GONE UPDATED 5/19/2007

The Reverend Jerry Falwell at age 73 died of heart complications in his office at Liberty University.

Now, let's me see, some of the Religious Right's leaders are becoming awfully old. Pat Robertson is 77, James Dobson is 71, and Phyllis Schlafly is 83. Beverly LaHaye is 78 and her husband Tim is 81.

Not that they will be missed, mind you. These deaths will not be a tragedy because they have set back the course of American progress in science, literature, medicine, and technology with their ignorant, uneducated, and superstitious view of the world. Instead of promoting research and development in the fight against AIDS and cervical cancer as well as in the general realms of medicine, they have promulgated scientifically incompetent abstinence programs for teen age sex education, discouraged fact based solutions against the transmission of AIDS on the basis of their hatred for gay people, and thwarted future careers of children who would be doctors with introduction of the false science of intelligent design in schools. These are people who don't understand that even cats get a form of AIDS . Preventing the virus should not be a matter of biblical morality, but of the most effective way of stopping transmission.Evangelicals also do not understand sex is not the only way the human papillomavirus infection (HPV) that causes cervical canver can be transmitted.

Furthermore, the religious right grudge against the teaching of evolution imperils scientific research in the fight against fatal diseases. It is relevant, for example, that bats are related to humans through a distant and common ancestor. Bats, as mammals, can not only transmit diseases like rabies to humans but very lethal diseases like Ebola, Marburg virus and SARS. There is nothing wrong with evolution in schools because teaching this science is a matter of human life and death.

The leaders of the religious right will not be regretted when they pass on. The world will be a better place without their outdated and harmful beliefs.

UPDATED 5/19/2007 Okay, this is cute. The Westboro Baptist Church, home of those ultra-fundies the Phelps, has decided to picket the funeral of the late Jerry Falwell because the Phelps think that he was too tolerant. This is the guy who blamed 9/11 on gay people, feminists, Pagans, et alius.

If that isn't enough fun check out the amateur video that the Westborians have created. The production values of "God Hates the World" suck wind but what can one expect from hard-core Xians? Not MTV quality fer sure.Near the end of the video, they wave a Canadian flag upside down. Does that have the same symbolism as an upside down pentacle with a goat's head? Or was someone not watching where they put the flag this morning? For a moment, I thought that the video was a joke but the Westborians are serious in their copyright infringement of "We Are the World."

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