Q Toon: Stacy Garrity Explains It All

I haven't seen much interest from national media in Pennsylvania's gubernatorial election this year; incumbent Governor Josh Shapiro is widely expected to win reelection handily. But since publications in both Philadelphia and Pittsburgh run my cartoons, I decided to show the Keystone State a little love this week.

The Republican nominee for governor there is State Treasurer Stacy Garrity, who, I will admit up front, has reportedly been doing a very good job at her present post. As a colonel in the Army Reserve, Garrity was a whistle-blower at Camp Bucca in Iraq, exposing abuses of prisoners and inhumane conditions.

On the other hand, she is a full-on MAGA Trumpster who advocated throwing out Pennsylvanians' votes in 2020 because they went for local boy Joe Biden over the grifter from Mar-a-Lardo. She's anti-choice on abortion rights, a COVID skeptic who protested houses of worship getting closed when other public gathering places were also shutting their doors. 

Spotlight PA, which identifies as "an independent, nonpartisan, and nonprofit newsroom producing investigative and public-service journalism that holds power to account and drives positive change in Pennsylvania," tried to get Garrity to respond to its questions on issues of interest to LGBTQ+ Pennsylvanians, but received only a terse, almost rude reply from a campaign aide.

Garrity’s campaign did not respond to a list of questions from Spotlight PA, including one asking her to elaborate on her position on same-sex marriage. Other questions included whether she would support nondiscrimination protections for LGBTQ+ Pennsylvanians; if healthcare providers should be able to assert religious or moral objections to turn people away; what she thinks of legislation to ban instruction on gender identity and sexual orientation in elementary classrooms; or if her administration would maintain a policy discouraging licensed providers and commercial insurers from conducting conversion therapy.

Instead, a spokesperson shared the following statement from Garrity: “We are all children of God, and every person regardless of their race, their gender, or their sexual orientation should be treated with dignity and respect. Period. Full stop.”

Marriage equality is, at least for now, the law of the land; but a heteros-only Definition of Marriage Act remains in Pennsylvania's statutes in case the Trump Supreme Court were to overturn Obergefell v. Hodges. Transgender persons are a favorite target of Republican politicians these days, and "religious liberty" advocates still want to be able to discriminate against LGBTQ+ patients, customers, renters, and neighbors.

Of  course, our issues are not the dominant ones in Pennsylvania this year. As in many other races around the country, the top campaign issues are affordability, data centers, and saving democracy from the other party. 

And by the way, there's a war on, or off, or on again. Or maybe it's splunge.

Happy Constitution Day (while it lasts)!

Rx Against COVID Memory Fog

Senator Randy Paul (R-KY) led a star chamber hearing this week aimed at trapping Dr. Anthony Fauci into somehow committing perjury. Even if only about the color of his tie. 

So today's Graphical History Tour offers a little reminder of what the world was going through a mere six years ago.

March, 2020

We first heard of this novel virus as a problem in far-off China and aboard cruise ships. The Trump Administration responded by trying to quarantine cruise ship passengers, naming Vice President Mike Pence in charge of addressing the health threat, and calling communicable disease expert Dr. Anthony Fauci out of retirement for his expertise.

March, 2020

In the days between my drawing this cartoon and its publication anywhere, hairdressers — and just about every other public service industry — were closing up their shops. The nation hunkered down, stopping first to empty store shelves of toilet paper.

April, 2020

Within the first weeks, everybody was working from home except doctors, nurses, emergency responders, and grocery store employees. Schools tried to figure out how to teach students remotely. Senior citizen homes closed their doors to visitors. Afternoon and late night chat shows shut down immediately; the halting of other television and movie production would take a while to affect viewers. Major League Baseball played to empty stadiums.

Meanwhile, bodies piled up in makeshift morgues.

March, 2020

We didn't know much about the corona virus, which was all that much scarier for everyone. What little we were learning did not inspire confidence: it could spread through the air, the body had no natural defense against it, and any vaccine or cure was yet to be found.

Donald Trump soon discovered that by going on live television to brief the nation about the pandemic, he could command the media's undivided attention. It did not matter at all whether he had the slightest idea what he was talking about; he could just make any shit up as long as it fed his bottomless ego to be on TV.

