The Importance of Being Frank

Graphical History Tour remembers former Congressman Barney Frank (D-MA), who passed away Tuesday night at age 86.

in Q SaltLake, March, 1999

Barney Frank was elected to Congress in 1980, succeeding Rev. Robert Drinan, who had left office in order to comply with Pope John Paul II's call for priests to withdraw from government positions. Q SaltLake asked me to draw the above caricature of Rep. Frank for their cover story on his upcoming speech at a dinner of the Utah Stonewall Democrats, an LGBTQ organization.

Frank earned a reputation as an outspoken, quick- and sharp-witted liberal, but it must be noted that he was very pragmatic, even on LGBTQ+ issues. In the 1990's, he counseled marriage equality advocates that the public were not ready to accept same-sex marriage. In his last public interview, however, he argued that marriage equality is safe because Republicans today would be afraid of the backlash were our marriages to be taken away.

Perhaps the interviewer thought it impolite to bring up the fate of the landmark Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act during Republican rule.

Frank wasn't the first openly gay Congressman; Gerry Studds (D-MD) had been outed at the center of a scandal over Congressmen having affairs with congressional pages. (Studds was censured in 1983 for having a sexual relationship with a 17-year-old page ten years earlier; he retired from Congress in 1997.) Frank was, however, the first member of Congress to come out as gay voluntarily, in 1987.

in Ranger, University of Wisconsin at Parkside, Sept. 21, 1989 

The first cartoon I drew of Barney Frank was, unfortunately, when it appeared that his political career was about to be cut short because of a sex scandal of his own. He had befriended Steve Gobie, a prostitute, hiring him as an aide, housekeeper, and driver in 1985. He evicted Gobie in 1987 after their landlord told Frank that Gobie continued operating as a male escort, even bringing clients to their shared home.

This became public in 1989 when Gobie decided to sell his story to the highest bidder, but gave it away to the Washington Times. Frank called for a House Ethics Committee investigation, claiming to have had no knowledge of Gobie's extracurricular activities at their home. Rep. Larry Craig (R-ID) led the push to censure Frank; but in the end, he was merely reprimanded for misrepresenting Gobie's criminal probation record, and for using his congressional office to fix 33 parking tickets Gobie had racked up.

Craig, by then a senator, would have his own gay sex scandal in 2007.

in UWM Post, Milwaukee Wis., Jan. 30, 1995

During a January 20, 1995 radio interview discussing a possible book deal, House Majority Leader Dick Armey (R-TX) said, “I like peace and quiet and I don’t need to listen to Barney Fag, [pause] Barney Frank, haranguing in my ear because I made a few bucks off a book.” 

The slur was reported by several radio networks, whereupon Armey blamed the media for reporting on what he claimed was an audio glitch, not a slip of the tongue or intentional insult.

Rep. Frank refused to accept Armey's excuses, saying, “There are a lot of possible ways to mispronounce my name but that one, I think, is the least common, ... I turned to my own expert, my mother, who reports that in 59 years of marriage, no one ever introduced her as Elsie Fag.”

After a separate incident of Armey making a poor joke about Frank's homosexuality, a reporter asked Frank if he wanted an apology from the Texan. "I’m trying to think of what I would be less interested in than an apology from Dick Armey," he replied. "Maybe the lyrics to the national anthem of Bhutan."

for Q Syndicate, Aug., 1998

Frank's office requested the original of this cartoon. I have no idea whether he still has it.

When Republicans in Congress were holding hearings in preparation to file impeachment charges against President Bill Clinton over his sex scandal, Barney Frank seemed to be the only Democrat willing to speak up in Clinton's defense.

for Q Syndicate, Nov., 1998

Wisconsin's Second District elected Tammy Baldwin to Washington in 1998, the first out lesbian representative in Congress, so I drew Barney Frank offering her some practical advice.

for Q Syndicate, March, 2009

I tried looking up why I included Barney Frank in this cartoon about the late Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, but it dates from two months before I started this blog. (and I couldn't find it among oocities.com's cached pages of my previous Geocities blog). 

Did Frank call Scalia a homophobe? I guess I wouldn't have put it past him, and I can't think of another reason why I would have drawn him in the foreground.

It is, however, my best example of drawing his famously rumpled couture.

for Q Syndicate, March, 2011

This cartoon caught some ridicule from a web page (now long dormant) dedicated to ridiculing editorial cartoons, in part for daring to run afoul of the litigious Dr. Seuss Estate. The topic was the Employment Non-Discrimination Act (ENDA), a bill proposed in successive Congresses to afford workplace protections to LGBTQ+ private sector employees.

