The First Month of Black History Week

Today's Graphical History Tour should have been the one I didn't post on the last Saturday of my vacation three weeks ago. Better late than never, I hope.

Exactly 100 years ago this month, historian Carter G. Woodson and the Association for the Study of Negro Life and History (ASNLH) declared the second week of February "Negro History Week," expanding on earlier observations of Frederick Douglass's birthday. I didn't find that any of America's Black editorial cartoonists were drawing about Black history that week or that month, although each of their newspapers took note of the proposal from Woodson and the ASNLH.

Here's what America's Black editorial cartoonists were drawing about in February of 1926.

Given the Heritage Foundation/Project 2025 mission of pressing the Courts to invalidate same-sex marriages like mine (and a law just passed in Tennessee legislating a right to discriminate against us), I was particularly interested to find that the state of Virginia was in the process of outlawing mixed-race marriage exactly 100 years ago this week.

"The Mongrel Bays at the Moon" by Leslie Rogers in Chicago Defender, Feb. 27, 1926

Leslie Rogers's cartoon was accompanied by a sarcastic "fable" summarizing the history of the "small shipload of outcasts" from England who settled in Jamestown, only to decide twelve years later "that work was obnoxious to them," so they contracted with the Dutch to supply them with slaves from Africa. From that editorial:

"Now, seeing that there were among the slaves many comely maidens, the lusts of these outcasts were aroused, and since the slave-women could not protect themselves, their masters threw themselves upon them and bred children by them. And it came to pass that a great war freed these slaves and made them citizens of a great state and country. But interbreeding went on merrily until the land was filled with a mixed race whose people spoke out against their former masters and kinsmen.

"'We will have no more illegitimate babies,' they cried. 'If you would cohabit with us. you must marry us.'

"And the masters raised their hands and eyes to holy heaven in horror. 'How can we, the salt of the earth, marry with these people who were once our slaves? Heaven forbid! Let us hasten and pass a law to prevent intermarriage in that we may breed with their women without fear of punishment. It is our God-given right. Our law will dull their will and keep them from thinking that they, as human beings, are entitled to live, love and marry according to their desires. We will hasten this law and shroud it in a pretense that we seek to preserve the integrity of all races.'

"And so they did."

Appropriately enough, it was a case out of Virginia that eventually overturned anti-miscegenation laws. Not that the ruling in Loving v. Virginia is certain to stand against the present Project 2025-26 backlash against civil liberties.

By the way, I would have liked to include any cartoons by Black editorial cartoonists from Virginia here, but none of the Black newspapers in that state appear to have employed their own cartoonists at the time. (The Norfolk Journal and Guide did start running its own editorial cartoons later that year.)

"And It Never Says a Mumblin' Word" by Leslie Rogers in Chicago Defender, Feb. 6, 1926

Leslie Rogers employed what had become a common metaphor for President Coolidge, in this case accusing him of having little to say about the lynching of Black Americans by "mob rule in enlightened society." 

"Silent Cal" did not have a lot to say about a great many things; but he did support the Dyer anti-lynching bill (which never passed Congress) and spoke against the so-called "Americanism" of the Ku Klux Klan. In October of 1925, he told a convention of the American Legion:

"Whether one traces his Americanism back three centuries to the Mayflower, or three years to the steerage, is not half so important as whether his Americanism of to-day is real and genuine. No matter by what various crafts we came here, we are all now in the same boat."

"Taking a Black Prisoner from the Jail to the Courthouse" by Leslie Rogers in Chicago Defender, Feb. 13, 1926

Meanwhile, Kentucky Governor W.J. Fields sent 1,000 troops to secure the safety of a Black defendant in a triple murder case as he was transported from jail to courthouse in Lexington, Kentucky.

The defendant, Ed Harris, stood accused of killing a White man and his two children, and assaulting the man's wife — exactly the sort of case that often excited mobs to take matters into their own hands; so Gov. Fields sent in eight infantry companies, four cavalry troops, two machine gun squadrons, and a tank company, with orders to shoot to kill.

