Q Toon: Not in Kansas Any More

Overriding their governor's veto, Kansas Republicans passed a law abruptly voiding the drivers' licenses of any and all transgender citizens of the Sunflower State. The Kansas law further invalidates birth certificates in which the gender marker has been changed.

AIRWAY, Kan. (KCTV) - Kansans are now required to list their sex at birth on their driver’s license under a new state law that has already rendered hundreds of IDs invalid.

Letters were sent to impacted drivers this week notifying them their licenses are no longer valid. ...

The law also prohibits transgender people from using public restrooms on government property consistent with their gender identity. It allows someone suspected of being transgender and violating the law to be sued for up to $1,000.

Trans Kansans are required to surrender invalidated driver’s license to the state before they can receive a replacement that misidentifies their present gender (and I wouldn't be surprised if the new license were to deadname them as well).

There was no grace period, taking effect immediately upon passage. Transgender drivers had no time to comply with the law before losing their driving privileges. 

"People who have changed the gender marker are worried about being pulled over on the way to getting their new driver's license. They're stressed. Matthew Neumann is a transgender man in central Kansas. He leads a statewide LGBTQ mutual aid organization. You know, he's got a long beard, a bald head, and now, whenever he applies for a job or gets pulled over by police, his ID is going to out him as transgender, whether he likes it or not."

The new law, besides imposing penalties for driving without one's birth genitalia, effectively disenfranchises transgender voters; state law requires that voters present a state-issued, unexpired, photo ID to cast a ballot. 

Meanwhile, Texas has not gone so far as to revoke transgender citizens' driving licenses, but does prevent trans Texans from updating the gender marker on their driver's license or state ID; nor is there an "X" option for non-binary persons. Trans activists worried that the state's 2024 law would deter people from voting in Tuesday's primary. 

“Trans voters are left vulnerable to being outed, questioned, or turned away, which creates very real barriers to casting a ballot,” [Caleb Armstrong, a transmasculine Texan and co-founder of Local Queer Foundation] wrote in an email. “It is difficult to find accurate information about voting as a trans person, and for many, the fear of navigating the process is enough to keep folks from voting at all. This fear and confusion has a purpose in trying to silence our voices and keep trans people from participating fully in our democracy.”

As it turned out, more voters may have been deterred from voting simply by a change of the rules on where Dallas voters were supposed to go. Polls had to be kept open for two hours past the usual closing time, just to accommodate voters who went to their usual polling place only to be told they had to go somewhere else.

Even then, Rep. Jasmine Crockett’s campaign is considering a lawsuit over the confusion.

All of which is an argument against constantly changing election rules.

Returning to the topic of this week's cartoon, two trans men from Lawrence, Kansas, have filed a lawsuit in Douglas County District Court to challenge the state's new law. The anonymous pair are represented by the American Civil Liberties Union and a Philadelphia-based law firm. A hearing is scheduled tomorrow.

Got a Feeling Kansas Is Not on Meta Any More

Screenshot from my phone

I was taken aback to find this notification on my Facebook feed this morning .

Last August, I had posted a link to a news story about a Kansas sheriff who raided the office of a local weekly newspaper, the Marion Record, and the home of its publisher, confiscating the newspaper's computers and resulting in the death of the publisher's elderly mother. The reporting by a progressive online news organization in Kansas was picked up by national media and others like me who were alarmed by this fundamental violation of freedom of the press.

Clicking the "See why" bar, I was told that my post presented a cybersecurity hazard to the metaverse.

Turns out I was by no means alone.

The Kansas Reflector article had been shared by several others in the journalism biz, and everyone who had shared that story on Facebook woke up to the same We Removed Your Content warning.

In fact, so had everyone who had shared any Kansas Reflector article on Facebook.

For the reason why, you'd have to go to the Kansas Reflector itself, because you can't read it on Facebook.

This morning, sometime between 8:20 and 8:50 a.m. Thursday, Facebook removed all posts linking to Kansas Reflector’s website.

This move not only affected Kansas Reflector’s Facebook page, where we link to nearly every story we publish, but the pages of everyone who has ever shared a story from us.

That’s the short version of the virtual earthquake that has shaken our readers. We’ve been flooded with instant messages and emails from readers asking what happened, how they can help and why the platform now falsely claims we’re a cybersecurity risk.

Allow us to assuage the biggest concerns first.

We were not hacked, and our website does not pose a cybersecurity threat. You and your devices are safe while reading our stories and sharing them. Facebook won’t let you do so at present, but other, non-Meta-owned platforms should be fine.

