Falwell Ordered to Pay $5,000 to Gay Who Met Evangelist’s Challenge

A judge has ordered the Rev. Jerry Falwell to make good on a promise to pay $5,000 to a gay leader if he could produce a tape recording of an attack by Falwell on a gay community church.

In making the ruling Tuesday, Municipal Judge Michael Ullman said that Falwell, founder of the Moral Majority, denied on a Sacramento television talk show last year that he had attacked the Metropolitan Community Church, and offered Jerry Sloan $5,000 if he could produce the tape.

Sloan presented the tape “almost immediately,” binding Falwell to “his unilateral contract,” Ullman said in a written opinion. Sloan filed suit to collect the $5,000 last September after Falwell refused to pay up.

‘Gospel Hour’ Sermon

The tape was of a sermon Falwell delivered in an “Old Time Gospel Hour” broadcast aired on two Sacramento television stations in March, 1984.

The judge found that Falwell referred to the homosexual church as “brute beasts . . . part of a vile and satanic system (that) will one day be utterly annihilated, and there will be a celebration in heaven.”

Sloan, a former pastor of the church who now heads a gay-lesbian organization seeking to establish a community center in Sacramento, said he felt “great” about the ruling.

“I did it for the principle of the thing,” he said. “His statements are dangerous to the gay and lesbian community. He has said disastrous things about various and sundry people, and he’s always tried to squirm out of it.”

‘Example of Harassment’

“This situation is only one more example of harassment by a militant homosexual group in Sacramento,” Falwell said, promising to fight the ruling.

In a statement read Wednesday by spokeswoman Diane Whitehurst in Lynchburg, Va., Falwell said his condemnation of homosexuality on his “Old Time Gospel Hour” was misinterpreted by the Sacramento group.

“They even edited one of my tapes to distort it out of context. I believe homosexuality is moral perversion and have preached that for years,” Falwell said.