CYBERSPACE—One of the not-so-bad byproducts of America's (and especially conservative America's) fear of anything having to do with sex is that pretty much anything sex-related can easily be used to embarrass religio-conservatives—and that's exactly blogger Matt Haughey's intent.
"There have been so many gun massacres of late it’s difficult to recount them all," Haughey recently wrote on his blog. " Increasingly, they’re striking closer and closer to home for me as well. Just a couple months ago, a shooting happened on an Oregon college campus a few hours from where I live. My wife is a college professor in Oregon and I never in a million years thought that was a dangerous profession, but now every day when she goes off to work I will have this thought in the back of my mind. The most recent San Bernardino shooting was about ten miles from where I went to college and took place at a location I used to drive by weekly. A couple of those injured in the attacks went through the same program I did at my school."
It was that realization, Haughey explained, that led him to think more about politicians' (and especially conservative politicians') failure to do anything significant to stem the rising tide of mass shootings in the U.S., which one site has noted have happened on a more-than-once-daily basis over the past year.
And so Haughey decided to do something about it.
"I read yet another news article on the GOP responses to a tragedy, and as they often do, it featured an image of a candidate proudly displaying a weapon to show his cred," Haughey wrote. "Again, I felt a sense of powerlessness at a Congress that does nothing about guns and would do nothing, then I got a goofy idea to do something with it. I will freely admit it’s something very stupid, but at least I could blow off some steam and protest in my own tiny way. I decided to take every GOP candidate/leader photo featuring a gun and replace it with a dildo."
Simple, no? Effective? Yes!
"The subjects are conservatives in power, that work in lawmaking or help support it, and yet do nothing to curtail guns," Haughey explained. "I locate an original photo of them with a gun (I’ll never use a photo of them holding a phone, or a microphone, or a corndog, just real guns near them), photoshop the gun out, plop a dildo image in, and make it look somewhat realistic. I post it to GOPdildo.tumblr.com along with a link to the original so you can see what I started with."
Apparently, Haughey's images have really taken off on Twitter and other platforms, with vierwers forwarding the images to their friends by the millions—and it's generated a lot of email, both complimentary and hate-filled.
"The strangest reaction to me is when someone finds these images 'hateful'," he wrote. "I’ve seen the word pop up a few times in responses, and it really throws me how something as harmless as a dildo crudely added to an image is seen as hateful, as if the original photo of someone proudly displaying a weapon capable of ending anyone’s life instantly is instead seen as righteous. That right there? That is a set of priorities that are fucked up, full stop."
Haughey's objective is to have stricter gun controls in the U.S., though he realizes with all the guns currently in circulation—there's more than one out there for each citizen already—it won't be an easy task—but hopefully, after people get done laughing at his images, they'll ponder (among other things) why someone would get more upset seeing a dildo in, say, Ted Cruz's hand rather than a gun.
But even Haughey has his limits.
"Finally, my last wish is that people stop sending me Michele Fiore’s family christmas card where everyone’s holding guns. I’m not going to put dildos in the hands of her entire family, jesus christ people have some decency[!]"
Pictured: Mike Huckabee and friend
