Q Toon: Down for the Count

Bergetoons, and a cartoon full of partying auctioneers wish all my readers a very happy, healthy, and humor-filled new year in 2019!

Q Toon: How It Works

It's true, Buzz. Romania held a referendum on October 6 and 7 on a proposal to enshrine in its constitution an exclusive definition of marriage as between a man and a woman. In spite of a 93.4% yes vote in favor of the constitutional amendment, it failed:

Data from the national election bureau showed voter turnout stood at 20.4 percent when the polls closed at 1800 GMT [later official figures put it at 21.1%], below the 30 percent required for it to be valid.
The two-day referendum, which cost $40 million, aimed to change the constitution to define marriage as strictly between a man and a woman from the current gender-neutral “spouses.”
Religiously conservative Romania, which decriminalized homosexuality in 2001 decades after neighboring countries, bars marriage and civil partnerships for same sex couples.

There had been an active campaign by human rights activists and the Save Romania Union urging people to boycott the election. Centrist-liberal President Klaus Iohannis also opposed the referendum, saying that as a member of an ethnic and religious minority (he is a Lutheran of German heritage), he supports tolerance and openness and rejects religious fanaticism.

Here at home, multiple reports suggest that in spite of the turmoil of the Corrupt Trump Administration and decades of craven inaction on gun violence in our schools, some young people may not be as keen on getting out to vote on November 6 as others are. I've heard interviews with millennials who complain that one vote doesn't make a difference, or that they'd rather march in the streets for change.

Granted, Republicans have been doing their damndest to keep one vote from making a difference, both by cracking and packing voting districts and by keeping one vote from being cast in the first place. But without those one votes after another, marching in the streets isn't going to make a damned bit of difference, either. The only things less effective than marching in the streets are retweeting a meme on Twitter, or sharing a post on Facebook.

(Or, for you pre-millennials, muting the TV set.)

There is a lot that could be done to make the American electoral system more transparent and representative, but none of it can possibly happen if the same people currently in charge of the three branches of government get to stay there.  And they're only leaving office if enough of us tell them at the voting booth that it's time to go.

The above tweet has been flitting around the internet during this past week. One hopes that the volunteer at your polling station doesn't need you to get all high and mighty and speaking in caps. "I'd like a provisional ballot, please" should suffice. But I'll pass it along anyway in case you get stuck with someone who takes their poll working instructions from Fox & Friends.

By the way, did you happen to pick up on the detail that the Romanian election was held over two days, a Saturday and a Sunday, when people generally have more time to get out to the polls than on a Tuesday?

There's something to be admired in the Romanian electoral system.

This Week's Sneak Peek

Even though Killer is breaking the fourth wall, he's never alone, which means that the news can't all be bad.

Q Toon: For the Record

When I'm up late on Sunday night cussing at a blank sheet of bristol board that stubbornly resists becoming the editorial cartoon that I have to send to my editor by Monday morning, it would be really, really nice if I had some inside source on the Supreme Court who would leak to me that the justices were going to issue a ruling of particular interest to the LGBTQ community the next day.

Which is to say that this week's syndicated cartoon is not about the First Fondantmentalist Church of the Sacred Wedding Cake.

So instead, Buzz and Killer have noticed something remarkable about 2018 off-year elections. According to the LGBTQ Victory Fund, there are nearly 400 openly gay, lesbian, bi, transgender and queer candidates for local, state and national office — over 50 in Texas alone.

Former Dallas sheriff Lupe Valdez, another Texas-based candidate, already shattered a ceiling last month when she became the first Latina and openly gay nominee for governor in the state. ...
Valdez, 70, is no stranger to breaking barriers. Despite her family’s fear that her running for public office would ignite a homophobic backlash in Texas — where it is still legal to discriminate against people based on their sexual orientation and gender identity — Valdez was not deterred. In 2005, she became the only Latina sheriff in the U.S. and one of the country’s few out LGBTQ public officials.

Elsewhere, Wisconsin Senator Tammy Baldwin has been targeted by right-wing PACs for defeat as she runs for a third term this year. Her TV ads focus on keeping American manufacturing plants open, but she has also opened up about her childhood with a mother who struggled with drug addiction. Colorado Congressman Jared Polis is giving up his seat to run for Governor, taking the risk of appearing in his TV ads with his husband and son by his side — standard practice for heterosexual candidates, but something most LGBTQ candidates have been counseled to avoid.

Consider the example of Gina Ortiz Jones, the Democratic nominee for Texas's 23rd Congressional District. The former Air Force intelligence officer is an out lesbian, but only to a degree.

