Q Toon: Berlin

There was another topic I had planned to draw about this week, but the truck and knife attack that killed one and injured 29 at Berlin's annual LGBTQ Pride event over the weekend changed all that.

It was the terrorist act of an 21-year-old wannabe ISIS jihadi, whom German police later sent in search of those 72 virgins. Too bad he had to leave his body behind. Sorry not sorry.

His choice to murder innocent LGBTQ+ people celebrating and having fun cannot be happenstance. Nothing represents what Islamic fundamentalists hate about what they see as Western decadence more than LGBTQ+ pride and joy — it's even worse than string bikinis, the Reconquista, and cartoons of The Prophet.

The attack is sure to inflame Islamophobic passions in Germany, where the neo-Nazi Alternative für Deutschland party (AfD) was already polling distressingly well beforehand. The AfD are fascists — not a term I toss around lightly — who oppose both immigration and LGBTQ+ rights, and are surely taking advantage of this tragedy for their own ends.

Caught in the middle are LGBTQ+ Muslims in Germany such as Ali Darwich, an influencer on Instagram who was at the Christopher Street festival himself, ready to go to some afterparty when friends began calling to find out whether he was okay. He later told the Associated Press:

“Born a Muslim, living as a gay man, working as a police officer,” Darwich said, as he tried holding back the tears, “this terror attack touches so many aspects of who I am. ...

“I asked myself as a gay if we will have to live with more fear now even though we are already experiencing bullying and hatred. I asked myself as a Muslim if our community will be exposed to even more racism now.”

Here at home, there are some antigay Americans — and some LGBTQ right-wingers as well — who try to excuse Republican actions against our community by pointing to Islamic fundamentalists decreeing the death penalty for LGBTQ people. That argument overlooks countries, especially in Africa, passing draconian antigay penalties up to and including capital punishment, egged on by Christian fundamentalists in the U.S.

For the time being, the Absolutely Corrupt Trump Regime will be happy to cite the Christopher Street Festival attack as further justification for its ethnic cleansing program, even when it dumps refugees who fled persecution for being LGBTQ+ back to the countries that condemn them.

Persecuting white gays and lesbians here in the Homeland will have to wait until Republicans have finished eradicating the transgender menace.

Q Toon: Ogles Tweets the Silent Part

Congresscritter Andrew Ogles (R-TN) greeted the start of LGBTQ+ Pride Month by tweeting (since it hasn't been "Twitter" for some time now, should we say xitting?), "Homosexuality has no place in America. Happy Nuclear Family Month."

Criticism of Ogles from Democrats was predictably harsh, but Congress members from his own side of the aisle also distanced themselves from Ogle's xitpost. Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) called the post "untoward." House Majority Leader Steve Scalise (R-LA) called it "inappropriate." Rep. Mike Lawler  (R-NY) went further, calling it "idiotic" and "fucking stupid." Even Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) averred that "I think the behavior of consenting adults is their business."

Ogles responded by deleting the xitpost and blaming it on “a member of my comms team” who has since "been reprimanded."

Republicans and Democrats both criticized Ogles just three months ago when he (or that naughty comms person) posted a pile of xits over several days that "Muslims don't belong in American society" and "America is for people named Andrew Jackson, NOT Mohamed Mohamed."

Ogles didn't bother to delete those xitposts.

By the way, as for the "Nuclear Family Month" crack, well, that's just Tennessee's (and Indiana's) version of Let's Call It Something Else Month, red states' attempt to cross out LGBTQ+ Pride Month by decreeing that June instead celebrates cisgender heterosexual breeders. 

Governor Spencer Cox declared June "Fidelity Month" in Utah; ditto Governor Sarah Succubus Sanders in Arkansas. It's "Strong Families Month" in Alabama, by which Governor Kay Ivey's declaration specifies "Homes led by stable parents, a father and a mother."

It's not unlike insisting "All Non-Black Lives Matter."

When folks observe Father's Day in a couple weeks from now, these Republicans would like you to know that two-father families have no place in America.

Not that they would actually say so. That's just a little secret between D, E, and I.

Q Toon: Us vs. Theme Nights

 It’s time to crank out a cartoon for LGBTQ2SAII+ Pride Month, so this year’s topic is the perpetual straight white cisgender sourpuss who gets upset whenever something is not all about him.

We’ve all met the guy. He’s terribly inconvenienced when offered to marcar dos por español (although he’ll happily have another margarita on Cinco de mayo). He voted for Trump to white-out Black History Month. And he’s only going to run into the store for a second, so anyone needing the handicap parking space will just have to hold their horses.

Major League Baseball teams put on a wide variety of special theme nights throughout the season, from movie tie-ins to cancer benefits to every ethnicity and nationality under the sun. If your favorite team doesn't have a Heritage Night celebrating your ancestry, rest assured that somewhere, some other team does.

Well, maybe there's no Tajikistani Heritage Night anywhere, but give the league time.

