Q Toon: When They Go Low

Some weeks, there seems to be a dearth of topics for LGBTQ+ cartoons.

This was not one of those weeks.

Some anonymous caller to Michigan Child Protective Services made a false complaint against Pete Buttigieg. An openly gay candidate for Nancy Pelosi's congressional seat was forcibly shooed away from a transgender pride event in San Francisco by pro-Palestinian activists making wildly unfair accusations against him because he's Jewish. Also in San Francisco, four pitchers on the local baseball team thought the Giants' LGBTQ Pride Game would be a good idea to tell LGBTQ fans just what they thought of them. And it would have been a good time to draw anything about the U.S. semiquincentennial.

I went with the first story, in part because Michigan's Between the Lines is one of my client papers, but also because the story is truly outrageous.

Buttigieg described in his Substack the attack on his family, likening it to "SWATting":

Now imagine the same concept, but with Child Protective Services instead of a SWAT team. Hadn’t thought of that? Me neither, until a few days ago when a police officer and a CPS worker showed up at our home and politely asked to speak with me.

I showed them in, invited them on the deck so that we could hear each other over the barking dog, and asked what was going on. They explained that there had been an allegation against me, that it concerned our four-year-old twins, and that a forensic interview had been arranged for the children the following day. I could not be present at the children’s interview, nor could any family member sit in. Afterwards, they would come back and interview me. And only then would they tell me anything about the nature of the allegation.

I was bewildered and troubled, but tried to stay calm. I’m used to any number of falsehoods, attacks, and serious problems being thrown my way. What I didn’t understand was what could have led to this kind of visit. Then, the CPS worker told me something that made my stomach turn: I was not to be alone around the children, at least until the interview took place the next day. They asked if I had relatives nearby or could perhaps stay at a hotel for the night. [...]

An anonymous caller had contacted CPS. The caller said that he had spoken to a woman who claimed to have met me at a conference several years ago in Alabama, where she said I told her that I had committed unspeakable violent crimes, and the caller believed my children were still at risk.

That was all. The officer had a couple of obvious questions. He asked if I had been to the town where the woman claimed she had met me. I have not. Then the officer made clear that he believed this was politically motivated, and said it would not be referred to a prosecutor. Nothing in the forensic interview with the children, which was conducted by trained personnel, had led to concerns.

Buttigieg holds open the possibility that he and his husband will pursue civil damages against the anonymous allegator. Michigan could also file criminal charges against the man for false reporting. That presumes that the person's cloak of anonymity can be drawn back in the first place. Unmasking the Mystery Woman from Alabama may well be impossible, if she exists at all.

There isn't much else that can be done about this sort of attack by false police report. Child Protective Services must take such allegations seriously, even against public figures. Sometimes the allegations turn out to be true — often when the public figure is some stridently antigay Republican preacher type.

If this kind of attack becomes more common — and make no mistake: LGBTQ parents are not the only people susceptible to this — somebody is going to have to give it a name.

But for now, Bearing False Witness will have to do.

Crime and Klanishment

Last month, our Graphical History Tour dealt with jay-walking and reckless driving in the summer of 1925. Today we focus on more serious criminal behavior of the time.

"The Life of the Tree Depends on Its Roots" by Dorman H. Smith for Newspaper Enterprise Assn., ca. August 4, 1925

Dorman Smith may have had the previous year's case of the Bobbed-haired Bandit in mind when he gave "maudlin sympathy for crooks" such prominent placement among the roots of crime. Sensational newspaper coverage of murder, robbery, and kidnapping led to a certain romanticizing of some criminals; we still remember Bonnie & Clyde, Dillinger, or Pretty Boy Floyd — or at least the movie versions of them.

Not to be overlooked are the other roots beneath Smith's tree, including "easy purchasing of arms," "crooked politics," "loose morals," and "weak judges."