“My girlfriend teases me sometimes for not sharing enough about myself on social media, particularly as I endeavor into an arena where people need to know the person before they want to hear the policies,” Jones wrote in October, referring to a partner she did not name. “I can’t help but think that some of that is still related to the precautionary steps I took as a cadet and officer. All this to say, there are effects to not coming out, or feeling as though you’re not able to come out.”

But if some candidates now feel confident running as openly LGBTorQ, other candidates have decided that it's safe to run as an open Nazi.

In Illinois’ 17th Congressional District, in the state’s northwestern corner, Democratic incumbent Cheri Bustos will face a GOP nominee named Bill Fawell, who believes, according to CNN research posted Friday, that the 9/11 terrorist attacks were an inside job, and that Beyonce and Taylor Swift are stumping for the Illuminati, a worldwide domination sect that some conspiracists insist exists.
In the same state’s 3rd district, comprising southwest Chicago and its suburbs, Arthur Jones, a Nazi — not a sobriquet, his preferred affiliation — became the GOP candidate despite being rejected by national Republicans and the state party for denying the Holocaust.
Party leaders have also gone out of their way to denounce Paul Nehlen, who is seeking the soon-to-be-vacated seat of House Speaker Paul Ryan in Wisconsin’s 1st, and Patrick Little, who is running for the U.S. Senate in California. Nehlen proudly attacks his enemies as Jews and Little is a white supremacist.

Mr. Little finished twelfth in Tuesday's "jungle primary," and Nehlen is unlikely to win in my home district (he's got carpetbagging Green Beret Nick Polce to split the pro-fascist vote with him).

Happily, there are hundreds of LGBTQ candidates and only eight seven Nazis running for office this year. If it's unlikely that any card-carrying Nazis will be sworn into office next year, however, there are plenty of Republicans running just to the right of Mussolini who will be. They may not call themselves Nazis — they may not see themselves as Nazis — but the Nazis recognize their fellow travelers.

As Patrick Little told MSNBC before the California primary, Donald Trump "dog whistled about globalists,” even if he "didn't understand he was talking about Jews until after the election.”

Radical right-wing candidates have had the wind at their back in 2010, 2014, and 2016. For all the talk of a "blue wave" this year, Trump has the bully pulpit (and his Twitter account) and a devoted following that believes any bullstool he, Fox News, Sinclair Broadcasting, or their Facebook friends from Smolensk tell them.

Besides, I seem to recall all the experts predicting a Hillary Clinton landslide not very long ago.

This Week's Sneak Peek

Killer got to be featured in the sneak peek the last time my good news/bad news bears were in a cartoon; so this time around, it's Buzz's turn.

Q Toon: Devil's Advocates

Buzz and Killer return this week with a question for our times.

The answer, of course, is that it would take an amendment to the Constitution, because Mr. Yiannopoulos was not born an American citizen.

Yiannopoulos, for those of you who have forgotten his fifteen minutes of fame last year, is a British-born, racist, Breitbartian provocateur whose schtick was getting invited by college Republican groups to speak on their campuses (campi?), usually provoking protests that prompted college administrators to cancel his speech. He is also gay, which made him a darling of the far right — their Token Homosexual — until he expressed his approval of pedophilia.

Now they have Kanye West, so as far as the Sinclair-Fox-Breitbart crowd is concerned, Black is the New Gay.

His star having fallen, Yiannopoulos wasn't the best example of somebody right-wing evangelicals would rally around the way they have steadfastly defended the Prince President of Lies, Donald Joffrey Trump. I'm fully convinced that not only would they stick by him if he shot somebody on Fifth Avenue, they'd stick by him even if that somebody were Franklin Graham.

While performing an abortion. On his daughter. Of his incestuous love child. And bragging about it every step of the way.

Those right-wing evangelicals have already sold their souls to him.

The rest is merely haggling over the price.

Q Toon: The First Rule of Book Club

As Buzz and Killer explain in this week's cartoon, a transgender activist named Andi Dier disrupted a book-signing event of Rose McGowan, an actress who has accused Harvey Weinstein of raping her. McGowan had been on the talk show circuit to promote her autobiography, Brave.

One thing I've learned in life is that if someone says they've been raped, you should try to show some respect and sympathy. One thing you should not do is start telling her "Oh, you think that's bad?"

Ms. Dier thought this was a good opportunity to go on the attack.

The video begins as McGowan is challenged by the activist, Andi Dier, about remarks she made on a RuPaul podcast last year: “I have a suggestion. Talk about what you said on RuPaul. Trans women are dying and you said that we, as trans women, are not like regular women. We get raped more often. We go through domestic violence more often. There was a trans woman killed here a few blocks… I have been followed home.”
McGowan then cut her off: “Hold on. So am I. We are the same. My point was, we are the same. There’s an entire show called ID channel, a network, dedicated to women getting abused, murdered, sexualized, violated, and you’re a part of that, too, sister. It’s the same.”
Dier then asked what McGowan had done for transgender women, and McGowan asked Dier what she had done for women, and then all hell broke loose.

