Behind the Bastards - Part Two: Jerry Falwell: Founder of the Religious Right

Episode Date: December 5, 2019

Robert is joined again by Sofiya Alexandra to continue discussing Jerry Falwell. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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And the wrongly convicted pay a horrific price? Two death sentences in a life without parole. My youngest? I was incarcerated two days after her first birthday. Listen to CSI on trial on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. But more often than not these days, I just do increasingly reckless things because no one has stopped me. I haven't been canceled yet. Oh, you are in Pennsylvania as we determined last episode. And tell us who your roommates are currently.

Well, I'm living with Louis CK, which is, let me tell you, pretty uncomfortable. Yeah, Miles didn't love him as a roommate when he was in Pennsylvania. No, no, not great. Not great. Uh, also bad at cleaning. I'll give it, you know what, I'll give it to him. Cooks a pretty decent omelet, not a bad omelet cooker. Okay, you know, everyone's got positives and negatives. Never cleans the toilet. I would expect that.

And Louis CK can damage a toilet, let me tell you. I believe it. You know who else who could damage a toilet? Jerry Falwell. And Ronald Reagan. Those jelly beans did not come out smooth. I don't know why we're talking about poop. It's because you're an odd duck and I followed you.

Yeah, yep, yep. To the poop. To the poop. Because I'm a good friend. That's the true meaning of friendship. That's how you know it's real. That's how you know it's real. Speaking of real.

This is a bad lead-in. Ronald Reagan today is such an icon among the religious right that it's easy to forget. He wasn't always viewed this way. You have to remember that back before his eight years in office, before his monstrous and unforgivable failure to respond to the AIDS epidemic, Reagan had a reputation for being a somewhat libertine playboy movie star. He had tons of gay friends. He was plugged into the Hollywood set.

Reagan had long been conservative, but he was not seen as a member of the religious right. Of course, some of that had to do with the fact that the religious right did not really exist when Reagan was in politics. Jimmy Carter, on the other hand, was and is a deeply devout evangelical Christian. Even today, at age roughly 170, he spends most of his free time building houses for the poor.

The fact that the moral majority and the bulk of American evangelical Christians broke for Reagan in the 1980 election was a strange, novel development. On this subject, Doug Banwart writes, Although Reagan was not the perfect conservative, he was better than Carter, who had not accomplished significant legislation or executive orders to appease the evangelical community. Bruce Bersumo wrote that the moral majority was pinning its hopes on Ronald Reagan in the presidential election.

The moral majority, Christian voice and other Christian political organizations hoped that they could have a real evangelical social conservative on which they could depend in the White House. Carter was not sufficient. Carter's crying right now. He's like, I was not sufficient. Jimmy Carter made the mistake of actually reading about the stuff Jesus said. And interpreting it in a positive way.

Yeah, and using it as like, oh, I should probably take care of poor people in the disenfranchised. Whereas Jerry Falwell read it and said, well, clearly black people aren't supposed to go to school with white kids. And Reagan was like, oh, I think mentally ill people have been having it too easy. Release them upon the streets. He wasn't a big fan of black people either. Yes, Ronald Reagan, the only Republican to push for massive gun control

didn't get attacked, still does not get attacked for it because the purpose of it was to disarm black people. That's the story we'll tell at some point. Yeah, that's why California has bands on open carrying actually. Cool stuff, cool story. Ronald Reagan. Now, one of the chief reasons. My hero.

Yeah, everybody's hero. Of course, of course. One of the chief reasons Jerry Falwell and the devout throngs he spoke for disliked Carter was his support for feminism. Back in the 1960s and early 70s when the feminist movement had first launched, it had seen tepid support from conservative Christian circles. This started to change in the mid 1970s, largely as a result of the feminist movement's decision to treat gay people

like human beings and not diseased pariahs. Yay. Yeah, real tactical misstep there. In November, 1977, the National Women's Conference was held in Houston, Texas. Feminist activists declared an alliance with several gay rights groups. At a meeting earlier in the year, feminist activists had noted that lesbians made up a significant portion of the movement. Yeah, no shit. Lesbians fucking run shit.

You want somebody to make a fucking Excel spreadsheet and show up on time? You get a lesbian. Yep. I'm just giving advice out here for people who are trying to hire. I'm like, get a lesbian. Seconding that advice, yeah. Also, it's pretty easy to pirate Microsoft Excel. I don't have anything else to add.

It's just in Google Docs. You can use their sheets too. Yeah, but that's not stealing something. No, it's not. You really want to be transgressive. You have a lesbian woman steal Microsoft Excel and then really fight in the power. Show it to Mr. Paperclip. Okay, so yeah, the National Women's Conference acknowledged that the oppression faced by gay people was very much rooted

in many of the same things that caused the oppression of women in American society. Intersectionalism, you could call it. Morally, this was the right decision, but it led to a tremendous backlash against feminism by America's most intolerant Christians. Two years before the establishment of the moral majority, Jerry Falwell said this about the gay rights movement. Though they claimed to be another poorly treated minority, homosexuals are involved in open immorality as they practice perversion.

They are not a minority any more than murderers, rapists, or other sinners are a minority. Since they cannot reproduce, they proselyte. Proselyte? Proselyte. He's saying that they have to recruit people. And this is like... So, Jerry, there's a conspiracy now. If you watch Alex Jones' show and they're reporting on the Drag Queen story hour, there's this belief among them that it's this attempt by the LGBT community to recruit kids.

Jerry Falwell invents that conspiracy theory. He's like the first really prominent voice saying that like... Well, because obviously being gay isn't something natural. It's not something that just a certain portion of the population is always going to be because that's just the way that human beings are as well as every other species that reproduces sexually are. He decides the only way that they can make new gay people is to convert children. And now you could run into a shitload today.

