She’s a certain character type played by actresses of a certain age in a certain type of horror movie genre.

She’s a Horror Hag.

After all the big bugs, saucer men and pod people of the Eisenhower Era horror movies had abdicated the throne, the Horror Hag became Queen of the new tide of terrors made up of Psychos, Bad Seeds and Peeping Toms.

This matronly malefactor embodied all the mistrust toward Picket Fence Babylon we’d come to harbor. Like chocolate cookies laced with gilt-edged razors, her nurture instinct had grown sick, delusional, deadly.

While her subgenre may have largely fallen by the wayside, the Horror Hag’s shadow still remains in popular culture. Every year there’s a notable real-life contender who takes a cue from the big screen and proceeds to go publicly bat shit and just dares us to bar the door at Thanksgiving.

This year it’s erstwhile Psycho-Biddy and Oklahoma Legislator Sally Kern (above right: upper left pic) who seems to be clutching like mad for the current title of Hag Supreme. (more…)

Ted.

History has blessed us with but a few notable Men Called Haggard.

The first, British novelist Henry Rider Haggard, wrote sprawling colonialist adventures beginning in the late 19th Century. King Solomon’s Mines charts a quest to uncover the spectacular riches of the titular Biblical King of Israel. Allan Quatermain features a lost white civilization brimming with internal intrigue and power-mongering. In the bombastic She, the indomitable goddess-empress Ayesha is obliterated by her own boundless ambition on the fiery dais of her sacred flame.

Cut to the 21st Century and detect a thematic foreshadowing in Ted Haggard and his New Life megachurch, the mere nomenclature of which on the scale of shameless American vulgarity tops even the Monster Truck Rally, the Multiplex and the Megamall. (more…)

The Cult of Mormon.

America’s longest-running scam? An authoritarian and insular power structure that holds its members in a stranglehold of fear and shame? Establisher of the driest and most score-free college campus ever?

Publisher of a highly-specific guide to overcoming the insidious effects of masturbation that depicts the act as if it were heroin addiction or demonic possession?

All of the above?

Damn right. But there’s more!

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints finds itself under the microscope as of late what with the recent accomplice-to-rape conviction of self-styled prophet/child slaver Warren Jeffs and the vapid would-be presidential bid of Mitt Romney, who with the aid of his saccharine sons has attempted to deflect sentiments that he’s a Mormon cyborg by staging the campaign equivalent of an Old Spice ad. (more…)

Have you ever wondered about the rampant gayface you see on professional homophobes?

Take a look at this gallery of “manly” faces — the simpering Gary Bauer, the Golly Gee eyed Peter LaBarbera, the pudding-faced Robert Knight — all of them spokesman for organizations that freak out regularly over gay civil rights — the so-called “gay agenda.”

In point of fact, it is these spokesman for Christian-front organizations with names like Americans for the Truth about Homosexuality (a one-man operation by nutjob LaBarbera) and Concerned Women for America (odd isn’t it, for a man — pudgy-wudgy Robert Knight — to be the head of a woman-specific organization)… it is these Concerned Morons for Homophobia that have the agenda — a theocratic one.

But that’s not all they have. These Prisoners of the Inappropriate Gayface also possess an oddly fine tuned gaydar that goes off — in full, flaming four-alarm mode — at the first breath of a whisper, at the teeniest hint of gender “confusion” in Barbie dolls, at the “blatant gay militancy” to be found on the cardboard cups at Starbucks , at the softest rustling in the bushes … (more…)

In the wake of the next gay Republican sex scandal, your child will have many questions. They will hear things at school and from the television that will trouble them. You can save them a lot of confusion if you speak to them now during this brief respite between arrests and indiscretions.

Sit your child down in a safe and non-threatening space — a beautiful hillside gold with autumn leaves will do — and then in a calm, reassuring voice touch on the following points: (more…)

Fools that we are, we thought it was impossible to top the inanity of Senator Larry Craig’s Wide Stance defense.

We thought no excuse could ever hope to dim the otherworldly moonshine of Ted Haggard’s I Was Only Seeing a Male Escort To Buy Crystal Meth Which I Immediately Threw Away — So What’s the Big Deal?

But we were wrong — so very wrong.

Never underestimate the power of the closet to breed hot-house disclaimers and spawn brazenly absurd cover stories. Stand back you amateurs, you squirming senators and glary-eyed pastors with manic grins, we have a real master coming through!

Let us set the scene. Fade in: Rome.

Brilliant sunlight floods a busy piazza. It is right in front of Saint Peter’s Basilica, which looms over the square like the giant dome-capped head of the pope himself, who, of course, lives in one of its upper tiers. Around the square, which is not square at all but global in shape, are colonnades to either side, like round, embracing arms. St. Peter’s casts no shadow at this hour, for it is noontime and the piazza is filled with tourists, pigeons … and one black-clad monsignor making haste across our field of vision. (more…)

I’m here to talk about bimbos!

Biblical bimbos!

Photogenic Mormons are doffing their tops for the good of their faith. And I’m conflicted.

Sure, there’s no better score than a guy with self-esteem problems — the sort of “issues” that cause him to seek out religion and beefcake photography. Yet still, I can’t help feeling skeptical.

Under the aegis of its parent company Mormons Exposed (I kid you not), the Men On A Mission Calendar features “twelve handsome former missionaries who have dared to pose bare-chested.”

The project is supposed to be all about the spiritual beauty that comes from within, not just trading in sculpted torsos and great abs. The copy writes itself:

“Rod loves his position as a missionary, spends hours on his knees, and will give you the shirt off his back. Turn-ons include topless testifying, constitutional amendments, and tending to the lepers.”

Have a listen to the venture’s co-founder and producer Chad Hardy as he elaborates on the calendars raison d’etre and try to keep a straight face: (more…)

“In Iran, we don’t have homosexuals like in your country.”

This jaw-dropping claim was made today by the President of Iran, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, during a talk he gave at Columbia University in New York. “We don’t have that in our country,” he asserted to a burst of shocked laughter and a smattering of boos and hisses.

“In Iran, we do not have this phenomenon,” he persisted, undeterred. “I do not know who has told you that we have it.”

Perhaps the photo above will refresh your memory, Mr. President.

From the UK Gay News, circa 2005:

Two gay teenagers were publicly executed in Iran on 19 July 2005 for the ‘crime’ of homosexuality. The youths were hanged in Edalat (Justice) Square in the city of Mashhad, in north east Iran. They were sentenced to death by Court No. 19.

Iran enforces Islamic Sharia law, which dictates the death penalty for gay sex.

One youth was aged 18 and the other was a minor under the age of 18. They were only identified by their initials, M.A. and A.M.

(more…)