The Passion Of The Threatened Assassinations Of Jerry Falwell
From the blog Jeremayakovka via Conservative Grapevine
Sphere: Related ContentIn the early 1980s homosexual savages inspired by 1969 riots at the Stonewall Inn bar made death threats against this influential opponent of gay civil rights, as suggested in over 100 pages of recently released FBI files, according to the Washington Post’s “Investigations” blog:
[Jerry] Falwell’s FBI file contains a 1983 letter sent to his television ministry that concluded with the words, “Hoping you will die soon.” It was accompanied by a small plastic box containing a live scorpion. One threat involved calls to Liberty Baptist College in Lynchburg in 1983, warning that a $10,000 reward had been offered for Falwell’s “assassination” and that it was to be carried out by “gays in Cincinnati.” One caller advised, “I know this is true, because my brother is one of them.” Said another, “I intend to be the one to collect that money.”
No less disturbing than the assassination threats (and attempt, if you count the scorpion) is that WaPo phrases the item and frames the issue by couching in reckless banality both the temptation and the threat to commit murder. The blog entry, called simply, “Exclusive: Jerry Falwell’s FBI File,” begins:
The Rev. Jerry Falwell , founder of the Moral Majority, stirred up passions with his attacks on abortion and homosexuality. Now, the FBI’s confidential file on Falwell, who died in May at age 73, reveals that he also stirred up death threats….[emphases added]
Fortunately such phrasing hints at a way out of its own epistemological impasse. For despite the authority implied by the active form of the verb “to stir up,” only something pre-existing can be set in motion. Which is to say that neither Falwell nor the Devil made those ostensibly “passionate” homosexuals do it. (Granted, the Reverend might have disagreed with my take on the Devil’s role in the matter.) While it’s true that people prone to passion will be found on both sides of any debate, making death threats catapults one into a category beyond the pale of what is acceptable (indeed, of what is possible) as civil discourse. Death threats destroy civil discourse. Like that bullying which taunts and torments another who is perceived to be “different,” death threats against a public personality convey an aggressive contempt for the targeted individual. They also convey a most cowardly disdain because they attempt — always in futility, I might add — to coerce through terror what one shrinks from achieving through debate.
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