The Rev. Jerry Falwell was stricken at his campus office and died Tuesday after a career in which the evangelist used the power of television to transform the religious right into a mighty force in American politics. He was 73.
The founder of the Moral Majority was discovered without a pulse at Liberty University and pronounced dead at a hospital an hour later. Dr. Carl Moore, Falwell's physician, said he had a heart condition and presumably died of a heart rhythm abnormality.
Driven into politics by the 1973 Supreme Court ruling that established the right to an abortion, Falwell founded the Moral Majority in 1979. One of the conservative lobbying group's greatest triumphs came just a year later, when Ronald Reagan was elected president.
Falwell credited the Moral Majority with getting millions of conservative voters registered, aiding in Reagan's victory and giving Republicans control of the Senate.
"I shudder to think where the country would be right now if the religious right had not evolved," he said when he stepped down as Moral Majority president in 1987.
I disliked Jerry Falwell immensely. I blame him for much of the backward thinking that has become prevalent in this country lately and I think that he had way too much power when it came to which politicians got elected in this country.
But having said that I do not make it a habit of celebrating the death of anybody. So I feel for Dr. Falwell and his family and hope that they find comfort in their religion.
But somehow I cannot help but think that Tinky Winky is somewhere clutching his purse and smiling.
Tinky WInky is more than just clutching his purse. He is sipping a martini, chatting up a storm and wanting someone else to buy his second drink. Seriously, I agree we shouldn't celebrate someone's death, even if Tinky Winky is.
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