It's like a huge conspiracy theory. And we have Jerry Falwell to thank for that. So that's cool. I mean, I don't know where that comes from. It's like, do you think straights are out there teaching straight people how to straight? Yeah, it does kind of insinuate that being straight isn't natural either. And you just have to capture kids with whatever... Right? The kids just come out completely without any identities.

And then whoever catches them first... Yeah. That's the sexuality they're going to get. Yeah, they're like birds imprinting on the first thing they see out of the egg. So lucky the first thing I saw when I came out was a penis and a vagina. That's how I became bi right away. Yeah. It was a weird hospital you were born in.

I mean, it was an all-new hospital. My request. I requested that in the womb. I would love it if we just did a shot-for-shot remake of ER, but everyone's naked. And they never ever address it? They never address it. Not for one second. I would love it. Not just because I want to see like...

Oh, Clooney's... Clooney's dick. Also, I was a Noia Wiley fan. Oh yeah, he was hot. I kind of really wanted them to kiss always, but they never would. Sorry, that was a personal journey. I have some good news for you. There's about 400,000 pages of fan fiction where they do in fact consummate that relationship. I know what I'm doing after this podcast.

I am excited for what deep fakes are going to do for fan fiction romances. It's really going to be groundbreaking. I'm horny already. So is Reddit. Oh yeah, I should probably read the podcast that we're doing. I was thinking about George Clooney and Noia Wiley. Me too. So Jimmy Carter was far from an outspoken gay rights advocate during his time in office,

although he has since been very outspoken about that. But he did lend his vocal support to the feminist movement, including the 1977 National Women's Conference. To fall well in his fellow evangelicals, this made Jimmy Carter a traitor to God's cause. They further hated Carter for his liberal policies on the value of social programs. Compounding this was the fact that the mid to late 1970s was a time of deep economic stagnation and high unemployment. This recession had actually started at the tail end of Nixon's time and power and it reached its deepest severity during Gerald Ford's presidency and continued through Carter's term in office. The actual causes of this stagflation, which is a term we all learned in high school,

are complex and multifaceted, rooted in a combination of enormous government spending on the Vietnam War, surging oil prices, and a series of union strikes. Things actually improved economically during Carter's term, but not quickly enough for fall well and his fellows on the religious right. Rather than see the recession as what it was, a complex disaster brought on by many different decisions, particularly those made by Richard Nixon, they decided the politic move would be to blame the economy on social programs. This tied in with a growing belief among the religious right that the federal government was incapable of handling social programs. They wanted churches guided by powerful pastors like Jerry Falwell to see to the poor and disenfranchised.

Falwell expressed this wish. See to the poor is such a fucking hilariously privileged, like, turn of phrase. It's like, oh, someone see to the poor. Yeah. Please. And there's this idea that, like, if the government's taking care of them, then they're basically slaves to the government as opposed to us taking care of them and making slaves to us. Yeah, it's like, why would we care about them? That's gross.

Yeah. Government, government, please get in here. Yes. Please take care of the poor, shall you? Yeah. Yeah. And it's like, it is kind of rooted in this idea that he had that, like, he and other pastors should own the poor, should, like, control them. Like, because they clearly believe that the government, like, that's one of the lines you'll hear on the right is that, like, well, if you have all these social programs, then basically, like, all these people are indebted to the government,

and they're just going to vote for more social programs. But it's like, if you're saying that you want churches to take care of it, and you're just saying you want those churches to control their lives. People to be indebted to the church, of course. Yeah, it's cool. Cool way for things to have work. Yeah, Jerry Falwell was a committed anti-communist, and he also saw the social safety net that Democrats had increasingly invested in since the New Deal as fundamentally dangerous.

In 1976, he preached that, if God lifts his hand from America, it's all over. And if America loses her freedom, the free world is gone. America should bless the world with expensive health care and not being able to feed your family. Also, it's always like mother fuckers being like, oh, I know what everybody should be doing that you're like, no one literally asked you ever. Yeah. But no, this is the moral agenda I have for the poor's who I now own, which is so weird. And also, there's a fundamental belief that poor people are somehow different from rich people.

Yeah. You know, that they're like of a lower stock and a different caste. Well, if they were, they'd be rich. Yeah, that's the whole thing. It's such a deep-seated thing that the poor masses, it's always like, oh, yeah, they're fucking dumb. They're dumb as hell. Otherwise, they'd be us. Yeah.

Otherwise, they would have started a mega-church. And made money off of themselves. Yeah. Yeah, it's neo-feudalism. Totally. That's what Jerry Falwell wants to be, is like a little king with a castle and some peasants who have to do what he says. Now, and for Jerry Falwell, America losing its freedom was synonymous with America spending money on stuff like food stamps. In the late 1970s, he made increasing claims that, quote, federal welfare checks went to bums who wouldn't work in a pie shop eating the holes out of donuts.

Jerry fought. I love that he thinks that's a job. Yeah. And also, I want that job. I do want that job. I do want that job. To Jerry Falwell, the roots of the economic crisis weren't a global dependence on oil, OPEX domination of the oil market, or the outrageous spending by several presidential administrations on a failed war. The cause was welfare spending from Falwell.

Because of the heavy taxation demanded for the support of a sick and unbalanced welfare program, the very heart is being cut out of the business community. The government seems to be committed to taxing the successful businessman right out of business. Yeah, that's a real problem in the 70s, businessman being taxed out of business. And so, for all these reasons, in 1980, the moral majority turned its back on the most committed evangelical Christian to ever hold executive office, and instead turned towards movie star Ronald Reagan. Wild. Yeah. And Reagan didn't really know how to deal with the moral majority. Like, he didn't really talk about his Christian worldview in his first campaign.

