The 80-year-old founder of the ‘God Hates Fags’ movement and his followers picket gay-pride marches, funerals, detention centres, high schools and,well, basically everything.

They carry bright, multi-coloured signs bearing slogans such as ‘Thank God For September 11′ and ‘AIDS Cures Fags’. Recently, for various reasons, Phelps has aimed his hatred at Australia. Penthouse caught up with the gay-hatin’ crusader to find out what he and God have against the land Down Under.

Does God hate Australia?
Sure, that’s one of the worst fag countries there is in Western civilisation.

You were in favour of the 2009 Black Saturday bushfires…
Oh yeah, they got upset with me, that whole island. I told them it was Sodom in the Pacific, and they made arrangements with a local television station for me to go over there to tell them, “You’re going to hell, every last cockeyed one of you.”

Which country does God hate more, America or Australia?
Well, there are more Americans than there are Australians, but that would be the only reason for the difference. They’re both hell-bound, and they’re both mighty proud of it, wallowing around in their filth. No, the Lord does not love Australians. They kill their babies and they promote fagdom—two hateful sins.

Have you seen the video of The Chaser’s Charles Firth hitting on your son in a picket line?
I wasn’t at that picket, but that happens all the time. You know Brüno [Sacha Baron Cohen's gay character]? He did that, too. He hopped out of a van and was trying to grab one of the signs. He had been pretending he was on our side, but we read him from the time he hit town. He was so disappointed that he couldn’t entrap us in anything that he drove out when we were picketing an Easter parade from some of these heretic churches.

Why did your Westboro Baptist Church picket Heath Ledger’s funeral?
That’s another reason why the Australians were mad at us. But you got a guy playing a fag and encouraging young people all over the world to experiment with that filth. He needs to be preached to, and when he does everyone a favour and commits suicide, there needs to be someone to interpret that as a sign of the times of this evil world. He had no business doing that.

Did you ever see Brokeback Mountain?
Of course not.

How do you know how bad it is?
Everyone in the world’s talking about it. It’s all over the media, or it was.

You have also referred to ex-President George W. Bush as a “fag enabler”…
Of course he’s an enabler. Two weeks before September 11—and that which triggered, in our theological opinion, September 11—Bush appointed Mike Guest, this out-of-the-closet fag, to be the United States ambassador to Romania. With his butt buddy sitting in the US embassy in Bucharest, all of Europe looked upon this country as a big fag country and Christianity as a fag religion. The only thing worse than a fag is a fag enabler because they are not driven by that internal lust themselves, and therefore they are without excuse for promoting it.

In your mind, everyone seems to be either a ‘fag’ or ‘fag enabler’.
Yeah, they enable; that’s Romans 1:32: He knowing the judgment of God that they would commit such things are worthy of death, not only who does them—that’s the fags—but take pleasure in them that do them—that is they who promote it and love it.

Do you think the following famous Australians are ‘fags’ or ‘fag enablers’? Olivia Newton-John?
I don’t know her; she must have been in another age.

Mel Gibson?
He’s a fag enabler. He promotes it. You take that Hollywood milieu, the zeitgeist, and that is so corrupt that we go out and picket them on general principals. If anyone in Hollywood dared to say anything that was the least bit negative about fags, their career would be over.You remember [US Supreme Court candidate Robert] Bork? He has a book on the subject called Slouching Towards Gomorrah. And he says, “When evil people become the majority, what’s the good of a Democracy when you have evil laws and evil people?” And that’s where we are today. They used to fear the Lord in this country; now they hate the Lord and they hate his word, and whenwe preach it, they hate us.

Was Steve Irwin, the Crocodile Hunter, a ‘fag’ or a ‘fag enabler’?
Was he in those movies?

What are “fag laws”?
I call them “fag laws”. They call them “hate speech laws”. They turned gospel preaching into a crime. Any country that does that is irreversibly damned.

So, in a way, Australia is even more evil than America because America’s First Amendment protects gospel preaching?
I’m not worried about this country as long as we have a First Amendment. You can’t turn innocent, peaceful gospel preaching into a crime because you don’t like the gospel message. They banned me from the United Kingdom. They’d rather have those Muslims declaring jihad against them than to have me over there, preaching to them.

