Q Toon: Just When You Thought It Was Safe to Go Back in the Lair

He's back! And just in time for Hallowe'en.

The Supreme Court heard opening arguments in Chiles v. Salazar last week.

Kaley Chiles, who bills herself as a Christian therapist, has sued the state of Colorado over its Minor Conversion Therapy Law (MCTL), which bars mental health professionals from offering "conversion therapy," the widely discredited practice of pressuring a patient who identifies as LGBTQ+ to change their sexual orientation.

Chiles, who is a practicing Christian, contends that although she does not try to “convert” her clients, she does try to help them with objectives that may include “seeking to reduce or eliminate unwanted sexual attractions” or becoming more comfortable with their bodies. Chiles filed a lawsuit in Colorado, asking a federal court to block the state from enforcing the conversion therapy ban against her.

Colorado has not taken any action to enforce its ban against Chiles, or, for that matter, anyone else during the six years that the MCTL has been on its books, which brings into question what standing she has to bring a case to the nation's highest court. As Justice Sonia Sotomayor pointed out, "we [even] have the entity charged with administering the law saying 'We’re not going to apply it to your kind of … therapy.'" 

That didn't stop the right-wing "Alliance Defending Freedom" from bringing the case before a Court majority eager to overrule Colorado's legislature, or the Absolutely Corrupt Trump Regime™ from filing an amicus curiae brief in support. Calling Colorado's law "blatant viewpoint discrimination," Justice Samuel Alito, for one, agrees with the plaintiff's argument that while the law does allow exceptions for religious practice, it violates her freedom of speech.

Twenty other states have laws similar to Colorado's MCTL, which could very well be rendered moot by Alito, Thomas, Gorsuch, Kavanaugh, Comey Barrett, and Roberts, in spite of bipartisan, professional and religious condemnation of conversion practices. Even some former "ex-gay" advocates have weighed in against conversion therapy:

"We once believed that there was something morally wrong and psychologically 'broken' about being LGBTQ. We know better now. We once believed that sexual orientation or gender identity were somehow chosen or could be changed. We know better now. We once thought it was impossible to embrace our sexual orientation or gender identity as an intrinsic, healthy part of who we are and who we were created to be. We know better now...

"In light of this, we now stand united in our conviction that conversion therapy is not 'therapy,' but is instead both ineffective and harmful. We align ourselves with every major mainstream professional medical and mental health organization in denouncing attempts to change sexual orientation or gender identity."

But we now live in a country where the conspiracy fabulists in charge of the nation's health care system have not merely freedom of speech but governmental imprimatur to say Tylenol causes autism, salmonella is good for you, and gender identity is a figment of your imagination. And any medical professional who disagrees is free to find other employment whether they want to or not.

And where a majority on the Supreme Court are free to prescribe the U.S. Constitution some conversion therapy into Project 2025.

Q Toon: Pondering President Pence

Monday, I mused that this, my third cartoon of 2017 with Mike Pence in it, could set a record for the most times I have cartooned a Vice President in the first year of his term. Since then, I have checked, and the record in fact stands tied for now.

I drew three cartoons of Dan Quayle in 1987. (For the record, I drew two cartoons of Al Gore in 1993, and none of George H.W. Bush in 1981, Dick Cheney in 2001 or Joe Biden in 2009.)

Being nominated to run for Vice President used to be an honor akin to having a post office building named for you: that's nice and all, but everyone is still going to call it "the post office." FDR's first Veep, John Nance Garner, is quoted as having said that the vice presidency was "not worth a bucket of warm piss." Woodrow Wilson's Veep, Thomas Marshall, had a joke about a man with one son who went to sea and drowned and another who was elected vice president; neither son was ever heard from again.

Nowadays, we reserve one of the election debates for the vice presidential candidates, but other than pundits, cartoonists and members of the nominees' families, nobody really pays any attention to them. If any memorable lines come out of the running mate debates — e.g. Lloyd Bentsen's "You're no Jack Kennedy" or James Stockdale's "What am I doing here?" — the comments nearly always come from November's losing ticket, so the candidates are better off being forgettable. (Quick: who debated opposite Mike Pence last year? No fair googling the answer!)

Presidential nominees usually select their running mates with November in mind, not the next four years, or the possibility of accession to the presidency. Veep candidates are often picked to provide geographical or ideological balance to a ticket; Kennedy-Johnson is an example.

