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)!

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.

June Toons

Today's Graphical History Tour head down into the Bergetoon vaults in search of cartoons from ten, twenty, thirty, and forty Junes ago. 

2016

June, 2016

I noticed that the Philadelphia Gay News, which usually runs my cartoons in grayscale, chose to print my Barney Frank tribute cartoon in full color in their annual Pride issue currently on newsstands. I did offer a grayscale version of it, which I did not do for the cartoon I drew ten years ago this week in response to the Pulse nightclub massacre.

Rainbows do not translate well into grayscale or black-and-white. For the first 16 years or so when I began drawing for the LGBTQ+ press, I didn't incorporate color except for special projects. At first, whenever I put a rainbow flag in a cartoon, I could only suggest the colors by drawing six shades of cross-hatching. Around 2005, I started employing computer-generated halftones in my work, but it was another seven years before I began regularly colorizing my drawings.

Changing the mood entirely:

2006

for Q Syndicate, June, 2006

Some guys just aren't second date material. And some other guys just don't know how to break it to them.

The non-topical nature of this cartoon suggests to me that although I drew it in June, it may have been sent to Q Syndicate as a reserve for a later date when I might be on vacation or any other reason miss deadline.

So I assume it was published sooner or later, because if it is still languishing in the retired computer back-up files at syndicate offices, I ought to change the Q in the final panel to an N in order to keep it relevant.

1996

June, 1996

Here's a cartoon I drew for the University of Wisconsin at Milwaukee student newspaper, the UWM Post, and drove it up to their office only to discover that they had no plans to publish during summer break.

Previously, the Post put out three issues each summer, publishing biweekly instead of its regular semiweekly schedule.

As for the content of the cartoon: Sen. Bob Dole, having secured the Republican presidential nomination with a record of supporting the party priority of criminalizing abortion, now sought to appeal to supporters of abortion rights. Not by softening his position on reproductive rights, but by welcoming the support of pro-choice Americans willing to have that choice taken away from them.

Standing behind Dole in this cartoon are House Majority Leader Dick Armey, House Speaker Newt Gingrich, Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott, Senators Phil Gramm and Jesse Helms, and theocratic activists Gary Bauer, Pat Robertson, and Ralph Reed.

1986

June, 1986

Speaking of cartoons that never saw print, I have not been able to determine whether or where this cartoon might have been published. It stars my congressman, Les Aspin, after he had voted in favor of President Reagan's military aid package for the right-wing Nicaraguan rebels, the Contras.

Aspin's vote stunned liberals at home and in Washington. Elected on a peacenik platform during the Vietnam War in 1970, his prior experience in the Pentagon garnered him the chairmanship of the House Armed Services Committee in 1985.

I populated this cartoon with a number of actual Democratic politicians: I can be certain of Alan Cranston, Daniel Inouye, Majority Leader Jim Wright, House Speaker Tip O'Neil, 1984 vice presidential candidate Geraldine Ferraro, and future President Joe Biden (which means that I was wrong about when I first drew him according to this Graphical History Stop). Some that I'm less sure of might be Representatives Barbara Mikulski and Dick Gephardt, Party Chair Paul Kirk, and Senator Robert Byrd.

Jumping back to 2016, I'd like to end up with a cartoon that I'm fairly certain got published somewhere.

for Q Syndicate, June, 2016

Republicans' mythical Big Tent popped up in Donald Trump's 2016 presidential campaign, when he claimed to have great support among the LGBT community while simultaneously wooing the antigay evangelical vote that had become so critical to becoming a GOP nominee. Since then, the evangelicals have bowed before the Baal of Trumpism, ceding their dominance to the oligarchs and broligarchs, Nazis and apartheiders.

By the way, I couldn't find the file of the colorized version of the Friends with Benefits cartoon, so I've recolored the original scan. I probably didn't originally paint Trump's face orange like I do now, since I also hadn't drawn tiny hands or the overlong necktie in this cartoon. The pig snout came a bit later.

Now, I don't know what LGBT supporters Trump, the presumptive GOP nominee at this point, had in mind, aside from Ric Grenell, Scott Bessent, Milos Yiannopoulos, and Caitlyn Jenner. But Trump's campaign message after the Pulse Nightclub massacre was that Hillary Clinton would "bring[] in more people who will threaten your freedoms and beliefs" (his tweet). He also told an audience in Atlanta: 

"The LGBT community, the gay community, the lesbian community — they are so much in favor of what I've been saying over the last three or four days. Ask the gays what they think and what they do, in, not only Saudi Arabia, but many of these countries, and then you tell me — who's your friend, Donald Trump or Hillary Clinton?"

