Who would have thought it? According to "Supervisor" Eugene Delgaudio, the Loudoun County Board not only has the transcendent power to destroy Christmas, it is threatening to do so.

Delgaudio, perhaps best known as Loudoun's pre-eminent practitioner of gay bashing for fun and (non) profit, now brings his special insight into the mind of God and the Founding Fathers to bear on that most sacred of all holidays, Leesburg's summer retail promotion, "Christmas in July."

Only for Eugene, it's the same as that "other" Christmas. You know. The one without trees, lights, and little round men in red suits.

In a recent e-mail blast, "Gene" expressed his profound belief that his colleagues (or at least five of them) "plan to destroy Christmas in July to block a small nativity scene and other religious displays."

Anyone who thinks the Loudoun County Board of Supervisors has either the desire (or, more important) the power to "destroy Christmas" in July or any other time, at the very least lacks "faith" in the durability of the religion he believes himself uniquely qualified to "protect."

The notion that taxpayer money should not be used to subsidize sectarian religious displays (during a sales promotion, for goodness sake), he describes as "an effort to destroy religious freedom."

The Board has about as much chance of destroying "religious freedom" as it has of destroying "Christmas", even in July.

The REALLY destructive force on the Loudoun County Board of Supervisors is Eugene himself: the epitome of the sort mean-spirited self-righteous religiosity that Christ himself, in the view of this recovering Presbyterian, would find embarrassing.

And I have faith that Christmas (even in July) will survive.