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: Malaysian Malaise

Malaysian Tourism Minister Datuk Mohamaddin bin Ketapi was in Germany last week for the ITB (Internationale Tourismus-Börse) Berlin tourism fair. Since Malaysian officials have consistently condemned homosexuality, and in January officially barred Israeli delegates to Malaysian sporting and other events, a reporter for Deutsche Welle asked him whether the country was safe for gay and Jewish visitors.

After initially sidestepping the question, the minister was asked again whether gays were welcome and he replied: "I don't think we have anything like that in our country."
...
Ministers of the southeast Asian country have made other derogatory statements about LGTBI people, including one who told gays they should keep their identities secret.

Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad said homosexuality was part of "Western values." He added: "Don't force it on us."

It is not uncommon for leaders of Islamic countries to claim that, yes, they have no homosexuals. Making a victimless act punishable by flogging, long prison sentences and/or death will tend to make gays and lesbians reluctant to come out to their governmental officials. Those government officials are then free to characterize LGBTQness as a strictly Western phenomenon, like having blond hair or enjoying pumpkin spice lattes.

Sexual variation is well documented in non-white-skinned cultures, not to mention in the animal kingdom, so it's hard to believe that there is a race of humans who for some reason are genetically immune to LGBTQ DNA.

Whispering from behind a curtain in a darkened room while wearing a hoodie, fake nose and glasses, one of Mohamaddin's underlings hastened to correct the impression that LGBTQ and Jewish tourists are unwelcome in the southeast Asian country.

An aide to the minister later told news portal Malaysiakini that the statement was Mr Mohamaddin's personal views although it was in line with the Pakatan Harapan government's stance of not recognising LGBT culture.
Nevertheless, the aide, who wanted to remain anonymous, said: "Tourists coming to Malaysia like any other country are welcome regardless of their creed, sexuality, religion or colour.”

Authorities just don't want those Western values rubbing off on the locals.

The Goal Is Won, Jerusalem

In light of near-unto-global ostracization of the U.S. for the Corrupt Trump Administration's plans to recognize Jerusalem as the exclusive capital of the state of Israel, Seventeenback Saturday takes one more look back at editorial cartoons from December, 1917. The issue this time is the British conquest during World War I of Jerusalem, then part of the Ottoman Empire.

"Again at the Gates of Palestine" by William Donahey in Cleveland Plain Dealer, December, 1917

The Sinai and Palestinian Campaign of the war had begun for the most tactical of reasons: the Ottoman Empire, in league with Germany, attacked the Suez Canal in January of 1915 in an unsuccessful attempt to cut Great Britain off from its colonies in India and eastern Africa. Over the next two years, Britain retook the Sinai peninsula and advanced into Ottoman territory. The Battle of Jerusalem began on November 17, and American cartoonists, to a man, made the now unfortunate decision to depict the battle as the Fourth Crusade. ("Crusade" being the Christian word for "jihad.")

"Fourth and Last Crusade" by Kenneth R. Chamberlain in Philadelphia Evening Telegraph, December, 1917

Even Kenneth Chamberlain, an antiwar socialist whose work had appeared in The Masses (until it was shut down after the November-December, 1917 edition), succumbed to the temptation to draw the British conquest of Jerusalem as a triumph of Christendom over the Heathen Foe. "I just went along after we were in the war," Chamberlain said in a 1966 interview. "I wanted to hold my job as a cartoonist although I wasn't for the war."

The British populace, on the other hand, considered the conquest of Palestine as a minor operation, a distraction of soldiers and materiel which would be more useful fighting on the Western Front. Harper's Weekly agreed, writing, "The capture of Jerusalem by the British forces has almost eclipsed the more important military operations in Europe."

Contrast this whimsical cartoon from Punch, of Sultan Mehmet V reading a telegram from Kaiser Wilhelm, with most of the American cartoons in this post.

"A Great Incentive" by Leonard Raven-Hill in Punch, London, November, 1917.

Jerusalem surrendered to British forces on December 9, and as far as American cartoonists were concerned, it was time to break into "Good Christian Men Rejoice."

"After Seven Centuries" by Daniel Fitzpatrick in St. Louis Post-Dispatch, December, 1917

If Lord Balfour believed that "His Majesty's government views with favor the establishment in Palestine of a national home for Jewish people," American cartoonists were not celebrating this victory as one for Zionism. (There must have been at least one cartoon drawn for an American Jewish publication on this topic, but I'm afraid I have not been able to find it.)

"Christianity's Christmas Gift" by John McCutcheon in Chicago Tribune, December, 1917

Not every cartoonist went all "Onward Christian Soldiers" on this topic. Ted Brown clearly labeled the character in this cartoon "Turkey" and clothed him to match, although the face has the upturned mustache of Kaiser Wilhelm.

