Q Toon: Trading Places

Linebacker Carl Nassib of the Las Vegas Raiders came out as gay last week, the first active NFL player ever to do so. He did just about everything about his coming out right, except for waiting until immediately after my deadline for last week's cartoon. But we'll let that pass.

His video announcement had a somewhat matter-of-fact air; there was no sense of any personal crisis or I've Been Trying So Hard To Live A Lie, no apologies, no regrets. Perhaps most importantly, he didn't make the announcement purely about himself, instead pledging $100,000 to the Trevor Project.

“They’re an incredible organization, they’re the number one suicide-prevention service for LGBTQ youth in America and they’re truly doing incredible things. I’m very excited to be a part of it and help in any way that I can and I’m really pumped to see what the future holds.”

As part of a determined show of support for Nassib, the NFL has matched his pledge; the publicity also sparked a 100% increase in on-line donations in the first week after Nassib's announcement.

Meanwhile, teammates, coaches, and many others around the league have expressed moral support for Nassib, and we're just not hearing the sort of qualified tolerance or even homophobia that would have greeted such a statement twenty or thirty years ago. (Or just eight.)

Oh, no doubt that antipathy is out there, muttered sotto voce. We just aren't hearing it.

Toon: American Horror Story

Sunday night, a 64-year-old white male with an arsenal of assault weapons barricaded himself in a 32nd-floor room of the Mandalay Bay Hotel in Las Vegas, broke through a window or two and opened fire on thousands of people attending an open air concert across the street. As of this morning, the death toll stands at 59; 527 others were injured in the shooting and resulting panic.

Congress, out of respect to the dead and maimed, plans to lead the nation in a moment of silencers.

The above cartoon won't show up on the AAEC web site until tomorrow, but I decided to break with my usual practice and post it here today. If I had waited a little longer to draw this cartoon, I could have featured disgraced Fox "News" star Bill O'Reilly instead of NRA Ghoul In Chief Wayne LaPierre:

"[H]aving covered scores of gun-related crimes over the years, I can tell you that government restrictions will not stop psychopaths from harming people.
They will find a way. ....
This is the price of freedom.  Violent nuts are allowed to roam free until they do damage, no matter how threatening they are.
The Second Amendment is clear that Americans have a right to arm themselves for protection.  Even the loons."

Mr. Trump called the Las Vegas massacre an act of "pure evil."

"The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing." — Edmund Burke

Q Toon: To Have and to Holder

When I pitched this cartoon to my editors, it was because U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder announced that the Justice Department would give same-sex married couples "full and equal recognition, to the greatest extent under the law" relative to mixed-sex married couples. The policy shift has ramifications in cases of bankruptcy, alimony, whether one spouse can be forced to testify against the other, bereavement leave, prison visitation, and myriad other situations.

The cartoon can also apply to various states' attorneys general as well. I drew just a couple weeks ago about Virginia Attorney General Mark Herring's decision not to defend his state's marriage inequality amendment. Just this week, Nevada Attorney General Catherine Cortez Masto decided that current case law renders moot any defense of her state's marriage equality ban (a decision backed by the state's Republican governor, incidentally).

In my home state of Wisconsin, on the other hand, Republican Attorney General J.B. Van Hollen and the Republican running to replace him this year plan to defend mixed-sex marriage supremacy with vigor. The Democratic candidates for the office have announced that neither would defend that amendment to the state constitution.