"For Falwell and the religious right, the tension between adhering to a literal interpretation of the Bible and allowing the compromise inherent in mainstream politics never fully eased. In a pluralistic democracy, the voice of every participant has a priori equal standing. Yet with its insistence on the inerrancy of the Bible in public policy, the religious right raised the specter of theocracy. To deal with the competing demands--theological and political--Falwell, like Pat Robertson later in the 1980s, simply opted to adopt two contradictory positions, one intended for his core audience and one suited for public consumption, and hoped no one would notice. After backing Briggs's and Bryant's campaign to ban gays and lesbians from teaching positions in the public schools and repeatedly in sermons and fund-raising letters harping on the homosexual threat to children, Falwell told the Washington Post, "I have no objection to a homosexual teaching in the classroom as long as that homosexual is not flaunting his lifestyle or soliciting students.""
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Non-fiction authors from the United StatesChristian leadersBaptists from the United StatesPeople from VirginiaClergy from the United States
Original Language: English
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Sources
John Gallagher and Chris Bull, The Religious Right, the Gay Movement, and the Politics of the 1990s (1996), Ch. 1
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Jerry_Falwell
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Jerry Falwell
Jerry Lamon Falwell (11 August 1933 – 15 May 2007) was an American pastor, Southern Baptist, televangelist, founder of the Moral Majority and Liberty University, and a prominent conservative activist.
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