"The Alienist" by John T. McCutcheon in Chicago Tribune, August 22, 1925

Also coming for popular blame was the psychiatric profession — “alienists” — expert witnesses testifying for the defense. In a case grabbing nationwide attention, a Chicago jury found Russell Scott guilty of the murder of drug store clerk Joseph Maurer, only to have Superior Court Judge Joseph B. David rule that Scott was insane. Scott was then committed to a mental asylum.

"The Big Brother of Herrin, Illinois" by Billy Ireland in Columbus Dispatch, ca. July 5, 1925

When you hear Chicago and the 1920's, what comes to mind? I'll bet that gangland violence is high up on your list.

The Graphical History Tour has made several stops in Herrin, Illinois over the past few years. The southern Illinois mining town was notorious for its bloodshed over striking union miners and overzealous Prohibition agents in league with the Ku Klux Klan.

"Chicago As the Rest of the World Must Imagine It" by John T. McCutcheon in Chicago Tribune, July 31, 1925

Chicagoan John McCutcheon's cartoon defended against the caricature of his city by Billy Ireland and others. The perception that Chicago was a hotbed of violence and illegal booze was however serious enough that the federal government was pressuring Chicago to crack down on crime. The Justice Department was particularly focused on quashing rum running, an especially lucrative organized crime business.

"Now They Are Drinking Furniture Polish and Shooting Each Other" by Daniel Fitzpatrick in St. Louis Post-Dispatch, Aug. 10, 1925

Daniel Fitzpatrick pairs gangland violence and turf wars with injury and worse from amateur distillers. Bathtub booze, homemade hooch from wood grain alcohol or other legal substances not meant for human consumption, was the cause of increased blindness and death.

"Rich Man, Poor Man, Beggar Man, Thief" by Daniel Fitzpatrick in Collier's, August 15, 1925

Disregard for Prohibition, now in its seventh year, crossed social classes.

The Feds showed less interest in another serious crime issue:

"How America Makes Criminals" by Leslie Rogers in Chicago Defender, August 22, 1925

Drawing for the Black press, Leslie Rogers cited lynch mobs getting away with murder, arson, and plunder when the victims were Black as inspiration for his cartoon criminal "believing that all criminals are protected."

The column running alongside Leslie Rogers's cartoon in the Chicago Defender further explained:

A comparison of the number of crime stories on the front pages of American and European newspapers is a terrible indictment of the United States. Statistics show that the city of Chicago alone has annually more holdups and murders than England and Wales put together.

From this there can be drawn but one conclusion: the present appalling prevalence of mob rule and lynching has bred wholesale disrespect for law and order. The fact that America is the home of lynching and mob psychology has much to do with her first place position in the crime line-up.

When a mob has lynched a black man, those who took part in this lawlessness are seldom, if ever, brought to justice. And should public indignation be aroused to the extent that an "investigation" seemed advisable, the result is always a verdict of "hanged by persons unknown."

That last quotation comes straight from the ruling that shut down investigation of a lynching in Excelsior Springs, Missouri. 

"Cant See for Looking" by Fred Watson in Baltimore Afro-American, August 22, 1925

The Afro-American had run a photograph of the lynching, attended by nearly 200 people, on its August 15 front page. An editorial accompanying Fred Watson's cartoon in its next edition provided details missing from the initial reporting:

Walter B. Mitchell was lynched by a mob in Excelsior Springs, Mo., last week on the charge of halting an automobile, beating up a white man and attempting assault upon his female companion.

Investigation afterwards proved that the white man attacked was in the cattle stealing business with Mitchell, and owed the later [sic] money. Mitchell stopped Utt's car and demanded his pay. They quarreled and fought. Utt was licked. His companion interfered. Mitchell threw her in the back seat and went home. Angered by the incident, Utt spread the talk about criminal assault and the mob got in its Ku Klux law enforcement.

"Better Watch Both Holes, Kitty" by Leslie Rogers in Chicago Defender, August 29, 1925

The Chicago Defender drew a straight line from Volstead Act enforcement to a lack of protection of Black American's rights to life and liberty:

Today we find the eye of law enforcement intently fixed upon the latest addition to the Constitution — the 18th or prohibition amendment. So concentrated are the efforts of the federal government upon apprehending the violators of this amendment that others more important, as far as national welfare are concerned, go unnoticed. 