He even boasted about getting bigger ratings than the Superbowl.

March, 2020

We didn't see much any more of Vice President Pence, supposedly the nation's COVID Czar. I guess he went back to his previous job as the president's golf caddy and Ambassador to Televangelistan.

For his part, Trump promised that the pandemic would be over by Easter, then by Mothers' Day, then by Flag Day, then by summer. Operating without a medical license, he prescribed disinfectant, horse deworming medicine, and shining bright light up one's rectum — none of which treatments had any basis in scientific fact.

April, 2020

When Kim Jong Il, Supreme Leader of North Korea, disappeared from public view for several weeks, there was speculation that he might be dead (he isn't). When dark humor is all a cartoonist has to offer, well, the darker the better.

May, 2020

Despite reports of COVID tearing through church choirs before The Shutdown, it didn't take long for the religious right to complain against social distancing. Not being allowed to pack the pews severely impacted the health of brick and mortar evangelists' bank balances, so Trump told the nation to reopen all the churches.

December, 2020

2020 dragged on. Every time we thought there was an end in sight, COVID cases spiked again. 

October, 2020

After a few months, the television networks decided against giving Donald Trump free air time to tout quack cures and predict COVID's miraculous disappearance, and Trump gave up taking a daily position behind the podium where he might be asked uncomfortable questions. Dr. Fauci became the public face of the government's response to the pandemic, delivering a frank, honest, and un-sugar-coated medical advice.

July, 2020

But by summer, the trolls and conspiracy mongers of the internet, egged on by Fox Noise and the rest of right-wing media, were hard at work promoting their own hare-brained fantasies about where the virus came from. Conservatism being opposed to anything associated with promoting the common good, they complained loudly that masks and social distancing infringed on individual rights.

September, 2020

They came up with the idea of publishing "face mask exemption cards," although the things carried no legal, scientific, medical, or practical authority. One was supposed to present the card at any office or business that had a policy mandating the wearing of masks, as if the business had some obligation to honor the card.

July, 2020

Until vaccines were finally developed roughly a year after the virus was first identified, the rest of us had to manufacture our own defenses.

Q Toon: Berlin

There was another topic I had planned to draw about this week, but the truck and knife attack that killed one and injured 29 at Berlin's annual LGBTQ Pride event over the weekend changed all that.

It was the terrorist act of an 21-year-old wannabe ISIS jihadi, whom German police later sent in search of those 72 virgins. Too bad he had to leave his body behind. Sorry not sorry.

His choice to murder innocent LGBTQ+ people celebrating and having fun cannot be happenstance. Nothing represents what Islamic fundamentalists hate about what they see as Western decadence more than LGBTQ+ pride and joy — it's even worse than string bikinis, the Reconquista, and cartoons of The Prophet.

The attack is sure to inflame Islamophobic passions in Germany, where the neo-Nazi Alternative für Deutschland party (AfD) was already polling distressingly well beforehand. The AfD are fascists — not a term I toss around lightly — who oppose both immigration and LGBTQ+ rights, and are surely taking advantage of this tragedy for their own ends.

Caught in the middle are LGBTQ+ Muslims in Germany such as Ali Darwich, an influencer on Instagram who was at the Christopher Street festival himself, ready to go to some afterparty when friends began calling to find out whether he was okay. He later told the Associated Press:

“Born a Muslim, living as a gay man, working as a police officer,” Darwich said, as he tried holding back the tears, “this terror attack touches so many aspects of who I am. ...

“I asked myself as a gay if we will have to live with more fear now even though we are already experiencing bullying and hatred. I asked myself as a Muslim if our community will be exposed to even more racism now.”

Here at home, there are some antigay Americans — and some LGBTQ right-wingers as well — who try to excuse Republican actions against our community by pointing to Islamic fundamentalists decreeing the death penalty for LGBTQ people. That argument overlooks countries, especially in Africa, passing draconian antigay penalties up to and including capital punishment, egged on by Christian fundamentalists in the U.S.