Leslie Rogers here added dirigibles and the "U.S.S. Mobqueller," in a cartoon that reminds me very much of the style of Chicago Tribune editorial cartoonist John T. McCutcheon.

"New Use for U.S. Air Fleet" by Fred B. Watson in Afro-American, Baltimore, Feb. 27, 1926

Fred Watson proposed enlisting the U.S.'s new air fleet to ferry Black prisoners past the volatile mob.

"Trial by Troops" by Wilbert Holloway in Pittsburgh Courier, Feb. 20, 1926

If Wilbert Holloway was not impressed, it was because there was no chance of Ed Harris being found anything but guilty. He pled guilty and was sentenced to hang, his trial lasting all of sixteen minutes.

Elsewhere, Delaware Governor Robert Robinson called out the National Guard to prevent angry mobs from interfering in the trial in Georgetown of 21-year-old Harry Butler, who pled guilty to critically assaulting a 12-year-old white girl. He, too, was sentenced to death by hanging.

As for Tennessee, Holloway may have been referring to the trial of John Franklin Webb, convicted of raping a 17-year-old white girl. The trial and jury deliberation took a combined thirteen minutes; he was sentenced to death in the electric chair.

"Finally Hooked" by Wilbert Holloway in Pittsburgh Courier, Feb. 6, 1926

Holloway didn't limit himself to explicitly Black issues (two of his four February cartoons were about the weather). I can't be sure what his opinion of U.S. involvement in the World Court was; reported elsewhere on the pages of that edition of the Pittsburgh Courier, a southern Senator made his opinion crystal clear.

"The Drunken Driver" by Fred B. Watson in Afro-American, Baltimore, Feb. 6, 1926

On the floor of the U.S. Senate, Sen. Cole Bleas (D-SC) offered as an argument against U.S. participation in the World Court that Liberia and Haiti were members of the League of Nations and would therefore have a say in the selection of World Court judges. If you were triggered by that Tourette's advocate blurting out an obscenity at the BAFTAs on Sunday, you might want to skip the next two paragraphs.

"I call the attention of Senators from the South," Bleas fulminated, "while they are voting on this reservation, to the fact that they are voting for a court where we are to sit side by side with a full-blooded [the N-word], who has as much right as we have in the election of judges of this court. I ask them if they are aware of the fact that there may be and probably will be a  representative of Haiti as a judge on this court so that the southern Senators are voting to throw the destinies of southern women and southern men into the lap of a black man?" 

Bleas used that N-word several more times in the course of his argument, mostly to describe what kind of republics Haiti and Liberia are.

"State's Rights or State's Wrongs" by Fred B. Watson in Afro-American, Baltimore, Feb. 20, 1926

Here's a rare cartoon that includes criticism of California's treatment of Japanese Americans. The topic occasionally came up in the context of protests from the Japanese government, but most white cartoonists and their newspapers approved of cutting off immigration from the Orient, and were content to overlook the restrictions against Japanese-Americans owning property.

Maryland Governor Albert Ritchie's moves to undermine Prohibition would be a topic for another day, but serves as a segue to a couple of editorial cartoons about local issues.

"An Unwelcome Serenader" by Fred B. Watson in Afro-American, Baltimore, Feb. 13, 1926

Watson cites a song popularized by the California Ramblers to express the plight of Black school teachers in his native Baltimore. The story about which he appears to be editorializing concerned two female Black high school teachers, Mabel Jackson and Mary Craft Cottrell, who filed lawsuits against the Baltimore school board for hiring two White women for positions for which Jackson and Cottrell were more qualified.

Jackson and Cottrell had passed the state examination for teachers of domestic art in 1924, placing first and second on the eligibility list. But the Baltimore School Board instead hired Susie Jennings and Elizabeth Burrell, neither of whom had a college degree or a graduation certificate from an accredited normal school, nor had they passed a competitive examination for teaching domestic arts.

