Q Toon: Symbolic Gesture

Four months ago, U.S. District Judge Robert Hinkle ruled that it was unconstitutional for the state of Florida to deny marriage licenses to same-sex couples. This ruling seems clear enough, but not for Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi. Bondi, in her quest to become the 21st Century Anita Bryant, has been fighting Judge Hinkle's order, currently stayed until this coming Monday.

Bondi's argument, incredibly, is that Judge Hinkle's ruling applies only to the one couple who actually brought the lawsuit.

Q Syndicate✒Jan 1, 2015

By the way, here's something for you typographers out there. Did you know that there is no agreed upon name in English for the "@" symbol? It's usually just called the "at sign," although other suggested names are the portmanteau "atpersand," the German "strudel," and the French "arobase."

The French term apparently derives from a Castillian unit of liquid weight, back when Iberia was Muslim, called the "arroba," which was abbreviated to the @ symbol in commercial usage. I don't know how the term "strudel" got applied to the symbol; I would think that "cinnamon roll" would be more visually appropriate.

@ any rate, I have a client publication with the nasty habit of using the punch line of my cartoons as the on-line headline for the cartoon, and I'm waiting to see how they manage to do that this week.