For the time being, the Absolutely Corrupt Trump Regime will be happy to cite the Christopher Street Festival attack as further justification for its ethnic cleansing program, even when it dumps refugees who fled persecution for being LGBTQ+ back to the countries that condemn them.

Persecuting white gays and lesbians here in the Homeland will have to wait until Republicans have finished eradicating the transgender menace.

Saturday Selfies

It's time once again for the Graphical History Tour  to venture down into the deep recesses of your friendly tour guide's basement to rummage through some April cartoons decades old.

Starting with—

1986

in UW-P Ranger, Somers Wis., April 28, 1986

Just five years after a mentally deranged person attempted to assassinate the President of the United States, Congress, with the full support of that assassination target, decided it was time to relax gun controls. 

The so-called Firearms Owners Protection Act of 1986 amended the Gun Control Act of 1968 to redefine "gun dealer," excluding those making occasional sales or repairs, and legalized interstate sales of firearms provided that seller and buyer meet in person.

Another provision of the Act prohibited "the establishment of any system of registration of firearms, firearm owners, or firearm transactions."

On the other hand, it did add penalties for the use of armor-piercing bullets during the commission of a crime involving illegal drugs.

1996

Gun rights in this country depend to some extent on one's socio-economic status.

in UWM Post, Milwaukee, April 18, 1996

Nowadays, the Citizen's Militia types even get presidential pardons and Justice Department pressure on judges to vacate seditious conspiracy convictions for trying to overthrow the U.S. government.

in UWM Post, Milwaukee, April 22, 1996

Speaking of eternal constants, consider the plight of poor, cursed Lebanon. Once considered the Paris of the Middle East, capital Beirut was ripped apart by a sectarian religious war in the 1970's and pummeling by its neighbor to the south, Israel.

The main difference between then and now is that Shimon Peres appeared to have genuine regret at the death and destruction, whereas the Netanyahu government seems to revel in it. Targeting ambulances, schools, journalists, and hospitals all seems entirely intentional now.

The University of Wisconsin at Milwaukee, where this cartoon was printed, has long had Islamic and Jewish student groups very vocal about matters involving Israel, Palestine, and their neighbors. I might have expected some blowback over this cartoon, but the next issue's letter to the editor from the Israel Activist Center defending Israel's actions made no mention of my cartoon. 

Nor did the counter-response from the President of the Collective Union of Arab Students a week later. And with that, the school year ended, and any further salvos in the conversation went up on some long forgotten BBS.

2006

for Q Syndicate, April, 2006

Donald Trump, Eric Swalwell, and Tony Gonzales most certainly did not invent sex scandals. One such scandal, quickly forgotten among the parade, involved sexting of underage girls by Department of Homeland Security Deputy Press Secretary Brian Doyle.

55-year-old Doyle, believing he was sexting with a girl of 14, was caught in an on-line sting by the Polk County, Florida, Sheriffs Department. Charged with sending the fictitious girl sexually explicit photos and movie clips, Doyle had even given her his name, that he worked for DHS, and his office and governmental cell phone numbers.

This embarrassment came on top of the department's woefully inadequate response to the devastation of New Orleans by Hurricane Katrina, and the revelation that someone at DHS had disposed of an envelope of suspicious white powder out an office window. (There had been a few incidents of envelopes being mailed to news anchors and Democratic politicians made to appear as though they contained a toxic chemical.)

Going for a Three Stooges reference here was complicated by the fact that DHS Secretary Michael Chertoff bore no resemblance to Larry, Moe, or Curly. I do think that I got his caricature down in this, the one and only time I ever put him (or Brian Doyle, for that matter) in a cartoon.

2016

for Q Syndicate, April, 2016

I haven't set a cartoon in a diner in a long time, which is too bad. I like the setting, with its possibilities for slightly altering the point of view. 

In the years before I started colorizing my cartoons, the second or third panel would have probably shown this couple in silhouette. It keeps the cartoon from being too static, since the characters aren't actually moving around doing things.

The situation also allows for this sort of twist ending in a way that, say, talking heads on Fox Noise might not.

