Q Toon: A-Gonna Trouble the Water

New Mormon Church (that of Latter Day Saints, if you prefer) policies denying the rite of baptism to the children of same-sex parents were leaked to Facebook last week by LDS ex-communicant blogger John Dehlin.

Under the new church policy, people in "same-gender" marriage have been added to the list of those acts that are considered apostasy and would be subject to disciplinary action. ...
As for children, a separate section of the handbook says that natural or adopted kids of same-sex parents, whether married or just living together, may not receive a naming blessing.
The policy also bars children from being baptized, confirmed, ordained to the church's all-male priesthood or recommended for missionary service without the permission of the faith's highest leaders — the governing First Presidency.

Baptism under the new policy is withheld until the child is an adult, "specifically disavows the practice of same-gender cohabitation and marriage, ... and does not live with a parent who has lived or currently lives in a same-gender cohabitation relationship or marriage."

Way to support families, LDS hierarchy!

The LDS later clarified the policy, explaining that children of gay and lesbian parents can still receive "blessings." So there's no need for an awkward silence after the kid sneezes.
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In other Utahn news, their Governor, Gary Herbert, stands apart from his fellow Republican governors (plus Jeanne Shaheen D-NH) in his refusal to bar Syrian refugees from his state. I rarely have a chance to say nice things about any Republican any more; yet I don't think there is anything I could say or draw better than the Salt Lake Tribune's excellent cartoonist Pat Bagley has.

Do check out his cartoon; it's a refreshing change from the torrent of Mayflower and No-Room-At-The-Inn clichés so many cartoonists (and meme raths outgrabing the internet) have produced this week.

Q Toon: Be Thou Prepared

Last week, officials of the Boy Scouts of America announced that they were officially dropping their blanket opposition to LGBT adults serving as scout leaders. BSA National President Robert Gates (the former Defense Secretary) explained that "due to the social, political and legal changes taking place in our country and in our movement, I did not believe the adult leadership policy could be sustained."

LGBT activists were disappointed that  the new policy will not apply to troops sponsored by religious organizations for whom antigay discrimination is a precious tenet of faith. Given that 70% of Boy Scout troops are chartered by faith-based organizations, the new policy could be of little help to gay scouts nearing adulthood in troops sponsored by evangelical, Mormon, or Catholic congregations.

Some evangelical, Mormon and Catholic sponsors, however, are upset by the new policy as well.

Officials of the Mormon church were apparently on vacation when the policy change was made, and saw that as a problem in an of itself. The church issued a statement complaining, "The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is deeply troubled by today’s vote by the Boy Scouts of America National Executive Board. In spite of a request to delay the vote, it was scheduled at a time in July when members of the Church’s governing councils are out of their offices and do not meet. When the leadership of the Church resumes its regular schedule of meetings in August, the century-long association with Scouting will need to be examined."

The Vatican hasn't issued any statement on the matter, and the National Catholic Committee on Scouting has been guarded in its reaction. Some local officials, on the other hand, aren't waiting for Holy Writ. Catholic Bishop David Kagan of Western North Dakota announced that, "Effective immediately, the Catholic Church of the Diocese of Bismarck and each and every one of its parishes, schools and other institutions is formally disaffiliated with and from the Boy Scouts of America."

A number of evangelical leaders reacted negatively, including Dallas megachurch pastor Robert Jeffress, who told the Associated Press, "Look, my advice to parents who are asking me about this is if you are concerned about the safety of your boys, you should run, not walk, away from the Boy Scouts as quickly as possible." Southern Baptist Convention President Ronnie Floyd agreed, telling the Baptist Press, "Sadly and regrettably, I believe churches who stand on the biblical ethic of sexuality will have to cease their sponsorship and involvement in the Boy Scouts of America."

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In this week's cartoon, I tried to come up with a name for the fictitious congregation whose council of elders is planning their next move. There are a lot of Catholic churches with "Our Lady" in the name, and "Latter Day" is exclusive to Mormons, but finding a word evoking evangelicals was a little more challenging. "Evangelism" is a core value of all Christian denominations (hence the "E" in the officially LGBT-friendly ELCA), so that word wouldn't work.

I settled on "Fellowship," which appears in the name of many a Baptist, non-denominational, and other fundamentalist church. Of course, other Christian denominations believe in fellowship, too; although, where I come from, the word is intimately associated with coffee and kringle.

Long Road to Victory, Part IV

Part IV: State by State

After voters in Hawai'i overruled their state supreme court on marriage equality, states all around the country began passing Defense / Definition of Marriage laws and constitutional amendments. Marriage rights activists believed that their best chance of stemming this tide was in the state of California. A ballot initiative written by State Senator Pete Knight to write marriage discrimination into the California constitution was on the ballot as Proposition 22 in 2000, actively supported by the Catholic and Mormon Churches, among others.

