The Half-Fonzie

European geopolitics are adorable!

Well this sucks. Slovakia is holding a referendum on marriage equality today and-huh? Oh, it's in eastern Europe. It used to be called Czechoslovakia until it broke up in 1992 becoming The Czech Republic and Slovakia. They even split the name in half. So today's vote is-what now? I don't know. Fine, here, I'll look it up. Um, ok, they have a parliamentary system and their major exports include cars and refined pertoleum. Why is any of that important?

Anyway, the referendum is not unlike the usual homophobic horseshit we have here in the States: marriage is between a man and a woman, and gays can't adopt children because they'll turn them gay. Same vitriol, just with those ridiculous accent marks over all the vowels.

"A stáble home envirönment wíth twö lôving pårents?
Çán't håve that! Qúickly, to the pôlls!"

-Slovakian conservatives

Like, he knows people write down pretty
much everything he says now, right?

What does set this one apart is the involvement of Pope Francis who's thrown his support and that of the Catholic Church behind the ban. Yeah, and we all thought he was the cool Pope. This, the same Pope who back in 2013 said: 

"If a person is gay and seeks God and has good will, who am I to judge?"

-The Freakin Pope, 

like 18 months ago

Ok, so it's not exactly the same thing as enacting sweeping reforms of the Catholic Church and welcoming gays, lesbians, bisexuals and the transgendered, but still, he kind of sounded reasonable there. That's why this billboard of Pope Francis giving the half-Fonzie* to Slovakian homophobia is so disappointing:

Who is he to judge? Apparently he's the Pope. And he's judging.

*I think it's pretty self explanatory, but for those not raised with Nick-at-Nite here's a primer:

From left to right: The Fonzie, the Half-Fonzie and the rarely used Double-Down.