The Winter of Our Recycled Content

Daffodil shoots are poking through the slowly melting snow in the garden hereabouts. While Spring hopes eternal outdoors, today's Graphical History Tour parades through four decades of my March cartoons from 1986 to the present. 

Yes, I said "the present."

1986

in UW-P Ranger, Somers Wis., March, 1986

Ronald Reagan had campaigned for the presidency in 1980 promising to rein in spending and to cut the federal deficit. Instead, thanks to tax cuts and increased defense spending, the deficit climbed year by year, topping $220 billion, not quite 5% of gross national product, by 1986.

Republican Senators Phil Gramm and Warren Rudman, joined by South Carolina Democrat Fritz Hollings (left to right in my cartoon), put forth a scheme to force future Congresses to slash spending or face automatic budget cuts beyond their control. Gramm-Rudman-Hollings passed both houses of Congress and was signed into law in 1985, but the Supreme Court found it unconstitutional in 1986.

Gramm, Rudman, and Hollings later came out with a revised bill addressing the Court’s objections to Gramm-Rudman-Hollings I. Coupled with a tax hike, social spending cuts resulted in some reduction of the federal deficit, but it was right back to $221 billion by 1990.

A propos of nothing, $220 billion happens to be the amount Secretary of Special Military Operations Pete Hegseth wants over and above the Pentagon's 2026 budget in order to continue the Excursion in Iran.

1996

in UWM Post, Milwaukee Wis., March 7, 1996

I really liked this cartoon, partly because it was my first truly successful caricature of Pat Buchanan.

Its problem lay in that it relied heavily on references to the 1995 film version of Richard III, which reset Shakespeare's play about England's last Plantagenet king into the late 1930's, depicting Richard as a murderous fascist grasping onto his usurped throne. I took the boar's head banners directly from the film (a white boar having been the actual heraldry emblem adopted by Richard himself).

Had there been more of an audience for updated Shakespeare histories, those references might have worked better. And why wouldn't audiences have flocked to see Ian McKellen, Annette Bening, Robert Downey, Jr., and Dame Maggie Smith bringing the bard from the 1480's into the 20th Century and the murders from offstage onto the screen?

I had been reading all of Shakespeare's history plays at the time, starting with Richard III, spurred on by first reading The Daughter of Time by Dorothy Tey. In her novel, Tey's detective, Alan Grant, is laid up in the hospital recovering from a gunshot wound in a previous adventure, and passes the time investigating the murder, supposedly by Richard III or on his orders, of Edward IV's two sons.

I even bought the DVD.

Which sits unopened on the DVD shelf, still in its plastic wrapping from Barnes & Noble. 

It ain't exactly Date Night material.

2006

for Q Syndicate, March, 2006

Another problem with the cartoon about Buchanan was that the newspaper headline in it was kind of small. It was passable in a university newspaper, read by young adults with generally good vision. I couldn't foresee people reading it on an itty bitty phone screen; nowadays, I would have had to put the newspaper more in the foreground. or the headline in a "News Item" text box.

The church window in this 2006 cartoon has the same flaw. I had plenty of room to make the window much bigger, and I think the cartoon would have been improved if it were at least taller.

I don't think I was intentionally referencing this illustration by Maximino Cerezo Barredo of the biblical story of Jesus's temptation by the devil, although I was aware of and probably influenced by it:

"Cuaresma 1C" by Maximino Cerezo Barredo

The Temptation of Christ is read in Catholic, Lutheran, and Episcopal churches every year on the first Sunday in Lent: after Jesus has fasted in the wilderness for 40 days and nights, the devil tempts him with power and glory. Liberation Catholic theologian Cerezo Barredo depicts the devil in clerical garb, offering Christ cash, a crown, and satellite communications, in what I interpret as a slam against televangelists.

2016

Sadly, this brings us to some 2016 election cartoons, as the tragic trajectory of how we got where we are today begins. Call it Act One, Scene One.

for Q Syndicate, March 2016

In a more recent election cycle, I thought of using the boar's head from Richard III as a leitmotif in my cartoons of Donald Dickon Trump. I was already drawing him with a pig snout by then, so why not just add the boar tusks?