This ties in, not just to the cartoon at the top of today's post, but also to the Bob Dole cartoon. I doubt that Dole, or any of the guys drawn behind him, seriously thought that he had fans of the pro-choice persuasion. Inviting them to vote Republican was just one of those things politicians used to do even in the days when we were sorting ourselves into irreconcilable adversaries.

But one does get the impression that Donald Trump lives in a fantasy world where facts become true (or crooked) simply because he says so. He hears the LGBT community, the gay community, the lesbian community agreeing with him in his head, so they must be his bigliest friends, that he can tell you.

Ditto the adulating crowds at Madison Square Garden, the praise for his gilded ballroom, any number of big men who have come up to him with tears in their eyes, and those peace negotiations about to bring Iran's surrender any minute now.

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.

My Left-wing Cartoons and Francisco

Pope Francis died in the wee hours of Easter Monday after having greeted Vice President Shady Vance and the throngs who came to celebrate the Resurrection with him the previous morning. I didn't get invited to the funeral at the Vatican today, so instead, I've got a look back over his papacy for this week's Graphical History Tour.

March, 2013

I caught a little bit of flack for this initial response to Cardinal Bergoglio’s election to the papacy in 2013, but I thought it was a light, whimsical cartoon to celebrate Catholicism’s first Latin American Pope. Besides, I happened to be discovering the music of Astor Piazolla just then. 

for Q Syndicate, August, 2013

Taking his papal name in honor of St. Francis of Assisi, Bergoglio quickly showed himself to be a very, very different pope than Benedict XVI. The archconservative B-16, breaking with longstanding tradition, had resigned the papacy rather than linger in the position while cruel age slowly robbed him of mind and body. (As critical as I was of Pope Benedict, I credit him with a selfless decision many aging politicians would have done well to emulate.)

for Q Syndicate, September, 2013

Conservative Catholics in America, who had weaponized their faith to impose their beliefs on pro-choice and LGBTQ+ fellow citizens, came to be extremely disappointed in the new pontiff... 

for Q Syndicate January, 2014

...and eagerly searched for another.

Here I suggested that Minnesota Archbishop John Nienstedt, Catholic League professional umbrage taker Bill Donahue, Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, Speaker of the House Paul Ryan, anti-marriage troublemaker Maggie Gallagher, and Senator Rick Santorum would be happy to invest Duck Dynasty's Phil Robertson with the scepter of St. Peter.

for Q Syndicate, October, 2015

Rowan County Kentucky clerk Kim Davis, who worked her refusal to issue to issue same-sex couples marriage licenses into national fame, subsequently boasted of having a private audience with the Pope. It eventually came to light that her private audience was shared with dozens of other Vatican visitors, and was private only in the sense that she hadn't brought the right-wing media along.

for Q Syndicate, October, 2020

Pope Francis gave his blessing to "civil unions" rather than marriage equality for same-sex couples in the fall of 2020 (although some conservative Catholics disputed the translation in English-speaking media of the papal Latin "convivenia civil"). A majority of the Catholic majority on the McConnell Supreme Court have been itching to overturn the 2014 Obergefell v. Hodges ruling favoring marriage equality in this country.

for Q Syndicate, March, 2021

Franciscan liberality notwithstanding, Catholic orthodoxy continues to condemn homosexuality as "intrinsically disordered."

As with the Anglican, Methodist, fundamentalist, and other denominations, antigay animus is especially dominant among Catholic clergy in much of Africa. Pope Francis's dialogue in this next cartoon is a direct quote, somewhat edited between panels two and three:

February, 2024

Ninety bishops and cardinals published a letter strenuously objecting to that papal pronouncement. They will be speaking up loudly as their conclave meets to elect a successor to this modern-day Pope. 

Don't be surprised to see someone more in the mold of Benedict XVI... if not Innocent IV.

✍

When I scour newspapers and magazines from 100 years ago for these Graphical History Tours, I never come across Pope Pius XI in U.S. editorial cartoons. I suppose that Protestant cartoonists didn't pay much attention to what Pius XI had to say about anything, and any Catholic cartoonists never presumed to differ with him. He did issue encyclicals criticizing capitalistic greed and warning against socialism and communism.

