The hashtag GodhatesFredPhelps appeared on Twitter soon after one of his estranged children posted on Facebook the news that the founder of the Westboro Baptist Church was dying. Perhaps more surprising was the news that he had been excommunicated by the church he founded.
It has drawn exactly the sort of angry, hate-filled gloating you would expect. Many readers may share the sentiment, despite their instinct to draw back from condemning someone who is, after all, an elderly and very ill man. But news of the excommunication is worth marking; Phelps, I think, did more than Richard Dawkins to make atheism seem a moral and intellectual imperative.
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