Anyway, Pride Nights are a staple in June, marking the anniversary of the Stonewall Riots. Naturally, people who hate gays hate Pride Nights.

I’ve only been to one Pride Night at the Brewers. We didn’t buy our tickets through the special promotion, so we didn’t get the promotional tee-shirts, although I did buy a cap with a rainbow “M” logo. 

I even made it onto the Jumbotron during an Everybody Get Up And Dance between late innings. My better half is a better dancer than I, but he  happened to be off talking to a cousin in another section of the stands, so I had the screen all to myself. (Well, the Cardinals fans behind me stooped down to get on camera, too.) 

It ain’t easy to dance like nobody’s watching when everybody is watching.

Q Toon: Leering Eye for the Meme Guy

Hey, I'm not a fan of editorial cartoons based on internet memes, but sometimes you have to go where the readership is. The days when one could reference Shakespeare and Schiller are sadly gone.

LGBTQ+ Pride festivals this year are likely to be more modest than revelers may have become accustomed to.

Knuckling under to the Blatantly Corrupt Trump Regime's policy of Conformity, Inequity, and Exclusion, erstwhile sponsors such as Mastercard, Skyy Vodka, Target, and Pepsi have decided to cancel their support in 2025. Anheuser-Busch ended its 30-year relationship with hometown St. Louis's Pride festival and others'; Comcast sent its regrets to San Francisco, contributing to a $300,000 shortfall in corporate support there. 

“I find it very difficult to believe this is about the economic context,” Fabrice Houdart, executive director of the Association of LGBTQ+ Corporate Directors, told the New York Times. “One thing that is striking about the conversations I have had over the past few months is there are a lot of companies saying, ‘I won’t engage on anything LGBT-related because I don’t want to find myself being a target.’”

Some folks see this as an opportunity to get away from the over-commercialized, homogenized versions of what used to be a celebration of queerness and activism — although, like complaining about Memorial Day Weekend becoming devoted to grilling out and drinking beer, that ship may have sailed.

Q Toon: Spell Check

My biggest regret after drawing this cartoon is that I didn't include enough diversity in it.

I had already scrapped an initial sketch because I had started making the characters too large in the space — I probably wouldn't have been able to fit more than half a dozen people into the cartoon. Drawing characters too small, on the other hand, would have presented the problem of how to fill the space vertically (either by depicting the crowd from above, or positioned on, say, parade floats), as well as perhaps doubling how long it would take to grayscalify and colorize the versions sent to Q Syndicate. (In order to attend a family funeral Monday morning, I was up until 2:00 a.m. adding gray tones to the grayscale version, and back at it at 5:30 a.m. adding color to the CMYK/RGB versions.)

So if you are disappointed that my cartoon doesn't include any same-sex parents, twinks, bears, drag kings, Republicans, or left-handed Polynesian furries, well, so am I.

On the other hand, how do you know that none of the people in this cartoon is a Republican?

Our community is under attack, and not just in red states, but nationwide, from a hostile federal government. They are concentrating their fire right now on transgender persons, but make no mistake: they are coming for all of us.

Equity and inclusivity are more vital these days than ever. Now is no time to abandon any segment of our LGBTQ+ alphabet soup. We must hang together, as the saying goes, or hang separately. Only by cherishing, celebrating, and defending our diversity will we save ourselves.

After all, without DEI, PRIDE is just PR.

Q Toon: Prattville Prattle

Or, The Pastors' Prorogue.

In the interest of drawing about anything that has nothing to do with the impending Even More Corrupt Trump Administration, or the Republican campaign of persecution against transgender Americans, I present to you my annual Christmas Holiday Cartoon.

Prattville, Alabama, population just under 38,000, celebrated its annual Christmas Parade down East Fourth, Wetumpka, Northington, and Main Streets last Friday, with "lights, marching bands, dancers, candy, beads and trinkets" per the town's web page, but not without a bit of litigious drama.

The town's LGBTQ+ group, Prattville Pride, paid their $30 entry fee to have a float in the parade, only to have their application rejected by Mayor Bill Gillespie, Jr. Prattville Pride took the city to court to be allowed to march in the parade. With mere hours before the parade was to start, they won their case.

In his order, U.S. District Judge R. Austin Huffaker of the Middle District of Alabama wrote: “While there are areas of unprotected speech, such as incitement of violence, the City makes no argument and provides no evidence that Prattville Pride has engaged in any speech or behavior that would remotely fall into an unprotected speech category. It is undisputed that Prattville Pride has complied with the City’s regulations.”

“The City removed Prattville Pride from the parade based on its belief that certain members of the public who oppose Prattville Pride, and what it stands for, would react in a disruptive way. But discrimination based on a message’s content “cannot be tolerated under the First Amendment,” the order continued.

Toleration, as it turned out, was in somewhat short supply.

Two participants pulled out of the parade after Huffaker’s order: St. Joseph’s Catholic Church, which initially backed out after Prattville Pride was included only to reverse course after the city’s ban, and Drive-In Park, the headquarters of “mobile movie evangelists” Drive-In Ministries.

