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• Even a blind, homophobic squirrel catches a nut once in a while.

We can all agree that Fred Phelps and the Westboro Baptist Church are sad, terrible people.

At this point, they're not even protesting gays as much as anyone who's ever relied on the Earth's atmosphere to survive, because .000000001 percent of the carbon dioxide used in photosynthesis may have been exhaled by a homosexual. Even if we could somehow send every Phelps into low orbit, it wouldn't be long before they started protesting faggy quasars. God hates that your high output of electromagnetic energy allows you to be the most luminous body in the universe! Queer!

In recent years, the shear breadth of their insanity and lust for attention may have allowed them to hit upon some truths, if only by accident. And as long as we're stuck with the Phelpses in our backyard, we might as well have some fun with them. Here's our list of people God might actually hate. Some of them have long since passed, some are still with us, but all of them have been called out by the Phelps family. You know you've fucked up when Westboro Baptist has a point.

• George Rekers on vacation with a "rent boy."

Normally when Westboro Baptist criticizes someone for homosexual behavior, they're just being dicks. But George Rekers is the rare asshole who compels you to nod in agreement when the Phelps clan calls him a lying, pretend Christian.

Until recently, Rekers and the Phelpses weren't that different. Rekers made a name for himself as a Baptist preacher and one of the country's most prominent anti-gay activists. He helped start the Family Research Council, a D.C.-based Christian lobbying group that supports criminalizing homosexual behavior, acted as an adviser to national politicians and testified as a state witness in support of banning gay adoption in Florida.

Then the Miami New Times caught him with a gay escort from rentboy.com to move his luggage. "I had surgery," Rekers said when confronted, "and I can't lift luggage. That's why I hired him." In the photo that busted him, Rekers is actually moving luggage.

The asshole had made a living degrading and terrorizing people who had the guts to openly live the way they wanted to, and the way he secretly wished he could. God hates a coward.

• Pure evil.

9. Ann Coulter

Here's Westboro Baptist on the woman they refer to as a "wild-eyed sorceress":

These blowhards would behead anyone who says words they don't like, while demanding the right to scream meaningless nothings 'til our ears bleed.

For gibberish, that line makes insanely good sense.

Of all the people on this list, Coulter might be the closet to the Phelpses in terms of saying the most inflammatory shit possible in the hopes of getting more air time. But while Westboro seems to be genuinely crazy -- you could argue that Fred Phelp's indoctrination of his children while they're too young to mount a mental defense qualifies as child abuse -- Coulter is a well-educated woman who knows exactly what she sounds like and calculates her next line for maximum vileness. She is a smirking instigator who is actively striving to lower public discourse because only in a media landscape this dumb could anyone take her seriously enough to buy her next book. Coulter is just disingenuous enough that when she throws around the word faggot or talks about killing Muslims if they don't convert to Christianity, it's actually somehow slimier than when the Phelps family says the same thing.

• One of the many ts porn stars SEC officials masturbated to while we all went broke.

8. Masturbating SEC officials

Lots of people had a hand in the destruction of the world's economy. Some hurt more than others. Some engaged in metaphorical dick-stroking, gambling with toxic assets they knew were worthless but could provide short-term gains. Others just sat at their desks actually, physically rubbing their cocks.

This February, the Washington Times broke the story that at least two dozen U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission employers and contractors were regularly looking at dozens upon dozens of porn sites for the two years leading up to the financial collapse. The work computer of one regional supervisor for the SEC showed more than 1,800 attempts to look up pornography in just over two weeks. At least one SEC employee made more than 300 attempts to access Lady Boy Juice.com (NSFW). Not over a period of months mind you, but in a single, eight-hour business day.

As if that Web site were the only place on all of the Internet where you could see lady boys -- and if you didn't see it that day, your genitals would shrivel and be useless forever. Try loading just one Web page -- non-porn if you like -- 300 times right now. You should barely reach 30 before your eyeballs are screaming at you to stop, and it feels like a screwdriver turning in your frontal lobe. Jesus, how could they be expected to spot the worst maket collapse in 70 years if they couldn't even figure out how to jerk-off properly?

These chronic masturbators are symptomatic of all the reasons that you got laid off and are at home on your computer right now, reading this in between 15 minute visits to the same Web sites that cost you your job in the first place.

• Daryl Gates argued that if black people didn't have such shitty arteries, they wouldn't die from being choked. Seriously.

7. Former Los Angeles Police Chief Daryl Gates

Say you're an embattled police chief -- the kind who doesn't think about stirring up racial tensions in one of the country's largest and most diverse cities by making statements like black suspects die in choke holds because their arteries don't open as fast as they do on "normal people." Say your men are accused of beating the hell out of an unarmed black suspect, and the whole thing was caught on tape, and you're accused of protecting them. Do you a.) peacefully resign when asked because it's best for the city, and it avoids the drawn out public shaming of your department or b.) tell the mayor to go fuck himself, then spend the first night of the riots at a fund-raising dinner.

Here's the shockingly accurate description of Gates tenure as Los Angeles police chief issued by the Westboro Baptist Church following his death.

"As LAPD Chief, Daryl F. Gates engineered a paramilitary SWAT-philosophy, mercilessly increasing arrests of the impoverished, and insisting no one criticize the little darlings in uniform. After his "men" beat a guy senseless, leading to punishing riots when more were acquitted, he bragged that their only mistake was not "blowing more heads off" the night of the riots."

• Actually, God loves Betty White as much as the rest of us do.

God doesn't hate Betty White, but the Golden Girl is on the list for the unique reason that she's so awesome that even the WBC can't deny her. After White hosted Saturday Night Live last month, the church posted a blog titled, "Thank God For Old Whore Betty White!" noting that White "excelled" as the host and that the "crowd was delighted." We assume that calling White an old whore was just a reference to the sketch where she played a bawdy senior citizen who regretted not eating more pussy in her youth. That was funny.

Just like that old drunk Ben Franklin said about the sauce, Betty White is proof that God loves us and wants us to be happy.

• God hates Jeff Spicoli!

Sean Penn does suck, but not because he played gay activist Harvey Milk as the Phelpses suggest. (Though to be fair, Mickey Rourke should've had the Oscar for The Wrestler that year, and we think Penn's hammy, melodramatic scenery-chewing has been enabled more than enough already).

No, Penn's on this list because the dude just cannot shut his fucking mouth. Look Sean, if you want to go rescue people from hurricanes in your raft, that's cool. We even admire it a little. But for Christ's sake, zip your over-privileged yapper. You seriously think Hugo Chavez -- a man with a long and troubled history with human rights groups -- is a great man and that journalists should be punished for questioning him? Seriously, Sean Penn? Say what you want about W., but at least he allowed you to call him a Nazi instead of censoring free speech.

• Jerry Falwell was just Fred Phelps with a television show.

4. Jerry Falwell

Oh, this asshole.

Let's play a game. One of these quotes is from the Phelps family. The rest are from "corpulent false prophet" Jerry Falwell (as the Phelpses referred to him, of course). See if you can tell which is which.

"The Jews are returning to their land of unbelief. They are spiritually blind and desperately in need of their Messiah and Savior."

"I do question the sincerity and non-violent intentions of some civil rights leaders such as Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., Mr. James Farmer, and others, who are known to have left-wing associations."

"Grown men should not be having sex with prostitutes unless they are married to them."

"Boston is full of filthy people. Hard-hearted sinful cretins, cursing God with every breath. Crews are feverishly welding parts to try to restore water for 2 million who are without water. Somebody's "flaw" cause a pipe to burst? No! God did it!"

"And, I know that I'll hear from them for this. But, throwing God out successfully with the help of the federal court system, throwing God out of the public square, out of the schools. The abortionists have got to bear some burden for this because God will not be mocked. And when we destroy 40 million little innocent babies, we make God mad. I really believe that the pagans, and the abortionists, and the feminists, and the gays and the lesbians who are actively trying to make that an alternative lifestyle, the ACLU, People for the American Way -- all of them who have tried to secularize America -- I point the finger in their face and say 'you helped this happen.'"

Does it matter which one was the WBC? Fuck Jerry Falwell.

• You miserable bastard. Oh, you beast from hell.

We bet there are a lot of people who think George W. Bush is going to have some explaining to do if and when the born-again Christian actually has to defend himself at the gates of heaven. What in his privileged life has not been -- to borrow a phrase from Pulitzer-winning novelist Cormac McCarthy -- a colossal goatfuck?

Every other month of your administration it was some disaster that seemed impossible to top. Well, we'd say, how much worse could it get? Surely we're over the worst of it. And then somehow things would get worse! Not even just short-tem bad, but ruinous to the point of crippling people's hopes and dreams for generations. He couldn't possibly end his presidency with the country sliding into its worst economic disaster since the Great Depression, could he? Whoops! Whoops!

Shortly after Hurricane Katrina, WBC issued this press release: "You are pouring gasoline on the raging infernos of God's wrath in Iraq and New Orleans. ... You are living for the devil in blatant defiance of your Creator and leading the country to Hell in a faggots handbasket..." There's a lot to despise in that statement, but if we're being honest it's still batting at least .500.

• "So you molested a couple of altar boys. That's why pencils have erasers."

Before he received his cool Pope name, Benedict the XVI was warned by several American bishops that failure to defrock a Wisconsin priest would allow a sexual predator to continue preying on children who put their faith in men they thought had their best interests at heart. Benedict decided that embarrassing the church was worse that punishing a man who molested as many as 200 deaf boys. He didn't even respond to the bishop's letters. And he was rewarded for his loyalty to the institution over its people by being named to one of the most powerful, respected posts in the world. It's as cold as that.

• Neither God nor Satan can cage Ronnie James Dio.

Within 24-hours of Ronnie James Dio's death, WBC announced plans to picket the metal singer's funeral, certain that God would not allow Dio into paradise. They were right, but not for the reasons they thought. The truth is, God fears Dio.

We all know the official story is that Dio succumbed to stomach cancer this month, but that's only true if you define "succumbed" as "summoned stomach cancer to tame and ride like a tiger through a window in time itself so as to begin the next phase of his interdimensional ascension to the highest throne of evil."

Taking the reins of Black Sabbath was only a means to an end for the master. Let Ozzy have the reality shows and the catchphrases for the masses to feed upon like rotting chum. Every worried parent was right all along. Your children gave their souls to Dio willingly, and now they serve him in the new Hell where Lucifer himself kneels beneath Dio's horned fingers.

Soon he will begin his assault on Heaven, tear the crown of thorns asunder, and his malignant wisdom will echo into eternity. It's already too late, and we are all the better for it.