Q Toon: Mr. Smith Goes to Washington

I'm not a fan of exceptionally wordy cartoons, but when one is taking a fairly obscure Congressman to task for a comment to an equally obscure administration official, it's quite likely that the story didn't get a lot of attention on the nightly news or comedy shows, and a good deal of explanation is in order.

So here's the cartoon:

Q Syndicate✍Feb 5, 2015

Congressman Christopher Smith (R-NJ) is chair of the House Foreign Affairs Committee's Africa, Global Health, Global Human Rights, and International Organizations Subcommittee, where he questioned the Deputy Assistant Secretary of the State Department's Bureau of African Affairs, Robert Jackson, last week. Smith brushed off anyone's concerns about LGBT rights on the world's second largest continent:

"There are fundamental differences in the United States over the whole LGBT issue. I am a strong believer in traditional marriage, and do not construe 'homosexual rights' as 'human rights.'"

On the same day, Nigerian sharia police arrested twelve men on charges of celebrating a "gay wedding." Two weeks earlier, an Egyptian court had acquitted 26 men arrested at a public bathhouse only after their televised arrests had been splashed all over news and social media. Up and down the continent, governments, abetted by sensationalist news media, are whipping up hatred against lesbians and gays as a way to distract their citizens from poverty, tribal and religious rivalries, and their own kleptocracies.

Various LGBT advocacy groups have criticized Smith for his dismissive attitude toward the persecution of gays and lesbians from Algeria to Zimbabwe. Fellow subcommittee member David Cicilline (D-RI and openly gay) also responded to Smith:

"I would like to address these comments and clarify that the official position of the U.S. government is: all people have basic human rights. Regardless of their race, sex, disability, age, political opinion, or religion, they are entitled to the very fundamental right to be themselves, free from persecution. This includes people who identify as lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender."

Q Toon: Rebranding the Tool

Q Syndicate✒Dec 11, 2014

This week's cartoon applies only in the states of California and New Jersey, plus the District of Columbia, where laws banning "reparative therapy" to change a minor’s sexual orientation “including efforts to change behaviors, gender identity or expression, or to reduce or eliminate sexual or romantic attractions or feelings toward a person of the same sex or gender” have been signed into law. (Language from the D.C. bill.)

Court challenges by conversion therapy advocates to the California and New Jersey laws on the grounds that their exercise of religion was being infringed were both rejected. A court challenge to the D.C. law may be unnecessary, should the Republican Congress decide to step in. (Republicans talk a good game about "local control," but put them in charge of state and federal government, and they will not hesitate to make decisions about how big cities they don't live in ought to be run.)

Meanwhile, a similar laws failed to pass in New York, Maryland, Florida, Illinois, Minnesota, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Virginia, and Washington in the latest biennium.

Q Cartoon: Rhode Island

Poor Rhode Island.

New York passes marriage equality at the eleventh hour on the eve of New York City's gay pride parade, one of the largest such parades in the country, and the whole LGBT community* goes wild with praise for Governor Andrew Cuomo and for heroic members of the state assembly. A few days later, little Rhode Island approves civil unions for gay couples, and hardly anybody even notices.

True, Governor Lincoln Chafee supports actual marriage equality. (That's who's signing the bill in the cartoon. I'm not sure that he wears bow ties; he just looks like a bow tie kind of guy.) A marriage equality bill which Chafee supported died in the Rhode Island legislature in April.

But neither supporters of marriage equality nor those demanding opposite-sex marriage exclusivity -- no, for that matter, the Governor -- consider the matter settled in Rhode Island:

Many gay marriage supporters criticized civil unions as discriminatory. In particular, MERI [Marriage Equality-Rhode Island] opposed language in the new law that allows religious hospitals, cemeteries and schools to refuse to recognize the rights granted through civil unions. Sullivan said his group will urge lawmakers to repeal the religious exemption.

Chafee, who called on lawmakers to approve gay marriage in January, called civil unions a 'foundation' for further efforts to allow same-sex couples to wed.

Groups on the other side of the debate aren’t going away either. The National Organization for Marriage-Rhode Island will urge lawmakers next year to specifically outlaw gay marriage by defining it legally as being between a man and a woman, according to executive director Chris Plante.

In the meantime, let's raise a glass of Champale and a cheer and a half for Civil Unions in Rhode Island. Hip, hip, hooray! Hip, hi.

* Minus GOProud, which really doesn't give a rat's ass about LGBT issues.