LYNCHBURG, VA — While friends, family, colleagues, and sympathizers of the now late and by some lamented Rev. Jerry Falwell gather for solemn remembrances of the man who founded Liberty University and put Lynchburg, VA on the political map, others celebrate the death of a man that some have called a member of the American Taliban. Ironically, one of the chief contenders for the Far Right media spotlight plans to disrupt his funeral with a religious protest.Newspapers throughout the country have begun featuring editorial cartoons taking to task the 73-year-old founder of the Moral Majority, who made a career of demonizing those who opposed his ultra conservative agenda. Most frequently in his sights were gays, feminists, and liberals – although he also took pot shots at fictional characters, including the purple jumpsuit and handbag wearing children’s character, Tinky Winky.

Although Winky has stayed quiet on the death of his nemesis, others have not seen fit to do likewise. Interestingly enough, it’s not merely the Left Wing that is enjoying a bit of Falwell bating, with cartoonist Scott Stantis of The Birmingham News depicting the maligned purple one greeting the reverend at the gates of heaven and Universal Press Syndicate cartoonist Ted Rall using his blog to recount how Falwell “launched straight into a personal, ad hominem attack” on him during a split screen debate on television last year. “The dude’s a preacher, for God’s sake” he marvels, “Doesn’t he at least have to pretend to act like a civilized human being? Evidently not.”

Among the litany of preachers determined to avoid the trappings of civilized human beings is the infamous Rev. Fred Phelps, whose Westboro Baptist Church family members promise to commemorate Falwell’s May 22nd funeral with one of their nationally renowned protests. According to a press release on the GodHatesFags.com website, “God hates Jerry Falwell, Billy Graham, Pat Robertson, and all such Arminian heretic preachers – from fundamentalist evangelicals to openly gay Episcopalians and pedophile Catholics – all of whom have created the Satanic Sodomite Zeitgeist wherein America has irreversibly gone the way of Sodom.”

While Falwell would likely be horrified to find his name listed as one of the “Fag-Enablers” so loathed by his morality, the press release assures readers that “There is little doubt that Falwell split Hell wide open the instant he died.”

In a touch of irony, some of the kindest non-neo-con observations made after Falwell’s sudden death comes from his most famous court room opponent: Hustler magazine publisher, Larry Flynt.

In spite of the fact that the two men met in direct legal combat in the 1980s, when the reverend unsuccessfully sued Flynt over an ad parody that proposed he had given his virginity to his own mother in an outhouse while under the influence of alcohol, the pornographer refers to him as a “friend.”

“My mother always told me that no matter how much you dislike a person, when you meet them face to face you will find characteristics about them that you like,” Pine magazine reports. “Jerry Falwell was a perfect example of that. I hated everything he stood for, but after meeting him in person, years after the trial, Jerry Falwell and I became good friends.”

Flynt goes on to explain how the two men would meet in California and debate on college campuses. “I always appreciated his sincerity,” Flynt writes in homage, “even though I knew what he was selling and he knew what I was selling.”

For the adult industry, one of the greatest gifts Rev. Falwell ever gave the world was the Supreme Court ruling that clarified free speech protections for erotic parody. Because of this, Flynt contends that “what we see on television and hear on the radio today is a direct result of my having won that now famous case which Flynt played such an important role in.”

Falwell’s inability to shut Tinky Winky down aside, his contribution to the acknowledgment of free speech protections for explicit speech may be reason enough for the mad dogs of Westboro Baptist Church to be enraged.