Richard Nixon introduced a new twist to the calculus of selecting a running mate with his choice of Spiro Agnew: once they were elected, Democrats couldn't get rid of Nixon without ending up with someone they considered worse. (He just didn't count on Agnew having to resign first.)

Donald Berzilius Trump's strategy last year used both the Kennedy-Johnson calculus and the Nixon-Agnew calculus. Pence has the bona fides with the party's Christian Right that Trump lacks, which cemented their support for the ticket and this administration. Meanwhile, liberals stomping their feet that Trump must be impeached have been cautioned that in many ways, having Mike Pence as president would be worse.

It certainly looks that way from an LGBTQ perspective. Trump admitted as much with his reported remark that when it comes to gay rights, “Don’t ask that guy—he wants to hang them all!”

The New Yorker article which recounts that Trump comment also discusses an antigay bill Pence signed as Governor of Indiana:

In the spring of 2015, Pence signed a bill called the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, which he presented as innocuous. ... But then a photograph of the closed signing session surfaced. It showed Pence surrounded by monks and nuns, along with three of the most virulently anti-gay activists in the state. The image went viral. Indiana residents began examining the law more closely, and discovered that it essentially legalized discrimination against homosexuals by businesses in the state. ...
The outcry over the Religious Freedom Restoration Act was enormous. Gay-rights groups condemned the bill and urged boycotts of the state. Pete Buttigieg, the young gay mayor of South Bend, who is a rising figure in the Democratic Party, told me that he tried to talk to Pence about the legislation, which he felt would cause major economic damage to Indiana. “But he got this look in his eye,” Buttigieg recalled. “He just inhabits a different reality. It’s very difficult for him to lay aside the social agenda. He’s a zealot.”

While the article does say that Pence was not the force behind the passage of the bill in the legislature, his record is littered with antigay zealotry. As head of the Indiana Policy Review in the 1990's, he advised employers not to hire gays and lesbians, writing,

“Homosexuals are not as a group able-bodied. They are known to carry extremely high rates of disease brought on because of the nature of their sexual practices and the promiscuity which is a hallmark of their lifestyle.”

In Congress, he groused when the Matthew Shepard and James Byrd Jr. Hate Crimes bill was signed into law in 2009, complaining that it advanced a “radical social agenda” and would have “a chilling effect on religious expression, from the pulpits, in our temples, in our mosques and in our churches.” He was against the Employment Non-Discrimination Act (ENDA) on the grounds that "Either the employer has to ban employees from having a Bible at the workplace for their break time, or displaying Bible verses, and thereby face a lawsuit under title VII for religious discrimination, or the employer then has to continue to allow it and face a potential lawsuit under ENDA by the homosexual employee."

Pence voted against the repeal of "Don't Ask, Don't Tell," arguing the shibboleth that repeal would damage military readiness and recruitment. He co-sponsored the Federal Marriage Amendment, which would have enshrined denial of marriage equality for same-sex couples into the U.S. Constitution.

Finally, the issues page from Pence's 2000 campaign web site demanded "an audit to ensure that federal dollars were no longer being given to organizations that celebrate and encourage the types of behaviors that facilitate the spreading of the HIV virus. Resources should be directed toward those institutions which provide assistance to those seeking to change their sexual behavior."

That passage is a dog-whistle to advocate spending federal money on "conversion therapy," the widely discredited practice of using psychological torture techniques to reprogram LGBTQ patients into believing they are straight and cisgender. Pence's spokespeople now deny that he was talking about conversion therapy — I suppose one could argue that he was calling for resources to be spent on institutions which convince LGBTQ persons to settle for a life of celibacy — but that's a distinction without much difference.

Q Toon: The Brainwasher Brigade

As promised, today's cartoon marks the return of someone I haven't drawn in a long time. The current President of the United States hasn't shown up in one of my cartoons since way back in March of 2013 (and then, in a crowd -- see at right).

That I would go nearly two full years without cartooning President Obama only seems weird until one realizes that I draw mostly about people whom I am criticizing, and I tend to agree with Mr. Obama more often than not.

The occasion for this week's cartoon is the White House's response to an on-line petition to ban "conversion therapy," especially when it is imposed upon gay, lesbian and transgender youth by pressure from their parents, guardians, or clergy.