The answer is that I tried it once, and besides being even more obscure than it was in 1996, it just complicated the caricature. Besides, the real Richard III was a capable soldier and commander in battle, in spite of developing scoliosis, whereas Trump claimed bone spurs to avoid the Vietnam draft (when he wasn't playing tennis and squash at Fordham).

I was still developing a caricature of Trump at this point; he has one of those faces with too much of a muchness, defying cartoonists to choose which feature to fixate upon. The pout? The ridiculous comb-all-over? The eyebrows? The wattle? The overlong tie? The tiny hands?

As for Hillary Clinton, considering how long she has been in the public eye — as First Lady, senator, Secretary of State, presidential candidate, and Republican bête noire — it annoys me that I have so few cartoons where I feel I have drawn her successfully. This is not one of them.

2026

Wait, what?

The Graphical History Tour doesn't usually make a stop at Yesterday Afternoon, but you've been such a wonderful tour group, you all deserve a little treat.

Trump's hand-picked Commission of Fine Arts revealed controversial designs for new dime and gold dollar coins to celebrate the nation's semiquincentennial and Trump himself. 

The dime kicks Franklin Roosevelt to the curb; instead, its eagle grasps the arrows of war but has dropped its olive branches of peace. The dollar coin features Donald Render-to-Caesar Trump.

for this blog post, March 21, 2026

This is not the design proposed by the commission, but perhaps you remember this little episode from when Time magazine wanted to get some campaign photographs for a cover story on Trump.

Federal law has long prohibited putting living persons on U.S. currency, but a special exception was made for coins commemorating the nation's 250th anniversary. I'll give you exactly one guess which president signed that legislation into law.

Can you imagine any previous president getting his own mug on golden dollar coins while he was still in office?

Can you imagine Donald Imperator Trump passing up the opportunity?

January ’Sixes

This week's Graphical History Tour opens on a somber note, as we come to January, 1986, and one of those moments where anybody alive them remembers where they were and what they were doing.

in UW-Parkside Ranger, Somers Wis., Feb. 6, 1986

On January 28, 1986, the space shuttle Challenger exploded at "throttle up," just over a minute after launch. All aboard were killed, including schoolteacher Christa McAuliffe, chosen to be the first civilian passenger to fly into space. 

In five years, space shuttle flights had almost become routine, but because of McAuliffe's presence on the crew, millions of schoolchildren across the country were watching the liftoff. It was carried live on all the TV networks. 

We all knew the liftoff was not supposed to look like this. Everyone looked on in stunned silence, hoping against all reason to see the shuttle emerge from the fireball.

But no escape measures available to the crew; ejection seats and full pressure suits used in the first four space shuttle test flights had been removed before operational flights began in 1981. It's highly improbable that they would have been helpful in the event of an explosion, anyway.

A Presidential Commission attributed the explosion to a faulty O-ring made of material vulnerable to changes in temperature (there had been freezing temperatures in Florida overnight). Shuttle flights were suspended until September 29, 1988, after the implementation of new safety measures and stricter design standards.

1996

in UWM Post, Milwaukee Wis., Jan. 25, 1996

We’re now in an even-numbered year, so here’s fair warning that upcoming Graphical History Tours are going to include some presidential election cartoons. Fair warning also that it’s January, and someone is getting ready to harangue a joint session of Congress live on all the TV networks.

President Bill Clinton was all set to run for reelection in January of 1996. While there was a crowded Republican field heading into the year, Senate Majority Leader Robert Dole was the odds-on favorite. 

Multi-millionaire Steve Forbes, Jr., with a fortune at his disposal and a signature issue of replacing the current income tax system with a simple “flat tax” for everybody, had emerged as Dole’s closest rival.

2006 

for Q Syndicate, January, 2006

I have to tell you, when I was thumbing through my cartoons from January of 2006 to decide which one to post today, I had absolutely no recollection of what television show this cartoon was about.

The series might have been an attempt to update “Touched by an Angel” (1994-2003), or to make a faith-based “Harvey”; obviously, it never caught on. 