"Ending the Pipe Dream" by Ted Brown in Chicago Daily News, December, 1917

I have qualms about including this next cartoon. There is a lot of blatant racism in cartoons of this era, and I have avoided posting some otherwise interesting cartoons — not all by Dixieland cartoonists — because of stereotypes that are now offensive (and casual use of the N-word). In this case, was "Papa Mohammed" the only Muslim name Harry Keys knew, or was he actually trying to depict the Prophet? Why not draw the Ottoman Sultan (whose name, of course, is a Turkish variant on the Prophet's)?

"Papa Mohammed Hasn't Been the Same" by Harry Keys in Columbus Citizen, December, 1917

It's not as if Mehmet V's visage was totally unknown in the states; John McCutcheon had it handy for a cartoon depicting Allied forces closing in on Turkey on its Palestine, Baghdad, Persian and Persian Gulf fronts.

"The Bagdad Corridor" by John McCutcheon in Chicago Tribune, December, 1917

McCutcheon correctly does not depict Entente forces threatening Mehmet on his Balkan front. As noted last week, Romania signed an armistice with the Central Powers; Greece was busy fighting Bulgaria; and Italy was counting on Serbian help fending off Austrian and German forces in the Alps. And although Turkish and native forces made further attempts to wrest Jerusalem back from the Allies, the end result of the campaign would be the British Mandate for Palestine and the French Mandates for Lebanon and Syria.

Germany had been directly involved in the fighting in Palestine; but German cartoonists, if they commented on the British victory at all, did so in the snarkiest of terms.

"Die Gralshüter" by Wilhelm Schulz in Simplicissimus, January 15, 1918

Backward Christian Soldiers

Donald Joffrey Trump's nominee for Secretary of the Army is a Tennessee state legislator named Mark Green (R-Clarksville). Where Barack Obama opened the U.S. military to LGBTQ service members and appointed Eric Fanning to be the first openly gay head of any branch of the U.S. military, it is clear that Trump is issuing the military an about-face.

Green is a lead sponsor of a bill guaranteeing educators a right to discriminate against LGBTQ persons, and backs another bill allowing mental health practitioners to refuse to treat LGBTQ patients. The West Point graduate sponsored a Tennessee "bathroom bill," and another bill prohibiting local governments from enforcing antidiscrimination policies protecting LGBTQ citizens.

Green's bigotry comes cloaked in religiosity. He told a radio interviewer that because of St. Paul's letter to the Romans:

"...as a state senator, my responsibility very clearly in Romans 13 is to create an environment where people who do right are rewarded, and people who do wrong are crushed. Evil is crushed. And so I'm going to protect women in their bathrooms, and I'm going to protect our state against potential infiltration by Syrian ISIS people through a  refugee program." 

Speaking to a Tea Party Koffee Klatch in Chattanooga, Green said transgender persons are mentally diseased, deriding them as "guys and gals with question marks." He also told the group that legalized same-sex marriage might lead to using taxpayer dollars for infanticide.

His animus is by no means limited to gays, lesbian, and transgender persons. At that same Koffee Klatch, he enthusiastically supported a variety of other tenets of Tea Partisan faith:

To a questioner who worried about armed insurrection by people who “don’t belong here, like Muslims in the United States,” Green said it was a “great question.” Referring to the “Muslim horde” that sacked Constantinople five centuries ago, Green agreed that we must “take a stand on the indoctrination of Islam in our public schools”—even as he vowed to spread the Christian light into the military and the culture as he had as a young missionary in a Muslim section of Toronto.
Green agreed with a questioner that President Obama is not a citizen and he refused to answer whether the former president is really a Muslim. Asked what could account for a mysterious rise in Latinos registering to vote in Tennessee, Green theorized they were “being bused here probably.”

Green's confirmation is not a sure thing, given skepticism expressed by Senate Armed Services Chair John McCain and others.

“The statements he has made on a number of fronts — in particular to the LGBT community, to different minority groups, different religious groups — are a great, great concern toward military readiness,” said [Iraq War verteran Daniel] Feehan, who served as principal Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for readiness from 2015 until earlier this year.
It’s already hard enough to recruit a talented, diverse military to accomplish critical missions, Feehan said. Green’s record and public statements will make that job even more difficult by creating an environment in which potential recruits might feel unwelcome, Feehan said.

On the list of organizations opposed to Green's nomination are GLAAD, Outserve-SLDN, the Council on American-Islamic Relations, the Human Rights Campaign, the American Military Partner Association, and the Truman National Security Project, the last of which wrote:

"As every military leader knows, unit readiness at every level is built on mutual trust, often referred to as unit cohesion. When leaders denigrate service members on the basis of their personal characteristics, it undermines that essential trust. As several of you know firsthand, that can be the difference success and failure on the battlefield."

