Falwell spent many Sunday dinners with his feet under our table and really loved my mother's chocolate meringue pie. She often baked two, one for dinner and one for us to take back to school. Since we usually drove back late at night the pie often had a hard time making it to Springfield. It certainly didn't last long after we got back to the dorm.

At the time of these weekly excursions I was 18 and Falwell was 22.

As it turned out on the day of the broadcast there were about 100 people in the audience and I was assigned an aisle seat. When host Jim Finnerty came around to me Falwell acknowledged me and said, "I remember you well."

We exchanged some minor personal banter and I started to ask him about a quote he had made about the "gay church" the Metropolitan Community Churches with which I had formerly been affiliated.

Now the quote was published earlier in the year in the Advocate, a national gay publication, as there were two Presbyterian college professors in Lynchburg who were taping everything thing Falwell said in his public services and they had sent it in to the Advocate.

It was a statement, which I thought he had probably uttered in a Wednesday night prayer meeting.

You can imagine my surprise when I heard it on a Sunday broadcast of his Old Time Gospel Hour.

I didn't have a VCR or even a tape recorder. I rushed out and bought a tape recorder so I could record the statement on one of his two later Sacramento broadcasts of the same sermon.

Here is what Falwell said:

"LOOK AT THE METROPOLITAN COMMUNITY CHURCH TODAY, THE GAY CHURCH, ALMOST ACCEPTED INTO THE WORLD COUNCIL OF CHURCHES RECENTLY, THE NATIONAL COUNCIL OF CHURCHES ALMOST, THE VOTE WAS AGAINST THEM, BUT THEY WILL TRY AGAIN AND AGAIN UNTIL THEY GET IN AND THE TRAGEDY IS THAT THEY WOULD GET ONE VOTE BECAUSE THEY ARE SPOKEN OF HERE IN JUDE AS BEING BRUTE BEASTS, THAT IS, GOING TO THE BASER LUST OF THE FLESH TO LIVE IMMORALITY. AND SO, JUDE DESCRIBES THIS AS APOSTASY. THANK GOD, THIS VILE AND SATANIC SYSTEM WILL ONE DAY BE UTTERLY ANNIHILATED AND THERE WILL BE A CELEBRATION IN HEAVEN!"

As I tried to get the quote out Falwell kept interrupting me and said what I was saying was "an absolute lie"

As I proceeded he became very agitated and kept denying he had said these terrible things about his fellow believers and he really lost it when I said had a tape of him saying these things.

At this point Falwell's face was flushed and he was extremely agitated and offered me $5000 to produce the tape.

I did not have the tape as I had lent to someone and could not get it back from them in time for the broadcast but I did take the tape to the KCRA studios on Wednesday, July 18, along with an audio tape produced by the Old Time Gospel Hour.

The reporters played the tape and the interviewed me for the evening news and all agreed I had had quoted him accurately.

To me Falwell's vehement denials of these quotes showed a gigantic flaw in his character. While I did get one word wrong as I quoted him as saying there would be "rejoicing in heaven when they annihilated" when actually he used the words "celebration in heaven."

Now he could have claimed the statement and corrected my one word faux pas but he chose do what so many Fundamentalist do often as the Sadducees and Pharisees before them did and that is to argue over jots and tittles. (For those of you who are not bible scholars, jots and tittles are accent marks in the Jewish writings and the placement of them may change the meaning of the word.)

Falwell has a history of denying things if he was not quoted exactly word for word.

Falwell, in his agitation and pride, stumbled over his jots and tittles and offered me $5000 not believing I would follow through and produce the tape.

At least three times Falwell said I was lying so it was a matter of personal honor for me to produce the tape and show that he was the one lying, the $5000 would just be icing on the cake.

After the KCRA interview I went to see Rosemary Metrailer, an attorney I knew, who happened to be a lesbian and asked her to write Falwell to send the $5000 by return mail as he could find his statement on his Old Time Gospel Hour tape #592.

Falwell's attorney wrote us a letter basically saying it would be a cold day in you-know-where before he gave me $5000.