It faced stubborn resistance from Republicans and other conservatives. In 2007, Frank proposed deleting transgender rights from the bill, in what proved to be a futile ploy to attract support from moderate Republicans which succeeded only in deeply dividing the LGBTQ+ community. 

for Q Syndicate, Oct., 2007

Frank's reasoning was that transgender rights could be added back in someday if ENDA ever became law; transgender activists and their allies are profoundly disappointed by what to this day they regard as outright betrayal.

Congress never has passed ENDA in any form. In an interview with Washington Blade's Lou Chibarro, Jr., after he entered hospice care this month, Frank noted that the Supreme Court ruled in Bostock v. Clayton County (2020) that employment discrimination against LGBTQ+ persons is illegal under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, a ruling Frank was confident the Court would never overturn — and if it did, Congress would step in and pass ENDA into law.

He must never have met Mike Johnson.

for Q Syndicate, Dec., 2011

No, this is not my eulogy cartoon for the Congressman.

The 2010 census resulted in Massachusetts losing a seat in Congress. In the redistricting plan produced by the state legislature, the Democratic stronghold of New Bedford was removed from Frank's district. While Brookline, Newton and Wellesley remained in the district, Frank announced shortly after Governor Deval Patrick signed the redistricting plan into law that he would not run for a 17th term.

My reference, of course, is to the reported last words of Oscar Wilde, another gay icon with a not unblemished history. (In trying to verify the quotation for this post, I've found several variations on its theme, so take it with a grain of smelling salts.)

That was the last cartoon I have drawn of Barney Frank — at least so far. I am likely obliged to draw an actual eulogy cartoon for him for release next week. If not, he's got a book coming out in September.

Given his record, the book is not going to be pablum.

This Week's Sneak Peek

Instead of the usual snippet from this week's upcoming syndicated cartoon, here's one from a little over 28 years ago:

in InStep, Milwaukee Wis., Dec. 11, 1997

For those of you under drinking age in 1997, Anheuser-Busch had recently replaced a trio of animated frogs who croaked "Bud... wei... ser" in their television commercials with a pair of lizards with a more extensive vocabulary.

As for the reason for the cartoon: Thomas Martin, a former manager at Anheuser-Busch's Los Angeles brewery, filed a lawsuit claiming that he had been harassed and fired for being openly gay. In pre-trial depositions, Anheuser-Busch manager Bob Warner admitted having told Martin that "to tell co-workers that you are gay is unbecoming of a manager and will result in your termination." 

Warner and other managers testified hearing the words "fag" and "faggot" at work often, but counter-claimed that Martin was fired for having committed "sexual harassment and sexual misconduct" of two employees.

The case was to come to trial on December 1, 1997; Anheuser-Busch settled the case out of court for an undisclosed monetary amount.

♫

Here’s another recording of Schoenberg’s “Verlassen.” 

The Fours of July

We'll get back to 1924 soon; but first, I'm gonna rummage around in my dusty old cartoons bin to check what I drew in Julys (Julies?) of decades ago.

Since we're waiting on tenterhooks to find out what lickspittle Donald Berzilius Trump will name to replace The Late Great Mike Pence as his Vice President next week, here's the challengers' ticket announced forty years ago.

Unpublished. July, 1984

Walter Mondale's choice of Geraldine Ferraro as his running mate in 1984 was calculated to be a game-changing, historical gambit. No woman had ever been on a major party's top ticket before.

The move was somewhat blunted by the National Organization for Women and the National Women's Political Caucus — and House Speaker Tip O'Neil — having publicly pressured Mondale to name a woman to his ticket. When the announcement was made, the Mondale-Ferraro ticket couldn't escape muttered gripes that he was merely pandering to a Democratic interest group. The same thing, rightly or wrongly, nagged at Joe Biden's choice of Kamala Harris in 2020.

Contrast that to John McCain's choice of Sarah Palin in 2008. Governor Palin had her own minuses to be sure, and certainly there were more qualified Republican women for the vice presidency; but by not promising ahead of time to name a woman, McCain got credit for having made a bold move.

Of course, she turned out to be a goofball. Not that's in any way a detriment to a Republican Party career any more. But still.

At least Geraldine Ferraro wasn't the butt of jokes for the next three months as Brooklyn Barbie.

July, 1994? Sure.

The Post at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee didn't publish in July, 1994, and apparently I didn't draw anything for the Journal-Times, either. But this drawing sits in front of my August cartoons in the 1994 folder, so let's just say for the sake of having anything here that I drew it in July.

This was my one and only venture creating album art. (Is it album art if there isn't an LP?) Rev. Tim Hansen, a Lutheran pastor in Racine who had graduated a year behind me at St. Olaf College — we had an abundance in Racine pulpits that year of pastors who had been at Olaf during my four years there — asked me to create this drawing for the cover of his upcoming CD and cassette based on the title track, "Shoved by the Dove." 

