Well yes, the loathsome Westboro Baptist Church scumbag has gone to his eternal reward, the location of which most of us are pretty sure, and he would doubtless be pleased, publicity hound that he was, with all the media attention his death has got.
Hell, the fanfare started before he was even dead with all the coverage of his son’s post that he was near death, the coverage certainly dramatically increased by the juicy tidbits regarding his excommunication of at least two of his sons and his own subsequent excommunication. Oh, and didn’t we love that, since it sparked speculation about the cause of his getting the boot. Ummm, maybe a little dalliance with that lovely soprano in the choir, or much better yet, with that handsome, buffed field hand. Yesssssssssss.
My favorite response to his death was the lighting that evening of the Empire State Building with rainbow colors for about five minutes around 9:00 PM.
My favorite verbal response was so widely promulgated that i’m not sure of the source, but it ran, “My mother said to say only nice things about the dead. He’s dead. How nice.”
Or speaking of nice, as Isabella Allende remarked upon the death of Roberto Bolaño, “Dying does not make you a nicer person.”
But actually, i mourn his death, not because i’m nobly turning the other cheek because i realized just a few years ago that if i didn’t start fighting back now, i’d go to my grave without ever standing up for myself. No, i mourn Phelps’ death because i wish he were still alive. Since his anti-gay ranting was so over-the-top that nobody with an IQ in double digits would buy into it, that evil fucker did more to advance the cause of gay tolerance than “Will and Grace”, albeit inadvertently. And now he can’t do it anymore.
That’s why, if i uttered prayers, i’d start with heartfelt and deeply earnest ones for the health of Pat Robertson. Now that Phelps is dead, Robertson is our primary remaining source of anti-gay bile so ludicrous that it cannot but turn folks away from hateful Christianity.
I looked through my recent photographs trying to find a good portrait of Phelps, but this was the best i could do:
