Q Toon: NOM and 8's Motel

Last week, the California Supreme Court put an end once and for all to antigay Proposition 8, refusing to hear an appeal by the amendment's sponsors that it had been unconstitutionally overturned.

Initially, I had developed an idea for this week's cartoon that would have been set in a cemetery; and I was all set to send the proposal to my editors when I realized that I had just drawn a cemetery-themed cartoon a month or two ago. It seemed too soon to return to that venue, so I continued in search of something else.

This idea probably came to mind because a Facebook conversation with fellow Q Syndicate cartoonist Dave Brousseau about Alfred Hitchcock just days before was lurking just behind the shower curtain of my subconscious. There are other, more obvious films I could have referenced -- but I didn't feel like depicting the California Supreme Court as munchkin coroners. I'm sure the justices will understand.

Speaking of understanding, I'm hoping that editors don't mind that I didn't provide them with a full-color version of this cartoon. That would have been sacrilegious.

Q Toon: Scalia on the Rocks

Here at long last is my cartoon about last week's Supreme Court ruling against California's Proposition 8 and the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA).

Justice Antonin Scalia's sclerotic dissent in United States v. Windsor is less about finding strict constitutional arguments in favor of Prop 8 and DOMA than bitching about the damn kids today:

"In the majority’s judgment, any resistance to its holding is beyond the pale of reasoned disagreement. To question its high-handed invalidation of a presumptively valid statute is to act (the majority is sure) with the purpose to ‘disparage,’ ‘injure,’ ‘degrade,’ ‘demean,’ and ‘humiliate’ our fellow human beings, our fellow citizens, who are homosexual. All that, simply for supporting an Act that did no more than codify an aspect of marriage that had been unquestioned in our society for most of its existence— indeed, had been unquestioned in virtually all societies for virtually all of human history. It is one thing for a society to elect change, it is another for a court of law to impose change by adjudging those who oppose it hostes humani generis, enemies of the human race."

Enemies of the human race, no less! In his prior arguments that it is gays and lesbians who justly deserve odium humani generis, Justice Scalia has proven no stranger to wild overstatement. In Romer v. Evans (1996), Scalia dissented from the majority opinion affirming a Colorado law forbidding localities from discriminating against LGBT citizens. Scalia could see no difference between homosexuality and homicide:

" I had thought that one could consider certain conduct reprehensible—murder, for example, or polygamy, or cruelty to animals—and could exhibit even 'animus' toward such conduct. Surely that is the only sort of 'animus' at issue here: moral disapproval of homosexual conduct[.]" 

As Adam Serwer observed in Mother Jones, "It's true that people generally disapprove of murder, but there's more going on in laws banning murder than mere disfavor—the rights of the person being murdered, for example."

Scalia probably doesn't read Mother Jones, but he at least restrained himself from of likening gays and lesbians to Charles Manson in his dissent in Lawrence v. Texas (2003):

"The Texas statute undeniably seeks to further the belief of its citizens that certain forms of sexual behavior are 'immoral and unacceptable,' Bowers, supra, at 196–the same interest furthered by criminal laws against fornication, bigamy, adultery, adult incest, bestiality, and obscenity.  ...  State laws against bigamy, same-sex marriage, adult incest, prostitution, masturbation, adultery, fornication, bestiality, and obscenity are likewise sustainable only in light of Bowers’ validation of laws based on moral choices. Every single one of these laws is called into question by today’s decision.”

The Republic may survive the nullification of state laws against masturbation, but Scalia had surely hoped that his parade of horribles would bring a Christian nation to its senses. For a time, as Republicans raced a series of antigay constitutional amendments through the the states, he probably did feel vindicated.

But as young people continue to come of age in a world where gays and lesbians are openly joining into committed relationships and raising families of their own without any demonstrable deterioration of heterosexual marriage, Scalia is left to fume:

Why can't they be like we were, perfect in every way?
What's the matter with kids today?

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: We Mutually Pledge to Each Other...

Last week, the Supreme Court ruled 8-1 in the case Doe v Reed to keep public the signers of a Washington state petition to put Resolution 71 on the state ballot in 2008:

By a broad eight-to-one majority in an opinion by the Chief Justice, the Supreme Court today held in Doe v. Reed that signatories of referendum petitions generally do not have a constitutional right – i.e., a right that would trump state open government laws – to keep their identities private. But the Court held – again, by the same broad majority – that courts should consider in any given case whether a particular referendum presents sufficiently unique circumstances that anonymity is required. It therefore permitted the claim to anonymity in this case, which involves a referendum on gay rights, to proceed in the lower courts. But their chances of prevailing appear very slim, as five members of the Court either expressed significant doubts about their claim or expressly rejected it.

It's a complicated ruling, with extra opinions from various members of the majority; but only Clarence Thomas bought the argument that people who sign a petition to take away rights from their gay and lesbian neighbors ought to have a right to have their signatures kept private, especially from those gay and lesbian neighbors.

Simply put, we have a right to a secret ballot in this country, but not a right to secret government. Our governmental representatives do not have the right to make laws in secret (the Senatorial Secret Hold aside), and neither do citizens.

If a citizens' group wants to circulate a petition to outlaw mosques in your town, to deny gay and lesbian couples marital rights in your state, or any other action to discriminate against a minority in this country, that group cannot expect the protection of anonymity.

For that, there are plenty of Comment buttons other people's internet sites.

This Week's Cartoon

When the American Foundation for Equal Rights announced that it would challenge the anti-marriage amendment to California's state constitution approved by the voters in November, mainstream LGBT rights organizations said it was too soon to go to the courts. They had been defeated in the state supreme court before the election, and again in the election itself. Since the AFER suit is proceeding anyway, those mainstream organizations have offered their assistance, but those offers are getting a chilly response.

It's hard to know whose side to be on in this kerfuffle. A quixotic attempt to refight a lost battle might do more harm than good, but what point is counseling patience while real families are being hurt? I'm reminded of a classic Feiffer cartoon: six panels show basically the same cartoon updated from 1865 to 1965, supposedly drawn by cartoonists counseling patience on Blacks' civil rights -- activists pushing for real change are represented in the cartoons-within-the-cartoon as a radical individual doing damage to his own cause.

The point of the Feiffer cartoon, of course, is that no progress comes of patience. So lead, follow, or get out of the way; just don't bleed on the car, please.