Nobody came out of the incident, shall we say, smelling like a rose.

Dier was ejected from the event. McGowan accused Dier of being a paid stooge of unnamed nefarious forces, and, after meeting an obligation to appear on Late Night with Stephen Colbert later that night, McGowan abruptly canceled her book tour, complaining that nobody had stepped up to defend her at the Barnes & Noble.

So, in case you're still wondering what the hell this was all about, here's what McGowan said on RuPaul's podcast:

She said they think they know what it’s like to grow up female because they "felt like a woman on the inside" but concluded this was false. McGowan said: "That’s not growing as a woman, that’s not living in this world as a woman and a lot of the stuff I hear trans [women] complaining about, yeah, welcome to the world."

As for Diers, there are internet accusations that pre-transition, he was a sex offender himself. (She denies this, and there doesn't appear to be any criminal record involved.)

Her life now seems to be devoted to punishing people who are slated to appear on a certain television program. Although claiming to have supported Bernie Sanders's run for the presidency, Diers wrote about badgering the Socialist-Democrat on the campaign trail:

After confronting Senator Sanders on stage, he walked away in a hurry and kind of ignored what I was saying. I was regretting not shutting it down but focused my efforts on making sure he wouldn’t leave this city without knowing my name. So we drilled him 3 more times that day.
By the time we got [to] the Late Night with Colbert, he was practically running away from us.

So now you know what this week's cartoon is all about. Don't you feel better?

Q Toon: Life Isn't All It Seems at '17

Buzz and Killer would like to remind you that despite a year with a deranged pathological liar in the White House (when he wasn't golfing), a summer of exceptionally brutal hurricanes, national surrender to mass shootings, and a virulent strain of penile encephalopathy wiping out entire careers, 2017 was not all bad.

Marriage equality came to Australia, Austria, Germany and Malta. All the countries that are not governed by the Corrupt Trump Administration committed themselves to fighting climate change. Sufficient numbers of voters in Alabama, Virginia and France rejected appeals to their basest instincts. Rian Johnson resisted the urge to have a Romulan from the future time-travel back before Phantom Menace to destroy the planet Tatooine. There was that one really cute video you saw. And chances are you will, in fact, see your taxes cut next year.

Although your kids will be the ones paying for it.

Unless Paul Ryan succeeds in raising your retirement age to 92.

Still, 2017 isn't quite over yet. It still has time to redeem itself. It ain't over until the fat Eskimo lady sings.

Q Toon: Good News/Bad News Bears

I'm throwing everything but the kitchen sink into this week's cartoon. Gosh, I hope I'm able to find something else to draw about next week.

Danica Roem received a fair amount of press when she was elected to her state legislature, not only because she is the first openly transgender person elected to such a position in this country, but also because she unseated a lead sponsor of Virginia's version of a "bathroom bill."

You might also have caught coverage of Australia's non-binding referendum on marriage equality; over the month of October, over 12 million Australians sent in their ballots by mail, with nearly 62% of respondents voting Yes.  While the 80% voter participation fell somewhat short of  regular compulsory elections, that's a rate greatly above any national election in the U.S.

Other news items may have escaped your notice unless you follow LGBTQ news closely. This past Monday was Transgender Day of Remembrance, by which time 25 transgender persons had been murdered in the U.S. in 2017. According to the Human Rights Campaign (HRC), that sets a record.

HRC is sounding the alarm over five Trump-Pence administration judicial nominees openly hostile to LGBTQ rights, Jeff Mateer, Damien Schiff, Leonard Steven Grasz, Mark Norris, and Stephen Schwartz. I drew a cartoon about Mateer in September.

I didn't include the name of Ohio State Representative Wes Goodman, a married "up and coming conservative" who pushed anti-LGBTQ legislation by day and "exchanged salacious texts and emails with gay men he met on Capitol Hill, and sent sexually suggestive messages to young men" by night; he was forced to resign over "inappropriate behavior" with a man in his state office in Columbus.

And finally, anti-LGBTQ repression is on the rise in Turkey as the country abandons its secular government in favor of a sharia-based one. This week, the governor of the capital Ankara banned "any events such as LGBT... cinema, theater, panels, interviews, exhibitions are banned until further notice in our province to provide peace and security." Gay pride events have been banned in Istanbul for the past two years, although homosexuality is not a crime per se.

I visited Turkey once, in 1996, and I would have liked to go back; that first visit only scratched the surface of the place. But there's no chance I would go there the way things are now.

Ah, well. We'll always have Australia.