After initially supporting fascism in his native Italy and in Germany, Pius XI would issue an encyclical in 1937, smuggled in to Nazi Germany, lashing out against violations of a concordat between the Nazi state and the Holy See. In Mit brennender Sorge, Pius condemned "pantheistic confusion," "neopaganism," and "the so-called myth of race and blood," which he called a form of idolatry.

I bring that up in regard to modern-day cartoonists such as Michael Ramirez, who apparently believe that papal pronouncements on current politics are something new with Pope Francis.

"You'll Have to Leave That Behind" by Michael Ramirez for Las Vegas Review Journal, April 21, 2025

Pius XI never stood up to Benito Mussolini, although he was scheduled to deliver an address on February 11, 1939 in which he was expected to denounce il Duce's laws aping Nazi Arianism. The Pope died on February 10, however, and Mussolini tried to have all 300 copies of the address destroyed.

Under the next Pope, Pius XII, the Roman Catholic Church turned a blind eye to the atrocities of Mussolini and Hitler. 

Today's Republican Party and its Amen Corner cartoonists, teledemagogues, and duck dynasts would most certainly have approved.

Tales of Future Past Pluperfect

Is it time for my weekly Graphical History Tour again already? Oh, shoot! Looking back at my February cartoons from decades ago, I find that I don't have much to say today about many of them.

But since I did set this one up last month, here's one starring then-House Majority Leader Dick Armey (R-TX) from 1995, after he had made a slip of the tongue calling Congressman Barney Frank an antigay slur during a radio interview:

in UWM Post, Milwaukee Wis., Feb. 6, 1995

How an inadvertent slip of the pen made it into my homage to George Cruikshank I have no idea. I'm sure it was purely unintentional.

for Q Syndicate, February, 2015

For decades now, Republicans have labored tirelessly to deprive the poor of sustenance and children of free school lunches. To atone for such unChristian attitudes, they demand that public schools post the Ten Commandments in every classroom so that children know which Lord Thy God the government has decreed for them.

They like the Ten Commandments rather than those woke Beatitudes from the Sermon on the Mount.  Especially not the version from the Gospel According to Luke read in "Lutheran" (and Episcopal and Catholic) churches last Sunday, which include some verses not in Matthew's account:

24 “But woe to you who are rich,
    for you have already received your comfort.
25 Woe to you who are well fed now,
    for you will go hungry.
Woe to you who laugh now,
    for you will mourn and weep.
26 Woe to you when everyone speaks well of you,
    for that is how their ancestors treated the false prophets."

Hey, I don't mean to cut this post short, but, well, it is a holiday weekend, after all.

for Q Syndicate, Jan./Feb., 2005

Happy Presidents' Day!

Beethoven's Birthday's Sneak Peek

Instead of the usual rough sketch or snippet from this week's cartoon, here's the first panel from one that came up in my Facebook Memories the other day:

Sondern laβt uns angenehmere anstimmen, und freudenvollere!

Q Toon: Citius, Altius, Querulius

Someone got the Christian Right all riled up about the over-the-top opening extravaganza for the 2024 Paris Olympic Games. A tableau including a cast of drag queens and an oversized Smurf was supposedly a blasphemous parody of Michelangelo's painting of the Last Supper. Before long, the outrage had spread like mono at a summer camp.

Except, of course, that it was meant to portray a bacchanalia out of Greek myth, and the Last Supper was supposedly not that wild. Just because Jesus's disciples couldn't stay awake afterward, taking post-prandial naps doesn't mean they were in full party mode.

Then last week, the same people got their panties in a collective wad over a transgender female boxer from Algeria who won against a cisgender female boxer from Italy. Fox Noise Machine went into overdrive. Right-wing cartoonists cranked out toons of burly behemoths pummeling defenseless little girls. Even President Melloni of Italy, Trump, and J.D. Vance weighed in.

The thing is, however, that the boxer from Algeria has been female all her life. By every measure promoted by transphobic Republicans — what's on her birth certificate? what's her given name? who does her grandmother think she is? — she is a woman. Not that you’re likely to see any apologies from the people who accused her of being Andre the Giant in drag.

