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Jerry Falwell--Ties to Huckabee? 12/17/2007 9:02:51 AM
Although Falwell died in 2006, he's still running politics from the grave. Back in the early 1970's, Falwell started a college of his own, called Liberty Baptist College. What he had in mind at the time was more than educating young Baptists to enter the world with devoutness, charity, and deeply help religious beliefs in mind. Falwell had a deeper plan that silently merged religion with politics and he lived to see it carried out.
His first plan was to join with a contingent of Southern Baptists to insure that a man of great faith would be elected as president to bring more of his views into the White House. The primary choice at the time was Jimmy Carter, who to this day teaches adult Bible classes at the Maranatha Baptist Church in Plains, GA. Falwell felt that with a hand in government affairs, his own anti-abortion thinking, along with his own anti-gay thinking, would stimulate a Congress run by a holy man to right the wrongs of the world.
However, although President Jimmy Carter ran his office with quiet dignity and good will towards all in mind, he was a bitter disappointment to Falwell. Carter might've been the one at the time to end the ten-year Palestinian war with Israel, but he failed both the Southern Baptists and Falwell when he didn't go to war with Iran to force the release of 52 American hostages. After a failed attempt to rescue the hostages, Carter tried diplomacy. See the article below taken from Carter's bio.
QUOTE: 'The 1979 revolution in Iran provided the most trying foreign policy challenges of the Carter presidency. After the victory of a fundamentalist Islamic faction in the Iranian revolution, radical students seized the American embassy and held American diplomatic personnel hostage, while demanding that the United States deliver the deposed Shah of Iran, who had sought medical care in the United States. Even after the Shah's departure from the United States and his subsequent death in Cairo, the government of Iran refused to return the American hostages. After an unsuccessful attempt to rescue the captive Americans, President Carter was able to secure the Iranian government's agreement to release the hostages, but not until after he had been defeated for re-election by Ronald Reagan'. END QUOTE
After Jimmy Carter's first and last term in office ended, Falwell turned his pre-election sites on Ronald Reagan, whom he considered a not-too-religious man who was a warrior. He figured the results he didn't get from Carter would surely be on the positive side with Reagan. And although Reagan's defeat of Carter's hopes for a second term was a slam dunk, Falwell suggested that all of his college students register to vote and cast the vote for Reagan. (Note: There are more than a few photos of Reagan and Falwell slapping each other's backs during Reagan's campaign.) How much Falwell influenced Reagan during his presidential terms is still a matter of conjecture.
QUOTE 'In 1979, Falwell founded the Moral Majority, which became one of the largest political lobby groups for evangelical Christians in the United States during the 1980s. The group is credited with delivering two-thirds of the white, evangelical Christian vote to Ronald Reagan during the 1980 presidential election'. END QUOTE
However, at that time, Falwell and his henchmen lobbied against laws that afforded legal rights to gay couples. He also banded together with Anita Bryant, a well known anti-gay activist when he tried to have a law banning discrimination against gays overturned in Florida. In regards to his views on abortions, Falwell went so far as to have his attornies appear in Supreme Court in an attempt to overturn Roe vs. Wade. After many such failed attempts, Falwell managed to push through a law with a timeframe in regards to abortions. The law stated that after so many months, around six, no abortions were allowed to be performed.
It was also suspected, but never proven, that Falwell's henchmen were involved in the bombing of many abortion clinics and the subsequent slaughter of patients, nurses and doctors. While this carnage was blamed on many, Falwell was first choice when it came to 'people of interest' in the cases.
Falwell, raised as a segretationist, spoke many times against the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, suggesting that King's quiet way of fighting for equal rights was just a sham. He felt that King was a violent man underneath his dignified demeanor.
Years later, still trying to keep his hand in politics, Falwell establed a college of law at his Liberty Baptist College, which was the culmination of the dream started in the 1970's. With hundreds of lawyers brain washed with Falwell's ideas in mind, their graduations would insure success in courts around the land. The college is still turning out lawyers at an alarming rate. Some will enter industry, others established law offices, still others, politics.
Meanwhile, ex-President Carter stayed active in his church and in the organization of Southern Baptist Churches, a group Falwell also supported. In 1999, this organization held a convention to dramatically change the laws of their churches. The main theme of the changes involved relationships between men and their spouses. Women were to be subservient to their husbands, they were to obey all of their husband's wishes, they were not allowed to play key roles in the church, such as deaconesses, ministers, or teachers of classes where the primary occupants were men.
Carter quickly outdistanced himself from the organization and started his own Baptist group along with ex-President Bill Clinton: An organization that stood to overturn all of the wrongs committed at the Southern Baptist Convention. Falwell, however, remained a member of the organization of Southern Baptist Churches.
Now we get to Huckabee, a Southern Baptist minister running for the office of president of the U.S. After living down South for 18 years, year round, and attending Southern Baptist churches, I think I've had enough of their fire and brimstone and damnation way of preaching. I've also had enough of male dominance in their churches. Now I have to wonder if Huckabee, for all of his religious piety, is a member of the Southern Baptist hard-handed orgranization once forcefully supported by Falwell. I also have to wonder if Huckabee is thinking on the same level and has adopted the 1999 ban on women's role in the church.
With Romney on one side and Huckabee on the other, women can now take a 100-year step backwards thanks to their views.
