Everyone's favorite church is protected by the First Amendment, so far

[Admiral Yi]

*shrug* The way I see it, the Phelpses just take the ideology championed by other evangelical churches and take it to its extreme but logical conclusion. If the Bible is a literal word of God - rather than a collection of more or less gruesome fairytales from the bronze age - then you can't just pick and choose parts you like and ignore the others.

This means pretty much that the only good Christian literalist is the one who brings forth a veritable-hell-on-earth in a form of the most oppressive and repressive totalitarian regime imaginable - or dies trying.

Incidentally, while Phelpses are less hypocritical about their ideology than other evangelicals, they are still picking and choosing - I haven't seen them opposing the use of yeast, shrimps, cheesburgers (meat and cheese together is an abomination!) or mixed fabric clothes, for example.

For that kind of faithfulness to the Holy Bible, you have The Best Church of God

The logical conclusion of Christianity, evangelical or otherwise, is to live one's life in accordance with God's will in the hopes of a nice afterlife, and to convince others to do the same as an act of kindness.  The notion of collective guilt and collective punishment is Jewish, insidiously grafted on to Christianity by that bastard Calvin.