“Unfortunately we are back to our original stance of having to forgo the parade since the pride float with their drag queen is back in it,” said Father Den Irwin, pastor at St. Joseph’s. “I am sincerely sorry for any inconvenience. We were trying to support the City after they boldly removed the float. However Prattville pride challenged the ruling in court and won.”

Drive-In Park said in a social media post it was “disappointed” that it had to pull out of the event.

“Our convictions at Drive-In have guided us to decide that we should not participate this year due to the inclusion of the Prattville Pride float,” the post read.

Congregants of St. Joseph and Drive-In Park who had put in so much work putting their floats together were no doubt crestfallen, although I'm pretty sure at least one of them has a parking lot they could parade around and around in.

As for the town's official parade, I have not been able to find any reports of any further disruption thereto. Neither fire nor brimstone has rained down upon beautiful downtown Prattville, according to the latest from the Weather Channel.

Just beads and trinkets.

Q Toon: Florida Man Yells at Rainbow

Let me preface today's commentary by saying that I generally don't check the weather forecast for my cartoon's locale before sitting down at my drawing board. So I just want to make it clear that Governor DeSantis here is not rooting for this week's torrential rains to continue pummeling Florida. This cartoon is not about the weather.

Okay, now that that's out of the way:

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Florida Republicans didn't want to see rainbow-colored lights illuminating their state's bridges in celebration of Pride Month in June. So they passed a law last month decreeing that Florida's bridges be lit up exclusively in red, white, and blue from Memorial Day to Labor Day.

They thus were able to pretend that the purpose of the law was a patriotic celebration — of the colors of the American flag. Or, if y'all'd rather, the Stars 'n' Bars. (Le tricolore? Mais non!) 

The diktat from Tallahassee is part of what Governor Ron DeSantis calls, without a trace of irony, "Freedom Summer." 

I suppose the rednecks up in Niceville are enjoying their freedom to tell the gays down in Key West how to decorate.

We'll see whether Key West gets its freedom back in time for LGBTQ History Month in October. 

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Earlier this week, prolific editorial cartoonist Clay Jones shared a comment left under one of his cartoons at GoComics, from a reader chastising him for using — stealing, even — popular cultural references in his work.

The rest of us editorial cartoonists shared — stole, even — a good chuckle over that one. Most of us reference popular cultural stuff all the time. This isn't the first time I've resorted to a Simpsons meme; and I've also based cartoons on Calvin and Hobbes, Rocky & Bullwinkle, Peanuts, Monty Python, Dr. Seuss, Whatever Happened to Baby Jane, All About Eve, Sunset Boulevard, It's a Wonderful Life, The Wizard of Oz, Alice in Wonderland, Oliver Twist, and The Three Musketeers.

On the other side of the pond, editorial cartoonists can get away with aping Serious Art that would go over the heads of many readers stateside; Dave Brown of the Independent signals his readers that he has redrawn someone else's classic by showcasing the cartoon in a fancy gilt-edged frame. The rest of us could do that, too, except that it would be stealing the idea from Mr. Brown.

Down under, David Rowe redrew Manet and David paintings on successive days this week; Financial Times readers may have caught the references without spying the obligatory apologies in the corner of the cartoons. American readers would likely have missed the parodies unless published in the student newspaper of the School of Art Institute of Chicago.

Elsewhere, references to artwork are rife in editorial cartoons in other countries where keeping the cartoon wordless makes it saleable outside of the cartoonist's native language.

My own thought on all of this is that one shouldn't make the same reference over and over. Once one has parodied Edvard Munch's "The Scream" for Topic A (another choice I could have made for this week's cartoon), one should seriously consider not parodying "The Scream" again for a good long time. Unless you want to be known as That Guy Who Keeps Drawing The Scream.

Which, if you can pull it off, isn't ipso facto a bad thing. At least you won't have to worry whether readers will think your cartoons are about the weather when they're not.

Just make sure that someone else isn't already That Guy.

Pride Cometh to North Pratt Falls

It's LGBTQet-al. Pride Month, so let's start today's Graphical History Tour with something in a lighter vein than Thursday's cartoon.

Q Syndicate, June, 2004

Here's a cartoon I drew in time for client publications' Pride Month issues in 2004 (meaning that I drew it in May, of course), observing that Gay Pride celebrations were no longer found exclusively in major metropolitan cities.

"Boy Meets Boy" was one of those "reality" TV shows — on Bravo if I remember correctly. A gay twist on "The Bachelor," the main contestant was presented with several potential male suitors to choose among — the catch being that some of them, unbeknownst to him, were straight.

I have no recollection who the geeky straight contestant was, whether he was the guy picked in the end, or whatever happened to him or anybody else connected with the show. And it's just as well.

in Journal Times, Racine Wis., June 18, 1984

Let's keep talking about sex, but step back 20 more years to 1984.