He didn't really talk about how it had impacted his beliefs or anything like that. He wasn't that guy. Nowadays, you can't imagine a Republican winning by not. Even if it's Trump misquoting Bible verses, they've got to do that shit. Reagan really didn't in his first campaign. And it was actually revealed during the election that he donated less than 1% of his income to religious causes, which is way short of the 10% tithing that you're supposed to do. But for the first and only time, Christian conservatives decided it was okay to vote for a man who wasn't religious and against a man who profoundly was in order to get tax benefits. Because money is the real God.

Yeah, that really is like the, that's my conspiracy theory about Jerry Falwell. So once Reagan got elected, evangelicals of the moral majority came to believe that they had a president who would advance their agenda of like getting rid of abortion and bringing back school prayer and getting governments to let them not have black kids at their schools. And a lot of people who were like rational observers of all of this thought that they were kind of fooling themselves because there was really no chance that Reagan was going to do any of that shit. Like he was a conservative, but Ronald Reagan wasn't going to wait into like pulling away Roe v. Wade or reinstituting like school prayer or anything like that. And so like while they were in office, Reagan's administration would kind of like talk nicely to the moral majority, but he actually didn't do most of the stuff that they wanted. The Reagan administration proved to be a huge disappointment for Jerry Falwell. Throughout his first year in office, Ronnie refused to go after any of the social issues the new Christian right had voted him into office to deal with. Abortion remained legal. Mandatory school prayer remained illegal. Feminism continued its slow march forward.

The only social arena in which Reagan's corporatist chunk of the Republican Party remained in line with the religious right was the oppression of gay people. So at least there's that for Jerry. Nice to find some common ground. Common ground. The common ground is stomping on the head of, yeah, yeah. Conservatives in San Francisco attempted to criminalize homosexuality during Reagan's term, and the moral majority launched a boycott of sponsors for TV shows that included anything they considered an abomination in the eyes of God. As the AIDS crisis kicked off and the death toll started to rise from the hundreds to the thousands to the tens of thousands, Jerry Falwell was there to blame the catastrophe on gay people. I'm going to quote next from a National Institutes of Health publication, The Social Impact of AIDS on the United States. The Reverend Jerry Falwell, an independent Baptist minister, in a sermon titled How Many Roads to Heaven, delivered on his nationally televised old time gospel hour, stated that God was bringing an end to the sexual revolution through the AIDS epidemic.

He also said, they, gay men, are scared to walk near one of their own kind right now, and what we preachers have been unable to do with our preaching, a God who hates sin has stopped dead in its tracks by saying, do it and die, do it and die. Falwell's political organization, Moral Majority, opposed governmentally funded research to find a cure for AIDS, because the disease was a gay problem. He promoted the idea that AIDS was not only God's judgment on gay men, but also that divine judgment extended to all of society. AIDS is a lethal judgment of God on America for endorsing this vulgar, perverted and reprobate lifestyle. Strong condemnations of gay sexuality is the cause of AIDS and God's vengeance also appeared in some religious journals. One of them affirmed, God warned mankind about AIDS in Numbers 32-23 when he said, be sure your sin will find you out. Maybe the AIDS plague will educate the world that the Bible is still the bedrock of civilization, and it should be learned, loved and lived in our daily lives. Wow, I really feel like getting people to get into Christianity by saying that God could occasionally punish you with AIDS

is really not the strongest pitch I've heard for Christianity. I really feel like that's not... Alright, if you throw that bagel, you're out of the show. I'm just prepping it. You're fired, Sophie's face is very angry. I'm just prepping it. I have to deal with my rage at reading that paragraph somehow, and the way I'm doing it is by putting my sling bag together and getting it loaded. Alright, you load it up, but you don't throw it away yet.

Not yet. If you hit the dog. I should not in here. Yeah, okay. Yes, so this is the best time to throw a bagel, really. See? I'm playing this out. I didn't.

The exact impact of Falwell and the moral majority on the death toll of the AIDS crisis is impossible to calculate. As with the 1970s recession, this was a disaster with many factors behind it. We dealt with some of that in our two-parter on the Reagan's and the AIDS epidemic. The total death toll to AIDS would measure close to half a million by the year 2000. Much of the government in action on AIDS during the crucial early years of the outbreak can be blamed on the religious rights. A vicious rejection of any money being spent to help people sick with what was then called the gay plague. It's nuts to me to be like, oh, we're going to meddle in your business and tell you that you can't be gay, but also now that you need help for what we've called a gay disease, we're going to just completely step away. How do you, how do you have it both ways where you're like meddling and telling people what to do, but then you're also like, no, but then not this part.

It's the same way it always works with these people where the only actual moral consistency is hate. Yeah, it's true. There's no actual philosophy that can stand up to anything. Yeah. If you think about the core of it being hate, then it all is consistent. Yeah. Because their justification will change and like they'll say like, yeah, we shouldn't spend any money. Like we can't, you know, spend any money to like help out gay people, but also like we can't consider homosexuality in any way as like a government and like all these different like contradictory things.

But the core of it is just they want gay people to die. Yeah. So if you think about it like that, then yeah, they're like completely consistent. Very consistent. Kind of what everyone who's not white and wealthy to die, but they hide the wealthy part from the people that they need to vote. I mean, that's Trump right now also. This is the same. Yeah.

This is kind of where the core of that is a political movement came from. Because like before this, like there were conservatives, but they were like, like, like Nixon, the shitty stuff he did was kind of like, there was a lot of shitty stuff he did. You could also have a guy like Nixon who would do like rational things like, well, but of course we need to protect the environment and like, okay, I'll open trade with China, even though like there are big nemesis. That seems quite now. He'd also bomb Cambodia in the Stone Age, but like, he's not going to, like, he's, he's, it was just different, different kind of shitty. Yep. Yeah. We've really evolved.

