#falwell — Public Fediverse posts

#QoTD: “If you gave [Jerry] #Falwell an enema he could be buried in a matchbox.”
― Christopher #Hitchens

The #white #evangelical movement prior to 1980 was largely #supportive of #abortion #rights.

They were furious, however, when the Supreme Court #banned preacher-led #school #prayer and in the late 1970s Jimmy Carter pulled the #tax #exemptions of #segregated #schools run by white evangelicals.

Jerry #Falwell had started his “Moral Majority” in 1978 and uber-Christian Paul #Weyrich (co-founder of The Heritage Foundation and the guy who famously said, “I don’t want everybody to vote!”) signed up for the Reagan campaign.

As Donne Levy writes for George Washington University’s History News Network:

“Weyrich and Falwell realized that the tax exemption issue based on racial discrimination had limited value, but #opposing #abortion was a moral issue cutting across racial and religious lines. That was their thinking on the eve of the 1980 elections.”

An oldie but goodie:

"Like many #fanatical preachers, #Falwell was especially disgusting in exuding an almost sexless personality while railing from dawn to dusk about the #sex lives of others. ...From his wobbly base of opportunist fund raising and degree-mill money-spinning in Lynchburg, Va., he set out to puddle his sausage-sized fingers into the intimate arrangements of people who had done no harm." https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2007/05/jerry-falwell-faith-based-fraud.html #hitchens #taxthechurches