The amendments receiving less attention of any are the 13th, 14th, and 15th. These three happen to deal with the citizenship and rights of 12,000,000 black people. Hence the enforcement of them is deemed unimportant!

"A Great Day" by Edmund Duffy in Baltimore Sun, Aug. 9, 1925

Meanwhile, the Klan marched 35,000 strong in the nation's capital on August 8, 1925. Klansmen and women paraded down Pennsylvania Avenue to the Washington Monument. Festivities were interrupted by heavy rain. 

Edmund Duffy's cartoon, above, ran on the Baltimore Sun's front page instead of its usual place on the editorial page.

This Week's Sneak Peek

I decided not to draw a cartoon about Jonathan Joss's murder this week — well, at least not just yet, anyway.

The accused murderer's friends are putting their version of events out now. Not surprisingly, when Joss and his husband discovered the skull and harness of their dog put on display at their burned-down home and "began yelling and crying in response to the pain" of it, whatever they were yelling was not likely to have been kindly to the people responsible for it.

It will be up to a jury to decide how credible — and relevant — the defendant's counterclaims are that Joss exhibited disruptive behavior prior to his home burning down. 

If the neighbors had filed complaints against Mr. Joss with the San Antonio Police Department, it is incumbent upon the SAPD to bring them forward to explain why they don't believe Joss's murder was a hate crime.

Q Toon: Texas Senate Bill 12

Florida notwithstanding...

There's a lot to be upset about this LGBTQ+ Pride Month, and a Texas-sized amount of shame is coming from the Lone Star State:

Senate Bill 12, authored by Sen. Brandon Creighton, won final legislative passage Saturday after lawmakers in both chambers adopted the conference committee reports that specifically clarified that schools will be banned from authorizing or sponsoring student clubs based on sexual orientation or gender identity. ...

Rep. Gene Wu, D-Houston, emphasized that these clubs exist because of a long history of oppression against the LGBTQ+ community. He warned against demonizing students and teachers for discussing gender and sexuality.

“The real monsters are not kids trying to figure out who they are,” Wu said during the House discussion. “The monsters are not the teachers who love them and encourage them and support them. They are not the books that provide them with some amount of comfort and information. The real monsters are here.”

Lawmakers shared personal stories about LGBTQ+ youth. Rep. Rafael Anchía said his daughter was a vice president of a pride club at her school. He stressed that these clubs “are no more about sex than 4-H or ROTC or the basketball team.” ...

Anchía also told the Texas Tribune he “didn’t sign up for five anti-LGBT bills this session.”

Those bills include one denying transgender Texans the right to have accurate, up-to-date identification in state documents. HB 229 has passed both houses of the Texas legislature and is certain to be signed into law by transphobic Governor Greg Abbott.

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If I had read more than the initially cursory reporting Sunday of the fatal shooting death of actor Jonathan Joss in San Antonio, that might very well have been the topic of my cartoon this week instead of SB 12. It hasn't received quite the media attention the attacks in Boulder and Washington D.C. have, but it should.

Joss, 59, was the voice of King of the Hill character John Redcorn, and portrayed Wamapoke Chief Ken Hotate on Parks and Recreation. The Native American was openly gay, and had married his husband, Tristan Kern de Gonzalez, on Valentines Day this year.

The two have been subjected to years of homophobic and transphobic threats (Tristan is a transman),  duly reported to San Antonio law enforcement, but to no avail. Those included threats to burn down their house, a threat which someone appears to have carried out on January 23, resulting in the deaths of their three dogs.

On Sunday, June 1, the Joss-Kerns returned to their destroyed home to pick up any mail, and found the skull and harness of one of the dogs prominently displayed there. From de Gonzalez's statement on Redcorn's Facebook page:

"This caused both of us severe emotional distress. We began yelling and crying in response to the pain of what we saw.