We really have evolved thanks to Jerry Falwell. Now there was an appeal during this time on the Christian Broadcasting Network where they asked their followers to write the Justice Department in opposition to any relaxation of the rule against immigration of HIV infected persons. And that don't generate 40,000 letters. And I can't think of anything more Christ like than not wanting sick immigrants to be helped. Yeah. As Jesus said, fuck you got mine. Yeah. Famous Jesus quote.

Yeah. So abortion remained a key issue for the moral majority throughout the 1980s. They did not see much support from the Reagan administration on this. Falwell's tactic was to seek a constitutional amendment to overturn Roe v. Wade. Since the Supreme Court had already declared that this undue restriction of abortion was a violation of constitutional rights, his first step towards achieving this was the human life bill, which would have written into American law that life begins at conception and that a fetus is a living person. But the human life bill never passed. Falwell's embrace of this tactic set the tone of the abortion debate, though, in a way that rings through to this day. The Reagan administration was never quite willing to take real action, though, because that would have cost them the political capital that they preferred to spend on deregulation and deinstitutionalization.

But later on, Reagan at all would throw a few bones to the moral majority. In 1982, one of his allies in the Senate introduced a constitutional amendment that would have made it legal to have official school prayers as long as individual students or teachers couldn't be forced to say that prayer. The amendment never came particularly close to passing, and Reagan himself failed to go to bat for it in any significant way, though. Early in 1982, Reagan's Justice and Treasury departments did reverse the IRS revocation of tax exempt status for Bob Jones University. But this sparked a massive backlash at the administration for basically supporting segregation with taxpayer dollars. Yeah. Yeah. Bob Jones keeps insisting.

They're like, no, we're really committed to segregation. Yeah, it's our religious beliefs. It's not based on racism. It's based on... What we think God wants, which we know about better than anyone. Which is racism. But not our racism. God's.

God's. So it's fine. He said that. It's totally not us. Yeah. So Reagan backpedaled and announced that he was now seeking a congressional ban on tax exemptions for racially discriminatory schools. This happened. While the moral majority wound up supporting Reagan's re-election campaign, the Christian right came out the other side of the Reagan years deeply disappointed in conservative politics.

We only got some of what we wanted. We didn't get everything. Jerry Falwell, however, was not the kind of guy to put all of his eggs in one basket. Throughout the early years of the moral majority and over the course of Reagan's two terms, Jerry fought an epic battle for the soul of the First Amendment with a man who might rightly be viewed as his greatest nemesis. Larry Flint. Larry Flint, baby. Yeah. Finally, a hero.

Finally, a hero arrives. And we're going to talk about that hero. But you know what else is a hero, Sophia? No. The corporations who sponsor this podcast. What if it's Coke Industries? Coke Industries? You mean Coke Hero Industries?

Hero Industries? Buy Coke products. No. No? No. Sophie's so mad at you. Sophie's very mad at me. Sorry, I'm distracted thinking about when I'm going to utilize the sling next.

The mold on that bagel is truly disgusting. Isn't it so gross? There's so much mold on this bagel. It keeps putting it next to the food I actually put in my mouth and I'm like, why are you doing that? I can't explain my actions. I just do them. Speaking of which, products. I'm Robert Evans,

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We're back! And Sophie is saying mean things to me. I think in an attempt to get me to throw this bagel. No one's attempting to get you to throw that bagel. Everybody's excited for me to throw this bagel. That's really the highlight of the show. That's what keeps the listeners coming back. That bagel touches me.

All bets are off from him too. I can't promise it won't. I can't promise what I'll do. That's fine. Great. This is a tense standoff. I can't wait to see how it resolves. Every podcast, nothing goes better with an audio medium than a standoff based mainly on eye contact.

I'm just saying I would pick her in a fight. Yeah. Also, we're wearing pretty much the exact same outfit kind of. We are wearing the exact same outfit. It's going to be like me fighting my own shadow. Sophie, can that be the video plug for the episode? You guys fighting? I mean, sure.

Okay. Oh, shadow box. So, we're talking about Larry Flint. We finally have a hero. Are you excited for this? So excited. You big fan of Larry Flint? I mean, who doesn't love Larry Flint?

Larry Flint. That movie was so fun. Yeah, one of the best smut peddlers that who has ever peddled smut. And I say that. Top three. With love. In case you weren't aware, Larry Flint is one of the most infamous smut peddlers of all time. He's the founder of Hustler Magazine, a trailblazer in the field of pornography.

And as a child, he claims to have lost his virginity to a literal chicken. Did you know that? No. Fuck the chicken? Yeah, he grew up on a farm and he said like farm kids would fuck animals and that's how he lost it. He claimed for years that's how he lost his virginity to a chicken. Interesting. I mean, I figured farm animals sure, but a chicken seems very peckish.

He was really specific and consistent about the fact that he fucked a chicken. I mean, they have to be able to push an egg out. So, I imagine there would be more room in there for your teenage farm boy dick. I hate this. Continue. Everyone should know that the hero of today's episode is a chicken fucker. And no one's even going to care by the end of this story. Yeah, because he's on the right side of history.

Yeah. Now, Larry Flint as a chicken fucking porn salesman is perhaps an unlikely pick for the man who literally saved free speech as we know it. But he is in fact the man who literally saved free speech as we know it. His story is extremely well documented and you can find a number of different writeups in there. And for our purposes, I'm going to quote the man, the myth, the legend, the chicken rapist himself, Larry Flint.

