The Reverend Jerry Falwell was pronounced dead today at Lychburg General Hospital in Lynchburg, Virginia after being found unresponsive in his office at Liberty University this morning. Founder of the "Moral Majority" and one of our times' most flamboyant opponents to modernism in all of its forms, Falwell held himself out as a segregationist, a homophobe, an enemy of secularism in schools, a millenialist and apocalypse-heralder, a proponent of South African Apartheid, and a crusader against pornography and the Teletubbies. Although Falwell lost his fabled case against Hustler Magazine publisher Larry Flint (precipitated by Flint's publishing of a fake Campari add purporting to quote Falwell as recounting his first sexual experience--with his own mother in an outhouse), Falwell prevailed in a case the SEC prosecuted against him for allegedly issuing unsecured bonds fraudulently on behalf of his church. Falwell founded Liberty University in Lynchburg, Virginia in 1971. His Thomas Road Baptist Church of Lynchburg presently counts its membership at 24,000. Falwell, never shy about making outrageous public statements, was fond of claiming that God is a Republican. With regard to Falwell's passing, of this much we are certain: the political dialogue in our nation will not be the same without him.
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