As to what happened, we’re still working on finding out. Many have wondered if one story or another was responsible, highlighting our coverage of the Marion newspaper raid or state government.

Coincidentally, the removals happened the same day we published a column from Dave Kendall that is critical of Facebook’s decision to reject certain types of advertising: “When Facebook fails, local media matters even more for our planet’s future.”

When we attempted to share the column on Facebook this morning — shortly after 8 a.m. — the link was summarily rejected. After a second attempt at posting, we instead simply linked to our website with advice to find the story there. Within the next half-hour, all posts linking to our site were gone. For reference, we have published more than 6,000 news stories, briefs and opinion columns since Kansas Reflector’s founding in 2020.

Now, it is true that the Marion newspaper raid is an ongoing story; the Marion County Record filed a court case against the mayor, police chief, and sheriff just this week. But I'm going to go out on a limb here and say that Facebook isn't desperate to protect Sheriff Roscoe Coltrane and Boss Hogg. To my mind, there is no coincidence that the Dave Kendall article complaining about Facebook was published the very morning that the Zuckerverse came crashing down on the Reflector. 

Kendall had produced a documentary film about local efforts to combat climate change. He then decided to "boost" a Facebook post advertising screenings of his film.

Imagine my surprise when I attempted to “boost” a post on Meta’s Facebook to begin our online promotional efforts — and the company summarily rejected it.

Why? According to the automated response I received, the post “doesn’t comply with our Ads about Social Issues, Elections or Politics policy.”

Apparently, Meta deems climate change too controversial for discussion on their platforms.

I had suspected such might be the case, because all the posts I made prior to the attempted boost seemed to drop off the radar with little response. As I took a closer look, I found others complaining about Facebook squelching posts related to climate change.

... [I]n the Meta-verse, where it seems virtually impossible to connect with a human being associated with the administration of the platform, rules are rules, and it appears they would prefer to suppress anything that might prove problematic for them.

 By mid afternoon, the Reflector had updated the story about Facebook shutting them down:

Facebook appears to have restored Kansas Reflector’s ability to share links to our website and our past posts, approximately seven hours after the problem was first reported. We have not received an explanation about why our stories were blocked.

Meta spokesman Andy Stone offered the following response on Twitter: “This was an error that had nothing to do with the Reflector’s recent criticism of Meta. It has since been reversed and we apologize to the Reflector and its readers for the mistake.”

As of Thursday evening, the column criticizing Meta still cannot be shared on Facebook. We are continuing to monitor the situation. If you experience any difficulties with the platform and Reflector articles, please let us know. If you want to support our work, please donate.

Q Toon: Pride 2023

I like to come up with an LGBTQIA+ Pride themed cartoon in time for monthly publications' June issues. This year, it just feels impossible to come up with anything upbeat, let alone funny.

Pride celebrations have been cancelled in several Florida communities this year due to the "hostile environment" created by Governor Ron DeSantis and his legislature's intentionally vague law criminalizing drag performances. 

Florida is by no means alone in promulgating DeSantis-style Cancel Culture. Event organizers have cancelled similar celebrations in Kansas, and organizers are concerned that a legislation in Tennessee may yet force them to cancel events in Memphis and Knoxville.

The onslaught of viciously anti-LGBTQ legislation being regurgitated from one red state to the next makes this a bleak Pride season. 

Who knew that we would come to miss the crass Pride Merch commercialism of 1992 to 2016?

Q Toon: Sinema Vérité

I wanted to draw a cartoon this week about the Senate race in Arizona between Kyrsten Sinema and Martha McSally, which had yet to be decided when I sat down at my drawing board. Sinema was leading at the time, and has since been declared the winner, making her the first out bisexual elected to the Senate.

Reading a Huffington Post story about LGBTQ candidates elected to office convinced me to expand the scope of the cartoon to include Senator Tammy Baldwin (D-WI), who coasted to reelection in my home state, and three newly elected members of the House of Representatives: Angie Craig (D-MN), Sharice Davids (D-KS), and Chris Pappas (D-NH). Cramming them all into one cartoon, I barely had enough room to squeeze in my signature.

And as soon as I thought I was finished inking the toon, I realized that I had completely forgotten about Congressman Mark Pocan (D-WI). It turns out that Pocan had no opponent in his Madison-area district, so he wasn't even in the local coverage of election results.

For that matter, I also neglected to include David Cicilline (D-RI), Sean Maloney (D-NY), and Mark Takano (D-HI).  Shame on me for not fact-checking HuffPo! My Spidey sense should have been tingling, if only because when I originally read their story, the lead photo at the top of the page was of Representative-elect Ilhan Omar (D-MN), who has not been identified as L, G, B, T, Q, or any of the other letters of the rainbow alphabet.

