Slate Voice

Jerry Falwell made his living finding gay people where they didn’t belong. “Remember… homosexuals do not reproduce,” the televangelist and activist warned his followers in 1981. “They recruit!” He claimed to have confronted President Carter about why he employed “practicing homosexuals” in the White House in 1980. When Ellen DeGeneres’ sitcom character came out of the closet in 1997, he called her “Ellen Degenerate.