Is the Crocodile Hunter in hell right now?
Probably. Look, he was in the entertainment industry. Enough said.

What do you say to the critics who accuse you of actually working on behalf of gays to show how absurd homophobia is?
I’ve heard that. That’s fine. Whatever they say, the Bible says it’s good. Once you say “Phelps” or “Westboro Baptist Church”, people automatically think “God hates fags”. That’s what we’ve established in this world. It wouldn’t matter what else we did.

You preach on the Internet about “fag faeces”. What’s that all about?
In the fourth chapter in Ezekiel, that was a technique that Ezekiel used to get attention. He said you are so filthy that you ought to have to eat faeces. And so it was required that the prophet put a cup of faeces in every loaf of bread he ate until he finally asked the Lord to get out of that by at least letting him use cow dung.

It says on your website that Obama is the Antichrist…
Well, there’s a strong argument that could be made for that. And it is being made by a whole lot more preachers than me. Did you ever read the Bible in your whole life?

Yes. I’ve read the entire Bible.
Well, you must have skimmed through some of it.

I don’t remember reading about Obama…
In Revelations 13, it describes him. The big mouth on him. That fits Obama to a T.

People say every new leader is the Antichrist. The Prime Minister of Australia could be the Antichrist, too…
Yeah, he probably is.

Is Obama a ‘fag’ or merely a ‘fag enabler’?
Well, I know he’s a murderer; he said if one of his daughters, who is 13 now, should make a mistake and get pregnant, he would kill the baby.

What do think about gay animals?
I don’t believe that, but what’s the relevancy anyway?

Well, if animals are gay, that tends to show that homosexuality is natural.
They say, “Are you a fag because you were born that way or because society made you that way?” It’s a matter of supreme irrelevancy how they got that way, to a Bible preacher. You got to stop it, and if you can’t control yourself any other way, castrate yourself. You hear me talking? I’m talking out of Matthew 19:12, where the Lord Jesus Christ said, “If you can’t behave, get a piece of rusty Kansas barbed wire and castrate yourself.”

I wasn’t aware that Jesus had made a reference to Kansas barbed wire…
Not quite like that, but he said, “There are some that make themselves eunuchs for the Kingdom of Heaven’s sake.”

Can gays repent?
No, they can’t repent because it’s an axiomatic matter of fact that you can’t repent something you’re proud of.

What if they are no longer proud of it?
You’re getting into discussions about Calvinism versus Arminianism—deep water, and you ought to just read the simple Bible verse in Jeremiah that says, “Were they ashamed when they committed such abominations? They were not at all ashamed, neither could they blush; therefore they shall fall with them that fall, and at the time I visit them.” In other words, they are going straight to hell.

Anything else you want to tell the people of Australia?
Yeah. It is not okay to be gay. It will destroy your life and damn your soul. And God hates fags.

What are you working on at the moment?
I’m actually running a course on policing the organised crime aspects of the Australian bikie club for the Federal Police Executive College. A few police station masters from each state come along, and I try to teach them how to mediate between the police and the bikies because the traditional ‘hammer’ approach is just not working.

How do you remain objective? It must be difficult, considering that you have friends on both sides…
If I’m hanging out with a bikie club for a while, each night I call Julie van den Eynde, my field-note archivist, and debrief her thoroughly as to what happened, so the notes are as clean as they can be. I then get Julie to work me back through it all and take out any bias. It’s a scientific process—an insider/outsider technique.

Are there differences between US and Australian bikie clubs?
There is no [crime] problem here, compared with America. In a lot of ways, we have a pretty laidback, peaceful society, and our bikies tend to be that way, too. There is a lot more violence in the US gangs, and the customs are different. When the first Australian Banditos went over in around 1983 to meet up with the Banditos in America, they were shocked. They’d walk around a Bandito home and be offered the host’s wife or partner, and this shocked them because that custom did not take off here.

Is there an official mediator between bikie clubs in Australia?
The Motorcycle Council of Queensland tries to keep the Queensland clubs in line, and is by far the best tribunal in Australia. They allow two members from each club to come in and air their grievances, in an attempt to stop turf wars.
What is the major difference between a gang and a club?
Club is the preferred term. Bikies usually see ‘gang’ as a derogatory police term. You are only seen as a legitimate club when you have formed a group with absolutely no criminals in it, and you are operating at a level that is respectable within society.