"While we were doing this a man approached us. He started yelling violent homophobic slurs at us. He then raised a gun from his lap and fired.

"Jonathan and I had no weapons. We were not threatening anyone. We were grieving. We were standing side by side. When the man fired Jonathan pushed me out of the way. He saved my life."

A neighbor, Sigfredo Ceja Alvarez, 56, has been arrested and charged with Joss's murder. Astonishingly, however, the San Antonio Police Department has since announced that in spite of the history of harassment complaints, the likely arson, the cruel display of the dog's remains, and the unprovoked attack, they don't believe that this obvious hate crime is a hate crime.

“Our investigation has found no evidence whatsoever to indicate that the Mr. Joss’s murder was related to his sexual orientation. We take such allegations very seriously and have thoroughly reviewed all available information. Should any new evidence come to light, we will charge the suspect accordingly.”

Given that the alleged murderer is named Sigfredo Ceja Alvarez and not Buford T. Redneck IV, one assumes that the Texas justice system will result in a conviction and prison sentence — if not deportation to a concentration camp in El Salvador or Libya — even without a hate crime penalty attached.

Unless, of course, the case ends in a mistrial because Joss's widower identifies himself under oath as Tristan Kern de Gonzalez rather than his deadname.

Q Toon: Rainbow Alert

The United States Department of State issued a warning earlier this month of the possibility of some sort of terror attack targeting LGBTQ+ Pride celebrations in June. They were not, however, terribly specific about it.

I don't visit their STEP page often enough to know whether the orange bar atop this notice means that they're still using the color-coded alert system created by the Dubya Bush administration. Orange was pretty serious, as I recall.

But then, it's also the color of road construction notices.

Today's cartoon is not to dismiss the State Department warning in any way. You may recall that the State Department issued a similar warning of a possible terrorist attack in Russia that was ignored by the Putin regime, only for Islamist terrorists to kill 140 people at a Moscow rock concert.

Rather, the threat of attack is something that LGBTQ+ people — the genderqueer particularly — live with every day. Not a month goes by without news of a transgender person or two being murdered somewhere in the U.S. So-called honor killings of LGBTQ persons by members of their own families happen around the world, even here in America. And it's only a matter of time until some gundamentalist crackpot picketing outside a Pride event somewhere in this country snaps.

The possibility has to be kept in mind when we have men of the actual cloth spewing stuff like this at city council meetings:

 David Lettau, pastor of Country Gospel Church, read a passage from Romans 1 about “uncleanness” and then related it to the Pride Festival.

“What they’re doing is teaching perversion to our children,” Lettau said. “We as a city are responsible for making sure that no decadent and perverse things go on.”

Lettau then made his threat explicit.

“It’s worthy of death, it says in the Bible,” Lettau said.

No one from the city council challenged his words.

Later, Pastor Jeff Combs of the First Community Church of God lamented that he was being lumped in with people who hate, especially as he has “nothing but love for people who live any lifestyle” and once “had a gay friend.” He then told the council they would be in violation of state law if they allowed juveniles to be allowed to attend Pride.

“We will pursue the matter further,” Combs threatened. “This is about protecting children.”

The pastor then, too, grounded his threat in the Bible, citing Luke 17:2, a passage that suggests drowning someone who adversely influences children.

“It would be better for them to be thrown into the sea with a millstone tied around their neck,” Combs said. “So watch yourselves. We are called to watch over our children.”

If I were Pastor Combs's gay friend, I'd be leery of accepting any invitation to join him at the beach.

The danger comes not just from the Christian Right, of course. The current Israel-Gaza War has heightened fears that some jihadi will be inspired to lash out against a soft target such as a Pride festival. June of 2016 saw the massacre at Orlando's Pulse nightclub by a gunman who variously pledged allegiance to Islamic State and to Hezbollah. We remember also the ultra-orthodox Jew who attacked Jerusalem Pride festival-goers in 2005 with a knife — and again ten years later.

So should we cancel Pride this year?