Reports earlier this week that Green might withdraw his nomination are so far being denied. If those reports prove correct, Green would be Trump's second Army Secretary nominee to pull out; billionaire Vincent Viola withdrew his nomination on the grounds that he couldn't extricate himself from several conflicts of interest with his family businesses. (Trump’s pick for Navy Secretary, financier Philip Bilden, also dropped out of consideration, citing similar business conflicts. President Trump Inc. could learn a thing or two from Viola and Bilden.)

Yet Republicans have been more than happy to stock all branches of government with reactionary right-wing apparatchiks, and party leadership is likely to pressure its wavering members to fall in line and approve whomever Trump wants. There is nothing the GOP values more highly than partisan unity.

Reversing any and all progress made by the Obama administration, however, ranks a very close second.

Q Toon: The Protectionist

As it turns out, Donald Berzilius Trump spent much of this week trying to attract Black and Latino voters with his new slogan, "What Have You Got to Lose." (Considering the priorities of states controlled by Republicans, The Right to Vote comes to mind.)

But earlier this summer, Trump tried to use the Orlando massacre as the basis of an appeal to LGBTQ voters, awkwardly pausing partway through the five-letter acronym. Perhaps he was having difficulty remembering the whole thing. Perhaps he gets out of breath saying five-syllable words. Better page Dr. Harold Bornstein.

As a cartoonist, it's a daunting challenge to come up with things for Cartoon Trump to say that are more outrageous than the things that come out of Reality Trump's mouth. One imagines that Trump's spokesschmucks are taking Botox injections to avoid the inadvertent looks of terror when they contemplate having to explain what they are hearing.

✒

P.S.: This story broke this week.

Q Toon: Danse Macabre

On the evening after the Orlando massacre at Pulse, Pastor Roger Jimenez of Verity Baptist Church in Sacramento, California told his congregation:

"Are you sad that 50 pedophiles were killed today? Um, no, I think that's great! I think that helps society. I think Orlando, Florida is a little safer tonight. ... There’s no tragedy,...I wish the government would round them all up, put them up against a firing wall, put a firing squad in front of them, and blow their brains out.” 

After a terrorist attack, you expect the nut jobs at the Westboro Baptist Church to crawl out of their cesspool to insult the victims. When the victims are LGB or T, the Westboro cult has its share of company among so-called Christians.

"The left is having a dilemma of major proportions and I think for those of us who disagree with some of their policies, the best thing to do is to sit on the sidelines and let them kill themselves.” -- Pat Robertson, 700 Club, Christian Broadcasting Network

"The good news is that there’s 50 less pedophiles in this world, because, you know, these homosexuals are a bunch of disgusting perverts and pedophiles. That’s who was a victim here, are a bunch of, just, disgusting homosexuals at a gay bar, okay? Obviously, it’s not right for somebody to just, you know, shoot up the place, because that’s not going through the proper channels. But these people all should have been killed, anyway, but they should have been killed through the proper channels, as in they should have been executed by a righteous government that would have tried them, convicted them, and saw them executed." -- Pastor Steven Anderson, Faithful Word Baptist Church, Arizona

“These 50 sodomites are all perverts and pedophiles, and they are the scum of the earth, and the earth is a little bit better place now. And I’ll take it a step further, because I heard on the news today, that there are still several dozen of these queers in ICU and intensive care. And I will pray to God like I did this morning, I will do it tonight, I’ll pray that God will finish the job that that man started, and he will end their life, and by tomorrow morning they will all be burning in hell, just like the rest of them, so that they don’t get any more opportunity to go out and hurt little children.” Pastor Donnie Romero, Stedfast Baptist Church, Fort Worth, Texas

Meanwhile, in Buford, Georgia, someone decided to spray paint over a hate message against gays and transgender persons that had been out front of The Back to the Bible Holiness Church for weeks before the massacre. Pastor Bobby Weeks bizarrely claimed that "I haven’t cursed anyone. I haven’t called anyone a name" with his sign which read "God created man and woman. Satan created gays and transgender." He further claimed that everyone is "welcome" in his church.

I suspect that the vandals possessed the same degree of restraint, love, and charity as Mr. Weeks.

2015 in Review, part 1

Proving that Christians do not have a corner on the market for loopy televangelists, a Turkish cleric claims that masturbation will result in "pregnant hands" in the afterlife:

Istanbul-based televangelist Mücahid Cihad Han [right], who is active on Twitter and has his own channel on YouTube, made the remarks on May 24 while answering questions from viewers on the 2000 TV channel.
Han initially looked puzzled when a viewer said he “kept masturbating, although he was married, and even during the Umrah”, a pilgrimage to Mecca that can be undertaken by Muslims at any time of the year, unlike the Haj which is performed in the last month of the Islamic calendar.
The televangelist claimed Islam strictly prohibited masturbation as it was a “haram” (forbidden) act, the Hurriyet Daily News reported.
“Moreover, one hadith states that those who have sexual intercourse with their hands will find their hands pregnant in the afterlife, complaining against them to God over (their) rights,” he said, referring to what he claimed was a saying of Prophet Mohammed.

