Gay man wins Internet fight vs. Falwell

A gay New Yorker won a big Supreme Court victory yesterday in his Internet battle against Moral Majority founder the Rev. Jerry Falwell.

Christopher Lamparello, 36, won the right to keep his fallwell.com site, which criticizes Falwell’s views on homosexuality - and often snares Web surfers looking for the reverend’s online ministry at falwell.com.

“Rev. Falwell is completely wrong about people who are gay or lesbian,” Lamparello’s site says - under a red disclaimer that offers a link to Falwell’s site.

Falwell believes homosexuality is a sin that gays and lesbians must repent of and resist. The Supreme Court - without comment - said it would not hear his appeal of a lower-court ruling that went against him.

The appeals court ruled last year that Lamparello was not violating Falwell’s trademark because he was not running the Web site to make a profit.

Lamparello, who lives in Greenwich Village and has not spoken publicly about the case, has the free-speech right to run the “gripe site,” said his lawyer, Paul Levy.

“A domain name is not just the source of a Web site, but the substance of a Web site,” said Levy, whose group Public Citizen took the case for free. “You can say the name of the person you’re criticizing, and you can put their name in the domain name of your Web site.”

Falwell’s lawyer had argued it was a simple case of trademark infringement - which disturbed many of the reverend’s supporters, who went to the site by mistake - and that it opens the door to more abuses.

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