That's a caricature of Pastor Tim, of course, and he had specifically asked that the dove be kicking him in the tuchus.

For those who are interested, "Shoved by the Dove" is available on Spotify.

for Q Syndicate, July, 2004

Hey, remember when Jeb Bush was the biggest threat to come out of Florida since Hurricane Andrew?

He's a kitten compared to the state's current crop of Republicans.

Anyway, this is one of several cartoons of mine poking holes in that "special rights for homosexuals" shibboleth.

The irony, jumping forward another ten years to discussion of the Employment Rights Protection Act, is that it's the bigots and 'phobes who keep insisting on having "special rights."

July 2014 for Q Syndicate

Come 2025, they might be the only ones with any rights in this country.

Q Toon: Hold Your Firing

The Supreme Court ruling in Bostock v. Clayton County, Georgia (and companion cases Altitude Express v. Zarda and R.G. & G.R. Harris Funeral Homes Inc. v. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission) came out minutes after I sent my weekly cartoon off to Q Syndicate a week ago Monday; so every other cartoonist in the known universe has already had a chance to publish their rainbow-themed cartoons. Since I've had to withhold my reaction (in fairness to the papers that subscribe to my work), I decided to take note of the reaction of the guy who appointed the guy who wrote the majority opinion.

Trump's response, as is his wont, was to fire off a pissy tweet:

"These horrible & politically charged decisions coming out of the Supreme Court are shotgun blasts into the face of people that are proud to call themselves Republicans or Conservatives. We need more Justices or we will lose our 2nd. Amendment & everything else. Vote Trump 2020!"

Trump was equally annoyed, if not moreso, by the Court ruling against him in Department of Homeland Security et. al. v. Regents of the University of California et. al., blocking the Corrupt Trump Administration's plans to scrap the Dreamers' program. "Do you get the impression that the Supreme Court doesn't like me?" the President of the United States of America and Leader of the Free World sulked in reply.

His attention span being what it is, Trump has since devoted his office to proving that he can drink a glass of water one-handed, complaining about having to walk down a ramp, and insisting that the number of people who attended his Tulsa rally really ought to include the people who were watching it on Fox News.

The Supremes are expected to rule this week on whether the state of Louisiana can regulate women's health care out of existence, and chances are still good that the Roberts Court will find its way back into Republicans' and Conservatives' good graces.

Thereby, I suppose, saving our 2nd. Amendment.

Q Toon: No Trump Double Bogey

I suppose the Donald is making some attempt to reach out beyond the Religious Right on this issue. After all, if secularly-inclined voters are going soft on antigay attitudes, you have to find some argument other than Leviticus and the letters of St. Paul to pull them back in line.

✍

P.S.: I've been uploading cartoons to replace the dead AAEC links in some eight or nine years' worth of posts, and I have no idea why this 2011 post has reappeared as a 2019 post. This cartoon was about a comment Trump made during his unsuccessful run for the 2012 Republican presidential nomination, not something he has said lately. 

I do know that this isn't the first time this particular cartoon posted strangely.

Q Toon: Take Your Boyfriend to Work Day

I'm a little early for National Coming Out Day, which will really suck if I can't come up with something to draw about next week.

National Coming Out Day (NCOD) is October 11. Founded in 1988, the only significance of the date is that it was when the National March on Washington for Lesbian and Gay Rights was held the year before.

31 years of emboldening LGs and eventually BTQs to come out has changed the landscape. By now, everyone knows that they know at least one LGBTQ person, probably including a relative, and that makes it hard for the antigay community to sell antigay hysteria.

So come out. The water's fine. You don't need to drape yourself in a rainbow flag 24/7 if that's not your style, but come out. The little things do count.

Even having your beau's picture on the desk in your home office.

Q Toon: This Just In

In a Washington Post op-ed back on August 15, Robert Kabel and Jill Homan, Board and Vice Chairs, respectively, of the Log Cabin Republicans, published their endorsement of Donald Berzilius Trump for reelection in 2020. According to Kabel and Homan, Trump is responsible for leading the GOP away from its open hostility to LGBTQ humans:

This is the party that Trump has helped make possible by moving past the culture wars that dominated the 1990s and early 2000s, in particular by removing gay rights as a wedge issue from the old Republican playbook. And since taking office, President Trump has followed through on many of his commitments to the United States, including taking bold actions that benefit the LGBTQ community.

Kabel and Homan apparently missed that plank in their party's 2016 platform renewing its support for a Federal Marriage Amendment and sending kids off to quack conversion therapy chambers.

Since the LCR went public with its allegiance to their fearless leader, the Corrupt Trump Administration has now filed LGBTQ-hostile amicus briefs in three Supreme Court cases. I drew last week about the Trumpsters' filing that transgender employees are not covered under equal opportunity law because congressmen in 1964 didn't have transgender persons in mind at the time.