For centuries, queer people have faced jail, dungeons, torture, muggings, burning at the stake, stoning, death camps, having brick walls dumped on us, hangings, knifings, shootings, ostracization and ridicule.

Yet we're still here. Because love finds a way.

And that's why we celebrate Pride.

This Week's Sneak Peek

This week's cartoon co-stars someone whom I haven't drawn in a while, and it's not this guy.

That's all I'm going to say about that for now.

Moving on: I've edited a cartoon and blog post from a couple weeks ago to correct an error on my part. An editor questioned my syndicate editors about the name I mistakenly gave Nex Benedict, the Oklahoma teenager who died shortly after other students beat them up in a school lavatory. Somewhere in the process of erasing and rewriting text, I had changed Nex to Dex.

When the question was passed along to me, it came with the suggestion that perhaps I was trying to depict the cluelessness of the politicians talking in the cartoon, or their awkwardness in using Nex's pronouns of choice. 

At first, I thought the editors were confused by the use of they/them pronouns referring to Nex where someone could think the pronouns referred back to "those students." Most of my erasing and rewriting of dialogue had been in effort to steer clear of they/them confusion.

After a few email exchanges, I realized where I had been in error, so I corrected the cartoon and sent replacement files to Q Syndicate in case any client papers are still interested in it now that an official cause of death has been declared.

I apologize to all concerned for my mistake. 

Q Toon: Merry Christmassacre

 

Saturday night, a young man armed with two long rifles of the AR-15 variety burst into Club Q, a popular LGBTQ+ bar in Colorado Springs, and opened fire. Two of the bar patrons heroically disarmed and subdued him, but not before five people were killed and at least 17 more injured by gunfire or in the ensuing panic.

It was an exceptionally violent week across the U.S. Prior to the Club Q shooting, a former member of the University of Virginia football team shot and killed three current Cavaliers and wounded two others on a bus returning to campus from a class field trip; someone still at large stabbed four University of Idaho students to death at their off-campus apartment.

Politicians and religious leaders from across the political spectrum expressed their varying degrees of outrage and sympathy after each of these tragedies, the Club Q attack no less than the others.

That includes Colorado Congressman Lauren Boebert — or someone on her staff, or whoever paid Elon Musk eight bucks to impersonate her — who sent out a sympathetic tweet the morning after the Club Q shooting:

Up to now, Boebert's reputation has been as an ammosexual activist (today's cartoon is based on her actual 2021 family Christmas card), a hard-core defender of all things Trump, and a spreader of Trans Derangement Syndrome. On the floor of the House, on the campaign trail, on right-wing media, and prolifically on Twitter, she has mocked others' pronoun preferences, blamed trans men for shortages of baby formula and tampons earlier this year, and accused the Biden “regime” of paying for the “mutilation of children who are gender confused.”

In August, Human Rights Campaign rated her as the #3 on their list of "the top ten people responsible for driving the 'grooming' narrative on Twitter."

Back when Twitter had rules about hateful conduct.

But if she finally wants the public to know she's now against slaughtering LGBTQ+ citizens, perhaps at least we're seeing some progress. Why, even Franklin Graham has come out against spraying weapons fire into gay bars.

Consider that only six years ago, the morning after the terrorist attack on Pulse nightclub in Orlando that killed 49 LGBTQ+ patrons, the Lieutenant Governor of Texas, Dan Patrick, thought it would be a good time to tweet out Galatians 6:7: "Be not deceived; God is not mocked: for whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap."

Faced with uproar from the LGBTQ+ community and our allies and friends, Patrick quickly took his tweet down, and his staff issued a mealy-mouthed apology that it had nothing to do with the massacre. It was just supposed to be an inspirational message from a random book off his nightstand.

Twenty or thirty years ago back before Twitter, politicians like Patrick would have responded to loss of LGBTQ+ life by proudly issuing that biblical passage as a press release. That generation of conservatives unapologetically exulted that HIV/AIDS was God's punishment of gay men for being gay, and made jokes about Jeffrey Dahmer.

