The past two days have been a constant repetition of the same scene. "Did you hear?" someone asks me, and the look of feigned seriousness masking secret glee tells me exactly what they're about to say: "Jerry Falwell died."
It makes sense that people want to know my reaction to Falwell's death. I'm an out gay man, who's also an out Christian. Jerry Falwell was one of the most prominent conservative Christian enemies of the gay community.
But, the fact is, I'm saddened by Jerry Falwell's death.
Call me a Pollyanna, but I honestly believed Falwell might live long enough to change his mind about gay people. Remember, he was a vocal segregationist minister early in his career. He believed the lies about black people put forth by those who would twist the Gospel to coincide with their prejudices. On his radio show in the 1950s, he told African Americans they were not welcome in the pews of his church.
However, he later saw the error of his ways, and learned to read the Gospel without the lens of racial prejudice. He publicly apologized to the black community, and his church and university became something unusual in the American south -- racially integrated Christian communities.
While he continued to espouse his anti-gay reading of Scripture, Falwell modulated his tone in later years. Thanks in large part to Mel White (Falwell's former ghost writer and an out gay man), the pastor of Thomas Road Baptist Church mostly stopped repeating the lies about gay people too common in the sermons of conservative Christian leaders. When he did slip into stereotype and misinformation, Mel White would call him on it, and he would almost always apologize.
Had he been granted more time, Falwell might have come around. Whatever the case, I believe he now knows the truth about God's wildly inclusive love, and I pray his church and university will one day learn that truth as well.