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Rev. Jerry Falwell

Jerry has always reminded me of Mr. Haney on Green Acres. Both are plump and jowly, and they're always trying to unload a pile of crap on you.

Once a major GOP player during the 1980s, his political operations are pretty much washed up today. His Moral Majority disbanded in 1989 after the money stopped rolling in. And his Liberty University, based in Lynchburg, Virginia, hit hard times in the early 1990s and had to get bailed out by a front group for Rev. Sun Myung Moon's Unification Church.

But he still manages to make headlines and make us laugh with his screwball observations on American culture.

In 1999, he attacked Lilith Fair, the all-female concert tour, calling them a bunch of lesbians. Calm down, Jerry. These gals aren't nearly as penis-phobic as some Baptist preachers I know.

Jerry also criticized TeleTubbies for having what he thought was a gay character. He insisted Winky Dinky is gay because he's purple and carries a purse. He's worried that it will screw with kids' minds. So why don't you challenge Winky Dinky to a little wrestling match, Jerry? Yeah, show the kids who's more macho. You'll be a big hit. The kids love wrestling.

Not all of Jerry's rants have been amusing. Some have been quite sinister. On his Old Time Gospel Hour program, Jerry has peddled thousands of copies of a video titled The Clinton Chronicles. This video accuses Bill Clinton of drug smuggling, coke snorting, and having folks murdered when he was Governor of Arkansas.

Jerry has always acted weasely about this, sending this preposterous video through the mail to folks gullible enough to swallow it. It has even been shown in Christian fundamentalist schools, where the minds of young children have been poisoned with anti-Clinton propaganda.

Yet Jerry has never held a news conference to announce this incredible tale. Why would he need to sneak around if the charges were true? Exactly.

Jerry's always trying to get folks stirred up. In 1988, his Moral Majority attacked the Civil Rights Restoration Act, insisting it could make churches hire "a practicing, active homosexual drug addict with AIDS to be a teacher or youth pastor." And I thought he was against it because he didn't like black folks. Sorry, Jerry, I guess I had you figured wrong.

During that same year, he lost a lawsuit against Larry Flynt in a landmark Supreme Court case. Larry's Hustler magazine had published a parody which suggested Jerry had had sex with his mother in an outhouse. Funny, Jerry never struck me as the romantic type.

But then, in late 1999, a miracle happened. It had been only weeks before that Jerry urged a mostly gay crowd in San Francisco to go straight. (And for his next trick, he's going to Harlem to sign up folks for the Klan.) Yet there he was, holding an historic meeting at his church with a delegation of gay Christian activists, led by the Rev. Mel White.

Mel had been a ghostwriter for both Jerry and Pat Robertson. Then Mel came out of the closet and has since campaigned for gay rights and against his not-so-tolerant former employers.

Jerry still thinks gays can change their orientation, and he still opposes almost all the rights they're fighting for. But he has come out against anti-gay violence. What really changed his mind was the 1999 fatal shooting of seven youths at a Fort Worth church. He says evangelical Christians have begun to see themselves as victims of intolerance, so now he sees what gays have been up against. Sort of.

Either that, or Jerry was trying to clean up his act to prepare for the Second Coming. Millennium fever was in the air, you know. God just might tell him to cut out the crap. Right, Jerry?