It was apparently one of the uncounted eminently forgettable January replacement series that come and go like Frosty the Snowman. Facebook Memories just reminded me of another such failed series, “¡Bob!”, a vehicle for Rob Schneider and Cheech Marin. I’m wondering if either of them remember it. I’ll bet you don’t.

2016

for Q Syndicate, January, 2016

Here's a cartoon about a spate of "religious liberty" laws, pushed by Republicans to legalize discrimination against LGBTQ+ persons — special rights for straights.

What I love about this cartoon is how easy winter scenes are to draw. Especially when the object is to set the cartoon in the middle of the most desolate nowhere imaginable. I may have spent more time thinking up the cartoon than drawing it, even considering all that lettering of the dialogue.

Well, here's where the Graphical History Tour ends today. Safe travels, drive carefully, remember to steer into a skid, and always remember to carry a blanket and maybe an extra jacket in the car.

August Assembly Required

Back when I was drawing cartoons for University of Wisconsin student newspapers, there would be one cartoon I drew every August in order to make the deadline of the first edition of the new fall semester.

in UW-Parkside Ranger, Kenosha Wis., Sept. 5, 1985

As it happens, the UW-Parkside Ranger did publish Volume 14, Issue 1 on August 29, 1985; but this cartoon I drew that August only made it into Volume 14, Issue 2. I don't remember whether I hadn't known there would be an August 29 issue, or whether there wasn't space for this cartoon. It was probably the former, though.

Anyway, there was a white minority government ruling South Africa in those days. Apartheid meant a strict segregation of the races; native Blacks were kept subjugated in impoverished villages, forbidden the vote, and generally treated like trespassers in their own land. In response, corporations and universities were responding to demands to divest from South African companies.

Amid violent suppression of Black South African protests against a new constitution, President Ronald Reagan resisted congressional and citizen calls to impose sanctions on the South African government. Even with a Republican majority in the Senate, Congress would pass the Comprehensive Anti-Apartheid Act of 1986 over Reagan's veto, banning new U.S. investment in South Africa and sales to the country's police and military, while cutting off South African imports.

in UW-M Post, Milwaukee, Sept. 5, 1995

The UWM Post published three issues during the summer semester in those days; I would contribute cartoons to the summer editions in 1996.

As for this cartoon, Sen. Phil Gramm (R-TX) was a prominent fiscal conservative, and the lead namesake of the Gramm-Rudman-Hollings Balanced Budget Act on 1985. The bill promised to balance the federal budget by 1990 by mandating across-the-board cuts in government programs if Congress failed to pass budgets beneath a prescribed deficit level.

It didn't work. The federal deficit would be eliminated, temporarily, under President Bill Clinton, but thanks to tax increases that were anathema to Gramm and the rest of his party — which were reversed as soon as the supposed deficit hawks were back in total charge of things.

The line in the third panel of my cartoon is a direct quote of his rationale for simultaneously cutting benefits for the poor and taxes for the rich — still Republican dogma to this day. They got their way in spades with the Big Abomnibus Budget Bill of 2025, which proved that Republicans never really cared about running up the deficit in the first place — in case anybody thought that George W. Bush's deficits were a fluke.

Gramm was running for president in the summer of 1995, and made a good showing in an Iowa straw poll in August; but his campaign didn't make it past the Iowa caucuses in January. The one positive thing I can say about him is that he was a hoot to draw.

✍

I've got one other cartoon from August, 1995 that I'd like to include here, because it never got published. I'll leave it up to you to decide why that was.

It's about a local news item, and drawn for the Racine Journal Times. The Ku Klux Klan announced plans to hold a rally on August 19 in front of the courthouse in Elkhorn, population then around 5,000, in Walworth County. In response, the county's Republican and Democratic parties issued a joint statement denouncing the Klan while affirming their First Amendment right "to have and declare" their beliefs. 

"We do not support the belief that hatred solves problems," their joint letter read. "We believe hate crimes and hate group activities negatively affect everyone in the community."

When the Walworth County board took up a resolution in support of "peaceful counteractions against hate groups," someone objected to the term "hate groups." So the board amended the resolution so that it lent its support to "peaceful counteractions against unhappy groups."

