Farewell to Arms

"Do you think we ought to kill the homosexuals?" he asked, staring into the camera. "Let me tell you something: they're already dead. They're like festering maggots of society spreading their disease .... They're taking everyone down with them because we're too loving, while they put the knife in our throat and slice."

The reason Paramount gave for canceling the Phil Arms show is known as the standard of "clear and present danger." Quoting from a Supreme Court decision, the FCChas decreed that the public's interest "is best served by permitting the expression of any views that do not create 'a clear and present danger of serious substantive evil.' "

Where does that leave the Reverend Arms? A few days after his latest sermon, as a former Aldine High School football player stood trial downtown for the murder of a gay man, Arms was in his office again, tired, he said, from carrying on his two crusades. Would he display those letters, please, from homosexuals supporting him? No, he said. He had shown the others, but he couldn't betray the confidentiality of these correspondents.

"Festering maggots of society," he had called them. His words were slowly read back to him. He didn't condone killing homosexuals, he explained, but when he was asked if his words could spur someone else on, the Bible-pounding preacher just said, "People can interpret anything any way they want."

"It's a spiritual war out there," he said. "The responsibility of the church is to provide the answers, the light, the truth.