Q Toon: The Life of Lambda

Drawing this cartoon, it occurred to me that there are such things as Siberian tigers, so I could have put tigers in both boats. I stayed with my original idea of using a bear, which is, after all, the cartoon shorthand for Russia.

And in trying to find a picture of a tiger from the angle I wanted, I was somewhat surprised to learn that there is no real difference between African tigers and Bengal tigers. I guess I had assumed that, as with elephants, there would be something to distinguish one from the other -- more stripes, a longer snout, tufted ears, or that sort of thing.

I did squeeze in one change along the way. The original proposal to my editors called for the word "death" to be crossed out on the tiger's label, with "life in prison" squeezed in, due to claims by the Ugandan bill's sponsors that the death penalty has been removed from it. More recent reports, however, are that the death penalty remains in the bill, so I shoehorned "death" back into the label.

"The only version of the bill that is public today still includes the death penalty provision for 'aggravated homosexuality'" said Kasha Jacqueline, Executive Director of Freedom and Roam Uganda (FARUG). "We know that the bill still refers to death, contrary to what the media [are] saying."

The Russian bill doesn't include a death penalty, but the proposed ban on "homosexual propaganda" recalls the Soviet-era ban on homosexuality:

Igor Kochetkov, head of the LGBT Network, a Russian gay rights group, [said,] "It's a strange coincidence that this law will be looked at on 19 December, and on 17 December 1933, the Soviet authorities made sexual relations between men illegal. They argued that gays were alien to Soviet society. Now and then, we hear the same rhetoric."

_____
Update: It  has been brought to my attention that tigers are not native to Africa at all. Which would explain why there wouldn't be any way to distinguish between African and Bengal tigers.