As if! (graphic: Mike Tidmus. Here’s the real cover … boring)

So hey, San Diego! Come on out meet and greet presidential aspirant Mitt Romney on Monday at 6:00 in La Jollies. The Mittster will be signing copies of his new book (that kinda looks like the one above) at the Deseret Bookstore in the lovely La Jolla Village Square Shopping Center. Here’s the real deal from Californians Against Hate:

Protest planned for San Diego leg of Mitt Romney’s book tour

Ask Mitt Romney to help stop the Mormon Church’s campaign against gay marriage!

As a national political leader and influential member of the Mormon Church, Mitt Romney could persuade Church leaders to end their 15 years of active involvement and massive financial support to oppose equal rights for Gay and Lesbian Americans.

The Mormon Church and its members have spent tens of millions of dollars in 31 states to ban gay marriage and hurt so many people.

Mormon Church Leaders should take a vow of political neutrality on gay rights, similar to their stated practice in partisan elections.

What: Demonstration at Mitt Romney’s Book Signing

When: Monday, March 22nd at 6:00 pm

Where: Deseret Bookstore (meet at S.E. Corner of Nobel Dr. and Villa La Jolla Dr.)

La Jolla Village Square Shopping Center
8657 Villa La Jolla Dr., La Jolla, CA 92037
(Exit 28 off I-5 south — Exit 28A off I-5 north)

Californians Against Hate

BRING SIGNS!!!

About those signs: Be creative but keep it positive. This isn’t about bashing the Mormon church.

As long as Carrie Prejean and Maggie Gallagher get to make shit up, …
(graphic: Mike Tidmus, here’s the original)

Margaret White: I can see your dirty pillows. Everyone will.

Carrie White: Breasts, Mama. They’re called breasts,
and every woman has them.

(dialogue: Carrie, a 1976 film by Brian De Palma)

The undeniably stimulating new Queen Esther (graphic: mine,
source photo: from a B!isss Magazine centerfold)

Maggie Gallagher of the National Organization for Marriage recently said of beauty queen and pin-up Carrie Prejean:

Her example resonates, especially to many young Americans, because she chose to stand for truth rather than surrender her core values.

Right. And, with an apology to Dorothy Parker, I’m Marie of Rumania.

Mocking the man-dog-love-obsessed ex-Senator Rick Santorum
(graphic: mine, from the Tidmus archives)

In a comment, Carrie Prejean supporter F Sanders asks: 

OH, one last thought…why don’t we let people marry and have sex with their dogs next…why not?? Oh, jeez, is this already going on and do the gay people have it on the ballet for the next election :)

My response:

You call that a “thought?” What is with this peculiar Christianist obsession with fucking and marrying animals?

This loony-tunes fixation on bestiality and inter-species marriage didn’t originate with F Sanders. Jim Burroway at Box Turtle Bulletin has a round-up of Christian kookiness on the subject that begins with Texas Senator John Cornyn: “It does not affect your daily life very much if your neighbor marries a box turtle. But that does not mean it is right… Now you must raise your children up in a world where that union of man and box turtle is on the same legal footing as man and wife.”

There’s more:

• Bill O’Reilly, during a shouting match with a guest, confessed his love for a duck: “The people who want to marry a duck can come in, all right. …If I want to marry a duck… I have a right to marry the duck, alright? … And leave my house to a duck.”
• Sen. Rick Santorum (R-Pa), in describing marriage as being between a man and a woman, added, “It’s not, you know, man on child, man on dog, or whatever the case may be”.
• Rev. Jimmy Swaggart thought that politicians who supported marriage equality “all oughta have to marry a pig and live with him forever.”
• After considering his options, Bill O’Reilly apparently changed his mind and decided to forsake his duck for a goat: “…Somebody’s gonna come in and say, ‘I wanna marry the goat.’ You’ll see it; I guarantee you’ll see it.”

Let’s not forget former Terry Schiavo lawyer David Gibbs III, who last month suggested, “Maybe people will want to marry their pets or… [dramatic pause] …their robots.”

My poor little Roomba just scooted under the couch.

These are not well people. These are people who should seriously consider getting professional help.

(tip: Box Turtle Bulletin and Joe. My. God.)

Wake up Maggie, I think I have something to say to you (graphic: mine)

Last October, the entire staff of Slime magazine attended the wedding of our much-loved Claude the Copy Editor to his charming husband Javier the Freelance Editorial Cartoonist, in beautiful Cardiff-by-the-Sea — just north of sunny, formerly conservative San Diego. It was, like approximately 18,000 other same-gender weddings that took place in California in the all too brief window between the California Supreme Court coming to its senses last May and a slim majority of California voters losing theirs last November, a day none of us will soon forget.

Now, we at Slime love our copy and we love our Claude, so none of us were in the least amused when a bunch of Bible-humping transplants, who apparently relocated to the Golden State seeking easier access to welfare benefits, strip-mall mega-churches and methamphetamine, took away the right of loving couples like Claude and Javier to enter into legal civil marriages.

One of the loudest, and most vulgar, voices behind that travesty at the ballot box was Maggie Gallagher, who heads the National Organization for Marriages Denied People Like Our Beloved Claude and His Husband Javier, or as it’s commonly known NOM — an organization that may or may not be a front for the Church of Jesus F Christ of Latter Day Saints.

NOM (pronounced gnome) recently launched a television ad campaign in response to the overwhelming victories for common sense, justice, equality and secularism in Vermont and Iowa.

We, here at Slime magazine, are exceedingly and demonstrably saddened to report that Victoria, our video and media critic, died in mid-laugh at her first viewing of NOM’s Gathering Storm-troopers for the Lord video.

Victoria is survived by her parents, Seth and Bette, her brother, Binky, and her white standard poodle, Oodle. Vickie, we will miss your intelligence and your voice. We will soldier on, in your memory, against Maggie Gallagher and the evil forces of theocracy in our beloved country.

On behalf of the entire staff of Slime magazine, I wish to state that we, at Slime, cannot and will not stand for theocracy rearing its ugly head here in California, nor in any corner of this great nation of ours. 

See also: Free speech is sacred

A plot to embarrass the Pope? As ridiculous and deplorable as trying
to screw in an imaginary light bulb (Graphic: mine)

Threatened with yet another round of lay-offs, Slime magazine’s already over-worked editorial staff, one beleaguered art director and Mila the faithful coffee girl worked into the wee hours of the morning to produce what is being hailed as the latest special edition of Slime magazine. Slime’s Special Papal Apology Issue was deemed necessary, and a potential best seller, in light of the storm clouds that have been massing over Vatican City for the past week or so.

Yesterday, the infallible Vicar of Christ on Earth was rebuked by German Chancellor Angela Merkel. She called on Papa Ratzi to publicly reject the views of the recently de-excommunicated, Holocaust-denying bishop, Richard Williamson. Ms Merkel said, “The Pope and the Vatican should clarify unambiguously that there can be no denial and that there must be positive relations with the Jewish community overall.”

Hermann Haering, a prominent German Catholic theologian, has called on His Infallibleness to resign “for the good of the Church.” After all, maintains Herr Haering, cardinals must resign at the age of 80, and Ratzi is 81. It should be noted that no Pope has been forced to resign since the 13th Century. In an editorial, entitled It’s About Time, Ratzi, Slime magazine has, in no uncertain terms, joined the  pile-on  call for the Prada-sporting pontiff’s resignation.

While the Vatican has called on Bishop Williamson to recant, it is, at the same time, pointing an accusing finger at Swedish TV reporter, Ali Fegan, on whose program Williamson stated that no more than 200,000 to 300,000 Jews died at the hands of the Nazis and no gas chambers were used their executions. Accused of an insidious plot to embarrass the Pope, Fegan characterized the Vatican’s charge as “ridiculous and deplorable.”

While others have called Slime’s demand for an immediate apology from the Pope just as ridiculous and deplorable, Slime has cast those dispersions into its CEO’s $1400.00 trash can, and persists in its demand for a no-holds-barred apology from His Papalness.

For the record, Slime’s late December 2008 demand that the Pope apologize to the gays for labeling them a bigger threat to humanity than the destruction of the planet’s rainforests, was met with a plain brown envelope with a Vatican postmark containing what seems to be an audio recording of Papa Ratzi being relentlessly tickled.

Background:

• Ratzi steps in it again
• Benny and the Jews
• The Pope is a disgrace

Just in time for his farewell tour (Graphic: Mine)

He says hello, and we say good-bye.

(Graphic: mine)

Looks like the professional homo-haters are up in arms over a little article called Our Mutual Joy, which was recently published in a second-rate parody of Newswank magazine called (and isn’t this ever so clever?): Newsweek. Sheesh!

In her article, Newsweek’s Religion Editor Lisa Miller maintains the Bible gives no reason why gays and lesbians should not marry. Says Ms Miller, “All the religious rhetoric, it seems, has been on the side of the gay-marriage opponents, who use Scripture as the foundation for their objections,” but, Miller adds, “Religious objections to gay marriage are rooted not in the Bible at all, then, but in custom and tradition.”

Cue the fire and brimstone set … 5 … 4 … 3 … 2 …

OneNewsNow’s Reverend Donald Wildmon seems to be running an article blasting Newsweek and Ms Miller every fifteen minutes. In an American Family Association Action Alert, Wildmon said, “Miller’s article is one of the most biased and distorted pieces concerning homosexual marriage ever published by any major news organization.”

