Q Toon: Courage!

This week's Q Syndicate cartoon was probably inspired by watching so much Game of Thrones ... and by this picture (at right) in the Bible my church gave all of us Sunday School children way back in the days before Good News for Modern Man came out.

This particular edition has a comprehensive concordance, dictionary of biblical terms, maps, and, peppered judiciously throughout, a number of color pictures on glossy paper. The publisher didn't credit whoever was responsible for the pictures, unlike most of the considerably older Bibles I've seen which usually have a list of all the "plates" right after the table of contents.

This particular painting always looked to me as if the Emperor were somehow disintegrating down the wall, and I've never quite figured out what that red swath is supposed to be. Tattered cloth? Fading paint? Blood? Did he choose poorly?

The other source for this cartoon is the continued complaining from the religious righteous about how expecting wedding bakers and florists to treat their customers with equal respect is Just Like The Holocaust.

It's still a bit premature, I think, to make a joke out of Auschwitz; so, with apologies to my Sunday School teachers, I present Saint Godwin, the patron saint of Tiresome Hitler Analogies. (And just in time, Phyllis Schlafly has gone and compared antigay Christians to their lion fodder forebears. Is she a reader of this humble blog?)

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P.S.: I drew this cartoon well before A Jerk With A Gun decided to shoot up a church Bible study group in Charleston, South Carolina last night. No connection with last night's events is intended. But I would nevertheless suggest that there are greater threats to Religious Liberty than Adam and Steve patronizing their local florist.

Bathroom Humor

The other day, I made an off-hand reference to two conservatives who have been obsessed with our nation's toilets. It's Stickleback Saturday, so what better excuse to dredge up a couple of my old cartoons about them?

First was Phyllis Schlafly, spokesperson for the Eagle Forum and vociferous opponent of the Equal Rights Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. The proposed amendment, which passed the House and Senate overwhelmingly in 1972, would have guaranteed women equal rights before the law with men. Schlafly is credited for derailing its ratification, predicting that the ERA would result in unisex bathrooms, same-sex marriage, and compulsory military service for women. The ERA fell three states short of ratification in 1982.

There was some talk of reviving the ERA after Democrats swept the 2006 elections. Only talk, apparently. Most public buildings still offer a choice of men's and women's rest rooms, and there hasn't been any military draft since the Vietnam War, As of this writing, we're still waiting for the Supreme Court's ruling on whether marriage equality should be the law of the land even without the ERA.

I drew the above cartoon for the Kenosha [Wisconsin] Tribune when the deadline for ratification had passed in July of 1982. I believe I've mentioned the Tribune before; it was a very short-lived newspaper that failed to survive that summer.

I have no idea whether Schlafly's husband, John Fred Schlafly Jr. bore any resemblance to the man in the cartoon. Or whether they had a dog.

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Senator Larry Craig (R-ID) had a very different interest in public rest rooms. The conservative Idahoer (yes, that's a word) had racked up a solidly antigay voting record in the House and Senate when, on June 11, 2007, he was arrested at the Minneapolis-St. Paul airport for soliciting sex from an undercover policeman in the men's room.

The nation learned how men supposedly invite sexual encounters by sticking a foot underneath the stall divider; Senator Craig protested that the officer had misinterpreted his habitual "wide stance." He later revised that to "I'm a wide guy," but ultimately pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor charge of disorderly conduct. Meanwhile, the second stall from the right in the men's room next to the lottery shop actually became a tourist attraction.

I drew a couple earlier cartoons about Craig, but my favorite is this one from June of 2008, when the retiring senator announced that he planned to write his memoirs.

Q Toon: P.E. Eww

If you're a public official, and you want to tell a joke, it had better be a good one. If the joke is even slightly off, we inkslingers may never let you hear the end of it.

Former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee was regaling guests at a religious broadcasters' conference with his God Guns Grits 'n' Gravy Elitist opinion of  Caitlyn Jenner, né Bruce.

"Now I wish that someone told me when I was in high school that I could have felt like a woman when it came time to take showers in P.E. I'm pretty sure that I would have found my feminine side and said, 'Coach, I think I'd rather shower with the girls today.'"

I'd say that at least Huckabee was finding some facility to fret over besides public rest rooms, the obsession of every conservative from Phyllis Schlafly to Larry Craig, except that he used "Omigosh There'll Be Trannies Flashing Kids In The Lavatory!" as the lead-in to his shower joke.

I'm just guessing, but I'd be willing to bet that Jenner has given more thought to what it means to be a man or a woman than Huckabee has. And to put it in language that even the former Governor might understand, I'm sure that Jenner didn't put herself through all this public notoriety just so she could enjoy the longer lines for the ladies' room.