The School Board contended that tailoring and dressmaking were trade vocational subjects not requiring a teaching degree. Jennings and Burrell, in their view, were not high school teachers per se, in spite of instructing high school students in a high school building during high school hours.

"An Alarm He Doesn't Heed" by Leslie Rogers in Chicago Defender, Feb. 20, 1926

In Chicago, Blacks could apply for and qualify for employment as city firefighters, but would have to wait for a vacancy at the Taylor Street station, the one and only fire station open to Blacks. Any vacancies at any other fire station in town could only be filled by White applicants.

Even if their only qualifications involved tailoring and dressmaking.

Okay, that's an exaggeration. But you get the general idea of where race relations were in this country 100 years ago.

✍

Well, this is a little off-topic, but since Fred Watson brought up Prohibition a couple cartoons ago, I'll close with one of Leslie Rogers's other regular features in Chicago Defender, a more or less non-topical panel titled "The Hardest Job in the World." 

"The Hardest Job in the World" by Leslie Rogers in Chicago Defender, Feb. 20, 1926

Anyone who has had to live with dietary restrictions should understand.

Q Toon: Just Deserted

The Supreme Court declined to hear Kim Davis's appeal of a $100,000 judgment against her in suit brought against her by David Moore and David Ermold because she refused to issue them a marriage license.

Davis was elected Rowan County Clerk as a Democrat in 2014, a position whose job description includes the issuing of marriage licenses. When the Supreme Court's Obergefell decision made marriage equality the law of the land in 2015, the Davids applied for a marriage license; but she refused "under God's authority" and told them to go to some other county. She then went further and stopped issuing marriage licenses to all applicants to protest the prospect of having to issue them to same-sex couples.

Two different lawsuits followed: one by Moore and Ermold, who contended that she had violated their constitutional right to marry; and one challenging her refusal to issue any marriage licenses. In the latter case, U.S. District Judge David Bunning ordered Davis to issue licenses to both gay and straight couples. That prompted Moore and Ermold to try once again to obtain a license, but Davis and her deputies rejected that request, as well. Kentucky eventually enacted a law that would accommodate county clerks like Davis by removing their names and signatures from the forms used for marriage licenses. 

Moore and Ermold’s case against Davis went to trial, and a jury awarded each of them $50,000. Davis then appealed to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 6th Circuit, which upheld that award. It rejected Davis’ argument that requiring her to issue a marriage license to Moore and Ermold would have violated her First Amendment right to freely exercise her religion. In that court’s view, because Davis was acting on behalf of the government when she refused to issue the license, her actions were not protected by the First Amendment. 

In the meantime, Davis switched her party affiliation to Republican as the Grand Old Party rallied around her as a cause celebre. Republican Presidential candidates fought over who got to champion her case loudest (see this cartoon). Rowan County voters, however, threw her out of office in the next election.

Marriage equality advocates were quite worried that the current Supreme Court would seize on Davis's case as a vehicle to overturn Obergefell. The right-wing supermajority on the Court today includes three of the justices who ruled in the minority, two of whom, Thomas and Alito, have been very vocal in their continued opposition to the decision. They have been joined by Trump appointees who have demonstrated that their lip service to the concept of stare decisis ain't worth a 2015 penny.

This Supreme Court has already decreed that wedding cake bakers, florists, and pharmacists are free to discriminate against whomever they dislike, provided they claim that God made them do it. And along comes Davis asking to extend the privilege to public servants.

So virtually everyone was surprised when the Court refused to hear her appeal. One has to assume that the current majority thought that Davis's case made for lousy law.

They're probably waiting for another case better suited to putting an end to same-sex marriage, even when the County Clerk is pleased to assist the happy couple.

Beshear's Veto

A perennial complaint against editorial cartoonists is that we never have anything nice to say.

