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A Bible autographed by the Rev. Jerry Falwell awakened memories for Liberty Baptist College
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My Wish for Falwell
Exclusive look at the man from one of his queer students
by Glenn Scofield Williams
LASER HAIR
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Celebrating Pride & a year of keeping Portland healthy
1. Had a free rapid HIV and STD screening.
2. Learned how to eat healthier on the run.
3. Gotten tips on how to be a better boyfriend.
4. Learned helpful hints on Internet dating.
5. Played bingo with Chicos Latinos.
6. Learned how to live well with HIV.
7. Found out how to keep your ticker happy.
8. Learned how to give yourself a testicular exam.
9. Learned how to better protect yourself from HIV.
10. Met a new friend.
What will you do next year? 1
for more intormabon on the
Hbiross Center or
monthly events: 503.445.7699, www.cascadeaids.Ofg7services_mensjive0ness
Cascade /MOS Prefect
>CAI=>
erry Falwell died May 15. He owed me
$1.75.
Most of my friends applauded and
rejoiced at the news, making jokes about
the surprise he got in hell a few minutes
after his unholy heart gave out. Part of me
rejoiced as well. Especially the part of me who
remembered sitting in his church in the early
1980s as the new "gay cancer" spread its deadly
wings, the part of me that squirmed in the pews as
Falwell intoned that it was God’s wrath, punish'
ing gays for their “godless and immoral lifestyle."
As if God lacked the capacity for love that I,
a 19-year-old Montana kid, had. The part that
rejoiced was the part of me that hated Falwell and
his crusades against everything and anyone who
was different: gays, women, liberals, intellectuals,
unbelievers, anyone
with a sex drive.
I attended Jerry
Falwell’s Liberty
Baptist College off
and on from the
fall of 1978 until
I graduated in May
1985. Mine was the first graduating class to be
fully accredited and the first to bear the words
“Liberty University” on our diplomas. I graduated
with a degree in drama and enough credits in
Christian theology to make a second major. I had
entered Liberty to become a preacher. But during
a sermon contest my sophomore year, the judges
told me I was “too effeminate" and should learn to
preach “in a more manly style." I switched my
major the next day.
Looking back, I recognize in myself a naive kid
who hadn’t a clue as to the makeup of his identity.
I am tempted to look at the boy, sitting in the pew
beside Anita Bryant, serving as one of her body
guards as gay rights organizations protested outside
the church, and call him a coward. But how can I?
I knew that I loved men and women both, that
I found sex pleasurable without worrying about
what organs it was that shared that pleasure with
me. But I hadn't a clue that I was gay or bi or any-
thing like it. The words didn’t somehow “apply.”
I remember the first time I tried the word
“homosexual” on myself. It was my junior year at
Liberty, after a particularly nasty harangue from
Falwell on the evils of the “homosexual agenda.”
The day before I received a really excellent blowjob
from a beautiful young man in a department store
bathroom. That Sunday afternoon, after Falwell’s
sermon, 1 stood in my dorm room on the Liberty
campus, staring into the mirror.
“Homosexual,” I mouthed silently into the mir
ror. Scared the fuck out of me.
Who we are can be quite a surprise and can take
a long time to find words for.
But there was another part. When I heard
Falwell died, I remembered, of ail the fucked-up
things, his kindnesses toward me. I remember how
he praised my perform
ance as Oedipus in
Sophocles’ tragedy. He
told the entire congre
gation of Thomas
Road Baptist Church
that they needed to
see the production.
Falwell’s wife, Macel, used to drag him to all of our
productions (“hoping to get me a little culture,”
he would joke). He always sought me out back
stage after a show to thank me and praise my act
ing. I sought that praise like a boy seeking his
father’s approval.
Backstage at Oedipus, he fake socked me in the
shoulder and said in his pear-shaped baritone,
“Glenn, that performance was dynamite!” That
night, I pulled him aside and asked him if he would
write a little note to my grandparents, who were big
Falwell fans. My relationship with my grandparents
was strained at the time, and I thought this might
make me a temporary hero. Falwell clicked his ball
point, grinning that famous jowly grin of his and
said, “What are their names?’ He wrote a little note
to them and signed it. I never saw a photo of me on
my grandparents’ walls. But that note was framed
and hung on the wall of their living room until the
day they died.
When I heard Falwell died,
I remembered,
of all the fucked-up things,
his kindnesses toward me.
I