So, goody for Lauren Boebert for showing some vestige of humanity this time. Those morning prayers were the least she could do, and I guess they're better than nothing at all.

But they don't get her off the hook for contributing to a culture that egged on — and armed — some murderous psychopathic loser.

This Week's Sneak Repeat

Instead of the usual snippet out of this week's syndicated cartoon, here is my cartoon published immediately after a hate-filled gunman killed 49 patrons of Pulse, an LGBTQ+ bar in Orlando, Florida, six years ago.

Gonna Cartoon Like It's 1991

Our Saturday flashback will begin after this brief public service announcement.

in Journal Times, Racine Wis., April 1, 1991

For today, I'm just going to dig up some of my old cartoons from 30 years ago this month. This selection of cartoons from a generation ago is more or less random. Here is probably the one and only cartoon I have ever drawn about Albania.

in UW-M Post, Milwaukee Wis., April 4, 1991

Remember when we could ridicule foreign countries for their elections? Oh, what good times those were.

But there were serious issues back then, too. Crime was a big deal, and there was serious talk of Congress doing something about guns. The Brady Bill, named after the Press Secretary for President Ronald Reagan who was seriously wounded in the assassination attempt on the president ten years earlier, included a provision requiring a seven-day "cooling off" period for the purchase of a firearm, in part so that a serious background check could be run before the weapon changed hands. And the National Rifle Association was seriously alarmed that the bill might pass. I'm serious.

in UW-Parkside Ranger, Kenosha Wis., April 11, 1991

The U.S. government started collecting data on hate crimes in 1991, although by the end of the decade, half of local authorities were not complying with the Hate Crime Statistics Act of 1990. Democrats proposed additional hate crimes legislation in the 102nd Congress, which failed to pass the Republican-controlled Senate.

UW-M Post, April 16, 1991

I misdated the above cartoon and for years had a photocopy of it in the wrong folder in my files. (The original had disappeared from the Post offices by the time I delivered my cartoon for the April 18 issue.) Only after trying to find it in the UW-M Post on line archives when I was putting together another one of these retrospective posts last year did I discover my mistake. 

Maybe the original got sucked into a temporal anomaly.

Anyway, a letter writer to the Post had quoted then Congressman Thomas Petri as having answered question about gay-bashing by boasting, "I was one of the ones who voted against legalization of homosexuality. It's wrong. You know, you do have to set some standards." The other Wisconsin Congressman in the cartoon, Jim Sensenbrenner (who just retired Congress this January), was then and remained until retirement opposed to federal hate crimes legislation to protect LGBTQ citizens.

in UW-Parkside Ranger, April 25, 1991

A generation ago, the nation was bracing itself for a high-profile trial of Los Angeles police officers accused of brutality against a Black man. Sgt. Stacey Koon and officers Theodore Briseno, Laurence Powell and Timothy Wind were indicted on March 15 for beating and kicking Rodney King, who had attempted to flee a traffic stop and had led them on a high-speed chase, on March 3. The assault, which continued well after King was lying on the ground, was filmed by George Holliday, a resident of the apartment building where King had finally stopped his car.

 

A year later, a jury found all four officers innocent of almost all charges (the jury failed to reach an agreement on one excessive force charge against one of the officers), sparking five days of rioting in L.A.

We now have another high-profile chance to see whether things have changed at all a generation later.

I'll have some more cartoons to share from 1991, but for now, let's break for another word from our sponsors.

in UW-M Post, April 30, 1991

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.

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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: Za Vashe Zdorov'ye

It has been less than a month since my last cartoon highlighting the mortal danger faced by LGBTQ citizens of Russia. I normally try to avoid repeating the same topic only a few weeks apart, but this past week, a prominent LGBTQ activist in Russia was attacked and killed near her home in St. Petersburg.