How does one go about starting a bikie chapter in Australia?
There’s a hierarchy and a protocol that must be followed to get a club officially accepted in Australia. You need at least six members, three in smaller rural areas, and you have to get approval from the mother club, usually in the United States.
Why do you think that bikie clubs are seen in such a negative light?
Because some of the members in the clubs are criminals. However, what needs to be known is that bikie clubs are not criminal entities—some just have a few bad eggs in them. This is why other clubs are getting angry. There has been a drop in the core values of outlaw motorcycle clubs, and this is what we are attempting to wipe out for good.

What sort of blokes were the sailors?
A lot of them were depression-era kids—some grew up in the slums of Sydney, and they’d have been lucky to get a bit of bread and dripping for dinner at night. Others were country kids.

But to suddenly grow up and see the world like that, and to come out of the depression and plunge into WW2, it was a huge thing. They were an amazing generation—they dealt with it all. They grew up strong and they stayed that way.

And their first big stop was New York City!
Oh, New York was an absolute eye-opener for them. They were stunned and amazed—skyscrapers and Coca Cola and women. I like the story of the two sailors who were at Madison Square Garden, at the old ballpark.

The locals invited one to have a hit out on the field. Someone pitched a baseball at him and he missed it and fell over. But the second pitch he knocked out of the park!

And so they just rolled out the red carpet for them and took them to nightclubs where they met movie stars and all of that stuff.

The Aussie boys done good!
Yeah, but the story I really like was when they were on their way back across the Pacific and they called in at Tahiti. It was more or less a four-day orgy! Half of the ship’s company was dancing or swimming naked in the water with these Tahitian girls and it was just an amazing scene. Of course, it got a bit rougher after that.

You need some fond memories when you’re floating in oily and fiery waters…
…When you’ve just been torpedoed, yes. There was a terribly sad story of one former crewman who was dying on the Burma-Siam railway and he said to his mate, “I’m gonna die tonight. Just come and sit with me and talk with me about the old times and about Tahiti and everything.”

It was terribly poignant. They saw life in a way I don’t think any other Australians have: from those incredible highs to the atrocities of the railway. They went from the A to the Z of human experience.

The ship survived several battles before it was finally sunk. Did its first hostile contact in the Mediterranean, with a dozen casualties, come as a shock?
They knew it was coming, but nothing can really prepare you for the first time you’re under attack. Particularly from the dive bombers of the Luftwaffe, which must have been terrifying. They were under attack day after day until, finally, a bomb hit them.

HMAS Perth was one of just three cruisers to survive the almighty Battle of the Java Sea… only to then stumble into the main Japanese invasion force in the Sunda Strait.

That was an absolute tragedy. But in hindsight, the Japanese were everywhere. The Perth blundered into that and was outnumbered, outgunned, out-everythinged.

They fought as best they could with what they had and ended up firing practice ammunition and star shells, which were utterly useless. But I guess it gave them something to do and a sense they were fighting back. It was a tragic battle. There was no other end to it than that the ship was going to be sunk.

So they knew they were doomed?
Well, it’s hard to say. If you were on the bridge or you were working one of the guns, then you could see the battle. But if you’re below decks, you don’t have a clue—you just hear the noise and the feel vibration of the ship.

Until the torpedo hits, that is, and then you know you’re stuffed. And when the second torpedo hits, you know you’re gone for all money. Some of them could see it straightaway, that they were doomed.

Others didn’t know for a while. There were blokes who would have been killed outright when the first torpedo hit, and others who were trapped inside the ship with no way of escaping—which would have been an appalling way to go.

In your estimation, what was the Perth’s finest hour?
That final battle. It was magnificent and she fought to the very last. The captain, Hector Waller, should have won the Victoria Cross.

But for some reason—which puzzles a lot of people—no-one in the Australian Navy has ever been awarded the VC. Until fairly recently, they had to be okayed by the British Admiralty in London.And they never once okayed the Victoria Cross for an Australian sailor.

Was Waller’s contribution to that final battle known to his men?
Oh, yeah. He was an inspirational leader, and they knew he’d done his best to get them out of it, to try to save them and the ship. To this day, they still hold him in enormous regard. They knew how the battle was fought—and how it ended.

