Wednesday was a very bad day for the radical religious right. Proud products of flagship evangelical universities were revealed to be criminals and terrorists. And on the same day that vice presidential daughter and oxymoronic lesbian conservative Mary Cheney delivered her baby, a scientific study reported news of female sharks conceiving offspring without males.
In Washington, former DOJ White House liaison Monica Goodling admitted violating the Hatch Act's prohibitions on using political litmus tests for career positions. The 1999 graduate of Pat Robertson's Regent University law school conceded to the House Judiciary Committee that she broke civil service laws, stating "I believe I crossed the lines. But I didn't mean to."
Meanwhile at the late Jerry Falwell's Liberty University, student terrorist Mark David Uhl was arrested for planning to bomb protesters at Falwell's funeral. The self-proclaimed "Mighty Warrior" prepared to hurl homemade napalm devices at the family of Fred Phelps, the Kansas preacher expected to heckle Falwell for his insufficient zeal in persecuting gay Americans.
Speaking of gay Americans, vice presidential daughter Mary Cheney gave birth to her and her partner Heather Poe's first child. Her parents, of course, were supportive. Her father Dick, after all, eventually concluded he could not support a same-sex marriage ban, while mother Lynne famously wrote a novel of forbidden lesbian love in the Old West. Their allies on the religious right like Tony Perkins and James Dobson, however, could never bless a family bringing a child into the world without a man.
Which means Perkins and Dobson won't be visiting a shark tank any time soon. Researchers in Northern Ireland and Canada documented three cases of asexual reproduction in female hammerhead sharks which had no contact with males for over three years.
So apply every tired cliche and weary metaphor you want. When it rains, it pours. You can't make this stuff up. The truth is stranger than fiction. Because on Wednesday, May 23, 2007, the religious right jumped the shark.