That year, the Racine Unified School Board voted to reject five recommended textbooks, including two sex education books for teenage readers. Married and Single Life and Living Today offered frank discussion of the sorts of questions real adolescents have about relationships, loving, and, yes, sex. Beyond "When a man and a woman love each other very much they share a special kiss and have a baby."

The ban ignited controversy between Racinians who believed that teens deserve access to books that deal frankly and honestly with sex, and others who believed that frank and honest discussion of sex should wait until after teens grow up, get married, share a special kiss, and have children of their own.

The very night after my cartoon appeared in the local newspaper, the school board voted to reverse the ban on the two sex ed books. But the board upheld their vote on rejecting three American history textbooks for supposed liberal bias. The Journal Times reported that board member Barbara Scott said the textbook flap could have been avoided if the board had had time to review the books.

in Journal Times, Racine Wis., June 14, 1994

Continuing with the local scene: Democrat Peter Barca was elected to Congress from Wisconsin's First Congressional District in 1993 to succeed Les Aspin, whom Bill Clinton had appointed Secretary of Defense. Aspin had represented the 1st CD since 1970, routinely trouncing his Republican challengers.

My crystal ball here proved faulty. Republican realtor Mark Neumann, who had narrowly lost the 1993 special election, won the rematch in the 1994 GOP wave. A series of Republicans have held the seat ever since, mostly with only token opposition whom the Democratic National Congressional Committee never lifted a finger to help.

In the meantime, Peter Barca went back to representing Kenosha in Madison, including six years as Assembly Minority Leader, before accepting Governor Tony Evers's appointment as Secretary of the Department of Revenue. This year, he's running for Congress again, hoping to unseat three-term incumbent Bryan Steil.

For the moment, the DNCC thinks that Steil might be vulnerable to a challenge. Unlike the other Democratic congressional candidates here since 1998, Barca has plenty of governmental experience — although heading the Department of Revenue is a point on his résumé that Republicans will be more eager to emphasize than he will.

June, 2014

And finally, I began sketching this cartoon ten Junes ago after Judge Barbara Crabb of the United States District Court, Western District of Wisconsin, ruled my state’s antigay “marriage amendment” unconstitutional. 

Before inking it, I saw that Wisconsin State Journal editorial cartoonist Phil Hands had published a similar cartoon of the sailor and miner shaking hands. He's syndicated throughout Wisconsin, whereas I haven't been published in my home state since InStep magazine folded in 2003. So I decided not to send this cartoon out to my editors at Q Syndicate, on the theory that few readers elsewhere would recognize the men on the Badger State flag.

But I inked, scanned, and colorized it anyway, and here it is again.

Q Toon: D.C. Rider

Republican Speaker of the House Mike Johnson reached across the aisle to cobble together a stop-gap budget deal to keep the U.S. government running until September. The must-pass deal will probably pass the Senate in time to keep the government from shutting down when the last stop-gap budget deal expires at the end of March.

Johnson needed Democratic help passing the bill, because — let's be frank here — when it comes to running a government, today's Republicans are utterly incompetent.

What else could you expect? Today's Republicans are fundamentally opposed to government, so why would they be good at governing? Most of them hate the government and want to drown it in a bathtub of red ink. They are in Washington to get on TV and own libs and get shares on social media, not to pass budgets and accomplish stuff. 

They can't even accomplish stuff they claim they want when they have it handed to them all put together and tied up with ribbons and bows, like this year's border security bill.

What few Republicans who are actually interested in getting the government to do things are leaving town, and not waiting for the next election. The latest departure is Wisconsin's Mike Gallagher, who has represented the northeast corner of the state since 2017. He has had a 100% vote rating from the National Right to Life Committee and Susan B. Anthony Pro-Life America, National Association of Manufacturers, Americans for Prosperity, Freedom First Society, and Gun Owners of America.

His approval ratings drop to 92% from the National Rifle Association, 82% from the Club for Cancerous Growth, and 79% from the American Conservative Union; but still, he's no middle-of-the-road Republican-In-Name-Only wishy-washy Alexander Throttlebottom.

But like Rep. Ken Buck (R-CO), Gallagher simply couldn't wait to get the hell out of Washington, and is leaving Congress before his term ends. Democrats, expecting next month to pick up the seat vacated when George Santos (R-Living Island) was expelled, would then be only two votes shy of the majority. In other words, if only one Republican were to break ranks and votes with all the Democrats, the result would be a tie, enough to defeat any amendment, bill, or impeachment.

The previous must-pass stop-gap budget deal only passed because Mike Johnson's predecessor begged for Democratic support, which is why Kevin McCarthy is no longer Speaker of the House. Now Johnson has decided he had no alternative but to follow McCarthy's lead. As if to prove the point that Republicans simply cannot govern, Marjorie Taylor-Greene (R-Through the Looking Glass) wants to call for a vote of no confidence in Johnson.

And start the tortuous process of electing a Speaker of the House all over again.

Q Toon: Earmarks the Spot

I've been waiting a long time for a reason to feature my home state Congressman Mark Pocan in a cartoon, and here it is.

Pocan has represented the Madison area in Congress ever since Tammy Baldwin gave up the seat to run for the Senate in 2012. Openly gay throughout his political career and currently the Chair of the House Equality Caucus, he took it personally last month when House Republicans on the Appropriations Committee singled out three LGBTQ+-related projects — "earmarks" — to cut from this year's budget.

Tensions boiled over Tuesday after Rep. Tom Cole (R-Okla.) introduced an amendment to the annual funding bill covering the Departments of Transportation and Housing and Urban Development to eliminate $3.62 million in funding for three LGBTQ community centers in Pennsylvania and Massachusetts.

The amendment, which Cole said Tuesday would crack down on “problematic” spending, also prohibits federal funds from being used to fly LGBTQ Pride flags outside government buildings.

It passed Tuesday in a 32-26 vote along party lines.

Rep. Mark Pocan (D-Wis.), chair of the Congressional Equality Caucus and one of 12 openly LGBTQ members of Congress, called the proposal “an embarrassment.”

“This amendment brings this committee to a new low,” Pocan said Tuesday during a markup of the bill. “The fact that you would take away members’ earmarks simply because they refer to the LGBTQ+ community is insane.”

“If you were to take away earmarks because they went to the NAACP or the Urban League, you would rightfully so be called racist bigots,” Pocan said. “But when you do it to the LGBT community, it’s another frickin’ day in Congress.”

I used Pocan's language on Twitter (or Xchan, or whatever it's called now) in my cartoon; he must have had second thoughts about more colorful language. I'm kind of sorry that I didn't keep the "frickin'" in there, though.

As it is, Republicans demanded that Pocan's comments and those of two other Democrats on the committee be taken down, and silenced any further statements he may have wanted to make.

But before that happened, Rep. Pocan pointed out to his Republican colleagues that

"The pride flags that you're so passionate about cost somewhere between, if you look on line, $25 and $40. We are micromanaging, pedantically, dealing with this budget at such a small level, in order to make certain people in your base happy, and in your caucus happy, who have built a brand around hate. So, in doing so, you are doing the silliness of determining whether $25 flags come out of the Appropriations budget."

If the Senate is forced to spend time debating the savings to the nation's budget by prohibiting pride flags at federal facilities, perhaps they could save us even more by prohibiting the Alabama state flag as well.

Take that, Senator Tuberville. 

Q Toon: Come On Out Now

Having drawn three cartoons with LGBTQ+ Pride Month themes over the past four weeks, I decided to offer something for my client publications currently assembling their July issues.

Ed here represents all those dogs-in-the-manger who whine "Why isn't there a Straight Pride Month?" (or White History Month, or non-handicap parking spaces) and grouse about all the precious seconds they've lost waiting for "Para español, oprima dos" to be over.

The parades may be winding down, and any pride flags that have been flying over government buildings will soon be folded up for storage. But right-wing attacks on the LGBTQ+ community were going full bore well before June 1, and I have every expectation that they will continue unabated for months to come.

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Tech stuff: I decided to go with Epson after all. The rather pricey ET-8550 was the only independently recommended unit I could find that could scan a 9"x12" original (my bristol board will not flip around in a scanner feeder even if I were to trim it to the necessary 8"x12"), print in color, and hook up wirelessly. It takes up a bit more space than I would like, but not as much as a laser unit would.

Rather than those little ink cartridges that tended to gum our previous printer up, it uses those ink bottles you see Shaquille O'Neal hawking on TV, so that will take some getting used to. There are six colors to keep track of instead of four (a black for text, a black for photos, gray, magenta, cyan and yellow). Supposedly, the bottle ink lasts longer before drying up than the ink cartridges do; you just have to be more careful about spilling any.

I've already gotten a bit of magenta on one finger.

It looks fabulous. 

Q Toon: Hamtramck Flag Flap

When this blog last visited Hamtramck, Michigan, it was to rerun a tongue-in-cheek 1922 column by John T. Wallace and H.T. Plass in the Detroit Free Press, imagining that popular cartoon character Andy Gump (no relation to Forrest) had been elected mayor of the newly incorporated enclave. 

Surely Wallace and Plass would have found it equally fantastical that the citizens of Hamtramck would elect a Muslim mayor and an entirely Muslim city council, but that is exactly what they did in 2021.

Reversing policy of their previous administration, the Hamtramck council voted last Tuesday to ban displaying the LGBTQ+ rainbow flag on city property.

Muslim residents packing city hall erupted in cheers after the council’s unanimous vote, and on Hamtramck’s social media pages, the taunting has been relentless: “Fagless City”, read one post, emphasized with emojis of a bicep flexing.
In a tense monologue before the vote, Councilmember Mohammed Hassan shouted his justification at LGBTQ+ supporters: “I’m working for the people, what the majority of the people like.”