As for the Congresspersons who did make it into this week's cartoon, Sinema flips a Senate seat that has been Republican for three decades. She has been a member of the House's Blue Dog caucus of moderate and conservative Democrats, even winning the endorsement of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce in 2014. That didn't stop Republican opponent Martha McSally from trying to paint Sinema as a radical left winger, based on Sinema's having entered local politics as a candidate of the Green Party.

Baldwin is in fact well to the left of most Senators, but ran a finely tuned and savvy campaign for her third term. Unopposed in the primary while two Republicans duked it out for their party's nominations, she established herself in early television ads as having stood up for small towns hurt when their major employer pulls up stakes; for the cheese-making industry; and for favoring American-made products in military contracts. When ALEC stooge Leah Vukmir won the Republican nomination, Baldwin's ads attacked her relentlessly for acting to restrict access to and affordability of health insurance.

Craig, in a rematch of a race she lost in 2016, beat a militant libertarian who equated marriage equality with slavery and complained that calling a woman who has had more than one or two love interests in her life a "slut" just isn't acceptable any more. A former health care executive, she joined many others in her party in focusing her campaign on health care issues.

Davids makes history as the first out LGBTQ Representative from Kansas and one of the two first Native American women elected to Congress. A member of the Ho-Chunk nation, she unseated four-term Congressman David Yoder in the only swing district in a solidly red state. Another likely Blue Dog, she campaigned on working within the current health care system rather than promising Medicare for All, and she supported modest immigration reforms rather than abolishing Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).

Pappas was elected to succeed fellow Democrat Carol Shea Porter in what has been described as a bitter election from primary to general. The general election was as much a referendum on Donald Trump as anything else; in their first debate, Republican Eddie Edwards attacked Pappas over a photo taken at an LGBTQ pride parade of Pappas wearing a rainbow t-shirt with the word "Resist" across the chest. "I'm proud of who I am," Pappas replied, "and I'm proud to stand up against hate and bigotry and intolerance."

Dabber Dan

After only knowing about this incident from what showed up on my Facebook feed over the past couple days, I saw the film of it on TV this morning, and couldn't help but notice that the youngest fellow had his tongue out the entire time.

Did Congressman Marshall put the kids up to this? How else could he have hoped to get so much free publicity out of this biennial congressional cattle call?

Q Toon: Sermon at the Counter

As if last week's two marriage equality cartoons crammed into one weren't enough, I've got another one this week. Thumbing through almost 20 years of my cartoons on the subject, I'm surprised that I have anything left to say about it.

(click here to view)

Paul Berge Q Syndicate✒Jul 9, 2015 EditorialCartoonists.com

The "y'all" betrays the setting of this cartoon as being somewhere in the South, and that picture on the wall is supposed to be Texas Governor Greg Abbott. The news out of the Lone Star State is that with the encouragement of Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, County Clerks in Irion County and Hoods County have publicly vowed not to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples.

But I could easily have set this cartoon almost anywhere in the South:

• A gay couple was denied a marriage license in Rowan County, Kentucky (they don't get up to the counter until ten minutes into the video at that link).
• Offices in Louisiana and Mississippi dragged their feet as hard as they could, hoping that the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals would somehow overrule the Supreme Court. "There is not yet a legal requirement for officials to issue marriage licenses or perform marriages for same-sex couples in Louisiana," wrote that state's Attorney General, Buddy Caldwell after the high court ruling.
• Pike and Geneva Counties in Alabama have announced that in order not to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples, they won't issue marriage licenses to anyone at all, and other counties may follow suit.
• Kansas will issue same-sex marriage licenses, but for some reason doesn't want those couples to file joint tax returns. (Some people would classify Kansas as a midwestern state, but it was part of the Confederacy, and I reckon that's South enough for me.)

Q Toon: Ice Bucket List

Between the time I drew this cartoon and it had a chance to appear in print, somebody turned the idea into an internet meme featuring any female bête noire. Randy Bish went for the same idea, too. I have to assert that I like my execution of it better. I may be somewhat biased.

Daryl Cagle calls this phenomenon of one idea striking multiple cartoonists a "yahtzee," and the only reason more cartoonists haven't drawn this cartoon this week is that there happens to be so much more to be outraged about right now. If this had been your typical no-news August, there would have been more of these.

The MGM version of "The Wizard of Oz" turned 75 on Sunday, and has been a source of ideas for just about every editorial cartoonist who grew up with the movie -- drawing politicians lamenting "if I only had a brain" (or courage, or a heart) or depicting some wicked so-and-so sending out flying monkeys or drawing "Surrender (fill in the blank)" in the sky, or being exposed as Toto pulls back the Wizard's curtain. It's also the go-to reference for any cartoon having anything to do with the state of Kansas. Or not being there any more.

