Q Toon: Pride 2023

I like to come up with an LGBTQIA+ Pride themed cartoon in time for monthly publications' June issues. This year, it just feels impossible to come up with anything upbeat, let alone funny.

Pride celebrations have been cancelled in several Florida communities this year due to the "hostile environment" created by Governor Ron DeSantis and his legislature's intentionally vague law criminalizing drag performances. 

Florida is by no means alone in promulgating DeSantis-style Cancel Culture. Event organizers have cancelled similar celebrations in Kansas, and organizers are concerned that a legislation in Tennessee may yet force them to cancel events in Memphis and Knoxville.

The onslaught of viciously anti-LGBTQ legislation being regurgitated from one red state to the next makes this a bleak Pride season. 

Who knew that we would come to miss the crass Pride Merch commercialism of 1992 to 2016?