When assessing the validity of conversion therapy, or other practices that seek to change an individual’s gender identity or sexual orientation, it is as imperative to seek guidance from certified medical experts. The overwhelming scientific evidence demonstrates that conversion therapy, especially when it is practiced on young people, is neither medically nor ethically appropriate and can cause substantial harm.
As part of our dedication to protecting America’s youth, this Administration supports efforts to ban the use of conversion therapy for minors.

 

(click here to view)

Paul Berge Q Syndicate✒Apr 16, 2015 EditorialCartoonists.com

Credit for the White House response actually belongs to Valerie Jarrett, by the way. But I've gone this long without drawing any cartoons about Valerie Jarrett, and I'll probably make it through the rest of the Obama administration assuming that anything she puts on the White House blog has the full blessing of her boss.

The humor of the cartoon works better this way, anyway.

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.

Qtoon: They Pray Away, but Are Gay to Stay

Exodus International President Alan Chambers has admitted that "reparative therapy" for gays and lesbians does not turn us into straight gentlemen and ladies. Now living in a different-sex marriage ("The best marriage I know," he says), Chambers admits that his attraction to men has never gone away; he just doesn't give in to those attractions.

"For someone to put out a shingle and say, 'I can cure homosexuality' — that to me is as bizarre as someone saying they can cure any other common temptation or struggle that anyone faces on Planet Earth."

This has led some ex-gay hucksters, such as First Stone Ministries, to break up with their erstwhile partner. But is not going to stop the folks at Exodus. Exodus will soldier on, alone and unloved. Exactly the life model Exodus recommends for the suckers who come through their doors.

This Week's Toon: Bachsh!t Crazy

Last week, Michele Bachmann (R-Wonderland) hurried to sign an antigay pledge from Mr. Bob Vander Plaatz's FAMiLY LEADER group before the ink was dry, resulting in no end of approaches I could possibly have taken with this cartoon.

At the top of the document was a preamble positing that an African-American child was more likely to live in a two-parent home under slavery than "than was an African-American baby born after the election of the USA’s first African-American president." (As Stephen Colbert pointed out last night, the slave child was more likely to be the property of his biological father as well.) That preamble was dropped over the weekend, although not before another antigay presidential candidate, Rick Santorum (R-Google) signed and defended the pledge.

Two presidential candidates, Jon Huntsman (R-Utah) and Gary Johnson (R-Ukidding) announced their refusal to sign the pledge before removal of the slavery plank; Mitt Romney (R-Obot) waited until the pledge was thoroughly discredited before deciding not to sign it.

Further on down the pledge, candidates vowed to protect the sanctity of marriage against the assault by homosexuality, bigamy, polygamy, and sharia law. The antiexgay group Truth Wins Out seized on this moment to go public with their undercover sting of the clinic of Michele's husband Marcus Bachmann, where "reparative therapy" is offered to patients who come in seeking to become straight.

The mainstream media have reported this story -- properly, I should add -- as an example of Republican right-wing extremism. But to the religious right, there is nothing about the pledge, even with the preamble, that raises any eyebrows. The sting uncovered nothing particularly shocking: no electroshock therapy, no sensory deprivation, no waterboarding, no naked pyramids.

"The undeniable goal of the sessions was transforming [undercover TWO agent John] Becker from homosexual to heterosexual. To his credit, the counselor [Timothy Wiertzema] did not claim that change would be instantaneous or even complete. However, he did explicitly promise that sexual conversion could occur as a result of prayer and therapy at the clinic."

The power of prayer is at the heart of Christian faith; it is also a given that human nature is sinful and one should repent of whatever infractions of the Mosaic code one has committed. (God revealed to St. Peter that it was okay to go ahead and eat shellfish and pork, but the rest of Leviticus remains on the books.) Thus I'm afraid that a lot of "middle America" is going to hear about this story and wonder what the fuss is about.

The third aspect of the story is Dr. Bachmann's acceptance of patients on federal assistance at his clinic, contrary to the Bachmanns' belief that gummint helping citizens get health care is pure evil, and even worse, socialist. We'll see how that part of the story plays out, although I suspect that the media won't have any lasting interest in going after a candidate's spouse. At least, I don't expect the sort of hunger that the right wing media displayed in going after Hilary Clinton ante Monica.

Where Marcus starts to get weird, however, is his equating gays and lesbians with "barbarians" and that we "need to be disciplined."

There's a cartoon in that statement, to be sure, but you've already drawn it in your head.