Jerry Falwell died yesterday. He used his position to promote hate. No doubt. But should we be rejoicing over his death? I heard a lot of “Yay, he’s dead!” since yesterday.
Perhaps, we should use the energy of excitement to continue educating and inspiring those who was taught the wrong thing – hatred. Spewing hatred back to those who hate us isn’t going to solve anything.
Call me a rightous-wannabe. Rejoicing over someone’s death isn’t sitting quite right in me.
What the world needs now is love.
I touched on this in my last podcast. I don’t rejoice, but i’m not crying any tears over his death. I read some wonderful press releases from HRC and GLAAD which can also be found on the Americablog site (www.americablog.com)
John Aravosis writes alot about political stuff on that site, but with a definite gay slant.
His death doesn’t do away his bigotry. His death doesn’t wipe off what he’s caused the gay community and those he hurt. His hatred legacy is still there. We have a lot more work to do, and feeling good about his death isn’t helping.
Well, he promote hate, and inflicted a lot of pain onto others.
But that doesn’t mean we have to “rejoice” over his death,
right?
We loath them for “promoting” hate,
but why not ask ourselves,
aren’t we doing just the same thing
when we in turn hated him as well?
I have very mixed feelings about this…especially since so much of that hatred was blankly aimed at myself and my friends like me. On one hand, he was a human being and the celebration of the ‘loss’ of another human seems immorally wrong. On the other hand, celebrating the demise of a mass murder or dictator, such as Hitler, seens so much easier to justify. I guess in Falwell’s case he was neither a murderer (though his type of message undoubtedly inspireed people to murder or gaybash) nor was he a saint. For me, I guess it’s the Ebenizer Scrooge syndrome, where the general consensus is that the world is a warmer, more tollerant place without him. He should have been spreading the Christmas Spirit, rather than needing a visit from them.