bigots

The virulent homophobes of the Westboro Baptist "Church" get chased out of town in Smyrna, Tennessee, having staged another of their protests at the funerals of American servicemembers killed in Iraq (they contend that the deaths are God's punishment for serving to defend a country that harbors gay people.)

Meanwhile, the Vatican takes steps to bar gay men from entering the priesthood, supposedly with the hope that this will be perceived as taking concrete action with regards to the sexual abuse scandals of recent years. In other words, instead of tackling the failures of the church hierarchy to prevent and stop abuse, let's just blame the queers!

(No, I'm not implying that the Catholic Church and the "Rev." Fred Phelps and his loons are morally equivalent. But bigotry is still bigotry, even in the guise of "love the sinner," and the influence of the Vatican is far more wide-ranging than that of a few idiots from Kansas.)