So I hope someone out there will appreciate my offering a reprieve from all the cartoons about bloody classrooms, Putin and Xi standing over dead Ukraine, banks crumbling, and David with his DeSantis hanging out.

I'm paraphrasing Kentucky Governor Andy Beshear in this week's cartoon before quoting him directly in the last half of the dialogue. After vetoing the Republican legislature's bill outlawing all gender-affirming therapy for minors regardless of parental and professional medical judgment, Beshear told reporters, 

“At the end of the day, this is about my belief — and, I think, the belief of the majority of Kentuckians — that parents should get to make important medical decisions about their children, not big government."

The vetoed bill, hastily passed at the close of the legislative session, does more than tread on families' personal medical decisions. As outlined by the Human Rights Campaign, the 

• Ban gender affirming care: The bill will prohibit transgender youth from accessing best practice, age-appropriate medical care – care delivered after careful consultation with the young person’s parents and doctors. It would also force doctors to detransition transgender youth who have been receiving – and thriving – under their care plan.
• Force teachers to disclose confidential conversations they’ve had with students about their sexual orientation or gender identity to the student’s parents, even if that would put the student in danger at home: This bill will make it more difficult for LGBTQ+ students to seek assistance from trusted adults in school, and could put children in real danger if they are not safe being out at home. The bill also requires teachers and students be allowed to misgender their own pupils and classmates, and prohibits schools from recommending or requiring any policies on pronoun use.
• Ban transgender students from using school restrooms and locker rooms that match their gender identity.

The first and third provisions listed above were added with minimal notice at the last minute to a bill which originally dealt only with the material in that second bullet point. That allowed the bill to pass through the statehouse's education committee rather than one concerned with health care.

The legislature's bill is a deliberate slap in the face to one of their own members, grieving the suicide of her transgender son just this past December.

"My child is dead, but I have parents from all over the Commonwealth and literally all over the country coming up to me, writing to me, calling me — look, these children exist," [Sen. Karen] Berg tells TODAY.com. "These children have all always existed. They're just asking for a space to be. If I can't use my own life learnings to protect other people, and what am I doing here? What's my purpose?

"I cannot bring my child back," she adds. "But I can help other families. I can."

The Republican General Assembly has already overriden Governor Beshear's veto, and the state Senate is sure to follow.

But I give Mr. Beshear his due for standing up for principle.

And shame on the assholes passing these mean-spirited bills in state after state after state after state after state after state after state after state after state after state after state after state after — well, perhaps you get the idea.

Q Toon: But We Play Woke on TV

I'm taking a week off from alarmist cartoons about the fascist wing of the Requblican Party.

And drawing instead about the corporations that fund them.

By now, you cannot but notice how interracial and non-intergenderal couples have begun to appear in television and internet commercials, once the exclusive domain of white heterosexuals. (Although I've always had my suspicions about Mr. Whipple.)

Leaving interracial families aside for the nonce, unless the same-sex couples are pressing you to ask your doctor about anti-retroviral medication, you might blink and miss them. Which is why the guys in today's cartoon are stuck in that split second of time.

Many of these same advertisers wanting to appear (for lack of a better word) woke have, however, been helping fill Republican politicians' campaign coffers for decades, even as the party marches farther and farther into antiLGBTQ and racist territory. Repressive and restrictive laws are proliferating in Florida, Texas, Tennessee, Kentucky, Utah, Idaho, Montana, Arizona, and Iowa.

Chuck Magro. John May. Donnie King. Cory Harris. Charles Scharf.

These are the CEOs of five of the most powerful corporations operating in Iowa: Corteva. John Deere. Tyson. Wellmark. Wells Fargo.

Where are they? Should we request a wellness check to make sure they’re OK?

These CEOs lead corporate monopolies making billions every year off the bodies and brains of Iowans, including LGBTQ Iowans, yet they’ve been missing in action as Iowa Republicans propose the largest number of anti-LGBTQ bills ever in a single legislative session.