A Russian LGBTQ activist, Yelena Grigoryeva, was fatally stabbed in St. Petersburg Sunday night after her name was listed on a website that encourages people to “hunt” LGBTQ activists, inspired by the torture-themed film "Saw."
Reports in the Russian newspaper Fontanka said that a suspect, a “40-year-old resident of Bashkortostan,” had been detained by police.
Grigoryeva, 41, was active with Russia’s Alliance of Heterosexuals and LGBT for Equality and other activist causes, according to the Russian LGBT Network.
According to friends' and colleagues' online posts, Grigoryeva was worried about her safety after she found her name and personal information listed on the snuff site.
“I learned today that Lena asked a mutual friend to take care of her cat in the event of her death when she was threatened with murder,” friend and fellow activist Dinar Idrisov wrote on Facebook.
“The state of Russia was obliged to guarantee her the right to life,” Idrisov wrote. “Lena and her lawyer appealed to law enforcement agencies both on the fact of violence and on the fact of threats, but there was no noticeable reaction.”

Grigoryeva had found her name and personal information, including her photo and address, on the hit list web site only days before her murder.

Grigoryeva wrote that the site, which organizes a “hunt for homosexual, bisexual and transgender people,” went online in spring 2018 and was shut down several times but always popped back up. The website posted the personal data of “presumably LGBT+” activists, “including photos and addresses,” and offered prizes to those who completed an attack.
“Law enforcement agencies have still not done anything to find the creators of this ‘game’ and bring them to justice,” Grigoryeva wrote. She called on those opposed to the website to contact the Russian prosecutor’s office and the FSB, Russia’s intelligence agency.

The Putin regime will prosecute the 40-year-old Bashkortostanian and shut down the latest iteration of the hit list web site, thus maintaining its plausible deniability of responsibility. And the site will pop up somewhere else where its fans can easily find it. Putin inspired, nurtured and loosed these trolls; and like genies, gremlins, or the denizens of Pandora's box, once they're out, they're not going back into captivity.

LGBTQ citizens are not the only Russians in danger of state-sanctioned physical attacks, of course. Trump's buddy Putin may be able to distance himself from Grigoryeva's case, but another incident this week is too suspicious not to have some ties to the government. Opposition leader Aleksei Navalny was jailed for planning an unauthorized election protest in Moscow, and very quickly ended up in the hospital.

Navalny’s attending physician, Anastasiya Vasilyeva, said on Facebook that she doesn’t believe the Kremlin foe is suffering from what his spokeswoman, Kira Yarmysh, had said was a “severe allergic reaction.”
Vasilyeva and cardiologist Yaroslav Ashikhmin briefly spoke to Navalny late on July 28 through the crack of a door and said she could not rule out that he had been poisoned.
Yarmysh earlier tweeted that Navalny had arrived at the hospital with “severe facial swelling and red rashes on the skin.” She also said that Navalny had “never experienced an allergic reaction before.”
Officials gave no details of Navalny's condition, and Russia's Interior Ministry did not respond to requests from Western news agencies for comment.
Vasilyeva noted that Navalny had a rash on his upper body, skin lesions, and discharge from his eye. She called for samples of his bed sheets, skin, and hair to be tested for signs of chemical agents.
Vasilyeva also said she found it suspicious that authorities did not allow her to examine him properly.

Add to this the peculiar habit many Putin critics have of falling to their deaths from upper story windows, and one gets the distinct impression that despite Vlad's protestations of "Let them live as they wish," doing so is distinctly hazardous to one's health.

Q Toon: Don't Mind the MAGAs

Last week, Jussie Smollett, an actor who portrays a gay singer on "Empire," reported being assaulted on a Chicago street by two masked men who spewed racist and antigay invective and a certain Trumpster slogan:

Chicago Police have not yet been able to locate the two attackers or to verify Mr. Smollett's story. The longer this investigation takes, the less likely any arrests seems to become — unless, of course, these cartoonish villains start bragging in some 4chan forum.

Mr. Trump's rhetoric during his presidential campaign included some notorious incitement to violence, so accounts of marauding MAGAlomaniacs cannot be discounted. They have threatened journalists with physical harm, mailed improvised explosive devices to journalists and politicians, and run over counter-protesters in Charlottesville.