Needing to form a good, well-balanced squad, I went on the hunt for a young internet gun, and all roads led to a quietly spoken guy from Adelaide who was making more money than most CEOs playing poker online.

I found it odd that shy and retiring Jonathan Karamalikis was better known as “Monster Dong” on the web, but he was certainly making his mark.

Last year, Karamalikis joined a select group of Australian pros when he was sponsored by online gaming giant Full Tilt Poker, and he immediately repaid their faith in him by winning the PokerStars Asian Pacific Poker Tour (APPT) Grand Final in Sydney in December.

Not only did the victory catapult  Jonathan into the top echelon of Australian poker, it also saw him take home just under half a million dollars in prize money. I had a chat with the Dong at the recent Crown Aussie Millions tournament in Melbourne…

Okay, Jonathan, why “Monster Dong”?

Haha! It’s always the first question. Obviously, I had a lack of confidence when I invented the name. I made “Monster Dong” my online handle to make myself feel better about my adolescent issues, and to try and convince everyone that I actually have a big dong.

When did you start playing poker?

My mate taught me how to play when I was 16. That same night, I created an account at a play-money website and played endlessly. It took me about six months to learn the basics, and from there I’ve never looked back.

What are the most obvious differences between playing online and playing live tournament poker?

Being able to see who you’re playing against live is a huge advantage. I can usually work out what kind of people [my opponents] are in the first 20 minutes. Online, there’s a lot more re-raising and aggressive play. Live play is more focused on post-flop action.

Outside of poker, what else do you enjoy doing?

I spend most of my time hanging out with my mates, watching basketball and going to the gym, when I have the time to get into a routine. I also love travelling and seeing new places. I spend four to five months of the year on the road.

Where to next, Mr Dong?

I want to do Europe sometime this year, go play some tournaments on the EPT [European Poker Tour] circuit and perhaps visit London for World Series Europe. And obviously I’ll be going to Las Vegas for the World Series—that’s a “can’t miss”; however, I might just go for the Main Event this year because my mates and I never actually play poker when we’re there…

Do you see poker as a career option, or just a hobby?

I consider poker to be both a career and a hobby. I see it as a competitive sport because you’re always looking to improve. I’m more than happy to keep doing this for now.

Did you leave Australia for work?
Yeah, I was chosen by Playboy TV to travel to the USA and work on porn, so I did that. I’ve always wanted to be part of the adult industry. I started with adult modelling at 18, then went to dancing. Porn was always next, and that’s what I’ve been keeping myself busy with lately: making adult movies and adjusting to life over here.

Kiki Vidis featured in our March 2011 issue and she spoke of you. How did the two of you meet?
I met her through Playboy. They wanted another girl to continue on the American Adventure show to a second series. Her show was Kiki’s American Adventure and my show is Kelly’s American Adventure. We keep in touch; she’s a lovely girl.

What are you like when you’re filming scenes?
I’m pretty easygoing, but I’m also a crazy girl once the scene starts. I don’t like taking breaks. I keep going and going, and by the end of it if I’m exhausted, I know I performed well and gave my all.

What ranks as your favourite scene?
My first shoot was a girl-girl with Asa Akira, and during the scene Shyla Stylez walked in, as she was performing in a scene right after me. It was a surreal experience because I was a porn addict before I got into [the industry] and I had always loved watching her! We’ve since become really good friends.

The book has started a war of words among music aficionados across the country. Was that one of your aims?
We understood that when we started everyone was going to get upset; no-one was going to be completely happy. Even we’re still not completely happy. I get blamed for Beaches being in there. John Farnham’s Whispering Jack is there and I don’t particularly like it, but I understand that the record stands the test of time; so many people bought that record. I wanted The Avalanches’ Since I Left You to be included, and they [John and Toby] didn’t understand it.
So what makes a great Australian album?
Sometimes a record that we included refuted those qualities of having a distinctly Australian setting or pioneering a genre. But they had to be taking something further in a direction. So they might not be completely revolutionary. An artist like Powderfinger or The Saints, and coincidently they’re both from Brisbane, they built on the shoulders of other people and made their sound based on that.

