May 17, 2007
Falwell's Antigay Stance: A Research and Mental Health Viewpoint
By Robert-Jay Green, PhD

The passing of Rev. Jerry Falwell brought massive news coverage and praise from politicians – Senator John McCain called him “a man of distinguished accomplishment.” 

Falwell’s death holds a different meaning for lesbian and gay people.  He was unquestionably the leading early figure in the political movement that National Gay and Lesbian Task Force Executive Director Matt Foreman called “America’s antigay industry.”  While launching his activism, Falwell discovered the immense fundraising potential in antigay prejudice. In 1977, he joined singer Anita Bryant to overturn a pioneering ordinance in Dade County, Florida, that granted equal rights to lesbians and gay men in the workplace.  In 1978, he stumped with California legislator John Briggs for Proposition 6, which would have banned lesbian and gay teachers from California’s public schools.

Posthumous news accounts suggest Falwell was preoccupied with the struggle between good and evil.  Gay and lesbian Americans everywhere are asking themselves whether Falwell was a source of evil or merely a product of his times.  How to decide? Acts of unquestioning conformity to majority prejudice can be just as treacherous as acts of intentional aggression.  We can only be sure of this – as a result of Jerry Falwell’s leadership, many lesbians and gays found their employment opportunities destroyed in Florida and elsewhere.

In 1979, fueled by his antigay campaigns and growing reputation, Falwell founded “The Moral Majority” and set about turning back “the flood tide of moral permissiveness, family breakdown and general capitulation to evil” he believed was washing over America. He found ways to demonize lesbians and gays and made them central to his fundraising and political crusades. Other antigay groups followed his lead.

This approach worked well because many Americans believed they did not know anyone who was lesbian or gay.  When they actually knew and liked such a person, they considered that individual an exception to the rule. We all know the phrases:  “Yes, Jim’s gay, but he doesn’t act like one.” Or “We suspect those women living together are lesbians, but they’re some of the nicest people you’ve ever met!”  How many exceptions to a stereotype does it take before the stereotype itself collapses?  How many lesbians and gays can one like and respect but still vote against their equal treatment?

Much more information is available nowadays to refute antigay attitudes than when Falwell started.  Scientific research has proven repeatedly that the vast majority of lesbian and gay people are well-adjusted, desire and maintain long-lasting couple relationships, have loving connections with their parents and siblings, and contribute in constructive ways to their communities.  A significant percentage of them also are parents, and their children are doing as well psychologically as other children. As more people “come out,” most Americans know lesbians and gay people as friends, relatives, neighbors, and coworkers.  These encounters with reality have made it tougher to justify and maintain old stereotypes.

It is in this light that many lesbian and gay people and their allies will view the passing of Rev. Falwell. His ideas were born of a time when invisibility and a lack of research made it easier to vilify lesbians and gays.  Thirty-four years after the American Psychiatric Association concluded that homosexuality is not a mental illness, society’s prevailing opinion is still perched on a tipping point – most young people now say they support same-sex marriage whereas most older people do not.  The Rev. Falwell’s passing reminds us not only of how far we’ve traveled since he first arrived on the national scene but also of how far there is to go in America’s equal appreciation of its lesbian and gay citizens.

Robert-Jay Green PhD is executive director of the Rockway Institute, a national center for LGBT research and public policy, and Distinguished Professor at the California School of Professional Psychology, a graduate division of Alliant International University.