This is for an article he wrote the LA Times, tucking about the duel between him and Falwell and how it first began. I was publishing Hustler Magazine, which most people know has been pushing the envelope of taste from the very beginning. And Falwell was blasting me every chance he had. He would talk about how I was a slime dealer responsible for the decay of all morals. He called me every terrible name he could think of. Names as bad in my opinion as any language used in my magazine.

After several years of listening to him bash me and read his insults, I decided it was time to start poking some fun at him. So we ran a parody ad in Hustler, a takeoff on the then current Campari ads in which people were interviewed describing their first time. In the ads, it ultimately became clear that the interviewees were describing their first time sipping Campari, but not in our parody. We had Falwell describing his first time as having them with his mother drunk off our godfearing asses in an outhouse.

Suck it Falwell. Yeah. Pastor Falwell did not take this joke well. Oh, it's so crazy. He seems like he would have such a good sense of humor. You think he'd be able to laugh at himself with all the pranks he's pulled on other people. With that hilarious burning down the street prank. I mean.

He did not find this funny. And he sued Larry and his magazine for libel in Virginia. The lawsuit started in 1983, not long after the moral majority found themselves frustrated by Reagan waffling on tax exemptions and school prayer. It's possible Jerry's hunger for a win is part of what drove him in this endeavor. For a while, the case went well for him. Flint lost in the Jerry trial and again in federal appeals court. Now, if Flint had lost, he'd have had to pay Jerry $200,000 for, in Larry's words, hurting

his feelings. He wasn't willing to do this. And so he appealed to the US Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals where he lost again. So Larry appealed once more. And that was a decision with significant cost to him. He spent about $3 million in total on the lawsuits. But by escalating at this high, he also kind of risked the First Amendment for everybody, which was certainly a complicated decision to weigh because since it had been escalated

to the Supreme Court and like way out of like Virginia politics, that meant that like now what was at stake wasn't just a state level libel trial. Larry was, and he claims he didn't really think about this at the time, taking a gamble with the entirety of the First Amendment. So now like the case was not just about like whether or not he'd violated Virginia law, but whether or not the First Amendment protected powerful people from being made fun of. And that like kind of was the core of the Supreme Court case that Larry Flint waged against Jerry Falwell. And if he'd lost, it would have essentially removed First Amendment protections from the parody

of public figures. Thankfully for all of us, but most particularly late night TV hosts, the justices ruled that even gross and repugnant parody of a public figure was protected by the First Amendment. I mean, satire, if we don't have satire, what do we have? And that's what the Supreme Court decided. And so because of Larry Flint, that's not something we even have to debate over. It's like settled jurisprudence. So that's good.

Chief Justice Rehnquist explained that had they ruled against Flint, all any public figure would ever have to prove is that a writer made them feel bad to sue them and their publication into oblivion. Which, yeah, would have brought about the end of free speech as we know it. So Larry Flint both gambled and saved free speech in the course of a couple of years. Good for you, Larry. Good for you, Larry. Yeah. I'm going to quote from Larry's right up again.

Everyone was shocked at our victory and no one more so than Falwell, who on the day of the decision called me a sleaze merchant hiding behind the First Amendment. Still, over time, Falwell was forced to publicly come to grips with the reality that this is America, where you can make fun of anyone you want. Yeah. Yeah. Well, as the 1990s rolled along, the death toll from AIDS. Sorry, we're getting back to AIDS now.

Yeah, you can't read that in the same happy voice. You just read that decision. Nope. Nope. Tone shifting is a real problem for me, but here we are. The death toll from AIDS rose to the hundreds of thousands. Partly as a consequence, mainstream America began to gradually wake up to the idea that gay people are human beings and maybe didn't deserve to be abandoned to die horribly by

a sociopathic government. While most of the country slowly started to accept homosexual people as fellow citizens, Jerry Falwell continued to be a huge piece of shit. When the Clinton administration pushed forward its health care reform plan, Falwell complained in a video that this would allow AIDS patients to receive treatment without quote, any penalty for their abusive lifestyles. What the fuck? Yeah.

He's like, if you live, I want you to be punished. I want you to go to jail. For the crime of- For costing government money to treat you like this. Being a relationship with someone you love. What a human piece of shit. Yeah. Really a human piece of shit, Jerry Falwell.

In his tax-exempt church, he quoted right-wing firebrand Rush Limbaugh when the pill-addicted old bastard whined that allowing gays in the military would bankrupt the government due to the cost of their AIDS care. And the parade of bigotry went on from there. I'm going to quote from God's right hand again. In 1994, in a mailing sent out to supporters of the Liberty Alliance, Falwell wrote that the Clinton administration is set to award thousands and thousands of immigration visas to foreigners who are infected with the lethal, fatal, and deadly AIDS virus.

It's lethal, fatal, and deadly, Sophia. Well, but if it's- Well, the first two cancel each other out. So it's really only the last one. Just deadly. Just deadly. Really dodged a bullet there. Yeah.

So they can come to America. That's right. The Clinton administration is putting the health, welfare, public safety, and life of every American terrorist just so these homosexuals can hold an Olympic Games for gays and lesbians and transvestites and bisexuals and pedophiles and sodomites and exhibitionists and cross-dressers and every other sexual deviant on the planet with perverted proclivities. That is a long list. That is a long list.

But also he doesn't know shit about what people do. No, he does not. No, he does not. I will say that's actually one of the things that you got to give Jerry Falwell that you don't have to give his kids is he was morally consistent. He believed shitty things and he lived shitty things, whereas his kids just say shitty things. Yeah, and they don't believe him. No, no, no.