Now, the Corrupt Trump Administration wants the Supreme Court to rule that federal law allows private companies to fire workers based on sexual orientation, filing an amicus brief in the cases of Bostock v. Clayton County, Georgia and Altitude Express v. Zarda.

Remarkably, the department argued in its memorandum that the reason anti-gay discrimination is not unlawful under the ban on sex-based discrimination is because, in cases of adverse treatment by an employer, both gay men and gay women would be addressed equally poorly.
Upon experiencing discrimination from an employer, both men and women in same-sex relationships "would be similarly situated — and they would be treated the same," the department argued, negating a claim under Title VII's sex-based protections.

If the Trumpsters had not themselves put forward the argument that "both gay men and gay women would be addressed equally poorly," I probably would have made that the punch line of this week's cartoon. Damn, but it is hard to make jokes about the Corrupt Trump Administration's way of thinking when the CTA's way of thinking is a joke all by itself.

Meanwhile, a number of prominent Log Cabin members have quit the organization over Kabel and Homan's op-ed, most recently Executive Director Jerri Ann Henry. But according to those who were involved in the endorsement decision, it was approved by a majority of respondents from national chapters of the organization.

The endorsement cited Ambassador to Germany Ric Grenell's public advocacy of pushing antigay foreign governments to come around on LGBTQ rights, but a more likely explanation for the endorsement is that Trump only listens to people who kiss his ring and his ass first.

[T]here’s a sense throughout the party that Trump expects loyalty and fealty before he’s earned it. President Trump does not feel that he should have to take action or stand on principle or express support for anyone else. He sees all that as being activity and behavior that should be directed toward him.

Maybe this buys Kabel or Homan a seat at the table when LGBTQ issues are discussed someday.

More likely, an appointment as Ambassador to Greenland.

Q Toon: Misguidance Counselor

I usually try to avoid addressing the same topic in two syndicated cartoons in a row; but keeping Transgender Awareness Day this coming Sunday in mind, I figured it was worthwhile to point out Senator Joe Manchin's (D-WV) reasoning for coming out as the lone Democrat in the Senate against the Equality Act.

Besides, he's got one of those faces (and haircuts) that just begs for caricature.

As far as Manchin is concerned, it's another case where we're not allowed to have nice things because, you know, public school bathrooms.

I strongly support equality for all people and do not tolerate discrimination of any kind. No one should be afraid of losing their job or losing their housing because of their sexual orientation. After speaking with local education officials in West Virginia, I am not convinced that the Equality Act as written provides sufficient guidance to the local officials who will be responsible for implementing it, particularly with respect to students transitioning between genders in public schools.

Call me a skeptic, but I sincerely doubt that any "guidance to the local officials" that could be amended to the bill wouldn't provide Senator Manchin further reason to withhold his support.

As last week's cartoon illustrated, the Equality Act has virtually no chance of making it through the McConnell-controlled Senate anyway. Still, it does shine a light on who supports LGBTQ rights and who doesn't. Republicans across the nation have instead been pushing "religious liberty" laws to promote discrimination against LGBTQ people.

This is especially important as some states consider laws that would deliberately create a license for businesses, adoption and foster care agencies, health care providers and others to discriminate against LGBT people. Human Rights Watch has documented how these so-called “religious liberty” laws deny LGBT people goods and services, deter them from the marketplace for fear of facing discrimination, and send a signal that they are unwelcome in their state. By clarifying that religious protections cannot be used to discriminate, the Equality Act would better ensure that both religious believers and LGBT people are protected under federal law.
It would also make anti-discrimination laws clear and uniform, which is necessary if these laws are to be effective. LGBT people should not need a law degree to determine whether they are protected from discrimination when they apply for a job, rent an apartment, or eat at a restaurant in the places they happen to live, visit or travel through.

If, as I suspect, the only way to get Senator Manchin on board is to carve out a broad exception for public schools, that would inevitably be followed by a demand that private schools also be exempted. And if private schools, then also landlords, businesses, adoption and foster care agencies, health care providers and — perhaps you see where this is going.

Q Toon: I Hear You Knocking

Democrats in the House and Senate have introduced the Equality Act to extend existing federal anti-discrimination protections in employment, housing, credit, jury selection, and education to include persons on the basis of gender identity and sexual orientation. The measure seems certain to pass in the Democrat-controlled House of Representatives.

Chief Senate sponsor Jeff Merkley (D-OR) has a tougher row to hoe. Among Republicans, only Maine's Susan Collins has signed on to the bill; and one of the Democrats' own, Sen. Joe Manchin of West Virginia, has announced that he will vote against the bill. His problem with the bill seems to come from its inclusion of transgender students among those whose rights it would protect.