So that's where the phrase "pregnant paws" comes from!

On the Second Day of Christmas...

It's SaintStephenback Saturday, the second day of Christmas, which is swell if you're a big fan of turtledoves. If you're looking for a topic for next week's editorial cartoon, ummm, not so much.

The week after Christmas is usually a pretty slow news period, which wasn't a problem for me during those many years when I aspired to be the world's oldest college cartoonist. The college newspapers all take a long Christmas vacation. Out here in the Real World, the show must go on, even if none of the newsmakers are making news and their spokespersons are resting their voices.

In 1993, we had a certain eccentric rich presidential candidate (formerly and futurely) whose concerns about American jobs getting sucked south of the border provided sufficient fodder for this post-Christmas cartoon.

We now know that if your job didn't end up in Mexico -- or Vietnam, Pakistan, Indonesia, Guatemala or the Dominican Republic -- there is now an app for doing whatever it was that you used to get paid for, and even the reindeer are losing their jobs to Amazon drones.

Most post-Christmas cartoons don't have a Christmas theme, though. TV commercials will have been jamming Christmas down everyone's throats since the end of back-to-school specials, so everyone is sick and tired of Christmas. Even churchgoers who had complained "Why can't we sing familar Christmas carols?" all through the season of Advent have lost interest in "Oh, Come, All Ye Faithful" and "Once in Royal David's City" by the First Sunday of Christmas.

Which is why you never hear anyone talk about "keeping Christmas in our hearts 365 days a year" after December 25.

There are exceptions to the usual news drought after Christmas. Every four years, new cabinet members are named in December, often once Congress has gone home for the holiday. Up through 2012, with LGBT service in the military still a hot-button issue, the views of the nominee for Secretary of Defense were usually worth a cartoon or two.

Or the nominee for Attorney General.

And from that same year, having the 2000 election go into extra innings was a godsend for editorial cartoonists.

If politicians aren't being helpful, Mother Nature doesn't give a hoot about holidays on the calendar. Most years, you can count on a certain contingent of editorial cartoonists drawing someone up to his chest in snow wondering whatever happened to that global warming crap them dang egg-headed climatologists keep warning about. You haven't seen many of those cartoons this year.

On December 26, 2004, an earthquake off the coast of Sumatra sent a devastating tsunami around the entire Indian Ocean. Somewhere between 228,000 and 280,000 people were killed, and millions were left homeless. from Indonesia to South Africa.

Some religious people took it as an opportunity to lend aid and comfort to the afflicted. Others did not.

But you can't count on the weather, and it's ghoulish to count on disaster befalling someone before your deadline. If all else fails, there is still one last holiday on the December calendar. A cartoonist can try summing up the entire year.

Cartooning's Front Lines

Cartoon by Atena Faraghdani

This past extended weekend, I attended the annual convention of the American Association of Editorial Cartoonists. I've been trying to get to one of these things for years, but again and again there has been one scheduling conflict or another.

This year's convention was in Columbus, Ohio, home of the Billy Ireland Cartoon Library and Museum. It also fell in the shadow of the assassinations of the cartoonists and editors at the Charlie Hebdo offices in Paris, and the attempted shooting at Pam Geller's Cartooning Mohammed circus in Garland, Texas.

Registration desk at the Columbus College of Art & Design

With that in mind -- as well as the presence of an exhibit of cartoons drawn after the Charlie Hebdo attack and of a panel of cartoonists who have been imprisoned in their home countries for their work -- the security level was quite high. In addition to campus security at the Columbus College of Art and Design, we had city police, county sheriffs, under cover officers, and Homeland Security agents.

And, yes, a bomb-sniffing dog. After having left my heavy briefcase up on some upended construction materials during my first few trips to the bathroom, I decided that it might be wiser to leave it on the floor within easy sniffing range of Offissa Pup.

Most of the cartoonists' rights panel

A panel discussion entitled "Free Speech or Hate Speech?" was highly informative, but could have been improved if there had been someone on the panel representing Muslim sensibilities. With almost everyone in the room passionately devoted to artistic license, it fell to one young man (Palestinian, if I heard correctly) in the audience to attempt to argue against absolute freedom of speech.

In later conversations with my fellow ink-slingers, a few of us agreed that we had never had any reason to draw Mohammed before 2006 or since, and felt no compulsion to find an excuse to do so. The cartoon exhibit upstairs contained only one drawing of Mohammed, showing him commiserating with Jesus and Buddha over the murders committed in their respective names. My favorite was one by V. Cullum Rogers, depicting a religious fanatic with a smoking machine gun, standing over a slain cartoonist, while a voice from the dark clouds overhead says, "I don't get it."