Mayor Amer Ghalib is promising to hold firm to the city's ban on flags representing religious, racial, ethnic, or sexual-oriented groups, and accuses LGBTQ+ people and allies of subjecting Hamtramck to  "extortion" for choosing to "stay neutral when it comes to flying flags of different groups." Under the new ordinance, only the U.S. flag, state of Michigan flag, city of Hamtramck flag, and P.O.W. flag are allowed.

Mayor Ghalib claims that the ordinance doesn't lessen the rights of LGBTQ+ Hamtramckians, they just don't deserve special consideration. You know, like those "special rights" we were told when we wanted equal rights to get married or serve in the military. Or the "All lives matter" slogan that means "Sure, Black Lives Matter, but don't bother me about your problems."

Now, I don't know what other flag requests might have been vexing Hamtramck City Hall, but it seems telling that the council chose to pass this ordinance right smack-dab in the middle of LGBTQ+ Pride Month ― and less than a week before Juneteenth. 

Has anyone checked whether the Hamtramck Police Department keeps a Thin Blue Line flag in the front office?

Q Toon: Sense and Sensitivity

For the sin of displaying LGBTQ+ Pride merchandise, Target Stores have become the latest casualty in the Rabid Right's Kancel Kulture Kampaign.

Target announced earlier this week that the company was removing some LGBTQ-themed items from shelves and moving displays intended to honor Pride Month to the back of the store in response to a public backlash from the right. But what happened at Target goes far beyond just some people calling for a boycott.

As Target explained in a statement, some customers had knocked down Pride displays at stores while others outraged by Pride-themed merchandise angrily approached workers as well as posted threatening videos on social media. Target has been celebrating Pride Month for more than a decade, but as the company noted, “since introducing this year’s collection, we’ve experienced threats impacting our team members’ sense of safety and wellbeing while at work.”

And to think that only thirteen years ago, Target was funding those antigay ingrates!

Right-wingers, including Republican office holders and presidential candidates, are openly working to make anything LGBTQ+ "toxic," and they won't stop with books and rainbow tees. Or who appears on a beer can. 

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis has been bogged down in a losing battle against the lawyers of Disney World, one of the largest and most prominent employers and tourist attractions in his home state, and why? Were they a menace to public health and safety? Were they sucking money out of the state treasury? No, it was because Disney Inc. dared to criticize his "Don't Say Gay" law. 

So the DeSantis and the Florida legislature went on the warpath against Disney with a single-minded fury, only to end up looking like Kendall Roy sitting at the end of the pier.

Disney, it turns out, has better lawyers than DeSantis and his entire legislature put together.

And a stiffer spine than the folks at Budweiser and Target.

 

This Week's Sneak Peek

Thank you to Mike Peterson for linking to yesterday's historical post! 

Now, with the past as prologue:

 

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?

Too Jejune for Junes

Last Saturday, I asked what was so rare as a J.N. "Ding" Darling cartoon in June. The answer, for now, would be mine. 40 years ago, my June cartoons were rare indeed, whereas "Ding" drew nearly three dozen of them 100 Junes ago.

"South Atlantic," June, 1982

Starting out as a cartoonist for college newspapers, I didn't have anyone to publish anything I drew in June at first. But if I had an idea I really liked, I'd draw it anyway. Clearly, I had expended a considerable amount of thought coming up with this parody of "South Pacific" about the Falkland War between Great Britain and Argentina in May and June of 1982.

"Contingencywise," June, 1982

Drawing cartoons like this one about the resignation of Reagan's first Secretary of State, Al Haig, was useful in terms of keeping in practice and honing the craft. And in this particular case, beefing up the portfolio of work I would send out to newspapers who might be looking to hire a cartoonist.

"Isn't It a Shame..." in Quayle Quarterly, Winter, 1992?

Skipping ahead one decade, here's a cartoon I drew in June of 1992 that wasn't published for months later. It happens to be the only cartoon I drew in June of 1992 in spite of freelancing for the Racine Journal Times. Perhaps there were no local issues of interest that month.

Instead, I offered this to a national magazine, The Quayle Quarterly, devoted to the wet-behind-the-ears Vice President of the United States, J. Danforth Quayle. Quayle had spoken out strongly against Candice Bergen's TV sitcom "Murphy Brown" for a plot arc about the title newscaster choosing to become a single mother.

Given the Republican Party's committed opposition to abortion, those of you too young to remember 1992 might have expected Mr. Quayle to have applauded Ms. Brown's decision to carry a pregnancy to term. But those of us with a few more birthdays under the bridge remember that the abortion issue to the religious right was never about when a fertilized egg becomes a human. 

It was always about sex. Sex outside of marriage = always bad. Shame, shame, shame on you, Murphy Brown. And your little bastard, too.

With no other cartoons from June, 1992 to show here, let's now leap ahead another decade.

"Mixed Marriage," for Q Syndicate, June, 2002

To balance the drawing vs. publication discrepancy of my Dan Quayle cartoon, this next cartoon was actually drawn in December (hence the 2001 copyright tag) for release in June.

