And lo, Fred Phelps died, and there was much rejoicing.
The death of the founder of the infamous Westboro Baptist Church (WBC), a new religious movement (i.e. cult), could not have come sooner for many. The relatives of dead soldiers whose funerals his followers gleefully picketed will surely feel some kind of justice now that the Earth is bereft of a spiteful hatemonger.
Parties will be held in gay villages across the world, revellers no doubt pouring a sarcastic swig of their drinks to the kerb for the fallen Fred.
Meanwhile, in case there was any doubt as to the kind of liberal company I keep, almost everybody in my social network feeds is suggesting a picket of Fred's funeral. Dad's Army's Lance Corporal Jones's words, "They don't like it up 'em", seemingly now full of appropriate innuendo.
It doesn't take the world's sharpest mind to realize that criticizing WBC for picketing funerals, and then demonstrating at a funeral yourself, is massively hypocritical.
All moral crusaders position themselves as outsiders who are under attack. WBC have always been a cult. The only thing that has stopped them from being reported on as such is the fact that they're open and not secretive. Their modus operandi has always been to get headlines and grab peoples' attention, to cement their position as outsiders and to justify their batshit insane actions.
WBC's Twitter account and online presence looks like a parody. Their turn of phrase has never been that of a lunatic fringe, but of plain lunacy. To refer to the Catholic Church non-stop as a "Pedophile Sex Machine" is almost hilarious. But it's taken seriously, why?
That a famed jester can ridicule the theological flaws of this group proves just how out of touch with reality WBC really is and how seriously they should be taken.
To celebrate Phelps' death is to validate the 24 carat liquid mental that he spewed and made a living from.
Celebrating old Fred dying isn't a celebration of the triumph of good over evil, it's celebrating one's own self-righteousness - "Well done, me", you might say, "for having such wonderful morality".
The way I see it is that anybody celebrating at Fred Phelps' funeral falls into two camps: Either you are celebrating as a way of re-affirming your own moral compass, celebrating the death of the yin to your yang; or you're gleefully partying in the face of deranged lunatics in mourning who are trapped in a cult.
If you fall into the first camp, you're misdirecting your energy - an old man dying isn't the same thing as the end of homophobia or hate speech.
Meanwhile, if you fall into the second camp, are you a f*cking sociopath?