Manchin had not made his decision known as I was drawing this cartoon Sunday night. Had I chosen to make him the focus of the cartoon, I suppose I would have drawn the other Democrats calling down a coal mine shaft.

As far as Yertle McConnell is concerned, however, when he eventually comes out of his shell, we'll find out whether it is to attach some poison pill amendment (say, protecting the rights of Clockwork Orange "reparation therapists") or to kill the Equality Act outright.

Q Toon: Pondering President Pence

Monday, I mused that this, my third cartoon of 2017 with Mike Pence in it, could set a record for the most times I have cartooned a Vice President in the first year of his term. Since then, I have checked, and the record in fact stands tied for now.

I drew three cartoons of Dan Quayle in 1987. (For the record, I drew two cartoons of Al Gore in 1993, and none of George H.W. Bush in 1981, Dick Cheney in 2001 or Joe Biden in 2009.)

Being nominated to run for Vice President used to be an honor akin to having a post office building named for you: that's nice and all, but everyone is still going to call it "the post office." FDR's first Veep, John Nance Garner, is quoted as having said that the vice presidency was "not worth a bucket of warm piss." Woodrow Wilson's Veep, Thomas Marshall, had a joke about a man with one son who went to sea and drowned and another who was elected vice president; neither son was ever heard from again.

Nowadays, we reserve one of the election debates for the vice presidential candidates, but other than pundits, cartoonists and members of the nominees' families, nobody really pays any attention to them. If any memorable lines come out of the running mate debates — e.g. Lloyd Bentsen's "You're no Jack Kennedy" or James Stockdale's "What am I doing here?" — the comments nearly always come from November's losing ticket, so the candidates are better off being forgettable. (Quick: who debated opposite Mike Pence last year? No fair googling the answer!)

Presidential nominees usually select their running mates with November in mind, not the next four years, or the possibility of accession to the presidency. Veep candidates are often picked to provide geographical or ideological balance to a ticket; Kennedy-Johnson is an example.

Richard Nixon introduced a new twist to the calculus of selecting a running mate with his choice of Spiro Agnew: once they were elected, Democrats couldn't get rid of Nixon without ending up with someone they considered worse. (He just didn't count on Agnew having to resign first.)

Donald Berzilius Trump's strategy last year used both the Kennedy-Johnson calculus and the Nixon-Agnew calculus. Pence has the bona fides with the party's Christian Right that Trump lacks, which cemented their support for the ticket and this administration. Meanwhile, liberals stomping their feet that Trump must be impeached have been cautioned that in many ways, having Mike Pence as president would be worse.

It certainly looks that way from an LGBTQ perspective. Trump admitted as much with his reported remark that when it comes to gay rights, “Don’t ask that guy—he wants to hang them all!”

The New Yorker article which recounts that Trump comment also discusses an antigay bill Pence signed as Governor of Indiana:

In the spring of 2015, Pence signed a bill called the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, which he presented as innocuous. ... But then a photograph of the closed signing session surfaced. It showed Pence surrounded by monks and nuns, along with three of the most virulently anti-gay activists in the state. The image went viral. Indiana residents began examining the law more closely, and discovered that it essentially legalized discrimination against homosexuals by businesses in the state. ...
The outcry over the Religious Freedom Restoration Act was enormous. Gay-rights groups condemned the bill and urged boycotts of the state. Pete Buttigieg, the young gay mayor of South Bend, who is a rising figure in the Democratic Party, told me that he tried to talk to Pence about the legislation, which he felt would cause major economic damage to Indiana. “But he got this look in his eye,” Buttigieg recalled. “He just inhabits a different reality. It’s very difficult for him to lay aside the social agenda. He’s a zealot.”

While the article does say that Pence was not the force behind the passage of the bill in the legislature, his record is littered with antigay zealotry. As head of the Indiana Policy Review in the 1990's, he advised employers not to hire gays and lesbians, writing,

“Homosexuals are not as a group able-bodied. They are known to carry extremely high rates of disease brought on because of the nature of their sexual practices and the promiscuity which is a hallmark of their lifestyle.”

In Congress, he groused when the Matthew Shepard and James Byrd Jr. Hate Crimes bill was signed into law in 2009, complaining that it advanced a “radical social agenda” and would have “a chilling effect on religious expression, from the pulpits, in our temples, in our mosques and in our churches.” He was against the Employment Non-Discrimination Act (ENDA) on the grounds that "Either the employer has to ban employees from having a Bible at the workplace for their break time, or displaying Bible verses, and thereby face a lawsuit under title VII for religious discrimination, or the employer then has to continue to allow it and face a potential lawsuit under ENDA by the homosexual employee."