Unpublished, August, 1995

Lake Geneva Supervisor Dan Janowak explained to the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel's Meg Jones that he suggested the alternative phrasing because the KKK "is not a hate program. It's more or less people that are unhappy with what's going on and they don't necessarily hate."

Board Chairman Lawrence Scharine weaseled, "'Hate' or 'unhappy,' it doesn't make much of a difference. The point is still there."

"Lied" or "weaseled," it doesn't make much of a difference. The point is still there.

The Klan rally took place as planned, separated from counter-protesters by "a small army of police in riot gear." The Journal Times didn't offer an estimate of the number of Klansmen involved (and Imperial spokesWizard David Neumann wouldn't say how many members the local Klan had), but implied that they were outnumbered by the 400-500 counter-protesters and curious on-lookers. "Klansmen spoke against affirmative action and hiring quotas," the JT''s Joseph Scolaro reported. "They continually called protesters 'scum' and decried homosexuals and minorities."

The only arrests made at the rally were of two anti-Klan protesters from Milwaukee, released on signature bonds.

Speaking of affirmative action...

in Business Journal of Greater Milwaukee, August 5, 2005

As difficult as it may be to remember only twenty short years ago, a little corporate diversity was thought to be a good thing. I drew this cartoon to accompany a Business Journal editorial in favor of favoring "disadvantaged" businesses.

The idea was that businesses owned by racial minorities, women, and/or physically challenged persons should be given favorable consideration in bidding for government contracts; in practice, just having one or two such persons serving on the corporate board would qualify a company as labeled disadvantaged.

Under the present regime, of course, these companies would have to fire any racial minorities, women, and physically challenged persons on their corporate board just to have a glimmer of hope to compete with and out-bribe all-white, all-male, all-cis family and golfing partners of La Cosa di Trump.

for Q Syndicate, August, 2015

And finally today, marriage equality vs. religious liberty.

This Week's Sneak Peek

The celebrities I grew up with are dropping like, well, old people these days.

I happened to have listened to my Tom Lehrer album the day before he died, and I have to say that his nearly 60-year-old satire still stands up pretty well. "National Brotherhood Week" mocks taking a break from prejudice and bigotry for seven days out of 365:

Oh, the Protestants hate the Catholics,
And the Catholics hate the Protestants,
And the Hindus hate the Moslems,
And everybody hates the Jews. 

I memorized "Pollution" as a child:

See the halibuts and the sturgeons
Being wiped out by detergents.
Fish gotta swim and birds gotta fly,
But they don't last long if they try. 

Even proto-woke folk singers came in for some zingers:

The tune don't have to be clever,
And it don't matter if you put a coupla extra syllables into a line.
It sounds more ethnic if it ain't good English,
And it don't even gotta rhyme. 

The "Vatican Rag" is absolutely hilarious:

Do whatever steps you want if
You have cleared them with the pontiff
Everybody say his own
Kyrie eleison
Doin' the Vatican Rag

And of course, who could forget "New Math," his ode to his chosen academic field?

[T]he book that I got this problem [342 minus 173] out of wants you to do it in base eight. But don't panic! Base eight is just like base ten really— if you 're missing two fingers!
Shall we have a go at it? Hang on. ..
You can't take three from two,
Two is less than three,
So you look at the four in the eights place.

Now that's really four eights,

So you make it three eights,
Regroup, and you change an eight to eight ones
And you add 'em to the two,
And you get one-two base eight,
Which is ten base ten,
And you take away three, that's seven.
Ok?
Now instead of four in the eights place
You've got three,
'Cause you added one,

That is to say, eight, to the two,
But you can't take seven from three,
So you look at the sixty-fours —
"Sixty-four? How did sixty-four get into it?" I hear you cry.
Well, sixty-four is eight squared, don't you see?
Well, you ask a silly question, you get a silly answer!

From the three, you then use one
To make eight ones,
You add those ones to the three,

And you get one-three base eight,
Or, in other words,

In base ten you have eleven,
And you take away seven,

And seven from eleven is four!
Now go back to the sixty-fours,
You're left with two,
And you take away one from two,
And that leaves?
Now, let's not always see the same hands...
One, that's right. Whoever got one can stay after the show and clean the erasers. 