As helpful as it may be to have some ready-drawn cartoons on hand for those occasions when I wouldn't be sending a fresh new one for syndication, it is nearly impossible to predict what topics and issues will be a propos in the future. Routine events such as Pride Month, Thanksgiving, and Christmas only go so far, and might not coincide with a vacation, health crisis, or everyday writer's block.

Continuing the topic of trying to stay in the closet:

"Out to the Ballgame," June, 2002

Now, I don't remember whether there was some ballpark that observed Pride Month with a Cross-Dressers Get In Free Day in 2002. But this cartoon does remind me of the time a guy pretended to be Front Row Amy at a Milwaukee Brewers game some years back. 

Front Row Amy is a Milwaukee institution of sorts. For years, this young lady has had season tickets in a front row seat behind home plate. She always pays rapt attention to the game, keeps score, and applauds every pitch that goes the Brewers' way. You never, ever see her having refreshments of any kind.

She favors — exclusively — very low-cut tops that highlight her impressive cleavage. In tight TV shots of left-handed batters, you can't miss that cleavage in the background. These days, she always wears a facemask, but Brewers fans would recognize her anywhere.

She doesn't attend each and every home game; her seat may be empty, but there's usually somebody else more than happy to fill such a prime spot. And for one game, it was some dude who showed up in a long-haired black wig and a top that was as low-cut as any of hers.

Until a later inning when he switched to a Batman costume.

Finally, I could have drawn this Pride Month cartoon six months early, but I didn't.

President Obama had rescinded the military's "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" policy back in December, 2010; and yes, military recruiters did start showing up at Pride events to enlist new recruits. 

The homophobic Right has since dropped the word "recruiting" in favor of the apparently more ominous sounding "grooming," so this cartoon doesn't work as well as it did ten years ago. I mean, this guy could be telling Darlene that he spied a hair stylist's booth or a dog show, but do you even find that sort of thing at Pride events? 

So, no, it doesn't make sense as an editorial cartoon with groomers instead of recruiters. But fear not: there are still opportunities for parody.

Some enchanted evening
You may see a groomer
With a sense of humor
across a crowded room.
You'd better decide
to hang up the phone
And leave any briders or groomers alone!  

Q Toon: Driven to Distruction

 

So I've finally gotten a cartoon drawn about the arrest almost two weeks ago of the 31 white heterosexuosupremacists in Coeur d'Alene, Idaho. With them in their van were plans to attack the LGBTQ+ Pride event underway there that weekend.

Eric Ward, executive director of the Western States Center, a community organizing group that advocates for inclusivity and democratic principles, said [the planned attack was] a far cry from an isolated incident.

“People should be paying attention to these arrests far beyond Coeur d’Alene,” Ward said via email. “Idaho is a bellwether state for where the rest of the country may be headed in terms of how anti-democracy groups try to build power and how effectively they’re blunted.” He noted that in 2020, Idaho was among the first states to “turn anti-transgender attacks into law” by banning trans women and girls from school sports and that the local Republican Party has supported candidates for the library board who ran on pulling LGBTQ books from shelves.

Republican politicians have been whipping up these amateur fascists with a constant drumbeat of anti-LGBTQ+, anti-immigrant, racist, pro-violence rhetoric and legislation. Their ranting seems especially heated this year, but it has been going on for decades now, amplified by their cheerleaders and coaches at Fox News, OAN, Newsmax, and social media echo chambers.

Perhaps I should have identified the politicians in the lower panel of this cartoon. I've drawn about some of them before; Idaho Governor Brad Little is a newcomer here, however. 

The Idaho House passed legislation in March that would criminalize gender-affirming medical treatment for minors, tacking it onto existing laws banning female genital mutilation. The state Senate refused to take up the bill, thus saving Gov. Little from having to sign or veto it.

As for the rest of the motley crew in my cartoon, we've already discussed Texas Governor Greg Abbott's executive order classifying transgender therapy as child abuse, the "Don't Say Gay" law signed by Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, Congresstroll Lauren Boebert's malice against colleagues' transgender children, Ohio's pending bill, and Reprehensible Marjorie Taylor-Greene's anti-LGBTQ+ rantings and ravings. I just haven't gotten around to those same policies in Alabama, Arizona, and a host of other GQP-run states. 

That, along with their racist appeals to get "Critical Race Theory" — an academic topic on the level of multivariate calculus and quantum physics — out of public elementary schools is exactly what drives neoNazis like these "Patriot Front" lunatics to think they must save the White Cis Male Race from replacement by colored transgender wimminfolk.

Heck, I certainly understand the appeal of the LGBTQ+ experience.

Is it that attractive to everyone? Probably not.

But you can't tell that to the idiots in the U-Haul. They're listening to someone else.

[J]ust as police must contend with the growth of extremist groups, the public must pay attention to the elected officials and personalities in the mainstream who ignite the talking points that ultimately animate far-right groups.