Pence voted against the repeal of "Don't Ask, Don't Tell," arguing the shibboleth that repeal would damage military readiness and recruitment. He co-sponsored the Federal Marriage Amendment, which would have enshrined denial of marriage equality for same-sex couples into the U.S. Constitution.

Finally, the issues page from Pence's 2000 campaign web site demanded "an audit to ensure that federal dollars were no longer being given to organizations that celebrate and encourage the types of behaviors that facilitate the spreading of the HIV virus. Resources should be directed toward those institutions which provide assistance to those seeking to change their sexual behavior."

That passage is a dog-whistle to advocate spending federal money on "conversion therapy," the widely discredited practice of using psychological torture techniques to reprogram LGBTQ patients into believing they are straight and cisgender. Pence's spokespeople now deny that he was talking about conversion therapy — I suppose one could argue that he was calling for resources to be spent on institutions which convince LGBTQ persons to settle for a life of celibacy — but that's a distinction without much difference.

Q Toon: Office Space Cadet

Campaigning at Drake University last week, Senator Rand Paul (R-KY) was asked whether it was right for someone to be fired from their job because he/she is gay, lesbian, bisexual or transgendered. Paul responded by lamenting that LGBT people these days have the audacity to be open and honest about their families and relationships:

“I think, really, the things you do in your house, just leave those in your house and they wouldn’t have to be a part of the workplace, to tell you the truth.”

Given the extent to which today's employers think they have a right to know everything about every job applicant and employee (and certainly Mr. LibertariAyn Rand Paul wouldn't want to prohibit employers from requiring you to give them the password to your Facebook account), Paul certainly hasn't given any thought to what it would take to "leave those in your house."

Face it, Senator, LGBT citizens just want the same rights every other American has to surrender their privacy.

Paul has since attempted to walk back his comments by saying that, sure, it's wrong to fire someone for being LGBT, but it's even wronger for the fired person to take the ex-employer to court, and wrongest for the federal government to protect LGBT rights in the first place. He thinks these things ought to be left to state legislatures -- where some people want your boss to be able to require you to friend him on social media.

If Paul still sees nothing wrong with that, all I have to say is: Ophthalmologist, heal thyself!

Q Toon: Remember Me?

Former Speaker of the House Dennis Hastert (R-IL) was indicted last Thursday, accused of  paying someone known as "Individual A" $3.5 million in hush money over a case of sexual misconduct with a male student when he was a high school wrestling coach in Yorkville, Illinois.

Hastert is not accused of the actual sexual misconduct, the statute of limitations having expired long ago. Instead, he is accused of lying to the FBI about why the former congressman began making large cash withdrawals from his financial accounts in 2010; he had claimed it was due to a lack of confidence in the banking system and that he was keeping the cash.

Making huge cash withdrawals isn't illegal, but banks are required to file a "currency transaction report" on all cash transactions exceeding $10,000 thanks to the Patriot Act, which Hastert had taken credit for crafting and passing in a 2011 interview.

My cartoon, riffing on a 2014 appearance by Hastert on C-SPAN currently gone viral, deals less with the idea of the Patriot Act coming around to bite Hastert in the butt than his voting record on LGBT issues. In addition to Hastert's antigay votes on marriage equality and employment non-discrimination, I could also have included his stance on the impeachment of President William Jefferson Clinton.

In case you are too young to remember, the Republicans in Congress had forced the appointment of a special prosecutor, Kenneth Starr, to look into Whitewater, an Arkansas property scheme in which the Clintons had lost money. Finding nothing impeachment-worthy there, Mr. Starr moved on to investigate charges by Paula Jones that Mr. Clinton had sexually assaulted her while Governor of Arkansas. Finding insufficient evidence of wrong-doing there, too, Mr. Starr proceeded to investigate an apparently consensual extra-marital affair between the President and Monica Lewinsky, a 20-something intern at the White House.

Mr. Starr subpoenaed the President to testify under oath, wherein President Clinton flatly denied the affair. Physical evidence contradicted the President's testimony, so the House voted to impeach. Not over the sex stuff, Republicans protested, but over the perjury.

"Mr. President, I am saddened that there is clear and convincing evidence that the President lied under oath, obstructed justice, and abused the powers of his office in an attempt to cover up his wrong-doing. I regret that the President's behavior puts me in the position of having to vote for these Articles of Impeachment and to pass this matter on to the U.S. Senate for final judgment. ... In this nation, all men are created equal. Simply put, the President in our representative democracy is not a sovereign who is above the law. Tomorrow, we shall pass a difficult vote. The President's inability to abide by the law, the Constitution, and my conscience have all led me to the sound conclusion that impeachment articles must be passed." — Rep. Dennis Hastert, in the Well of the House, December 18, 1998

It is ironic, then, that Hastert, is now charged not with whatever sexual shenanigans he engaged in at Yorkville High, but with lying under oath and paying Individual A off in an effort to evade justice.