They don't at all. So, yeah. I don't know which is better, but... There's no better. It's a shit sandwich. It's a shit sandwich. Yeah. The fundraising appeal warned that these deviance would infect Americans with the AIDS virus

before leaving to fame your pastors, invade your neighborhoods, and recruit your children. This comes back to that, whether it's just teaching children to be gay, just out there. Gay immigrants are going to recruit your kids. The late 1990s brought Larry Flint and Jerry Falwell back together. This time as friends. History's Autist Bromance started in a 1997 episode of the Larry King Show. Flint was promoting his recent autobiography, and Larry brought Falwell out. The pastor greeted his former rival warmly with literal hugs and kisses, and then started

dropping by his office on visits to California. The two had a series of polite debates on morality and First Amendment issues that went on for nearly a decade. This is Larry Flint. In the years that followed up and up until his death, he'd come to see me every time he was in California. We'd have interesting philosophical conversations. We'd exchange personal Christmas cards.

He'd show me pictures of his grandchildren. I was with him in Florida once when he complained about his health and his weight, so I suggested he go on a diet that worked for me. I faxed a copy to his wife when I got back home. Now, it's interesting to me because you kind of see the core of Falwell's issue. If Larry Flint had just been a poor guy running like a fly-by-night porn magazine out of his apartment, Falwell would never have wanted to talk to him, but fundamentally... Just respect another white guy with money.

Exactly. That's really what it is for him. That's his primary loyalty, is to other rich guys with money. Gross. Gross. In God's right hand, Michael Winters notes that Falwell was constitutionally incapable of eating healthy food. His favorite breakfast was a cheddar cheese omelet with sausage, which he generally ate

at a Bob Evans restaurant near his church. Bob Evans. Everybody looked at me as soon as I said that. I've been getting that shit since I was a kid growing up in the fucking. As a now an elderly man in his 60s and 70s, Falwell continued his brutal schedule traveling across the nation to preach, as well as running Liberty University, raising funds, and of course, preaching at his own church. Agent Ilmis did not slow him down, nor did it put an end to his hot takes.

That's a shame. Yeah. In 1999, Jerry threw down one of the hottest takes in the history of hot takes. The Teletubbies, a surreal British children's show that I don't really know how to summarize if you have not seen it and aren't aware of what it looked like, took America by storm that year. Most people saw it as a weird, but basically harmless way to keep children entertained. Not Jerry.

I don't remember this. I don't buddy, Jerry. Yeah. You remember this one? The purple Teletubby. They saw it as a sinister attempt to infect the minds of young children with devilish gay propaganda. I'm going to quote from God's right hand again.

Falwell's Liberty Journal discerned a sinister agenda regarding Tinky Winky. He is purple, the gay pride color, and his antenna is shaped like a triangle, the gay pride symbol, noted the February issue. If that was not enough, Tinky Winky carried a magic bag that Falwell's editors thought looked suspiciously like a purse. The article accused the producers of intentionally putting subtle depictions of gay sexuality in the show and said that such role modeling of the gay lifestyle was damaging to the moral lives of children.

Again, such nerds, such fucking nerds, gigantic fucking nerds, and the way Larry Flint summarizes this issue is fucking hysterical to me. When he was getting blasted for his ridiculous homophobic comments after he wrote his Tinky Winky article, cautioning parents that the purple Teletubby character was in fact gay, I called him in Florida and yelled at him to leave the Tinky Winkies alone. Oh my God. Larry Flint. That's amazing.

You know what else is amazing, Sophia? These goods and services? Products and services. Sorry. We don't sell goods on this show. Goods are our products, and products are goods. Products. During the summer of 2020, some Americans suspected that the FBI had secretly infiltrated

the racial justice demonstrations, and you know what? They were right. I'm Trevor Aronson, and I'm hosting a new podcast series, Alphabet Boys. As the FBI, sometimes you've got to grab the little guy to go after the big guy. Each season will take you inside an undercover investigation. In the first season of Alphabet Boys, we're revealing how the FBI spied on protesters in Denver. At the center of this story is a raspy-voiced, cigar-smoking man who drives a silver hearse.

And inside his hearse was like a lot of guns. He's a shark. And not in the good and bad ass way, he's a nasty shark. He was just waiting for me to set the date, the time, and then for sure he was trying to get it to happen. I'm Lance Bass, and you may know me from a little band called NSYNC. What you may not know is that when I was 23, I traveled to Moscow to train to become the youngest person to go to space.

And when I was there, as you can imagine, I heard some pretty wild stories. But there was this one that really stuck with me about a Soviet astronaut who found himself stuck in space with no country to bring him down. It's 1991, and that man, Sergei Krekalev, is floating in orbit when he gets a message that down on Earth, his beloved country, the Soviet Union, is falling apart. And now he's left defending the Union's last outpost. This is the crazy story of the 313 days he spent in space, 313 days that changed the world.

Listen to The Last Soviet on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. What if I told you that much of the forensic science you see on shows like CSI isn't based on actual science? The problem with forensic science in the criminal legal system today is that it's an awful lot of forensic and not an awful lot of science. And the wrongly convicted pay a horrific price. Two death sentences and a life without parole.

My youngest, I was incarcerated two days after her first birthday. I'm Molly Herman. Join me as we put forensic science on trial to discover what happens when a match isn't a match and when there's no science in CSI. How many people have to be wrongly convicted before they realize that this stuff's all bogus, it's all made up? Listen to CSI on trial on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

We're back. I'm taking some flak from Sophie, but I've still got my bagel sling. Oh yeah, it's gonna do some damage, Sophie. Gonna do some damage. So there were some signs over the years that Jerry Falwell might soften his attitude towards homosexuality in the same way he'd reversed his opinion on segregation. One of these was the torture and murder of Matthew Shepard in October of 1998. Fred Phelps in the Westboro Baptist Church, being giant pieces of shit, protested Shepard's

funeral. Jerry Falwell, being a slightly smaller piece of shit, had enough human decency to be sickened by this. He got together with a Christian pro-gay activist to hold a summit on non-violence within the evangelical community. Literally the, hey, we should stop murdering gay people, maybe. We should talk about not murdering gay people. Which, I guess, took him what, six years, four to five years when he had that epiphany

about segregation. He was really turning it over in his head, is it wrong for us to murder gay people? Yeah. Yeah, he was really, he's like, I'm gonna take my time on this. He really did. So Falwell refused to reconsider his position that homosexuality went against the Bible in the will of God, but he did stand in front of a pastiche of photos of murdered gay people and state his desire for peace.