At the banquet Saturday night, the Cartoonists' Rights Network International (CRNI) announced its Courage in Editorial Cartooning Award was going to Iranian cartoonist Atena Faraghdani, 29, currently in prison for drawing the cartoon at the top of this post depicting members of the Iranian parliament as cows and monkeys. The cartoon, protesting a vote to restrict women's contraceptive rights, has resulted in charges of "spreading propaganda against the system" and a 12-year-9-month prison sentence. Even her lawyer has now been arrested, just for shaking her hand in court.

All was not seriousness and warm-hued Threat Levels; I had a good time, gained some valuable insights, and met several fellow cartoonists whose work I admire greatly. I'll save some topics for Snoozeback Saturdays and other occasions.

Cartoons drawn after the Charlie Hebdo assassinations

Rall Entando al Fine

Ted Rall continues his series on How I Got Fired And Nobody Cared at rall.com this week, coming around to the failure of his fellow cartoonists to leap to his defense.

"You guys suck" was Rall's header for an August 9 screed on the Association of American Editorial Cartoonists (AAEC) listserv blasting the AAEC's silence on his case -- described as deafening in another cartoonist's posting, the first on the topic, on July 28. (Postings on the listserv are supposed to be confidential, but since Rall has brought the discussion out into the open, I think the cat is out of the bag.)

Between July 28 and the publication of the AAEC statement on August 11, there was a lot of back and forth on the listserv over whether Rall had proven that his case was any worse than that any of the scores of other editorial cartoonists who have lost their jobs in the last 20-30 years, none of which have produced official statements from the AAEC. Of course, hardly any of those cartoonists were sent out the door with an editorial calling them liars.

So far this year, the AAEC has condemned the killing of the Charlie Hebdo cartoonists and editors, condemned the arrest of Malaysian cartoonist Zunar, condemned the shootings at the "Draw Mohammed" confab in Dallas, called for Maine's Governor LePage to apologize for telling a cartoonist's son that the governor would like to shoot the boy's father, and, of course, called for an investigation into the tape the Los Angeles Police Department gave to the L.A. Times editors to get Rall fired.

On the other side of the coin, I can't recall any instance of the AAEC officially criticizing any cartoonist by name -- although accusations of plagiarism have resulted in heated discussion on the listserv, a few well-known cartoonists leaving the association, and eventually, a code of ethics (see the update at the end of this story). There was plenty of internal discussion whether or not the Charlie Hebdo cartoons and the Texas anti-Islam cartoon contest were defensible, but in the end, the Free Speech absolutists won out.

We cartoonists are used to having our work criticized; we love praise, of course, but see criticism as a sign that our cartoons have succeeded in sparking conversation. Bill Sanders, for example, devoted three pages of The Sanders Book (1977) to hate mail. Today's editors, on the other hand, see editorial cartoons as little more than a graphic to break up an otherwise gray page. The occasional threat from a reader to cancel a subscription may not get a cartoonist fired, but complaints from advertisers, law enforcement, or the publisher's golfing buddies are likely to prompt an editor to discover reasons to "tighten the budget."

At issue here is not just whether the L.A. Times unjustly besmirched a cartoonist's reputation by calling him a liar, but also whether it should have leapt to conclusions based upon accusations by the LAPD supported only by a poor-quality recording.

I don't know who is qualified to step in at this late date, but a recent cartoon by Matt Wuerker was parsed by Politifact (and found "mostly true"), so perhaps we should let the Tampa Bay Times judge whether Rall's or the LAPD's pants are on fire.

Postscript:  (The Times defends its actions here, including a link to a recording from the LAPD purporting to document LAPD's failed attempts to contact Rall after his initial complaint about his treatment.
(But according to one of Rall's colleagues, J.P. Trostle, "As someone who has known Mr. Rall for almost 20 years, and was calling him frequently during this time period (as we finished collaborating on the book Attitude: The New Subversive Alternative Political Cartoonists), I can assure you that that is NOT Ted Rall’s voice on the answering machine, nor was it the greeting message he was using at time — which means the LAPD was calling the wrong number.")

Q Toon: Sermon at the Counter II

In spite of feeling that I put out the definitive cartoon on the topic just over a month ago, I've drawn about local county and municipal clerks who still defiantly refuse to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples, the Supreme Court of the United States notwithstanding.

Rowan County, Kentucky clerk Kim Davis is putting up a legal fight claiming that other people's right to a marriage license is a violation of her First Amendment religious liberty rights to refuse to do her job. On Monday, U.S. District Court Judge David Bunning stayed his earlier ruling that had required Davis to set her religious views aside and stop discriminating against same-sex couples.

Kentucky is not alone in facing unresolved issues related to marriage equality since Obergefell v. Hodges. Lawsuits have now been filed in Colorado, Florida, Mississippi and South Carolina claiming that public officials' religious beliefs supersede their responsibilities to their constituents.

Now, in case there are any sticklers out there who question the religious sincerity of the unnamed clerk in this week's cartoon, please note that in every panel of the cartoon, her head is covered by a dialogue balloon.