These bills include everything from attempts to ban books (because kids reading about LGBTQ characters is dangerous, while meatpacking plant child labor isn’t) to an attempt to ban same-sex marriage in the state (forget the issue of constitutionality).

The time has come to realize that corporate monopolies are no friend of the LGBTQ community when the going gets tough.

For these corporations, maintaining favor with the Republicans who run the state is more important than standing up for LGBTQ Iowans, including their own workers. They know if they dare defy Iowa Republicans, their ability to maintain the monopoly power they use to deliver their excessive profits will be threatened. ...

Perhaps one can't blame Corporate America for being intimidated by the example Florida has set after Disney Corporation dared to stand up for its LGBTQ employees and customers. Not every corporation has quite as sweet a deal as Disney had up to this year from the states where they operate; but nearly every major corporation has plied legislatures with campaign donations in order to secure special benefits of one kind or another: Tax Incremental Financing districts, property tax waivers, monopoly protection, taxpayer-funded stadiums, and so on and so forth.

And they don't want those bennies taken away after so much investment in those politicians.

If we in the LGBTQ+ community want to know who our real friends are in the business world, that Des Moines Register editorial suggests we look to the folks who can't afford to pay premium prices for friends in the statehouse:

[I]t’s again small-business owners who possess the courage to speak up. Dozens of small businesses like the print shop Raygun, the bookstore Reading in Public, and the brewery Firetrucker Brewery have all taken stands alongside LGBTQ Iowans and against Iowa Republicans’ proposed legislation.

Wouldn’t Iowa’s LGBTQ community be better off with fewer corporate monopolies and more Rayguns, Reading in Publics, and Firetruckers? The answer is yes.

Ask your doctor if small businesses are right for you.

Q Toon: Reach Out

The impetus for drawing this week's cartoon was the suicide of Henry Berg-Brousseau, a young trans man who had testified courageously before the Kentucky state legislature while still a teenager as it was poised to pass a mean-spirited, punitive, anti-transgender bill. (Which, having a Republican majority, they passed anyway.)

His testimony was featured on John Oliver's "Last Week Tonight"; his death has received international attention.

I became aware of him through his uncle David Brousseau, a fellow cartoonist for Q Syndicate and my editor for a time. I hadn't realized that Henry's mother, Karen Berg, is a Kentucky State Senator.

I will not presume to guess what made Henry decide life wasn't worth living. He had a promising future, having been hired as deputy press secretary for Human Rights Campaign. I know nothing of his personal life; a press release from his mother noted that he had "long struggled with mental illness, not because he was trans but born from his difficulty finding acceptance."

To paraphrase Tolstoy, every happy person is alike; every unhappy person is unhappy in their own way.

So this cartoon is not specifically about Henry Berg-Brousseau. It fails to encompass all the difficulties that transgender persons face. I don't have the expertise giving me the right to recommend any particular therapy or medication. 

But I hope that somehow, someone somewhere sees this in time to decide to stick it out one more day. To reach out to people who do know what to say, and more importantly, are there to listen.

If you or someone you know is in emotional distress or suicidal crisis, call the National Suicide Prevention Hotline at 988 or 1-800-273-TALK (8255).

_________________________

P.S.: To find this cartoon in one piece, visit one of my client publications, such as Q Salt Lake.

1920 Still Too Close to Call

If you're feeling deprived over having both presidential primary campaigns decided so early on, Smokefilledback Saturday comes to the rescue by bringing you up to date on the campaigns of 1920.

"Nearing the End of the Primaries" by Clifford Berryman in Washington Evening Star, May 3, 1920

With only a baker's half dozen contests left on the calendar, neither the Republicans nor Democrats had a clear leader for their nominations. On the Republican side, Sen. Hiram Johnson had racked up the most primary and caucus victories, including a resounding win in his home state of California on May 4. General Leonard Wood, carrying the banner of Teddy Roosevelt, was not far behind.