How did you come to agreement on what would be number one?
We all agreed that Midnight Oil mattered. Diesel and Dust is a great example of where the country was at and where the band was at. We have a great connection to it. Toby and John were running Rolling Stone [magazine] singlehandedly at the time Diesel and Dust came out. They both had a feel for how straight-jacketed race re lations were in Australia at that time. You play it, and it takes you somewhere, to that point in time. You know how incredible the songs are, 20 years on. Diesel and Dust is a big record.

Was it important to represent a wide spectrum of artists?
Australia is very rock-oriented. We wanted to reflect that, but there’s always been an underground, there’s always been something that’s oriented to dance or electronic music, or soul bands. There aren’t just rock bands. At the same time, people have said there’s a lack of female solo artists [in the book]. But as I always ask them, “Can you name five we have missed?”, and they can’t. It seems to be that music narrowed in the 1970s and ’80s and you can’t rectify that. You have no quotas.

What excites you about the future of Australian music?
I think the most interesting records are the ones we don’t foresee. Looking at this book, I hope we do get a hip-hop artist that is as exciting and important as Nick Cave or who is as popular as Normie Rowe was. You just hope for another transcending pop artist, someone like Sarah Blasko, and for the next wave of pop to be more male-orientated. You know, there are a lot of solo artists out there, and I’d like to see more bands. I’d like to see a band be like the next Jet but with two females and two males.

What’s your favourite Australian record of all time?
Hi Fi Way by You Am I. It’s a great record. I think it was almost the only five-star review I wrote at the time.

In our 2008 interview for Dexter in the Dark, you said you had problems getting the character to where you wanted him, and even considered killing him off. Two books later, has this changed?
Well, I had a couple of good books in between that made it relatively easy. It’s funny you should bring that up, though, because I find myself in the exact same spot again. Apparently, every three books I get this block. Maybe this time I’ll use a large hammer, and then Cody will take over the family business.

In Delicious, the birth of Dexter’s first child reveals glimpses of real emotion within the character. Was your decision to provide this evolvement a conscious one to humanise Dexter or just a personality facet of sociopaths?
Maybe both those things, but neither was conscious. I don’t sit down and plan things that ruthlessly. It was just what I was feeling when I started. I did plan to begin with him looking down at the birth of his child. I had plot points, but I had no idea about the tone until it started happening.

Do you have regular sources who advise you on the science in the books or do you go to different people according to plot direction?
I have a lot of sources in Miami, and others who do forensics for a living. I don’t really go into a lot of detail in the books because it’s just not interesting to me. Some people like it, I don’t. It’s background for me. I recently learned we’re using a different thing to test for trace blood and fingerprints; it’s a new chemical. That’s good to know. I need to know that, as Dexter uses it. But I don’t go into long lyrical sentences using the electro-spectro-diccolo-pack test machine. I don’t know and I don’t care.

The hit TV show Dexter has developed a different plot to your novels. Have the scriptwriters introduced any specific stories or twists that you like or dislike?
Rita’s a great example. I wasn’t happy they killed her off. I think [Julie Benz] is a terrific actress, a really nice person, and I hate to see anybody lose their job. On top of that, people are angry at me for killing Rita. I say to them, she’s still alive in the books! Occasionally they do stuff I never would. Sometimes it’s just because it’s TV, other times it’s a bunch of other writers wanting to put their own imprint on it. It doesn’t yank my chain in any way. It’s a different medium with different demands.

We understand you used to be a karate champion. What can you tell us about that?
I was at the black-belt level and I took a silver medal in the World Championships. The guy I was fighting for the gold was about six-foot-eight and very, very serious, a really hard person. I was a point-and-a-half ahead and was thinking it was easy; he was slower than anyone I’d ever faced.I went in for a side snap-kick and landed it perfectly. I heard a loud pop and crunch. I thought I’d got him, but when I landed on my foot I realised I’d got me.

I broke my foot in four places kicking this guy in the ribs. As I was standing there in shock, he did a sweep move that lifted me up and sent me flying out of the ring and into the bleachers. People think this is a punch line, but as I went back in, all I could hear in my head was, “New strategy, let the Wookie win”, and that made complete sense. I tried to give him small targets to get points so I could finish with the silver medal instead of being disqualified.

Have you ever thought about combining your passions into a stage musical about a sociopathic, serial-killing martial artist?
Actually, I believe I’m about 65 pages into something quite similar to that! I mean, why not?