Long Road to Victory, Part V

Part 5: The Rest of the World

For today's episode of Sweptback Saturday, here's one last (perhaps) installment of marriage equality cartoons. The U.S. of A. hasn't been the only country dealing with the issue, and it has by no means been the first. Our neighbor to the north legalized same-sex marriage in 2003:

Queen Consort Sofia, wife of then King Juan Carlos, had come out publicly against marriage rights for gay couples; but in 2005, Spain decided to ignore both her and the Vatican:

In 2006, Mexico City passed a law recognizing same-sex civil unions. The city's legislative assembly voted 39-20 in favor of full marriage equality three years later, even though polling of the electorate showed only half of the city's population approved. Just two weeks before the U.S. Supreme Court's Obergefell decision, the Mexico Supreme Court ruled that state bans on same-sex marriage were unconstitutional.

Queen Elizabeth signed legislation legalizing same-sex marriage in the Commonwealth of Nations in 2013. The legislation does not require member states, territories and dependencies to recognize same-sex marriage, and several do not. At this point, the only member nations with full marriage equality besides Canada and Great Britain are New Zealand, South Africa, and (not mentioned in this cartoon,) Pitcairn Island.

As the cartoon notes, many Commonwealth nations are holding out against marriage equality. (I should not have included "United Kingdom" in the cartoon, since Northern Ireland recognizes same-sex marriages, but unlike its southern counterpart, does not grant them.) In Russia, the Islamic world, and most of Africa where basic human rights of LGBT citizens are non-existent, marriage equality is not even on the horizon.

One can only hope that there will be a day in the not too distant future when I can add a "Long Road to Victory, Part VI" to this series.

AAEC Responds to Attack

Last week, the Association of American Editorial Cartoonists came out with a statement condemning the attempted attack by two gunmen on the "Muhammad Art Exhibit and Contest" in Garland, Texas

The shootings in Texas once again demonstrate that art is provocative, but we must not cower in the face of threats to this profession or to free expression. Political art, be it cartoons, paintings, sculpture, or anything else, is protected speech under the First Amendment.  The group that sponsored the “art contest” has been labeled a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center. The leader of the group seems to have her own tasteless and ignorant agenda. However, a group's political agenda, whether we agree with its goals or not, is subject to the same constitutional protections we all enjoy. Cartoons are powerful, as has been repeatedly shown in the past few months, and the AAEC condemns this senseless attack.

Well, I don't know whether I'd go so far as to call the attack "senseless." It sort of made some degree of sense in that it didn't take any great amount of effort to figure out why they did it. Pamela Geller hired extensive and mostly heavily armed security because the attack was rather predictable, which senseless attacks generally aren't.

Squeaky Fromme shooting at President Gerald Ford was senseless. Mark David Chapman killing John Lennon was senseless. The ridiculously convoluted murder plot on CSI: Cyber this evening was utterly senseless.

That one word, however, is a minor quibble in an otherwise accurate response.

Je Ne Veux Pas Être Pammie Geller

Sunday night, a pair of Islamic would-be killers tried to attack a deliberately provocative "Cartoon Mohammed" event in Garland, Texas. Armed guards killed them before they could carry out their plans; an unarmed security guard ("probably the only unarmed person in Texas," writes Clay Jones) was wounded in the 15-second gunfight. The So-Called Islamic State (SCIS) has claimed responsibility for the attempted mass murder.

The "Muhammad Art Exhibit and Contest" was organized by professional defiler of the prophet, Pamela Geller, and I have no doubt that this outcome was everything she had hoped for.

Now, I'm not above dipping my pen into some blasphemous ink from time to time...

This cartoon from 2005, a year before the Jyllands-Posten cartoon controversy, and six years before Charlie Hebdo's Mohammed cover (yet three years after Doug Marlette's "What Would Mohammed Drive" cartoon), doesn't include Mohammed -- but not because I set out to be sensitive to Islamic sensibilities. I simply didn't have a place for him in the cartoon. If I were redrawing the cartoon today, I wouldn't gratuitously stick Mohammed into it just to piss off the homicidal wing of his religion.

Not even for a $10,000 prize.

99.94% of the time, cartooning the founder of a religion is unnecessary.  Christ rolling his eyes has already been done (Marlette, again), and God delegates bouncer duty to St. Peter in all those eulogy cartoons set at the Pearly Gates. Overwhelmingly, it's the modern-day mouthpieces of religion who end up deserving of cartoon criticism.

I've seen the cartoons of Ms. Geller's contest compared to Andres Serrano's "Piss Christ," which depicts a plastic crucifix submerged in the artist's urine and won the Southeastern Center for Contemporary Art's "Awards in the Visual Arts" competition in 1987. It is a very offensive piece of art, it is true. That competition, however, was not expressly limited to art intended to offend Christians, as Ms. Geller's contest was expressly limited to cartoons intended to offend Muslims. The Southeastern Center for Contemporary Art does not have attacking Christianity as its mission statement.

Let me be clear, here. I am against mass murder and attempted mass murder. I'm against the murder, or attempted murder of editorial cartoonists. I believe in free speech, and that this right extends to Stéphane Charbonnier, Bosch Fawstin and Larry Flynt.

To paraphrase Voltaire, "I may defend your right to say what you say, but I will disapprove of it to the death."

Or perhaps these Hebdo cartoonists say it better.

We Are Charlie Hebdo

"100 lashes if you don't die of laughter!"

Terrorists killed at least 12 people, including policemen and cartoonists, at the offices of French satirical magazine newspaper Charlie Hebdo (loosely translated as "Charlie Weekly") this morning.

The cartoonists assassinated were Jean "Cabu" Cabut, Georges Wolinski, Bernad "Tignous" Verlhac, and editor Stéphane Charbonnier, who signed his cartoons "Charb."

In 2006, Charlie Hebdo had reprinted the caricatures of Mohammed that had appeared in the Dutch magazine Jyllands-Posten and added a few of their own. The cover at right was from a 2011 issue whose conceit was that Muslims had taken over the magazine that week. Islamic terrorists responded by fire bombing the offices. Charlie Hebdo responded in turn with a cover showing a stereotypical Moslem and one of their own cartoonists deep in a wet, sloppy kiss.

Charlie Hebdo was an equal opportunity offender, running scandalous cartoons about not only politicians and celebrities, but also the Catholic church, Jews, and Muslims which would never get past an editor in the United States. One cover showed a Nazi SS guard and an Orthodox Jew deep in yet another wet, sloppy kiss. Other cartoons have depicted the Pope having sex, with and without condoms, and various other lewd and scatological acts. Another depicted the Holy Trinity as a three-way. Charlie Hebdo is not so much Punch as it is Hustler with fewer photographs.

"Still no attack in France."
"Wait! We can send best wishes till
the end of January."

The magazine newspaper has been under guard by police due to the continued threats against it, but has refused to back down. Charb recently drew a poke in the eye of  the terrorists with the cartoon at right. (This must have been drawn before a series of attacks in December in Joue-les-Tours, Dijon and Nantes.)

Centuries ago, Christianity was mired in its Dark Ages while Islam was alive with intellectual activity, science and art -- and, yes, satire. After attacks from rural, anti-intellectual barbarians from East (and from the ascending West), Islam sunk into its own Dark Ages, which these terrorists hope to spread around the world.

Nous sommes tous Charlie Hebdo.

We are all Charlie Hebdo.

Update: The American Association of Editorial Cartoonists has issued its condemnation of the attack: "Cartoonists and journalists around the world should be permitted to express themselves freely without fear of reprisal. These types of attacks only serve to illustrate how important the free spirit of cartoon commentary is, and how cartoonists make a difference in helping to expose hypocrisy."

This Week's Toon: Boycotting CPAC

The Conservative Political Action Cabal (CPAC) gathers for its annual convention this week without several of its prominent members. Concerned Women for America, Family Research Council, Liberty Council, National Organization for Marriage, and other group have objected that one of the conference's sponsors is GOProud, the far-right, but still quite gay, Republican group.

Now it turns out that it's not just an anti-gay thing, however.

Who would believe that organizer Grover Norquist (of "drown the federal government in a bathtub" fame) has ties to Muslim Brotherhood? Who would believe that a panel on freedom of religion is being co-sponsored by (shudder!) an Islamic group? That's too much for many in the conservative - libertarian - tea partisan - Southern Baptistocracy alliance to bear, and even more are streaming to the exits.

How's that Biggy Tenty thing workin' out for ya?

Islamic Stereotypes

(These two letters reference the accompanying cartoon from July, 2001.)

Dear Illustrator Berge and Editors of Between the Lines:


I am writing to you today about your editorial cartoon that appeared in the July 12-18 2001 issue of "Between the Lines." This particular cartoon dealt with the United Nations conference on HIV/AIDS. Clearly you were just as annoyed as me listening to accounts of the UN conference and the inane commentary from some member nations about the inclusion of certain terms like, "gay" or "lesbian." If I were a graphic artist, I too would want to comment on such lunacy as well! At least, there were some sane people there who acknowledged the role the glbt community has had in educating the public at large on AIDS/HIV.

I looked with interest at your editorial cartoon on the whole thing, and initially, made one of those snorts of approval, you know the type. However, as I looked at your piece a little bit longer, there was something that bothered me. I do understand the conventions of the genre in editorial cartoons call on the use of caricature, however I do sometimes questions the conventions (of anything). In your piece I am questioning particularly the representations of Arabs: a robe wearing, saber toting, bearded man with combat boots on seems to be more of a stereotype rather than caricature.

I think that those of us in the gblt community must be aware of not only how we are stereotyped, but also then think about how we ourselves might be doing the same things to others. It only stands to reason that if we do not want others to essentialize us, then we should not do that to other people.

Also, one other additional side note. I noted a figure toward the back that looks a great deal like the pope. As a point of reference: of the 188 member states of the United Nations, the Vatican is not one of them!

Thanks for your time, and thank you for considering my thoughts.

Yours,
Katie Scott
Department of English
Wayne State University
Detroit Michigan 48202


Greetings. I'm writing in reference to the cartoon that appeared in my local BLTG paper, Between The Lines (Michigan), for the week of 7/12/01--7/18/01. I am familiar with the situation at the U.N. and that it was specifically the representatives of Muslim countries that continue to object to a reasonable and inclusive discussion of the global AIDS pandemic. As an HIV/AIDS counselor, I am well aware for the need to address this problem on the international stage. However, I am concerned that your characterization of the 'protestors' plays on ethnocentric stereotypes held by the majority of Americans (U.S.). Yes, I see that you included a papal characterization as well; however, the prominent figures are all portrayed with exaggerated features with mean looks on their faces. In a country where sterotyping, is rampant and contributes to a climate of intolerance of many ethnic and religious groups, particularly Muslims, I have to conclude that you picked a poor subject...or rather, picked a problematic way of addressing it. There are many, many Muslims who would and do support a dialogue on AIDS. Just as George W. doesn't represent the majority of U.S. citizens, neither do the heads of state of many Muslim countries represent all their people.

I found the caption funny, by the way, as I have many of your cartoons. I just wanted to let you know that the drawing was offensive to me and possibly to others as well. I have not sent this to the paper for publishing; I have, however sent it to the founder of the Al-Fatiha Foundation for LGBTQ Muslims. Someone from their organization would be able to address this issue more eloquently than I am; however, they have much bigger issues to deal with at the moment.

Please take this in the gentle spirit in which it is given. I do not mean to offend, only to share what may be a minority, yet important, viewpoint. Thanks for listening.

Sincerely,
Heather MacAllister
Field Organizer
Triangle Foundation
Report Hate Crimes 1-877-7-TRIANGLE


(Cartoonist's note: These two women have a legitimate complaint. It can be rough to find a balance between a caricature that everyone will recognize and one that is so overblown that it can only offend.
(Incidentally, the guy in the back with the kaffiyeh was originally intended to represent the various military regimes in Islamdom, but he kept looking more like a stereotypical 1970s era Latin American dictator. I made him a representative of the Faisal family instead--but kept the boots.
(As for including the Pope, I had read that the Vatican was involved in the background in the creation of the conference report. Putting him in the background of the cartoon seemed like a good idea at the time.)


(In 2005, there was a well-publicized incident in which George W. Bush held the hand of Saudi Crown Prince Abdullah as the latter was visiting at Dubya's Crawford ranch. By the time my cartoon deadline rolled around, there had been plenty of late-night TV and editorial cartoon jokes about how gay that looked, mostly imagining horrified reactions from the president's many homophobic political allies. Meanwhile, there was a trial going on in Saudi Arabia of several Saudi men arrested for attending a same-sex wedding. I drew a cartoon obliquely referencing this incident by having Abdullah comment that in his country, "two men holding hands like this would be severely flogged."
(The cartoon drew this response from gay columnist Paul Vernell:)

While the Q-Syndicate editorial cartoon of Bush and the Saudi official holding hands was a cute idea, it is based on a factual error.

It is simply not true, as you have the Saudi official commenting, that "two men holding hands like this" would be "severely flogged." In fact, hand-holding is extremely common among Arab men and indicates nothing more than warm friendship. Nothing about it is viewed as homoerotic. That is why Bush, as an act of diplomacy, held the hand of the Saudi prince. He was playing to the Arab audience.

U.S. military handbooks regularly warn American servicemembers serving in the Arab world not to assume that two Arab men holding hands are homosexual. And at least one U.S. anti-terror expert advised American businessmen in Arab countries that if they felt at risk of imminent attack for being American, they should immediately grab the hand of some other male in their group and amble along slowly as if they had nowhere special to go--in imitation of typical Arab behavior.

Most sincerely,
Paul Varnell


(We had a polite exchange of e-mails after this. Incidentally, I've since finished reading Bernard Lewis' What Went Wrong?: Western Impact and Middle Eastern Response, which does a nice job trying to explain some of the basic societal differences between the West and the Islamic world.

(Then, after becoming fully sensitized to Islamic sensitivities, I heard news of the arrest by Pakistani authorities of Mukhtaran Bibi, preventing her from traveling to the United States to attend a convention of the Asian American Network Against Abuse of Women. Mukhtaran Bibi had been sentenced by a tribal order to be gang raped -- as punishment for adultery committed by her younger brother. I'll remember her the next time someone tells me how much more revered and respected women are in the Islamic world than in the West.)