✒

A propos of our discussion the other day of racial and gender diversity in cartoon characters, I blew an opportunity to be ethnically inclusive when I changed the C-SPAN interviewer from Pedro Echevarria to Steve Scully. Mea culpa.

Q Toon: Patchwork Uniformity

This week's cartoon was touched off by Republicans' proposed measure in Michigan to nullify local anti-discrimination ordinances, and a similar measure which went into law in Arkansas.

LGBT activists breathed a sigh of relief when a provision that could have invalidated all 38 LGBT inclusive anti-discrimination ordinances in Michigan was removed from the final version of a bill passed 11-7 by the House Commerce and Trade Committee May 19. The Republican sponsors of the original version of the "Local Government Employer Mandate Prohibition Act" claimed they were simply trying to unify employment practices across the state.

In the final version passed out of committee, communities will not be allowed to pass ordinances regarding wages, benefits or working conditions in their towns. 

Paul Berge Q Syndicate✒May 21, 2015 EditorialCartoonists.com

I apologize, dear reader, that this cartoon works a whole lot better in a newspaper, which is easy to turn upside down, than on a desktop computer, which isn't, or a smart phone, which will keep trying to turn the image right-side up. (At last, an advantage dead trees have over live circuits!)

This cartoon is probably the result of my having recently read a mention of The Upside-Downs of Little Lady Lovekins and Old Man Muffaroo. The six-panel cartoon by Gustave Verbeck (starting in 1903) was ingeniously designed so that the second half of the story was told when you turned the page up-side down.

Verbeck's reader had to overlook the fact that Old Man Muffaroo's legs were extending up from the top of Little Lady Lovekins's hat, or that a stream the heroes had waded across in panel #3 was flowing through the sky in panel #10. But it was a weekly tour de force nevertheless: a story aimed at children but presented in a way that adults could appreciate.

At first, I was going to have a human character in the cartoon, talking out of his ass, as it were --  one of the preliminary sketches is at the top of this post. In the end (ahem), I decided that some of my editors endeavor to run respectable news publications in which exposed derrières belong in the club photos and phone sex ads in the back pages, not the editorial page. So I went with an elephant instead -- the traditional symbol of the Republican Party, whence these laws superseding local ordinances on everything from the above mentioned labor conditions to gun safety and fracking bans originate these days.

With an elephant instead of a human, the aspect of talking out of one's ass still remains, but not quite so explicitly that the League of Perpetually Offended Complainers should catch it.

Q Toon: Dogpatch, Arkansas

Q Syndicate✒Feb 26, 2015

Last week, the Arkansas legislature passed SB202, a bill by State Senator Bart Hester (R-Benton Co.) nullifying any local anti-discrimination ordinances which include LGBT Arkansans.

Arkansas on Monday banned local governments from expanding anti-discrimination protections to include sexual orientation and gender identity, becoming the second state to adopt a measure opponents call a thinly-veiled move to discriminate against gays and lesbians. ... The measure was introduced in reaction to a Fayetteville ordinance that voters repealed in December expanding the city's anti-discrimination protections. Eureka Springs in northwest Arkansas enacted a similar measure earlier this month, and Little Rock elected officials are weighing expanding that city's discrimination protections.

Sen. Hester is one of those Big Government Conservatives; he previously co-authored a bill requiring houses of worship to admit handguns into their sanctuaries. He claimed that SB202 was needed to prevent a patchwork quilt of anti-discrimination laws hindering business and industry, in spite of the thundering silence on that count from business and industry.

The Arkansas State Chamber of Commerce told ThinkProgress last week, “We have no position on that piece of legislation.” Walmart, which is based in Arkansas and has corporate LGBT protections, only spoke out on the bill Monday evening, mere hours before it was to become law without Hutchinson’s signature. Tyson Foods, another prominent Arkansas business that protects its gay employees, remained silent on the legislation.

Governor Asa Hutchinson (R-Of Course) expressed "concerns about the loss of local control," but allowed the bill to go into effect without his signature anyway.

Meanwhile, a similar pro-discrimination law is already on the books in Tennessee, and another has been proposed in West Virginia.

Q Toon: Asterisky Business

The Supreme Court's free pass to Burwell v. Hobby Lobby continues to have a ripple effect beyond the immediate scope of its ruling, despite its author's claims to the contrary. Spurred by the Supremes' ruling, the ACLU, National Gay and Lesbian Task Force, Gay and Lesbian Advocates and Defenders, Lambda Legal, the National Center for Lesbian Rights and the Transgender Law Center have withdrawn their support of the Employment Non-Discrimination Act (ENDA) in its current form.