There are certain people here and abroad who make their living being perpetually offended and making sure their audience is, too. 

Don't be surprised if somebody gets all upset that the closing ceremonies end without the IOC wishing the world a "merry Christmas."

Q Toon: Rainbow Alert

The United States Department of State issued a warning earlier this month of the possibility of some sort of terror attack targeting LGBTQ+ Pride celebrations in June. They were not, however, terribly specific about it.

I don't visit their STEP page often enough to know whether the orange bar atop this notice means that they're still using the color-coded alert system created by the Dubya Bush administration. Orange was pretty serious, as I recall.

But then, it's also the color of road construction notices.

Today's cartoon is not to dismiss the State Department warning in any way. You may recall that the State Department issued a similar warning of a possible terrorist attack in Russia that was ignored by the Putin regime, only for Islamist terrorists to kill 140 people at a Moscow rock concert.

Rather, the threat of attack is something that LGBTQ+ people — the genderqueer particularly — live with every day. Not a month goes by without news of a transgender person or two being murdered somewhere in the U.S. So-called honor killings of LGBTQ persons by members of their own families happen around the world, even here in America. And it's only a matter of time until some gundamentalist crackpot picketing outside a Pride event somewhere in this country snaps.

The possibility has to be kept in mind when we have men of the actual cloth spewing stuff like this at city council meetings:

 David Lettau, pastor of Country Gospel Church, read a passage from Romans 1 about “uncleanness” and then related it to the Pride Festival.

“What they’re doing is teaching perversion to our children,” Lettau said. “We as a city are responsible for making sure that no decadent and perverse things go on.”

Lettau then made his threat explicit.

“It’s worthy of death, it says in the Bible,” Lettau said.

No one from the city council challenged his words.

Later, Pastor Jeff Combs of the First Community Church of God lamented that he was being lumped in with people who hate, especially as he has “nothing but love for people who live any lifestyle” and once “had a gay friend.” He then told the council they would be in violation of state law if they allowed juveniles to be allowed to attend Pride.

“We will pursue the matter further,” Combs threatened. “This is about protecting children.”

The pastor then, too, grounded his threat in the Bible, citing Luke 17:2, a passage that suggests drowning someone who adversely influences children.

“It would be better for them to be thrown into the sea with a millstone tied around their neck,” Combs said. “So watch yourselves. We are called to watch over our children.”

If I were Pastor Combs's gay friend, I'd be leery of accepting any invitation to join him at the beach.

The danger comes not just from the Christian Right, of course. The current Israel-Gaza War has heightened fears that some jihadi will be inspired to lash out against a soft target such as a Pride festival. June of 2016 saw the massacre at Orlando's Pulse nightclub by a gunman who variously pledged allegiance to Islamic State and to Hezbollah. We remember also the ultra-orthodox Jew who attacked Jerusalem Pride festival-goers in 2005 with a knife — and again ten years later.

So should we cancel Pride this year?

For centuries, queer people have faced jail, dungeons, torture, muggings, burning at the stake, stoning, death camps, having brick walls dumped on us, hangings, knifings, shootings, ostracization and ridicule.

Yet we're still here. Because love finds a way.

And that's why we celebrate Pride.

Q Toon: Getting Creative

The Supreme Court happily carved out a right in Creative LLC et al. v. Elenis et al. for Lorie Smith to discriminate against same-sex engaged couples, essentially nullifying a Colorado non-discrimination law.

Ignored by the right-wing justices in the majority were several factors that should have rendered the case moot. Creative LLC had not ever created any wedding announcement web pages. Furthermore, the client whose same-sex wedding announcement web page she had supposedly refused on religious grounds to design is 

• a straight, cisgender man
• in a different-sex marriage
• who never approached Creative LLC to design a web page
• who didn't know someone had done so in his name
• and besides, owns his own web design company in the first place.

Now as someone who considers himself a creative person myself, I can sympathize with not wanting to expend creative energy on a project one disagrees with. I'm not going to accept a commission to draw cartoons for nazis, racists, or antigay bigots.

I can also appreciate that the court's decision is not entirely without precedent. We've had a conservative majority court for decades now, after all. The Supremes have previously ruled that private groups such as the Boy Scouts are free to discriminate against LGBTQ+ children and parents, and so may religious groups. This case extends the right to discriminate against LGBTQ+ persons to businesses offering a public service.