"No on Knight" tried to close the gap in the polls with print and television ads calling Prop 22 unnecessary: "You want the best for your children, but what if your child, or the child of someone you know, turns out to be gay? ... Gay marriage is already banned and it stays banned when you vote no. For your child, or someone else's, vote no on 22." This mealy-mouthed approach utterly failed, and Prop 22 passed by a whopping 61% to 39% margin.

Where marriage equality was finally able to stem the tide was in New England. I mentioned last Saturday that Vermont had led the nation with its recognition in July, 2000 of same-sex civil unions (nine years later, it would be the first state to recognize same-sex marriage by legislation rather than a court ruling). The first court ruling in favor of marriage equality came in the fall of 2003, in Massachusetts. In a 4-to-3 ruling, the Massachusetts Supreme Court gave the state legislature 180 days to legalize same-sex marriages.

The California Supreme Court found Proposition 22 unconstitutional in 2008, and the Connecticut Supreme Court found in favor of marriage equality that same year. Both decisions, like that in Massachusetts, were by one-vote majorities. Surprisingly, the first unanimous court decision came in April, 2009, not in some liberal coastal state, but in Iowa.

(Someone from central Iowa contacted me after this cartoon appeared, wondering how I knew of Sac City. As it happens, it was the only small town I found on the map with a name which clearly fit metrically in the Green Acres theme song. I've never been in Iowa west of the Mississippi River Highway.)

Conservatives in Iowa succeeded in ousting three of their Supreme Court justices in the next election, but the tide was turning in favor of marriage equality. I can't include my cartoons about each of the fifty states here, especially since the most recent progress has come, via U.S. Circuit Court rulings, several states at a time. But here are a couple favorites -- Hawai'i in 2009:

Minnesota in 2011:

And finally, from last year, featuring Wisconsin's then-Attorney General J.B. Van Hollen, whom I could have replaced with any of a few dozen elected Republicans from other states:

Q Toon: Coming Attractions

Q Syndicate✒Dec 25, 2014

The cable channel still known as "The Learning Channel" plans to air a special in January titled "My Husband's Not Gay." As the cartoon explains, the show peers into the lives of a handful of gay Mormons and the women who married them plus one single gay Mormon guy in the market to marry such a woman.

I'm sure he's quite a catch.

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We had some distribution problems with this week's cartoon, which is challenging enough with a midweek holiday. I had to send my cartoon files (a grayscale version, a high-resolution file for printing, and a low-resolution file for the web) to an alternate address which I apparently didn't have quite right. I've been cc-ing that address for years without getting any mailer daemon alert, so somewhere at Pridesource.com there is an untended email address filling up with cartoons.

Q Toon: Card Game

We'll get back to the royal baby in a moment, after this message from Geeks Out. Geeks Out wants everyone to boycott Ender's Game by Orson Scott Card on the grounds that he's antigay.

Unless you're deep into science fiction, you've probably never heard of the Ender's Game series or Orson Scott Card, but the 1985 book has been made into a movie set for release this November. Here's the plot: a remnant of humanity has been fighting an insectoid race of "buggers" (wait, wait, that's not what Geeks Out is upset about yet); the hero is one of the youth who have been trained during an uneasy truce to fight the next stage of the war. Fiery explosions, decapitations, impalings, and spattered ichor and guts festoon the screen.

Of more relevance to the current controversy is that Card is a board member of the National Organization for Marriage. The anger with Card stems from a article he wrote back in February, 1990, before most of Geeks Out were born:

“Laws against homosexual behavior should remain on the books, not to be indiscriminately enforced against anyone who happens to be caught violating them, but to be used when necessary to send a clear message that those who flagrantly violate society's regulation of sexual behavior cannot be permitted to remain as acceptable, equal citizens within that society.”
— Orson Scott Card, “The Hypocrites of Homosexuality,” Sunstone Magazine

Sunstone Magazine, by the way, is a Mormon educational publication, so we do have a religious aspect to this story. And if you think that there's something incongruous about portraying the religious right gambling at cards, I would lay you odds that even One Million M*ms will be willing to overlook all the gratuitous violence in Mr. Card's film in order to burnish their antigay bona fides.

Card currently claims that his 1990 article is rendered moot by last month's Supreme Court decision striking down the Defense of Marriage Act, so everybody should cut him some slack. His own 2008 article for the Mormon Times argues otherwise:

"Regardless of law, marriage has only one definition, and any government that attempts to change it is my mortal enemy. I will act to destroy that government and bring it down …"