On Friday, November 30, 1984, Falwell was scheduled to be in Sacramento on a fundraising tour so Rosie drew up papers to sue Falwell for "breach of an oral contract" and filed  the papers in the Municipal Court a couple of hours before the estimated time of arrival of his private jet in Sacramento.

All of the local visual and print media were there to cover his arrival and appearance at the Sacramento Convention Center. Much of the media were curious as to why Rosie and I were there. As the plane touched down they were handed a press release stating we were about to serve Falwell with papers for a law suit.

My friend Doug Mitten served the papers on Falwell who directed him to give them to an assistant.

The news of the lawsuit made national headlines and news of the suit popped up over the next 26 months as it made it's snail pace progress through the courts.

The case took so long, because after the Municipal Court judge ruled in my favor as Falwell appealed the ruling to the Sacramento Appeals Court on the grounds that the judge who heard the case was Jewish and had "a natural prejudice" against him.

In July, 1986, when the case was heard before three appeals court judges. I was taken aback by the judges' very harsh attitude toward Falwell's attorney, Weldon Reeves, and at the same time their light manner about the whole case.

The judges of course ruled in my favor and awarded me an additional $2875 plus interest as a sanction against Falwell for wasting the court's time with a "frivolous" law suit.

It still took until September before Falwell finally paid up and I received a check for $8982.90 from the Moral Majority.

He wanted to impose an agreement on my part that I would not call a press conference and "gloat" about winning the law suit.

While he had no right to make such a demand as he had been ordered by two courts and four judges to pay me.  I was tired and I told Rosie to let him put anything on the back of the check wished. I told her, "My mother will call a press conference and say, `Hey, look what my kid has done!'"

The winning of this case had national implications for the GLBT communities across the country as in June the infamous "Hardwick v Bowers" case had been ruled on by the 9 Supremes and they upheld sodomy laws which meant government at all levels could still interfere with the private sex lives of it's citizens. It gave us a little sunshine that a major homohater and soul molester had to pay for his venom.

I had people tell me they had heard about the lawsuit in news broadcasts as they were traveling in Europe and Australia.

After I finally cashed the check, I took a portion of the money and gave it to the Lambda Community Center, which opened in August of 1986, and we used the money to buy some much-needed equipment.

Falwell has not tamed down in the last 20 years, if anything, he has become more volatile in his opposition to civil rights for us GLBT folks.

He has jumped full force into the "gay marriage" issue and is firmly supporting an amendment to the Constitution that would only allow marriage between a man and a woman to be recognized in the United States.

I am happy to be, as far as I know, the only person to have proven Jerry Falwell a liar in two courts and before four judges.

When I recall this story, it always brings back a flood of good memories. The Lambda Community Center is still on 20th and L serving the needs of the Sacramento GLBT communities. It now has a vision to move and expand to meet the growing demand for it's services.

In the last 19 years countless men, women and young people have availed themselves of it services and left feeling better about themselves.

Out of the center's programs has grown the Lambda Players which bring GLBT culture and much joy to our community. The Center helped the Sacramento Men's chorus get off the ground and become an outstanding cultural anchor for us.

Without Jerry Falwell the Lambda Community Center and all of these other fantastic benefits would have never become a reality.

Anniversaries do bring warm memories.

Jerry Sloan, 71, a 29 year resident of Sacramento CA, has been a gay activist for over 40 years and is originally from Kansas City, Mo.  He obtained a Graduate of Theology degree (Th.G.) from Baptist Bible College, Springfield, MO., in 1957. He served as a minister of the Universal Fellowship of Metropolitan Community Churches in Sacramento, Des Moines, IA., Wichita, Ks., and Ft. Worth, TX. In Sacramento he is the co-founder of the Lambda Freedom Fair, Lambda Community Center and Project Tocsin. He has tracked the political money trail of the Radical Religious Right since 1980. He is the co-author of Without Justice for All: A Look At the Christian Right in California and Beyond (1994) He is currently a very active member of Atheists & Other Freethinkers of Sacramento.

Project Tocsin, http://www.rthoughtsrfree.org/tocsin.htm  

Blog: http://projecttocsin.blogspot.com

Digg
del.icio.us
Newsvine
Reddit
stumbleupon
Facebook