"Counting Their Chickens" by Charles H. "Bill" Sykes in Philadelphia Evening Ledger, May 12, 1920

...Which, as Bill Sykes's cartoon of Gen. Wood and Sen. Johnson illustrates, wouldn't mean a damn thing once the "Old Guard" weighed in.

"Proposing Trial Marriage" by John McCutcheon in Chicago Tribune, May 6, 1920

Other contenders such as Sen. Warren Harding of Ohio (walking away in the above cartoon) and Gov. Frank Lowden of Illinois (kneeling in the foreground), had come in first in their home states but nowhere else. There were a few delegates pledged to Iowan Herbert Hoover (far right) heading to both parties' national conventions despite his having publicly declared himself a Republican in March.

"Who's Looney Now?" by Jay N. "Ding" Darling in New York Tribune, May 2, 1920

The Democrats hadn't settled on a presidential nominee, either — but since most states were sending unpledged delegations to the Democratic National Convention, that was hardly surprising. The Democratic candidate whose two (count 'em, two) primary victories put him in the delegate lead was Attorney General A. Mitchell Palmer.

"A. Mitchell Palmer Out for a Stroll" by John T. McCutcheon in Chicago Tribune, May 4, 1920

Even given McCutcheon's Republicanism, his ridicule of the Democratic Attorney General in this cartoon might seem peculiar; the Chicago Tribune cartoonist was as strident as any other in the country in attacking the Red Menace. But on April 29, Palmer publicly announced that Bolsheviks were planning a major uprising on May Day. Law enforcement around the country braced for riots and insurrection, but the day passed without incident and Palmer was made a laughingstock.

"They're Always Nice an' Cordial" by Clifford Berryman in Washington Evening Star, May 29, 1920

Sending unpledged/uninstructed delegations to either party's nominating convention was not at all unusual. The conventions were not the protracted coronation ceremonies we see today, but were where all the wheeling and dealing were made to produce a nominee. The majority of Democratic delegations in 1920 would be unpledged to any candidate. New York's and Massachusetts's Republican delegations were unpledged, and Pennsylvania's were pledged to a favorite son candidate who had withdrawn from the race.

"His Hat in the Ring" by Clive Weed in Philadelphia Public Ledger, by May 15, 1920

The conventions today may do little more than ratify decisions made months earlier, but some things never change. Clive Weed's cartoon could be redrawn by any of today's altie cartoonists, just with fewer labels sticking out of the hat.

"Mothers' Day" by Clifford Berryman in Washington Sunday Star, May 9, 1920

It's Mother's Eve, so I'll wrap things up with Clifford Berryman's Mother's Day cartoon, and a historical first. Berryman offers a nice sentiment, since baseball and apple pie were ineligible to run, but that's a whole lot of sweeping he was expecting out of dear old mama.

As for the historical first: Kentucky was first to place a woman's name in nomination at a major party convention. Two of them, actually: Laura Clay and Cora Wilson Stewart were Kentucky delegates at the 1920 Democratic convention in San Francisco. Clay received one vote on the 33rd ballot, and Stewart received one vote on the 36th.

Clay was a suffragette but believed women's suffrage should be decided by individual states, not by a federal constitutional amendment. She expressed skepticism over enfranchising a large number of “inexperienced voters,” a term often used as code language for black women, although she denied that was what she meant by it.

Stewart's driving issue was eliminating adult illiteracy, to which end she founded night schools operating within the Kentucky public school system and including schools (albeit segregated) for Blacks. Her support of the eventual 1920 Democratic presidential nominee — she gave a nominating speech for him — hinged, however, on making sure that he shared her strong support not of the as yet unratified 19th Amendment to the Constitution, but of the 18th.

Kentucky's delegates to the 1920 Democratic National Convention. Laura Clay is at far left; Cora Wilson Stewart is fourth from the left. Future Vice President Alben W. Barkley is the tall man fourth from the right. Source.

Q Toon: Our Menu Hasn't Changed

In the aftermath of the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School massacre, the Florida legislature famously leapt into action to protect Florida students from the threat of deadly pornography.