Dick Locher hit the bulls-eye with a February, 1979 cartoon depicting President Jimmy Carter being scolded by Dorothy for being a very bad man for not fulfilling his promises, and responding despondently, "I'm not a very bad man, I'm just a very bad Wizard!" It was such a good cartoon that Locher has drawn it again and again. Well, it's firmly his idea now, so nobody else gets to draw it.

This is at least the third time I've drawn from the Wizard of Oz inkwell. It's a cultural reference everyone can understand; and since I hardly ever get out to see new movies, I'm left to draw about old ones.

Q Toon: The Lady Reappears

A couple weeks ago, Airport Dude made his third appearance in my cartoons. This week's cartoon marks a return of a One Million Mom character who appeared in my cartoons last June and August. She didn't even have a speaking part in her first appearance, but now I've committed to filling in her back story, I guess. For this cartoon, I had to figure out what her husband might look like.

Which is all to say that I don't really know who the couple that stiffed their waiter at a Kansas restaurant are or what they actually look like.

Instead of a tip, a couple who dined at Carrabba’s Italian Grill in Overland Park this week left a message for their waiter that has social media buzzing.
Said the message: "Thank you for your service, it was excellent. That being said, we cannot in good conscience tip you, for your homosexual lifestyle is an affront to God. [Antigay slur] do not share in the wealth of GOD, and you will not share in ours. We hope you will see the tip your [antigay slur] choices made you lose out on, and plan accordingly. It is never too late for GOD’S love, but none shall be spared for [antigay slur]. May God have mercy on you."

The anonymous waiter may have been flamboyant enough to trip this couple's gaydar, but even they admit right up front that his service was "excellent," and he has been thoroughly professional about the incident afterward. Although it came out early on that his mother is a manager at the restaurant, his name has not been made public, and he has not commented on the customers involved.

Perhaps this couple were drawing their own conclusions from the parable of the shrewd manager. If so, they stopped before arriving at Luke 16:15, in which Jesus tells his pharisee critics, “You are the ones who justify yourselves in the eyes of others, but God knows your hearts."

I suppose we could blame the boorish behavior of these so-called Christians on Fred Phelps's Westboro Baptist Church; they are 70 miles away, but they do get around. If they happen to be local people,they certainly can't expect excellent service at that particular Carrabba's again.

Q toon: Surrender, Dorothy

This week's cartoon concerns a case in Kansas involving a lesbian couple who advertised on Craigslist for a sperm donor so that they could conceive a child in 2009. William Marotta responded to the ad posted by Jennifer Schreiner and Angela Bauer.

The [sperm] donation was given under a written agreement that Marotta would not have parental rights and so not be considered the father of the child or liable for child support. However, when Schreiner and Bauer ran into money difficulties in 2012 an application for child support was made to the Department of Children and Families (DFC)...
In the state of Kansas when a child support claim is filed, the DFC is legally bound to find the biological father and petition him to pay. Kansas state is therefore seeking to have Marotta declared the father of the child and made financially responsible for her welfare, irrespective of the previous contract made between Marotta, Schreiner and Bauer.

Part of the problem legally is that Schreiner and Bauer's daughter was conceived at their home, rather than with a medical doctor acting as middle man.

The Topeka couple initially tried to obtain a specimen from a cryobank in Chicago, Bauer said, but ran into trouble with their family practitioner. The doctor refused to sign a release stating the couple capable of raising a child, she said. ... 

The women decided to inseminate Schreiner at their home, Bauer said, partly because of their previous awkward encounter with the doctor, but primarily because they wanted the act to be more personal.

The couple had no idea home insemination would have any bearings on parenting rights of the child, Bauer said.

Apparently, there is legal precedent that had a medical practitioner inseminated Ms. Schreiner via artificial insemination methods, Mr. Marotta would not be financially responsible for the resulting child -- at least in the state of California (even if they had had sexual relations before!).

In Steven S. v. Deborah D. (2005), a California appellate court held that the sperm provider was a donor with no parental status because the child was conceived by artificial insemination performed by a physician.  The donor argued that he and the mother had attempted to conceive by sexual intercourse prior to this insemination and that the mother acknowledged him and the father and allowed him to celebrate the child’s birth.  Nonetheless, the court concluded that the statute was clear and provision of the semen to a physician extinguished his potential rights as a father.

Oh, what a tangled web we weave when first we practice to conceive!