It's a shame Anonymous couldn't stand by their words in the earlier post, because I'm an environmentalist who constantly bangs the drum about overpopulation being the source of virtually every problem in the modern world. If we could rein in our explosive population growth, or even better bring the total back down to about 2 billion, many problems would literally vanish.

Biodiversity conservation would become so much easier without the pressure of increasing human numbers driving us to claim more and more wilderness for food and habitation. Pollution levels would likewise drop, clean water for everyone would again be feasible, disease outbreaks become more manageable. And then there's war, that constant epidemiological manifestation of the need to vie for limited resources.

Effective population management would resolve so many problems it's tempting to drop everything else and move it to the top of the list. The problem is that everyone wants to be the exception - "Yeah, those other people shouldn't be having kids, but I really want to have two, or three, or ten!"

Fortunately, Nature is the great equalizer here. If we don't take the issue in hand, it will be done for us. It would just be nice if we could do it ourselves, before we ruin the world for everyone and everything else.

My take, for the very little it's worth, is that it isn't rape, but it is a heinous sex crime. I don't see why the two have to be conflated in order to prove how foul the deed was. Yes, it was penetrative sex in an a situation that the woman might not have consented to had she full knowledge, but it isn't rape in the sense of being a crime of violence against a woman that engenders fear in other women, the way most rape does. However, I do yield to the victim's feelings, which is only sensible - if she feels she's been raped, she's been raped.

On the more pragmatic side, there's a taint of "trash" hovering over the whole affair. The girl lives with her boyfriend in his parents' basement, and he's got a brother that's low enough to put to moves on her. These are aspects that smack of daytime talkshow guests. I suspect the parallel goes further, and that at this point both the brother and the girlfriend are afraid of what kind of "rough justice" Duane is likely to dispense, unwarranted though it may be. Hence it's hard to know wherein the truth really lies.

The intimidation is aimed at women who are threatening in their independence or assuredness, not in their relative masculinity or femininity.

And the previous poster should change his handle to "dimbulb", since he is clearly one of those throwbacks who thinks equal rights are somehow special rights. Or has one of the guys in your office has ogled your breasts or pinched your ass or whispered some crude sexual innuendo at you lately?

not "previous" poster now, since a couple others sneaked in before my post finished. Shouldn't be too hard to figure out the target of my comment, though.

Listening to NPR on the way home, they had his personal physician on. He referred to the deceased as "Dr. Falwell" instead of "Rev. Falwell". How telling, that he would be prefaced by his meaningless credentials of academia, that hated branding of intelligensia and the poisonous taint of the American thinking class, rather than by the title that distinguished him as a man of God.

It says all you really need to know about the man in the end. He wanted nothing more than to belong to the elite, to be counted among the erudite and the respected, and possessed nothing but contempt for the faithful and indeed for any God above as well.

I am not a Christian, but I have beliefs, ethics, and most definitely morality. And I have studied Christianity to a great degree, certainly enough to say with conviction that Falwell was not a Christian.

He was, as the foundation text of Christianity states, a False Prophet. One of the myriad heads of the Second Beast, who turn people away from the true path of spiritual enlightenment and divine love. He corrupted the teachings of Christ for personal power and gain, he poisoned the minds and hearts of the vulnerable seeking redemption in Christ, and he drove from the temples many who would have otherwise sought the word of God.

Celebrating his extinguishment is appropriate, as it would be to celebrate the end of any agent of hatred and calumny. Surely you'd cheer as an angel lopped the head from the hydra-like form of the Second Beast? This is no different, if you are a person of faith.

As I have said, I am not a Christian, so I merely revel in the more naturalistic notion that a toxic organism has been removed from the ecosystem. And I can understand the Christian notion of praying for all souls, regardless of how fallen they be. So do so, in the hope that the afterlife opens his eyes to evil he wrought in his limited span.

But unless you are the type of prosperity-gospel Christian who shares the late reverend's dogma of bigotry and aquisitiveness, you should be able to take comfort that a true enemy of your Lord no longer stalks the Earth.