Inside both camps are people more interested in peace than in war and glorifying God than in getting their point across. He mentioned his friendship with Larry Flint as evidence that he and his ministry supported love for people, regardless of whether he approved of their behavior. He said to the gay community, we have not done that with you. We apologize for that. We ask your forgiveness for that. So.

Yay. Yay. It is the rightish thing done eventually, kind of, sort of. Let's read the next paragraph, Falwell supported George W. Bush in the 2000 election. However, he was not the same force that he had been in the 1980 election. For one thing, he was older and less influential, but the religious right he organized and formed into a weapon of political domination had only grown more powerful. George Bush lost one with the help of evangelical Christianity, and his administration would

cater to them in a more direct way than the Reagan administration had, particularly with things like the proposed Defensive Marriage Act. As you might expect, Jerry's reaction to the terrorist attacks on September 11th, 2001 were uniquely shitty, while most of America grieved and worked to process their fear and rage in the wake of the most spectacularly deadly terrorist attack in history, Jerry lashed out at, who else? Gay people. Yeah, you got it.

You're really getting a feel for this guy. Well, I just also remember this. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Two days after the attack, while guesting on Pat Robertson's show, The 700 Club, Falwell said this, what we saw on Tuesday as terrible as it is could be minuscule if in fact God continues to lift the curtain and allow the enemies of America to give us probably what we deserve. Pat, who was also a huge piece of shit, agreed.

Jerry, that's my feeling, and I feel we've just seen the anti-chamber to terror. We haven't even begun to see what they can do to the major population. Shortly after that, Falwell got down to explaining who he thought was really to blame for all this. The abortionists have got to bear some burden for this because God will not be mocked, and when we destroy 40 million little innocent babies, we make God mad. I really believe that the pagans and the abortionists and the feminists and the gays and the lesbians who are actively trying to make that an alternative lifestyle, the ACLU,

People for the American Way, all of them have tried to secularize America. I point the finger in their face and say, you help this happen. I mean, there's an extent. Thanks for helping the country heal. You know what I mean? Thanks. What I love about the wake of 9-11 is how it brought us all together. Yeah.

Really made us the best version of ourselves. Yeah. Yeah. What a beautiful way. Only we could get back to that. Yeah. How can we be the people we were at that moment? Yeah, before we blamed ourselves and when we blamed everyone else.

Women and abolitionists and gays. Yeah. The ACLU. And yeah, gay CLU. I mean, there's an extent to which that we could just take this, we could adopt this as kind of an empowering statement like, yeah, we did make 9-11 happen, guys. We fucked those towers up. Good on us.

My God. Yeah. So, what's it like, what's the weather like in your end of Pennsylvania right now? I will let you know when my, I helped cause 9-11 t-shirts go on sale at T-Public. Sophie, how close are we to getting those out? She just said fucking kill me and I appreciate that. These comments caused an uproar, which was not enough to stop President Bush from inviting Jerry Falwell to speak at the National Cathedral that year.

Shortly after that, Falwell released a non-apology apology. Despite the impressions some may have from news reports today, I hold no one other than the terrorists and the people and nations who have enabled and harbored them responsible for Tuesday's attack on this nation. I sincerely regret that the comments I made during a long theological discussion on a Christian television program yesterday were taken out of their context and reported that my thoughts, reduced to sound bites, have detracted from the spirit of this day of mourning. Okay, that's a lie.

We all heard what you said. You know, that doesn't strike you as a real apology. The fact that there's no I'm sorry in there. But all he said was you helped this happen. He's not saying that they committed 9-11, they just enabled 9-11. You wouldn't arrest a guy for enabling a murderer, right? Ah, yes. Oh.

That's conspiracy to commit murder. Oh, then it does sound like Jerry Falwell was accusing us all of that. It does sound like that. It kind of does sound like that. By our new, I helped enable 9-11 shirts, Sophie's not a fan of this one. I want to take the bagel sling so bad. No. It's mine.

I'm going to aim it at your stupid face right now. Oh, the shirt could be somebody knocking down the North Tower with a bagel from. Robert, you're fucking fired. Stop. Jesus. I'm going to be in Pennsylvania by nightfall. You're already there. You are in the lowest levels of Pennsylvania right now.

The U.C.K. is several floors above you. Wait, does this mean that Aziz Ansari is going to open for me now? No. He is doing better than you. Oh, shit. You would hope to open for him and you are not allowed. You're like fucking with Weinstein right now. Okay, okay, okay.

Yeah. You're Weinstein level. Cosby is in your kitchen making you tea right now. Let me try my canceled apology, okay? I am sorry that comments I made about me causing 9-11 were taken out of context by you and that it offended you. I am sorry that you were offended by the things that were said by someone who may have been me, but I do not apologize specifically for the statement itself.

Or for its intent. Or for its intent. Was that a good apology? Yeah. I feel a lot better. Thank you. I learned a lot from the people that I've written about. So yeah, well the neocons Falwell had helped into office, launched two disastrous, very

poorly waged and executed wars that crippled our military and loaded future generations down with unspeakable debt. Jerry Falwell spent his last few years seeing to his empire. In 2004, he opened a law school at Liberty University stating, we plan to turn out conservative lawyers the same way Harvard turns out liberals. Notable leftist bastion, Harvard. Yeah, I was like, what? In 2005, his health took a sharp downswing.