Q Toon: Parental Rights and Wrongs

The Supreme Court wrapped up its work for the litigation season at the end of June, its 6-to-3 right-wing supermajority handing down a thoroughly predictable series of rulings in support of Trumpster goodthink.

Of interest and disappointment to the LGBTQ+ community, the Court ruled in Mahmoud v. Taylor in favor of a group of parents who demanded to exempt their children from exposure to LGBTQ+ history and literature. The Muslim, Ukrainian Orthodox, and Catholic litigants had sued the Montgomery County, Maryland, school board to provide alternative curricula for their children. 

The dispute stems from the county school board’s 2022 approval of books featuring LGBTQ+ characters for use in its language-arts curriculum. One book, Uncle Bobby’s Wedding, tells the story of a little girl’s reaction to her uncle’s same-sex wedding; another book, Pride Puppy, describes a puppy that becomes lost during a Pride parade. 

The county initially allowed parents to excuse their children from instruction using the LGBTQ-themed storybooks. When the county removed that option in 2023, several parents went to federal court.

Writing for the majority, Dubya-appointed Justice Samuel Alito “what the parents seek here is not the right to micromanage the public school curriculum, but rather to have their children opt out of a particular educational requirement that burdens their well-established right ‘to direct ‘the religious upbringing’ of their children.’”

Clinton nominee Justice Sonia Sotomayor, in her dissent, countered that the Court's grant of a parental right to veto LGBTQ+-positive public school curriculum materials on religious grounds could mean that “books on evolution and interfaith marriage, and history may be next.”

It's easy to imagine that today's Court majority would have no problem with that.

Meanwhile, the Supremes declined to rule whether parental rights exist outside of their religious rights. In U.S. v. Skrmetti, the Court ruled Tennessee's SB1 (the number indicating it was the state senate's most urgent business this session) banning medical care for transgender minors, even against the wishes of patient, parents, and medical professionals.

No, parents: you and your transgender child have no say in the child's health care. That is up to the State. No opt-out for you.

The plaintiffs had tried to argue that Skrmetti was about gender discrimination: e.g., a minor the state identifies as male could be prescribed hormone blockers, but a minor the state identifies as female cannot. Chief Justice John Roberts rejected that argument, because the second patient is being discriminated against for being transgender, not for being female, and that's okay.

Influence of Skrmetti has already begun to spread to other transgender concerns. The Seventh Circuit vacated its prior rulin g against anti-trans bathroom policies in public schools. The Fourth, Ninth, and Tenth Circuits have been instructed to review two decisions involving Medicaid exclusions for gender-affirming medical care, one involving public teachers health insurance plans, and one involving birth certificate policies.

If nobody can come up with a religious liberty argument in favor of transgender medical care, health insurance coverage, and lavatory use, perhaps, my cartoon character suggests, someone could at least raise a faith-based objection to the State mandating who The Lord Your God is.

But I suspect the theocrats on the Court would find some excuse to find reason to infringe that particular religious exercise.

Q Toon: That Old-Time Religion

Southern Baptists held their annual national conference in Dallas earlier this month, passing resolutions thoroughly in keeping with the denomination’s commitment to being in the forefront of the retreat from charity and good will.

Authoritarian Republicans have been working hard to demonize transgender persons in popular discourse, but marriage equality is a settled issue for most Americans. That didn't deter the Southern Baptists from passing a four-page resolution "call[ing] for the overturning of laws and court rulings, including Obergefell v. Hodges, that defy God’s design for marriage and family."

Further provisions in the resolution deny the existence of transgender persons, demand "complete and permanent" defunding of Planned Parenthood, and decry what its authors call "willful childlessness."

Southern Baptists, the largest protestant sect in the U.S., have a history of opposition to racial and gender equality, workers' collective rights, welfare, and science, while mounting biblical advocacy of segregation and slavery. 

About the only social reform movement that they have supported was Prohibition. The record is clear on how that worked out.