At issue is language in the bill that would allow some employers to discriminate against LGBT employees on religious grounds. From the ACLU statement:

"ENDA's discriminatory provision, unprecedented in federal laws prohibiting employment discrimination, could provide religiously affiliated organizations — including hospitals, nursing homes and universities — a blank check to engage in workplace discrimination against LGBT people."

Given the Court's tendency to favor any claim of religious freedom as long as it doesn't involve psychotropic drugs, the so-called religious liberty clause in the bill means that it could apply only to employers who were unlikely to discriminate against LGBT employees in the first place. Discrimination against LGBT persons in any way, shape, or form, is almost always clothed in religious garments. Unless the spectre of showering together raises its prurient head.

The Human Rights Campaign and Log Cabin Republicans remain committed to ENDA in whatever form might make it through Congress, although there is very little likelihood of John Boehner allowing it to come to the House floor for a vote.

Which is nothing new. ENDA was first introduced by Rev. Bella Abzug twenty Congresses ago. If you were facing antigay discrimination in the workplace then, chances are you are facing retirement now.

Q Toon: That Dreamy Paul Ryan!

As I've noted before, part of the reason that I've drawn so few cartoons about Congressman Paul Ryan is that I draw cartoons for Q Syndicate, which distributes material to LGBT newspapers around the United States, and Mr. Ryan has had very little to say on LGBT issues. When asked, as he was on Meet the Press last February, he changes the subject to something of greater interest to himself.

“I support the Wisconsin amendment to define marriage between a man and a woman … I don’t know why we are spending all this time talking about this. We’ve got a debt crisis coming and the administration just gave us a budget that simply just charts another path to debt and decline.”

Being a 21st Century Republican, he doesn't have to spend any time thinking about defining marriage, or any other issue -- whether it's the Employment Non-Discrimination Act, hate crimes, adoption rights of same-sex couples, ending Don't Ask-Don't Tell, the Patriot Act, the Lily Ledbetter Fair Pay Act, criminalizing birth control, subsidizing Big Oil,  starting an unfunded war in Iraq, or creating an unfunded Medicare Part D.  He goes on autopilot and votes in lockstep with everyone else in his party, saving his precious intellect for that looming debt crisis.

This Week's Toon: Trump's Wedge Issue

I could swear I posted this cartoon on Wednesday. In fact, I did. I linked to it from my Facebook page.



It must have been here yesterday for Chris Hale to comment on it, but somehow it disappeared from the internet since then. So here it is again.

Unless it disappears again...

Q Toon: Green ENDA and Ham

Rep. Barney Frank (D-MA) will reintroduce the Employment Non-Discrimination Act into the current Congress, although he concedes that it has virtually no chance of passage in the current Republican-majority House.

I wanted to draw the Capitol dome in the style of Theodor "Dr. Seuss" Geisel, author of Green Eggs and Ham. His editorial cartoons for PM during World War II were drawn with the same whimsy and fantastic imagery that he used in his children's books. His GOP elephants look like Horton (of Who-hearing fame); his eagles more closely resemble sneetches than any eagle you've ever seen. Improbable machines and strange landscapes are common.

But the one and only drawing I found of the Capitol building was in the background of a November 18, 1941 cartoon, and is squarely representational:
Here I had visions of the dome topped with a lazily drooping attic and Wendy Who holding a torch aloft. In my minds eye, it looked so Seussian. On paper, I'm afraid it just looks like I don't know a thing about perspective. (Sketching and resketching the cartoon, I gradually shoved the figure atop the attic up and out of the cartoon frame.)

Employment Non-Discrimination Act

ENDA, the Employment Non-Discrimination Act, will come before Congress in the next week or so; this week's Q Syndicate cartoon anticipates opponents' arguments. The current fad among conservatives is to play the Nazi Card (or the Socialist Card, or both), whatever the topic is.

Now that President Obama has sign the Nazi Health Care bill into law (Nazis being well-known health care advocates), it's only a matter of time before the next Big Issue receives the same Republican-Fox-News-Teabagger treatment. If not ENDA, they'll soon be calling Immigration Reform, Nuclear Arms Treaties, or the next Supreme Court nominee to be part of the Democrats' Nazi plot to impose socialism on us all. (Or a socialist plot to impose Nazism on us all. It's so hard to keep their arguments straight.)

I heard Glenn Beck claiming the other day that Net Neutrality was a socialist plot to shut him up. Because, of course, the socialists have been anticipating for the last several years that Glenn Beck would become a Fox network star and net neutrality would somehow shut him up. I used my TV remote to shut him up well before he ever got around to explaining how he requires Net Bias to keep talking.