Writing at ONN, Marcia Segelstein agrees, “The mainstream media can no longer be trusted for unbiased, straightforward reporting.”

Amen, sister Segelstein! We all appreciate just how unbiased and straightforward the reporting is over at OneNewsNow, where editorial policy forbids the use of the word “gay.”

R Albert Mohler Jr, writing at the equally-unbiased Baptist Press, detects a vast pink-wing conspiracy in Newsweek’s unbalanced view of marriage equality:

The national news media are collectively embarrassed by the passage of Proposition 8 in California. Gay rights activists are publicly calling on the mainstream media to offer support for “gay marriage,” arguing that the media let them down in November. It appears that Newsweek intends to do its part. Many observers believe that the main obstacle to this agenda is a resolute opposition grounded in Christian conviction. Newsweek clearly intends to reduce that opposition.

Peter LaBarbera, of Americans for Truthiness about the Mo’s, was so incensed by the article that he called in a genuine Biblical scholar to debunk “every shibboleth and inacurracy [sic]” in Miller’s article, which, of course, is a lot like calling in a numerologist to address the national debt or an astrologer to comment on a flaming meteor hurtling menacingly toward Earth.

Tony Perkins, of the Family Research Council, is demanding Newsweek provide equal time for a Biblical retort — which, by the way, is not a holiday dessert. Perkins is handing out torches and pitchforks and calling on Christianist villagers across the vast internets to petition Newsweek’s editor, Jon Meachum, for editorial space to be devoted to a little traditional family-style gay-bashing:

Dear Mr. Meacham,

Newsweek’s recent cover story by Lisa Miller on the “religious case for gay marriage” is a frontal assault on millennia of orthodox biblical teaching about marriage.  It also fails to faithfully interact with any opposing viewpoints.  A piece so clearly intended to cause controversy demands a faithful hearing of both sides of the argument.

In the spirit of fairness, I ask that you please print an accurate article which presents the orthodox understanding of  the Bible’s teaching about homosexual conduct and same-sex “marriage” — one equal in length to the Miller piece (which was over 2,700 words) and also run as the cover story.

Right, Tony. In the interest of faithfully interacting, perhaps Newsweek should round up a few Holocaust deniers and skinheads for comment the next time they do an article on Auschwitz.

To his credit, Perkins graciously adds, “If homosexual activists want to simply ignore the Bible, they are free to do so.”

I hereby take him up on that.

Slime magazine cover girl Linda Harvey
(Graphic: mine, photo: Americans for Truth about Homosexuality)

Linda Harvey, of Missionary-Position America, and her homo-sex-obsessed soul mate Peter LaBarbera, of Americans for Truthiness about Homosexuality, might well end up in the unemployment line if everything they, and their Christianist comrades among the extremist religious right, fear might happen under an Obama presidency comes to pass.

Their fears include: executive opposition to any new attempt to pass the Federal Marriage Amendment (FMA), the repeal of the federal Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA), probable federal recognition for civil unions and expanded adoptions rights for queer citizens, the passage of the Employment Non-Discrimination Act (ENDA), hate crime legislation in the form of the Matthew Shepard Act, the elimination of Don’t-Ask-Don’t-Tell, and the long overdue refocusing of US tax dollars on domestic AIDS prevention and research.

Perhaps this fear of the inevitable is why both Linda Harvey and Peter LaBarbera issued ugly, hate-filled, medically-unsound screeds in  observance  celebration of World AIDS Day. Both rattle off statistics ad nauseam as they advocate the elimination of male homosexuality, and both seem to suggest that funding for AIDS needs to be eliminated if they don’t get their way. Were they to employ every single statistic in the CDC’s super computers, it wouldn’t begin to obscure their fundamentalist, anti-sex, anti-queer agenda.

The promise of the next eight years is nothing less than a nationwide assault on ignorance and homophobia. Linda and Peter, get ready, your worst nightmare — equality — is about to become reality. And head for cover because homophobia is under attack.

Cod-freak Coulter silenced at last (Graphic: from the Tidmus archive)

I don’t normally touch celebrity gossip, but for those of you who were thinking you had little to be thankful for this Thanksgiving, be of good cheer. Page Six is reporting that radical right-wing comedienne and (Klaus) Barbie Doll Ann Coulter has had her jaw wired shut. 

Details are scarce, but let us give thanks that this medical miracle has occurred on the eve of the launch of Coulter’s new book Guilty: Liberal “Victims” And Their Assault On America, which is slated for release in early January.

Look for my satirical take on Ms Coulter’s upcoming attack on sanity and reality in the near future.