Despite Falwell’s death, America still has a bumper crop of homegrown bigots – James Dobson, Tony Perkins, Don Wildmon, Louis Sheldon – who use religion’s inherent “us vs. them” mentality to justify their need to hate and, in the process, line their own deep, very secular pockets.

Falwell and these other spokesmen for “God” are little more than Chaucerian caricatures. They most closely resemble the Pardoner, except Chaucer’s Pardoner had the decency to admit he and everything he represented was a fraud and everything he said a lie. It all had but one purpose: his own financial gain.

One of the things Rev. Falwell left behind was his private jet. According to the American Family Association’s 2005 tax return, founder and chairman Don Wildmon received “about $110,000 with benefits, plus over $30,000 in expense account and other allowances – including a housing allowance of over $31,000.”

And the AFA isn’t even the top of the Christian Right’s money-making machines. That distinction belongs to James Dobson’s Focus on the Family and Tony Perkins’ Family Research Council. Wouldn’t it be the “Christian thing to do” for Dobson and Perkins, Wildmon and Sheldon to release their personal tax returns to assure everyone they’re not getting rich by milking the sheeple?

Peter LaBarbera heads a grotesquely misnamed organization called “Americans for Truth,” the sole purpose of which is to demean and denigrate gay and lesbian Americans and fight against equal civil rights for them and their children. Teletubby Tinky Winky would ask, “How’s that for Falwellian sick and demented?”

LaBarbera recently castigated Cathleen Falsani of The Chicago Sun-Times for her comments on Falwell. He suggested Ms. Falsani needed “sensitivity training.”

Jerry Falwell was among THE most insensitive human beings ever to infest planet Earth. But he did love to quote the Bible. So here’s one for Jerry and LaBarbera and all the other sanctimonious hate-mongers who cherry-pick the Bible for their own sinister purposes:

“Be not deceived; God is not mocked: for whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap” (Galatians 6:7, KJV).

Falwell’s memory is reaping just what he sowed in life. And justly so…
 

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