He suffered a heart attack, which he unfortunately survived. He recovered, but took this as a sign that he should start preparing to hand over the reins of his empire to his son, Jerry Jr. Why don't you take that as a sign that you're being evil? It's like 9-11, the gays caused, how did you cause your own fucking heart attack, buddy? Is it too much hate? They never seem to really think that God did that, because they were bad. That is weird.

Super strange. Yeah, even in the twilight of his life, Jerry Falwell continued to play shitty pranks on people. Oh my God, the prankster is back. We're getting one more prank story. Oh my God. I'm going to quote from God's right hand. What did he murder?

Come on. He just joked about murdering people. He drove his SUV around campus, developing a new prank of revving the motor at students as they walked in front of the vehicle. That's not a prank. That's threatening to run children over with your car. I love all shitty people have the same definition of prank, and it's making people fear for their lives.

Yeah, it's just straight up cruelty. It's beautiful. He equipped his SUV with an especially loud horn that he would blow at unsuspecting pedestrians. What a dick. That's at least closer to a prank. What a fucking dick. On May 15th, 2007, Jerry Falwell ate breakfast at the Bob Evans restaurant near his house. Afterwards, he entered his office and suffered a massive heart attack.

Thankfully, the paramedics failed to revive him this time, and he stayed dead. And that, praise the Lord, is the end of Jerry Falwell's story. But it is not the end of the Falwell story, and it was only the beginning of the story of the institution known as Liberty University. But that, my friends, is a story that we'll have to wait for another week. But I have it written here. Sophia? Yeah.

How are you feeling? I mean, refreshed, because now he's dead. I feel like there's only one way to really celebrate the death of Jerry Falwell. If that bagel hits either of us, I will punch you in the nuts. You'll be right to do so. And I'll film it. Okay. It's a deal.

I fell behind you. You don't even deserve to throw it. That's like the erectile dysfunction of bagel throwing. Totally. Right out of the hoop. All right. All right, guys, it's going to happen now. There's no stopping it.

Watch your- Yeah! That was dangerously near Sophie's head. It was. Anything you do with a sling in a tiny enclosed recording studio is going to be dangerous. I mean, if one day Sophie slips something in your drink and you do not- I'll deserve it. You have a massive heart attack after eating at Bob Jones' diner.

I mean, you're going to get your use, right? The cheese omelet with sausage, and then you're going to have a nice nap. A hater attack. Oh, no. Sophie's definitely going to be the one who brings me down. Well, the hate causes you heart attack, hater attack. A hater attack. All right.

I have to leave. I feel like hate kept her alive. Yep. You want to plug your plugables? Sure. You guys can find me on Twitter and Instagram at thesophia, S-O-F-I-Y-A. And you can find me co-hosting Private Parts Unknown, my podcast with Courtney Kossack about love and sexuality around the world, and 420 Day Fiancé, my podcast with Miles

Gray about 90 Day Fiancé. And you can find me on the internet at BehindTheBastards.com, where we'll have all of the sources for this. I'd also like to say special thanks to Corey, who made this wonderful sling that has improved all of our days so much. Burn in hell, Corey. You burn in hell. And if someone wants to draw fan art of George Clooney and Noah Wiley kissing, touching penises,

whatever. Taking down the World Trade Center? Please tweet that at me. What? What the fuck? Tweet that at me. And also cancel Robert. Just be cancel.

Hashtag cancel Robert. Hashtag cancel Robert. Plug your plugables. At BastardsPod, Twitter and Instagram. I write okay on Twitter, where you can tell me that I'm canceled to my digital face. This is the end of the episode. This is not the end of the episode. What else do we do, Sophie?

We have another podcast with Katie Stoll and Cody Johnston called. We have another podcast with Katie Stoll and Cody Johnston called NPR's Radio app. I hate you so much. Oh no, we actually beat them last week in the ratings. Yeah, we did. Our show worst year ever. All right. You brought it back.

I like that. I like that. Here's your bagel. I got it. Oh, Sophie! You get to throw a multi-plate bagel back. All right. I'm going to throw it one more time.

This one's for you, Corey. I feel like it's coming up to me. Yeah! Didn't you try to get Sophie? Which I did not. She really did. I was not cosign. I did not cosign.

I did not cosign. I did not cosign. I'm gently kicking. I've gently kicked it towards you now. All right. Well, that's all the bagel throwing I'm going to do today with this sling. Great. Thanks, Corey.

Alphabet Boys is a new podcast series that goes inside undercover investigations. In the first season, we're diving into an FBI investigation of the 2020 protests. It involves a cigar-smoking mystery man who drives a silver hearse. And inside his hearse was like a lot of guns. But are federal agents catching bad guys or creating them? He was just waiting for me to set the date, the time, and then for sure he was trying to get it to happen. Listen to Alphabet Boys on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your

podcast. Did you know Lance Bass is a Russian-trained astronaut? That he went through training in a secret facility outside Moscow, hoping to become the youngest person to go to space? Well, I ought to know, because I'm Lance Bass, and I'm hosting a new podcast that tells my crazy story and an even crazier story about a Russian astronaut who found himself stuck in space with no country to bring him down. With the Soviet Union collapsing around him, he orbited the Earth for 313 days that changed

the world. Listen to the last Soviet on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. What if I told you that much of the forensic science you see on shows like CSI isn't based on actual science, and the wrongly convicted pay a horrific price? Two death sentences in a life without parole. My youngest, I was incarcerated two days after her first birthday. Listen to CSI on trial on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your

podcasts.