And it didn't end there. Under the eyes of the surviving students, the Florida legislature went on to require the prominent posting of "In God We Trust" in all Florida classrooms. The gun control measures being urged by those students were quickly shelved because, unlike advertising Christianity on the wall, they wouldn't be 100% effective against future gun violence.

Well, to be fair, they also voted to approve letting Miss Othmar pack a pistol in class.

But let us not single out the Florida legislature for their commitment to non-responsive measures.

Republican legislators in Indiana are pushing a "No Promo Homo" bill, SB 65, that would explicitly prohibit the positive portrayal of homosexuality in schools. Ballot measures in Alaska, Alabama, Massachusetts and Montana seek to prevent or overturn state and local anti-discrimination laws based on gender identity in public places such as hotels, restaurants and stores.

Pennsylvania lawmakers have repeatedly tried to bar transition-related health coverage under Pennsylvania’s Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP). New Hampshire lawmakers are considering a set of bills that to bar Medicaid from paying for transition-related care, prohibit minors from obtaining gender confirmation surgery and allow medical practitioners to decline to treat patients on the basis of  “their religious, moral, or ethical convictions.”

"Bathroom bills" are still being pushed in Kentucky, where one out of every five legislators is a sponsor of one bill, in Iowa, and in Wisconsin. Yet pushback against these bills is not limited to the LGBTQ community alone; business and industry have come to the defense of their LGBTQ employees and prospects — so much so that there appears to be little interest in resurrecting bathroom bills that have already been defeated in Georgia and Texas.

They have more important things to worry about, after all.

The President is coming for their guns.

Vi Är Alla Svenska

Ohhhhkaaayyyyy.... What is Donald Joffrey Trump trying to distract us from now?

Q Toon: Kim's Private Audience

While I was busy at my drawing board with last week's National Coming Out Day cartoon, a story leaked out that was a gay editorial cartoonist's dream topic. So, with apologies to editors of weeklies who would rather have seen this week's cartoon last week and vice versa:

Liberals who have felt that Pope Francis was one of their own were dismayed when rumors began to emerge that Rowan County, Kentucky, clerk Kim Davis had taken time away from obstructing the duties of her office for a "private audience" with Pope Francis during his visit to the U.S. Could it be that this Pope, with all his talk of climate change, economic justice, and "Who am I to judge?" is but a cafeteria liberal?

First reports made it seem that Kim and Francis had met as the leaders of Roman Catholicism and American Apostolicism for intense discussions of strategic policy. We now know, of course, that Kim Davis's private meeting with Pope Francis was only private insofar as it was conducted indoors without a live broadcast feed. She met with the Pope along with a couple dozen other people who each had enough time to exchange "Hello, I'm so glad to meet you" greetings, arranged by some Vatican functionary in charge of deciding who the Pope gets to shake hands with.

We also know that Pope Francis did meet privately with a gay couple, half of whom was a student of his back home in Argentina -- a meeting which someone hastened to publicize after Davis started advertising her meeting of him. (And presumably, that someone was someone other than the functionary who invited Davis to that subsequent meet-and-greet.)

In the end, Kim Davis would probably have been better off wrangling an invitation to sit down with Robert Mugabe.

Q Toon: In Chains for Christ

At long last, it's finally time for my Kim Davis cartoon. Now that every other editorial cartoonist in the country has taken all the good cartoon ideas and has moved on to last night's performance of A Chorus Line, I'm getting around to sifting through the ideas that are left.

At the AAEC convention earlier this month, I was asked several times about the Kim Davis story, comments usually running along the vein of "Boy, you must be having a lot of fun with her!" And while three of my cartoons in July and August were on issues related to local clerks and so-called religious liberty, the cartoons I'd sent to my editors before leaving for the convention were on other topics.