Trump's bullying swagger attracts and encourages the "deplorables" Hillary Clinton warned us about. It wasn't a terribly politic thing for her to say, but the evidence seems to be bearing her out.

Q Toon: Terms of Enragement

Given how the assassination of nine Black Americans in Charleston, South Carolina's Mother Emanuel A.M.E. Church during a Bible study last Wednesday night has dominated the news in the U.S. this week, my Q Syndicate cartoon this week is only very tangential to LGBT issues.

This weekend on NPR's On the Media, Brooke Gladstone noted what she called the media's rules for different races when it comes to mass murder:

"If [Dylann] Roof were Muslim, he would have been identified swiftly and universally as a 'terrorist.' Reporters would focus on his 'recruiters,' which in his case could be a multitude of white supremacist web sites, or one of the many hate groups that exist legally in his own state. But when the suspect is white, he's an 'aberration,' immediately furnished with a name, a family, a history, and a diagnosis. Whereas a black suspect, for instance, accused of far less or nothing, more often is displayed as a nameless emblem of a social disease."

In the days since, The Guardian of Great Britain led American media in unmasking the Council of Conservative Citizens as Roof's on-line recruiter. Digging further, American media found that the head of the CCC, Earl Holt III, has donated thousands of dollars to Republicans over the years (including Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker, Senator Ron Johnson, and Representative Paul Ryan); Ted Cruz, Rand Paul and Rick Santorum are among the presidential candidates now stumbling all over themselves to turn away that cash.

Well, who could have known that an organization sharing its acronym with the Coo Clucks Clan would be a bunch of racists? Besides the Southern Poverty Law Center, that is.

And while Republicans have been hastily disavowing Roof's recruiter, Walmart, Amazon, Target and even the state of Alabama have taken the rebel battle flag off their shelves and flagpoles. Anything to keep the subject away from gun control, I suppose. Minneapolis might even rename Lake Calhoun.

I do so hope that Roof is being kept up to date with these developments in the Race War he wanted to spark.

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...

Er, last week's Q Syndicate cartoon

Somehow, I neglected to post the usual cartoon on this site last week.

It could have had something to do with having spent hours trying to download and install MacAfee on the home computer. The computer never did succeed at installing it, even though I did go through Add/Remove Programs to remove everything that sounded like it might possibly conflict with MacAfee. I've been through this before with my laptop; I couldn't renew Norton Antivirus while it also contained Webroot Antispyware, in spite of both programs having been on the laptop when I bought it. I also followed MacAfee's suggestion of completely wiping out the computer's browsing history, resulting in long download times and a number of sites that seem to get hung up on routine tasks, but not resulting in any ability to install MacAfee.

Once we gave up and downloaded the CA Internet Security Suite (which I hadn't realized was an option included for no additional charge in our Time Warner Roadrunner internet service), the MacAfee symbol appeared in the "tray" reporting that CA was our active antivirus program. Now I have to find someone at MacAfee's telephone bank who will refund my money and tell me how to find and remove their program. According to the e-mail confirming my purchase, I can get a refund within 30 days, but there's no phone number or link associated with that particular paragraph.

So anyway, here's last week's cartoon. What was it about, again?

This Week's Cartoon

This week's cartoon does not address any specific criminal case. In the process of deciding which news story to draw about every week, I always find at least one story about a gay-bashing somewhere. Sometimes, hate crime charges are added to the obvious murder or aggravated assault charges against the accused; but in other cases, the prosecution exhibits a baffling reticence to bring any serious charges at all.

Take for example, the case of Robert Hannah, who has pled guilty to a charge of misdemeanor assault for (ahem, allegedly) fatally assaulting Tony Hunter at Be Bar in Washington D.C. Hannah claims that he punched Hunter because Hunter made sexual advances to him. Hunter died ten days later as a result of the assault.

If heterosexual men were subject to straight panic attacks from uninterested women they made sexual advances toward, you can bet the women would not be charged with misdemeanor assault.