Q Toon: Orange You GLAAD I Didn't Say Banana

Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation (GLAAD) released a Harris poll over the weekend showing that after several years of increasing support for LGBTQ persons and issues on the part of straight, cisgender Americans, that support actually declined in 2017.

The poll didn't in fact ask respondents' attitudes toward marriage equality, but I thought that was an issue that illustrated Straight America's discomfort with LGBTQ people. After years of our fighting for the right to marry, we finally have a majority of Americans on our side; but once you start asking whether we have a right to expect the same professional services from florists, photographers and bakers as everyone else, our support begins to drop off.

No, the poll asked after some more fundamental aspects of acceptance, tolerance and support.

Three of the most personal interaction scenarios experienced significant declines with more people reporting discomfort with “learning a family member is LGBTQ”, “learning my child’s teacher is LGBTQ” and “learning my doctor is LGBTQ”.
 For decades, as more and more LGBTQ people were out, visible, and threaded through all walks of life, non-LGBTQ people became more comfortable. This year, more non-LGBTQ U.S. adults reported being uncomfortable learning a family member, doctor, or child’s teacher is LGBTQ. However, 79% of non-LGBTQ U.S. adults still agreed with the statement "I support equal rights for the LGBT community."

The "significant decline" in non-LGBTQ comfort isn't huge; it might even be within the poll's margin of error. But it is ... let's say, discomfiting, notes the New York Times' Jennifer Finney Boylan:

The increase in these numbers over years previous is not dramatic — 3 percent in some instances, two in others. What’s significant is not the margin of increase but the fact that the numbers are going up instead of down. In the life of this poll, that has never happened before.

Which explains why it was so important for Max Mutchnick and David Kohan to bring back "Will & Grace" this year. If those adorably wacky Manhattanites can't get Waylon, Willie and the boys at Luckenbach, Texas back on our side, nobody can.

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So what's with all the oranges?

As many of you know, Mort Walker, the creator of Beetle Bailey, passed away over the weekend at the age of 94. Among cartoonists, there is a famous story about the strip and a Beetle Bailey Belly Button Box at King Features.

Walker noticed that the syndicate was cutting out the belly buttons he had drawn on the characters whenever they were shirtless or in swimming suits and responded by drawing two belly buttons on each character — all of which King Features dutifully removed before publication. Interviewed by Cullen Murphy for the July 1984 issue of Atlantic, Walker said, “I began putting so many of them in, in the margins and everywhere, that they had a little box down there called Beetle Bailey‘s Belly-Button Box. The editors finally gave up after I did one strip showing a delivery of navel oranges.”

Rest in peace, Lt. Walker.