Q Toon: Tony Perkins

I was almost done drawing this cartoon Sunday night when I turned on the TV for the local news and instead found George Stephanopoulos, Christiane Amanpour and Mike Boetcher eagerly awaiting an announcement from the White House. They had already spilled the beans that Osama bin Laden was dead, and were filling the time by getting reactions from New York firefighters and 9/11 widows.

Clearly, terrorists this week were not going to give a rat's ass that the president of the Family Research Council said on April 29 that terrorists are just like LGBT activists.

The actual quotation isn't exactly as brief as one would like for a cartoon. He's talking here about gay and lesbian activists, boycotts against corporations that support antigay constitutional amendments and candidates, and publicizing the names of those who sign antigay petitions:

"This has moved from cultural terrorism to corporate terrorism. That's what this is. Now, back in the '80's and early '90's, I worked with the state department in anti-terrorism and we trained about fifty different countries in defending against terrorism, and it's, at its base, what terrorism is: it's a strike against the general populace simply to spread fear and intimidation so that they can disrupt and destabilize the system of government. That's what the homosexuals are doing here to the legal system."

At the risk of mockery from Editorial Explanations, I went ahead and finished the cartoon (I had nothing left to do but ink the background). By morning, I hadn't thought of any way to tweak the cartoon to take the previous night's news into account, so I sent it in to my syndicate for distribution. Q Syndicate, after all, is interested in providing LGBT content to LGBT publications, and would be less interested in the cartoon that I posted here yesterday.

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And since I've brought up yesterday's cartoon, a few words about it.

A number of my friends posted that misquoted quotation of Martin Luther King yesterday, so I have to ask myself whether it was unseemly to crow about the death of an enemy. Looking back, I did not exult in the death of Saddam Hussein; and even though I would hold him responsible for the deaths of innocent Americans, Britons and Canadians, I probably wouldn't feel any elation over the death of Muammar Khaddafy were that to come to pass. How I would have felt about bin Laden's death if the U.S. had succeeded in bombing him to smithereens in 1998 I can no longer remember, although I would probably have forgotten his name by now. (Like that blind cleric who fomented the first bombing of the World Trade Center.)

Maybe it was the sheer scale of Al Qaeda's appetite for death and destruction. Maybe it is the lingering memory of Al Qaeda sympathizers exulting in the carnage of 9/11. Maybe it's the nagging feeling that we'd better celebrate while we may, because somebody somewhere is eventually going to do something horrible in retaliation.

Jesus' admonition to love one's enemies notwithstanding, I'm happy that bin Laden is dead and that it was Americans who dispatched him. And I just can't apologize for that.

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And then there is Christian Broadcasting Network commentator David Brody, who not only let his heart rejoice over bin Laden's death, he actually criticized President Obama for not gloating, too:

"I know President Obama understands that getting Bin Laden doesn't mean an end to the war on terrorism but how about a smile? How about showing a little joy? How about a word or two saying something about how this is no doubt a happy or joyous occasion for Americans? We got nothing like that at all... Any hint of gloating or happiness might be rubbing it in the face of some of the crazies in the Arab World and heaven forbid we get them upset! How dare we Americans look like we’re celebrating his death! The travesty of it all! Give me a break. Isn’t it time to stop catering to thugs?"

Apparently, Brody forgot about President Obama cracking a great big smile over Osama bin Laden the night before: