Remembering John McCain

Sedonaback Saturday had intended to bring you a Back-to-School edition, but that will have to wait for another day. Instead, I've selected a handful of cartoons I've drawn about Arizona Republican John S. McCain III over the years. 

Due to the nature of political cartooning, these are not all flattering. The form does not lend itself well to flattery, and McCain was a complex, sometimes contradictory character. In these first two, however, he joined with freshman Senator from Wisconsin, Democrat Russ Feingold, in a valiant effort to combat the overbearing influence of corporate and Political Action Committee "soft money" in politics.

McCain came to the issue having been singed in the Keating Five scandal, involving favors for a Savings and Loan which ultimately failed during the S&L crisis of the late 1980's. A Senate Ethics Committee investigation cleared McCain of any criminal wrong-doing, but he would admit, "The appearance of it was wrong. It's a wrong appearance when a group of senators appear in a meeting with a group of regulators, because it conveys the impression of undue and improper influence. And it was the wrong thing to do."

McCain-Feingold was a tough sell on Capitol Hill. A version of the bill eventually passed in 2002, but was overturned by the Supreme Court's infamous Citizens United ruling in 2010. But it is only one example of how John McCain, holding true to his conservative principles, would reach across the aisle to even the most liberal of Democrats to achieve a common goal.

In 1999, with McCain-Feingold yet to become law, McCain announced his first run for the presidency. Differentiating himself from the rest of the Republican field, he was receptive to interests of the LGBT Log Cabin Republicans, securing their endorsement early on.

Indeed, he was willing to speak up on behalf of LGBT members of his party, notably former Congressman Jim Kolbe. But on issues of interest to LGBT voters generally, there was little difference between him and the other front runners.

He hadn't changed his position on gays in the military by the time he announced his second run for the White House eight years later. If anything, he tacked even more closely to religious right orthodoxy on LGBT issues.

But McCain was not a follower of the scorched earth policy that has come into vogue with Newt Gingrich, the Tea Party, and the Corrupt Trump Administration. In addition to leading the fight for campaign finance reform with Russ Feingold, he worked with John Kerry on normalizing relations with Vietnam, and with Ted Kennedy and later the bipartisan "Gang of Eight" in a vain attempt to reform our immigration system. He seriously considered naming Independent Senator Joe Lieberman as his running mate in 2008.

The clip of him correcting a woman at one of his campaign rallies who said she would never trust Barack Obama because "he's an Arab" — McCain called him a "decent family man, citizen, that I just happen to have disagreements with on fundamental issues" — has been viewed and debated on TV and social media many times this week. He also defended 2004 Democratic presidential nominee and fellow Vietnam veteran John Kerry against the scurrilous "Swift Boat" attack ads.

“I deplore this kind of politics,” McCain said. “I think the ad is dishonest and dishonorable. As it is, none of these individuals served on the boat [Kerry] commanded. Many of his crew have testified to his courage under fire. I think John Kerry served honorably in Vietnam. I think George Bush served honorably in the Texas Air National Guard during the Vietnam War.”

But anyone who claims he was anything other than a loyal Republican is full of crap. He voted for every GOP tax cut, for Dubya's war in Iraq, to remove Bill Clinton from office, and for 83% of the Trump Agenda. His 2010 campaign ads even called for posting the U.S. military along the Mexican border and "build[ing] the damn fence."

McCain had lost the 2000 nomination to George W. Bush in part due to a Karl Rove push-poll asking South Carolina voters "Would you be more or less likely to vote for John McCain…if you knew he had fathered an illegitimate black child?" (He hadn't.) He was deeply offended by the libelous attack. His literal embrace of Bush at the 2008 convention may have dented his reputation for being a "maverick," but it is indicative of the brand of loyalty, surpassing personal grievance, he believed in.

Perhaps it takes being a maverick to display that kind of loyalty any more. His fellow Republicans seemed to be more thrilled with his selection of Sarah Palin as running mate than they were with having him at the head of the ticket. The gravitational pull within the GOP then and now has been toward the doggedly anti-intellectual, semi-literate, vituperative and even fact-free style she epitomized.

You hadn't heard him once say a critical word of Mrs. Palin in the ten years since (although in his final memoir, he regretted not having stuck with the idea of running with Lieberman). The style of Republicanism currently in vogue is not the future he saw for this country in his farewell message:

"We weaken our greatness when we confuse our patriotism with tribal rivalries that have sown resentment and hatred and violence in all the corners of the globe. We weaken it when we hide behind walls, rather than tear them down, when we doubt the power of ideals rather than trust them to be the great force for change that they have always been.
"We are three-hundred-and-twenty-five million opinionated, vociferous individuals. We argue and compete and sometimes even vilify each other in our raucous public debates. But we have always had so much more in common with each other than in disagreement. If only we remember that and give each other the benefit of the presumption that we all love our country we will get through these challenging times. We will come through them stronger than before. We always do. ...
"Do not despair of our present difficulties but believe always in the promise and greatness of America, because nothing is inevitable here. Americans never quit. We never surrender. We never hide from history.
"We make history."

R.I.P. John McCain

Updates on the Eights

August has a reputation for being a month of summer doldrums in which little happens by way of news, but I find plenty to disprove that reputation when leafing through my cartoons drawn in August years ending in 8. That is partly because of national political conventions in election years, but not entirely.

August, 1978 saw the election of Cardinal Albino Luciani as Pope John Paul I, who broke with tradition both by selecting a double name and by having the Roman numeral I after it (unlike, for example, Pope Francis). Allied with neither the conservative or liberal activist cardinals of the time, Luciani had not been among the popularly rumored successors to Pope Paul VI.

Black smoke rose from the Sistine Chimney as the first three inconclusive ballots were burned. White smoke should have signaled the election of a new pope, but witnesses described the smoke from the fourth and conclusive ballot as gray.

John Paul I's papacy would last only 33 days (which still doesn't rank as the shortest papacy on record; ten popes reigned more briefly than he). He apparently had a heart attack while reading in bed, leaving little legacy besides the double name taken up by his successor, and rumors — fictionalized in Godfather III — that he was murdered.

Skipping ahead ten years, August, 1988 was an election year in the U.S. Wisconsin's statewide partisan primary was held in September back then (reminder: now it's this Tuesday!). There were races to succeed retiring Senator Bill Proxmire in both parties. Two of the candidates were Democratic former Governor Tony Earl and Republican Steve King, best known for having held and drugged Martha Mitchell, wife of Nixon's Attorney General, in her hotel room to keep her from talking to the press.

My cartoon for The Journal Times took note of the senatorial candidates' names as well as a nickname for Democratic presidential nominee Michael Dukakis. "Duke" didn't really suit the man well, and it didn't stick. As for King and Earl, both lost their parties' nominations to State Senator Susan Engeleiter and the ultimate winner, Milwaukee Bucks owner Herb Kohl.

Earl currently serves on the governing board of the governmental watchdog group Common Cause Wisconsin. King has been Trump's ambassador to the Czech Republic since 2017.

The National Republican Party held its presidential nominating convention in August. Vice President George H.W. Bush had the nomination all locked up, so the only suspense was over whom he would name as his running mate. His choice of Senator J. Danforth Quayle (R-IN) surprised everyone, including your humble cartoonist, who had not included Dan in the above cartoon.

Skipping ahead another ten years to August, 1998, I was freelancing separate cartoons for University of Wisconsin campus newspapers (yes, even in August), the Business Journal of Greater Milwaukee, and LGBTQ biweekly In Step News.

Rep. Joel Hefley (R-CO) had sponsored an amendment to a vital appropriations bill; the amendment would have gutted President Clinton's Executive Order 13087, which added sexual orientation to the federal government's nondiscrimination policies. Lobbying the Republican-controlled House and Senate to defeat the amendment was a chief goal of the Human Rights Campaign that year. Surprisingly, the House voted 252-176 to defeat the Hefley Amendment.

Of course, the George W. Bush and Donald Joffrey Trump administrations revoked Executive Order 13087 and its Obama administration equivalent, E.O. 13672.

I had to get one Business Journal cartoon in here. I think you ought to be able to figure out the point of the editorial it accompanied.

But the Big Story out of August, 1998 was not about appropriations bills or rural property taxes.

President Clinton's vehement denials of sexual encounters with White House intern Monica Lewinsky were given the lie when Lewinsky turned over a blue dress stained with presidential semen (which her pal at the Pentagon, Linda Tripp, had encouraged her to save as evidence).

These days, there's an entire cable news network devoted to defending the current president, no matter how overwhelming the evidence against him, and crowds of ardent supporters who will hoot and holler their fervent belief in his obvious lies. But in August, 1998, it seemed that the only person in the whole country willing to stick his neck out in support of William Jefferson Clinton was Congressman Barney Frank (D-MA). He may still have the original of this cartoon.

I'll leave you in suspense over how the Lewinsky story turned out, and instead jump ahead another ten years to August, 2008. The Olympics were coming for the first time to Communist China, where the authoritarian government took strict measures to clean up Beijing in time for the games.

If only they could have worked as hard to clean up the smog!

Even while authorities were shuttering the dance floor of Destination, Beijing's one and only gay dance bar (claiming the bar was too small to be a club), official state media were highlighting Destination as proof of the country's friendliness to its LGBTQ citizens. From the Xinua news article “Beijing’s Gay Scene Comes Out of the Closet”:

At weekends, the floor is always crowded with young men dancing close to each other to hit songs from Rihanna, Justin Timberlake or Kanye West. The strobe lights flash over their ecstatic faces and sweating bodies. Some stand in the corner drinking, flirting or just watching. … Today, China's young gay men enjoy a freer environment. With the thriving online gay communities, such as aibai.com, idanlan.com, gays can easily find each other and arrange activities through on-line forums or chat rooms.

2008 was also another presidential election year, of course.

Presumptive GOP presidential nominee John McCain (the party convention wouldn't be held until September) launched a peculiar attack on Barack Obama on the grounds that it was somehow a bad thing that the Democratic nominee wanted drivers to keep their tires properly inflated.

The party's convention mantra of "Drill, Baby, Drill" would prove catchier than "Drive, Flabby, Drive." But George W. Bush's Great Recession would hit in September, totally changing the national conversation.

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: Amodo Fi

Late last month, Defense Secretary Ashton Carter announced that the DOD would lift its ban on military service by transgender citizens.

“This is the right thing to do for our people and for the force,” Carter said. “We’re talking about talented Americans who are serving with distinction or who want the opportunity to serve. We can’t allow barriers unrelated to a person’s qualifications prevent us from recruiting and retaining those who can best accomplish the mission."

The policy will not take effect immediately; DOD wants to draw up a policy manual first, and to determine medical protocols when a service member or veteran seeks hormone therapy and/or gender correction surgery. A Rand Corporation study estimates that there are anywhere from 1,320 to 6,630 transgender troops in the active-duty force of 1.3 million. Perhaps as many as a couple hundred might opt for gender correction surgery on the Defense Department's dime, costing $2.4 million to $8.4 million per year.

Republicans in charge of the Senate and House Armed Services Committees, John McCain and Mac Thornberry, have threatened to hold hearings in an effort to scuttle the new policy — or at least to rile up their party's transphobic base in an election year.

Heroes and Villains

May, 1973: U.S. News & World Report puts out one of its edgiest covers ever.

Q Toon: Condemned to Repeat It

Senator Lindsey Graham appeared with Senators John McCain and Joe Lieberman on CNN earlier this month, and program host Piers Morgan brought up the topic of marriage equality. After Graham had stated that South Carolina would never vote for marriage equality, the other two senators couched the issue in the question of states' rights to define marriage for themselves.

Morgan then suggested that it wasn't fair that a couple could be legally married in New York but not in South Carolina. I've twisted Senator Graham's words in the cartoon, so here's his original reply:

"Can — can I suggest this? Slavery was outlawed by a Constitutional amendment. Go watch 'Lincoln,' a great movie. The people decided. The question for us is who should decide these things? Should it be a handful of judges or should it be the people themselves? And I come out on the side of the people themselves. Different people will look at it differently. But slavery was outlawed by a Constitutional amendment. If you want to propose a Constitutional amendment legalizing same-sex marriage and it passes, that’s the law of the land."

Q Toon: Who's Your Sweet Babeu?

This has been a story made for cable news, but of less interest to print media -- outside of Phoenix New Times, which broke the story in the first place. Pinal County Sheriff Paul Babeu was thrust out of the closet after a relationship went sour. His ex, a Mexican immigrant named Jose Orozco, suspected that Babeu was trolling the internet for sex, and stung him by arranging a rendez-vous under a fake identity on line.

(Originally, I wasn't going to include the boyfriend's name in this cartoon, but decided that the name Jose helped clarify that I wasn't trying to gloss over his being, say, Swedish. In the last couple days, however, Orozco's full name and photo have been made public on line and on television, so I will not keep referring to him as "the boyfriend" here. I should also explain that I use the word "illegal" in the cartoon instead of "undocumented" on the assumption that Babeu would favor such terminology.)

Babeu has denied the accusation that he threatened to expose that Orozco was in the U.S. illegally if he ever went public with their relationship. Babeu has, however, come out of the closet as a gay man as a result of the story, which he says is a relief to him.

We'll have to see how this affects his candidacy to represent Arizona's fourth district in Congress. He may be hurt less for the revelation that he's gay (this was once Jim Kolbe's district, after all) than by the incongruity of his relationship with Jose with his record as a hardliner against illegal immigration. Babeu first came to national attention four years ago as the sheriff walking beside John McCain in the "Build the Dang Fence" ad:

It isn't just the sexual relationship that conflicts with Babeu's record on immigration: he also employed Orozco to create and maintain his internet presence (Facebook, Twitter, etc.). If you need a moment to let that sink in, here it is again: the guy who went on national TV to decry undocumented immigrants in this country was simultaneously employing a guy he knew to be an undocumented immigrant to work for him.

Giving Orozco that job may have been what ultimately came back to bite Babeu in the ass: Orozco became suspicious of Babeu once he found the sheriff's accounts on gay dating sites Adam4Adam and Chino Valley E-news.

Buried deep in the New Times story is a development that may embarrass openly gay Democratic congressional candidate Matt Heinz. After Heinz broke with his party in the Arizona legislature to vote to allocate $5 million to combat border violence in Pinal County -- which is 70 miles away from the Mexican border -- one of Babeu's text messages that Orozco released reports that Babeu planned to spend the night with Heinz and his partner. (Note: The allocation was reduced to $1.7 million in the final bill.) Perhaps after a night of clubbing with the Heinzes, Babeu was simply being prudent by not driving home; but the implication of something further could doom both of their campaigns to succeed Gabby Giffords in Congress.

Q Toon: Pfc. Bradley Manning

The defense in the pre-court martial hearing of accused Wikileaker Pfc. Bradley Manning argues that the U.S. Military has no one but itself to blame for having foolishly entrusted its Top Secrets to a gay soldier with gender identity issues in the first place.

From msnbc:

"The defense stated Saturday that Manning, 24, had written to one of his supervisors when he was stationed in Iraq before his arrest and said he had concluded he was suffering from gender identity disorder, which is classified as a medical disorder in the International Statistical Classification of Diseases and Related Health Problems. He included a photo of himself dressed as a woman in the letter and said the issue was affecting his ability to do his job or think clearly. A defense attorney and a witness also stated that Manning had created a Facebook profile and opened at least one email account using the name 'Breanna Manning,' which the attorney described as an 'alter-ego.'"

As for myself, I reserve judgment on whether Pfc. Manning's actions amount to high treason or not, but I wish his defense would concentrate on the government's habit of stamping "Top Secret" on everything from aircraft crash reports to last month's cafeteria menu at Foggy Bottom.

Q Toon: The Exorcist

There must be a tie-in to the new Anthony Hopkins movie here...

This week's cartoon was inspired by this article by Candace Chellew-Hodge at religiondispatches.org. Chellew-Hodge excerpts an interview of former Navy chaplain Gordon Klingenschmitt on the David Pakman show in which he describes having "exorcised" the gay out of a lesbian sailor:

"I looked into her eyes and said 'You foul demon of lesbian homosexuality, come out of this woman in Jesus’ name!' She began to weep and she loved Jesus. She began reading her Bible, became the best evangelist in our church. She got baptized and started dating boys."

Klingenschmitt, who was discharged from the Navy for wearing his military uniform to partisan political events (that's a no-no), frets that the end of "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" will mean that other chaplains will no longer be allowed to exorcise those foul demons of lesbian homosexuality from the service members in their care.

Who ya gonna call? Ghost busters?

Q Toon: John Corley McCain, Jr.

Arizona Senator John McCain makes another appearance in this week's cartoon for his dogged insistence that gay and lesbian servicemembers lie about their lives and loved ones if they have the temerity to wish to defend their country.

The reference in this cartoon, for those too young to remember it (or in those Southern school districts where the Texas School Board version of U.S. history holds sway) compares McCain to Alabama Governor George Wallace blocking the University of Alabama door in 1963.

Q Toon: Cindy McCain Reconsiders

One of the main challenges in caricaturing women is their hair.

Men tend to keep the same hairstyle as long as they can. A hairstyle change may be forced upon them by genetics (e.g. Jerry Brown), or it may simply go gray (Russ Feingold), but that change tends to be gradual. Sudden changes, such as when Jimmy Carter started parting his hair on the opposite side of his head, or when Al Gore tested out a beard, tend to be rare.

But some women change hairstyles relatively often.

In her appearance in the NOH8 campaign video, Cindy McCain does not wear the hairstyle I drew on her head in this cartoon. This hairdo comes from an appearance on the campaign trail in 2008, whereas her hairdo in the video is a sort of short, free and breezy cut. Unfortunately for the purposes of the cartoon, that haircut wouldn't be distinctive enough for people to recognize it again in the last panel.

Some cartoonists still draw Sarah Palin with her hair piled up in the 'do she wore when most of America first met her, even though she hasn't been favoring that style in over a year. There aren't a lot of cartoons of Hilary Clinton these days, but the few that you see tend to show her wearing her hair as she wore it in the '08 campaign, or even when she was First Lady.

Look for considerable consternation among cartoonists if Nancy Pelosi ever restyles her hairdo.

Amendment Authorizing End to DADT Passes

The House of Representatives voted 234-194 yesterday to approve an amendment repealing "Don't Ask, Don't Tell". The amendment will be attached to the 2011 Department of Defense Authorization Bill. Five Republicans, Charles Djou (HI), Joseph Cao (LA), Judy Biggert (IL), Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (FL) and Ron Paul (TX), joined 229 Democrats in approving the measure. Djou was just sworn in days ago after a special election to fill the seat of Democrat Neil Abercrombie (resigned to run for governor). Cao, who succeeded the corrupt William Jefferson, was the lone Republican to vote for the draft Affordable Health Care for America Act; but, citing objections to public funding for elective abortion, he joined the rest of his party in opposing the final version, the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act. Paul, of course, is the Libertarian who ran for president in 1988 and 2008. 26 Democrats joined the remaining 168 Republicans in opposition to the bill. Those Democrats, grouped by state, are: Bobby Bright (AL); Marion Berry and Mike Ross (AR); Sanford Bishop Jr., Jim Marshall (GA); Jerry Costello and Frank Lipinski (IL); Joe Donnelly (IN), Collin Peterson (MN), Ike Skelton (MO); Travis Childers and Gene Taylor (MS); Bob Etheridge, Mike McIntyre and Heath Shuler (NC); Earl Pomeroy (ND); Christopher Carney, Mark Critz and Chet Edwards (PA); John Spratt Jr. (SC); Gene Green and Solomon Ortiz (TX); Lincoln Davis and John Tanner (TN); Rick Boucher (VA); and Nick Rahall II (WV). The Republican representing my home district, Paul Ryan, did not vote. The New York Times has the roll call here. President Obama issued this statement this morning:

"I have long advocated that we repeal ‘Don’t Ask Don’t Tell’, and I am pleased that both the House of Representatives and the Senate Armed Services Committee took important bipartisan steps toward repeal tonight. Key to successful repeal will be the ongoing Defense Department review, and as such I am grateful that the amendments offered by Representative Patrick Murphy and Senators Joseph Lieberman and Carl Levin that passed today will ensure that the Department of Defense can complete that comprehensive review that will allow our military and their families the opportunity to inform and shape the implementation process. Our military is made up of the best and bravest men and women in our nation, and my greatest honor is leading them as Commander-in-Chief. This legislation will help make our Armed Forces even stronger and more inclusive by allowing gay and lesbian soldiers to serve honestly and with integrity."

The full defense appropriation bill still needs to be approved by both houses of Congress; right-wing lap dog John McCain is threatening a filibuster. 

Paul Berge
Q Syndicate
Feb 24, 2010

EditorialCartoonists.com

The "Fierce Advocate" in 2008

Paul Berge Q Syndicate May 20, 2008 EditorialCartoonists.com

I drew the above cartoon in May of 2008, as the presidential candidates responded to the California Supreme Court's Marriages decision recognizing a constitutional right to marriage equality in that state. Both Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama seemed taken off guard by the decision, issuing awkward statements that acknowledged the decision without much if any sense of congratulation to LGBT voters. 

The Clinton campaign, however, did recover its footing enough to send daughter Chelsea to LGBT events to campaign for our votes. I certainly never got the impression at any point in the campaign that Obama was a "fierce advocate" for LGBT rights, even though he claimed to be. He was pressed on LGBT issues at a number of fora and debates, and always seemed to come up with parsed, legalistic answers on marriage rights — supporting "civil unions" rather than "marriages" for us (as did every Democratic candidate other than Dennis Kucinich and Mike Gravel). 

That didn't prevent me from voting for Obama, either in the Wisconsin primary or the general election. Much as I would have liked to imagine that he would be stronger on LGBT issues than his campaign persona ought to have led anyone to believe, I supported him on other issues and thought he would be more electable in November than Hillary Clinton. 

This is not to say that the administration's brief on DOMA this month is anything other than greatly disappointing. The May, 2008 cartoon, and the one out this week (below) were both drawn more in sorrow than in anger; but the ratio is closer to 50-50 this week.