So, while I was away from my drawing board, Davis went into and out of prison, greeted by an adoring throng waving their crosses. Just the sort of crowd someone seeking to be America's Evangelist In Chief would want to get in front of, so there was Arkansas Minister-Governor Mike Huckabee, who vowed to go to jail in Davis's place, now that she was being let out anyway.

Huckabee wasn't the only presidential contender there to bask in the adulation of the theocratic masses, but he was the only one getting onto that stage, if his folks had anything to do about it. And they did.

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.

Q Toon: Kenya Matata

President Obama visited Eastern Africa during this past week, and during a press conference with Kenyan President Uhuru Kenyatta in Nairobi, he was asked about gay rights, which very few African countries respect. He answered:

"If somebody is a law abiding citizen who is going about their business and working in a job and obeying the traffic signs and doing all the other things that good citizens are supposed to do, and not harming anybody, the idea that they are going to be treated differently or abused because of who they love is wrong. Full stop. ... When you start treating people differently not because of any harm they're doing anybody but because they're different, that's the path whereby freedoms begin to erode and bad things happen."

Under Kenyan law, sexual activity between men is illegal and may result in a prison sentence of up to 14 years. Kenyatta, described by Politico as "clearly uncomfortable, fidgeting at the podium,"  dismissed the topic entirely: "The issue of gay rights is a non-issue."

Given recent events in marriage equality in the United States and the horrible record in many African countries on LGBT rights, that the topic would come up during President Obama's visit was widely anticipated. A planned naked protest against Obama for his pro-gay stand had been canceled hours before his visit. Organizers claimed that 3,600 had signed up to participate in the protest before some unidentified 2:00 in the morning caller persuaded them to cancel.

One shudders to imagine such a protest in this country. I don't want to see thousands of naked Kentucky county clerks, Alabama judges, Mississippi cake bakers, Arkansas florists, Texas legislators, Scott Lively, Franklin Graham and Maggie Gallagher flapping and flopping their way up Pennsylvania Avenue, do you?

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.)

Rand Paul Caricature

The 2016 campaign season is well underway now, so here's the first of my stand-alone caricatures of the presidential candidates:

Peacenik Republican Rand Paul of Kentucky

Q Toon: Phil? Hey, Phil? Phil! Phil Connors?

Last year, the Supreme Court surprised everyone by declining to hear a marriage equality case. Without explanation, the court decided to ignore appeals from Republican state Attorneys General who were trying to overturn marriage equality rulings in Wisconsin, Indiana, Oklahoma, Utah and Virginia.

Suddenly, marriage equality was the law of the land!

Well, no, not quite.

The court's non-ruling came about because after it had found the Defense of Marriage Act unconstitutional (U.S. v. Windsor, 2013), all lower courts had consistently ruled in favor of marriage equality. Then, the contrarian Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals upheld the same-sex-marriage bans in Kentucky, Michigan, Ohio, and Tennessee.

Q Syndicate✒Jan 22, 2015

And the issue came right back to the highest court in the nation. The Supremes now have a chance to decide this issue once and for all!

Again, no, not quite.

If they rule to uphold the Sixth Circuit decision, it could throw the marriages of those of us who got married in Wisconsin, Indiana, Oklahoma, Utah and Virginia into legal limbo. At the very least, marriages from any of the 36 states where they are now legal would be nullified any time we'd move to or even travel through marriage discrimination states.

And if they overturn the Sixth Circuit decision, several Republican state legislatures have proposed or passed "religious liberty" laws creating a "right" for employers, insurers, municipal clerks, hospital employees and whoever else feels like it to treat married couples as unrelated strangers.

Texas is even considering a law, House Bill 623, that says, "State or local taxpayer funds or governmental salaries may not be used for an activity that includes the licensing or support of same-sex marriage" -- meaning that even a gay-friendly clerk who issues a marriage license to a same-sex couple is in danger of losing her job.

So sit back and wait to see how this issue eventually turns out. The Supremes have plenty of time to learn how to play the piano, carve ice, and recite French poetry.