When they see a mainstream politician pick up on something they agree with, they see that as validation,” [Kurt Braddock, a professor at American University] said of false claims some Republican lawmakers have made about trans people being “groomers” and “pedophiles.” “Just like the ‘great replacement theory,’ it trickles down to the far-right elements and they run with it.”

This Week's Sneak Peek

There has been a lot of LGBTQ+related news this week, not least of which was the alarming arrest of 31 neo-nazis on their way to attack an LGBTQ+ Pride celebration in Coeur d'Alene, Idaho.

I could have drawn about that last night, but I'm opting to wait until more of the facts come to light. Somewhere there is a hero who saw a bunch of masked, uniformed, armed fascists cramming into a U-Haul and decided to alert the authorities. There were authorities who took that report seriously and intercepted the U-Haul with sufficient force to apprehend these domestic terrorists.

Somewhere, there may also be someone who sent his minions on this mission while remaining safely in the shadows himself. Somewhere, there may well be more to come.

Meanwhile, there are people in elected office whose actions, because they are in positions of power, are equally reprehensible.

Tune in here again on Thursday.

Q Toon: Contains S-3XL Content

There are always complaints about how commercialized LGBTQ+ Pride festivals have gotten over the decades.

But these festivals are all about Being Who You Are, and some people happen to be natural born entrepreneurs.

So I hope you'll forgive me for occasionally wondering whether the Progress Flag (the rainbow flag with black, brown, white, pale blue and pink chevrons added on the hoist side) was created as an expression of greater inclusiveness, or just to sell more flags, bumper stickers, decals, clothing, and jewelry to people who already had the old six-color versions.

Alas, we didn't make it to Milwaukee's Pridefest last week, so this is only a wild guess as to what the hot new festival merchandise is this year.

Q Toon: The Kirilling Fields

Vladimir Putin may have a hard time finding support for his brutal invasion of Ukraine elsewhere, but he has the full-throated support of the head of the Russian Orthodox Church.

And guess what: it's all about The Gayskis.

Giving his sermon on "Forgiveness Sunday," the last Sunday before the start of Lent, Patriarch Kirill said the war is about “which side of God humanity will be on” in the divide between supporters of gay pride events — or the Western governments that allow them — and their opponents in Russian-backed eastern Ukraine.

For eight years, there have been efforts to destroy what exists in the [Russian-controlled breakaway region of] Donbas. What exists in the Donbas is a rejection, a principled rejection of the so-called values that are now being offered by those who lay claim to global domination. Today, there is a certain test for loyalty to that power, a certain pass into that “happy” world, the world of excessive consumption, the world of illusory freedom. Do you know what that test is? It’s very simple but also horrific: it’s a gay parade. The demand to hold a gay parade is in fact a test for loyalty to that powerful world, and we know that if people or countries resist this demand, they are excluded from that world and treated as alien.

It wasn't just a one-off thing; Kirill kept coming back to harp on gay pride: “Pride parades are designed to demonstrate that sin is one variation of human behavior. That's why in order to join the club of those countries, you have to have a gay pride parade,” he fulminated, as if gay pride parades were somehow the defining feature of Ukrainian culture and politics. (Hardly.)

If you're wondering why anybody should care what Patriarch Kirill says (well, you wouldn't be alone in that), he is the head of the entire Russian Orthodox Church — officially, "Patriarch of Moscow and All Rus' and Primate of the Russian Orthodox Church." That doesn't make him the pope of all Eastern Orthodoxy (the "Ecumenical Patriarch of Constantinople" is the guy deemed the first among equals), but it does include the Ukrainian Orthodox Church. 

At least, it did until Forgiveness Sunday; his sermon understandably angered nearly every cleric and congregation in Ukraine. There has been ample objection from the patriarchs of Orthodoxy's other nationalities as well to Kirill's support of Putin's war.

Kirill has been closely allied with Vladimir Putin throughout his patriarchate, and, like Putin, is a former KGB agent. When he's not obsessed with crushing gay pride, he has accused Ukraine of trying to "exterminate" Russians in Donbas.

Why else should we care?

Not long ago, many Americans took comfort in the apparent progress society seemed to be making toward justice and equality. This was the 21st Century! Sliding back into repression and prejudice might take place in places like Russia, but It Couldn't Happen Here!

Then the November, 2016 election returns came in.

Kirill has his mirror image here in the U.S. in such men of the cloth as Franklin Graham, Jerry Falwell Jr., Robert Jeffress, and their choir of Trump apologists. They, along with Rupert Murdoch, the Koch brothers, Sheldon Adelson, and other American oligarchs, have brought right-wing extremism into the mainstream to the point where their storm troopers have actually assaulted the seat of government in order to overthrow the elected government of the United States. (You may have heard of it.)

We took a step back from the brink in 2020, but the forces of repression are definitely not giving up.

So, if fighting for progress, justice, civilization, reason, democracy and, yes, gay pride means sticking up for Ukraine, it's an easy call. Слава Україні!