Q Toon: Regnum Anatium

One could argue that highlighting Duck Dynast Phil Robertson's antigay comments in GQ Magazine only serves the purposes of Sarah Palin, talk radio, and all the Foxsters out there complaining that A&E is trampling his right of free speech. Not that they ever came to the defense of free speech rights for, say, Martin Bashir, Alec Baldwin, or Keith Olberman.

His opinions regarding African-Americans are the more ridiculous and worthy of censure. But I draw for the LGBT media through Q Syndicate, so I'm afraid I must leave to others his claim that Blacks were happier before civil rights and antipoverty programs ("No one was singing the blues"). I would, however, like to assuage Mr. Robertson's fears that anatomy poses an insurmountable difficulty to gays' and lesbians' ability to have and to enjoy sex. We really are not bothered by it anywhere near as much as he is.

Meanwhile, this Greek chorus of conservative American Catholics makes its second appearance in my cartoons this week. (Here's their first appearance, in September.)

Q Toon: Small Minds Rule!

This cartoon could have been one big mess of labels.

I had initially thought that the reporter talking to Pope Francis (I shouldn't need to label him, should I?) ought to have the name of the magazine in which the "small-minded rules" interview appeared. But the magazine's name is American, and having that as the label would be confusing in its own way.

But how to label the cabal in the larger panel of the cartoon? "American Catholic Conservatives"? Admittedly, I have enough room in the panel's pan-handle for that, but it's awfully clunky. It would be clunkier still to label them each individually, although I really can't expect any reader to be able to identify all of them. Two of them have never appeared in my cartoons before.

Here are the answers to the American Catholic Conservative Quiz.

From left to right: Minnesota Archbishop John Nienstedt. Nienstedt has required Catholic students in his diocese to attend lectures expounding the evils of marriage equality, has issued orders to priests that if they disagree with his antigay stands they should shut the hell up about it, and has declared that condoms are the work of the devil.

Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia. Is there any need to explain his virulent antigay streak?

House Speaker John Boehner. He "can't imagine" ever supporting gay marriage. And then there's the allegation by former Congressman Bob Ney that on an overseas junket, Boehner said of a staffer, "Yeah, he's a good guy. I think he's a fag." I needed a Catholic politician currently in office (other than Scalia), and Boehner seemed like the most recognizable of the lot -- enough so that I could put him in the back of the crowd.

Former Senator, 2012 presidential candidate, and frothy mixture Rick Santorum, who famously equated same-sex marriage with "man-on-dog" bestiality.

National Organization for Marriage harridan Maggie Gallagher. I've drawn her often enough now that my caricature of her is actually my caricature of my caricature of her. If she hasn't been in your state lately to man the battlements against marriage equality, her face might not be familiar to you; I've been criticized before for not identifying her.

Catholic League blowhard Bill Donohue. This is my first try at his face, which should be familiar to prime-time cable crosstalk-fests and South Park devotées. Whenever anyone slights the Catholic Church in any way, no matter how justified the slight may be, Bill Donohue is on TV quicker than Gloria Allred to defend its integrity to the death.

Q Toon: Mitt's Ten Grand

A lot has been uncovered recently about the race-baiting and divisive tactics of the anti-marriage equality National Organization for Marriage (here personified by Maggie Gallagher). In among the other discoveries has been a $10,000 donation from Mitt Romney three weeks before the California vote on Proposition 8.

Mitt attempted to keep the donation under wraps by channeling it through his Political Action Committee, "Free and Strong America" and, apparently, failing to report it to state authorities. Well, not entirely secret -- the once and future presidential candidate certainly wanted the people devoted to breaking up same-sex households to know where the money came from.

With Romney, it has always been about perception:

"There’s something to be said for having a Republican who supports civil rights in this broader context, including sexual orientation. When Ted Kennedy speaks on gay rights, he’s seen as an extremist. When Mitt Romney speaks on gay rights, he’s seen as a centrist and a moderate." --Mitt Romney, in a 1994 Bay Windows interview

 I'm so relieved to know that he was for us before he was against us.

Q Toon: No, #8

Justices of the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals last week continued the legal trend of finding marriage discrimination against same-sex couples unconstitutional.

Maggie Gallagher of NOM, and the others of her ilk, are wont to point out that wherever marriage equality has been put on the ballot, it has been defeated. Wherever it has been judged in the courts, the opposite is true.

Q Toon: Perry v. Schwarzenegger

The two people in the lower right of this cartoon are Maggie Gallagher of the National Organization for Marriage and Tim Wildmon of the American Family Association, two anti-marriage activists. This is the second time I've drawn Gallagher in a cartoon, and it's because her troll-like looks are fun to draw.

Once U.S. District court Judge Vaughn Walker issued his strongly worded decision declaring California's Proposition 8 unconstitutional, the strategy of the anti-marriage forces was revealed. Having utterly failed to present any legal defense of Prop 8 in the court, Maggie Gallagher, Tim Wildmon, and the Faux News network immediately began their appeal to the phobias and prejudices of the general public.

The religious right has been able to pass these measures in nearly every state where they've tried because they find it easy to use fear and innuendo to convince a majority to trample the rights of a minority. Then they squawk and scream when judges refer to the law and constitution, not popular opinion and the Pentateuch, to find that the minority deserves protection.

Tim Wildmon has even gone so far as to propose that Judge Walker be impeached -- I guess on the grounds that if Walker is openly gay, he should be disqualified from ruling whether gays have a right to marry. (By the same logic, a judge who is married or engaged to be married ought also to be disqualified. So should a judge who openly professes a faith with a stand either way on the question of marriage equality.)

Unless the right manages to push through a constitutional amendment replacing the judiciary branch with popular referenda (which might actually be easy to accomplish in California), Perry v. Schwarzenegger will be appealed through the court system, and the appeals will have to concern themselves with Judge Walker's ruling itself, not a reintroduction of the allegations that same-sex couples are unfit to be parents, or that reproduction is the sine qua non of marriage, or that gay sex is nasty icky poopy.

An aside: if you wouldn't mind having your sex acts described in exact detail in a court of law, you're probably doing it wrong.