But this case, along with Biden v. Nebraska (in which no student loan lending firm had sued the administration), demonstrates how the current Court is not just conservative, but activist. There was no plaintiff with standing — that is, who had suffered actual damages of some kind. You can't take a case to the Supreme Court just because you don't like a law.

For example, the budget passed by Madison Republicans representing villages and rural communities around the rest of Wisconsin last month allowed the city of Milwaukee to raise sales taxes, but dictated how the tax money must and must not be spent. I might disagree with those restrictions, but I do not live in Milwaukee. I have no standing to challenge the budget law.

Our present activist Supreme Court went out of its way to find a trumped-up case, based entirely on a fiction, and ruled in favor of a plaintiff whose primary reason for starting up her business appears to have been not to operate a business, but to overturn a non-discrimination law she didn't like.

Remembering the Revrunt Pat

I had another Graphical History post all set to publish today; but if those cartoons could wait 100 years, they can wait another week. For all the material he has provided me over the years, Pat Robertson deserves his cartoon obituary here.

in UW-Parkside Ranger, Somers Wis., August, 1986

By the way, Mike Peterson noted approvingly that the angel in the cartoon I posted yesterday was Black. Now, whatever his other sins, I have no reason to believe that Robertson was racist. As the above cartoon may remind some of you, when he was publicly praying to God in 1986 whether he should run for president, his co-host Ben Kinchlow was Black.

By the same token (if you'll pardon the expression), my point in the above cartoon was not so much about the idea of Robertson running as Second Banana to a Black man, as it was that Robertson and Jackson were two men of the cloth who agreed on absolutely nothing other than the name of their Lord and Savior.

in UW-Parkside Ranger, Somers Wis., Feb. 4, 1988

Well, that and wanting to run for President. (With or without God's blessing.)

Jackson was able to hang on in the 1988 presidential race longer than Robertson, but I would suggest that both had a greater influence on their respective political party than most of the other politicians in my cartoon.

Besides, Jackson had his Rainbow Coalition to keep himself busy, and Robertson his 700 Club.

Q Syndicate, Sept. 2001

Then came 9/11, and a dastardly, unforgivable exchange between Robertson and fellow televangelist Jerry Falwell on Robertson's TV show two days later.

It was Falwell who blamed the deadly terrorist attack on "the pagans and the abortionists and the feminists and the gays and lesbians," but it was Robertson who answered, "I totally concur."

Q Syndicate, 2010

Robertson's flock kept sending in their fleece no matter how inflammatory the rest of us found his repeated attributing every disaster that befell anyone in the country to God being pissed at lesbians and gays. Thus Robertson's Club marked its 50th anniversary in 2010, and so did I.  

Q Syndicate, August 2011

As his own editor, Robertson perhaps realized that he was saying a lot of silly things on his show. Not all of them were as hurtful as the 9/11 diatribe:

"Ladies and gentlemen I don’t want to get weird on this so please take it for what it’s worth. But it seems to me the Washington Monument is a symbol of America’s power, it has been the symbol of our great nation, we look at that monument and say this is one nation under God. Now there’s a crack in it, there’s a crack in it and it’s closed up. Is that a sign from the Lord? Is that something that has significance or is it just result of an earthquake? You judge, but I just want to bring that to your attention. It seems to me symbolic. When Jesus was crucified and when he died the curtain in the Temple was rent from top to bottom and there was a tear and it was extremely symbolic, is this symbolic? You judge."

Or perhaps the Washington Monument was over 150 years old. You decide. 

Q Syndicate, Sept., 2013

Others were less benign.

Prior to yesterday, my last Robertson cartoon was about him fulminating against gays' and lesbians' influence on American academia.

Q Syndicate, April 2017

“We have given the ground to a small minority,” he said. “You figure, lesbians, one percent of the population; homosexuals, two percent of the population. That’s all. That’s statistically all. But they have dominated — dominated the media, they’ve dominated the cultural shift and they have infiltrated the major universities. It’s just unbelievable what’s being done. A tiny, tiny minority makes a huge difference. The majority — it’s time it wakes up.”

Robertson may be gone, but we still have DeSantis, Abbott, Pence, and the rest of the lot who have declared war on intellectuals, science, philosophy, art, literature, history, and compassion.

Not to mention the lesbians and gays and, of course, the transgender menace.