Q Toon: Texas Senate Bill 12

Florida notwithstanding...

There's a lot to be upset about this LGBTQ+ Pride Month, and a Texas-sized amount of shame is coming from the Lone Star State:

Senate Bill 12, authored by Sen. Brandon Creighton, won final legislative passage Saturday after lawmakers in both chambers adopted the conference committee reports that specifically clarified that schools will be banned from authorizing or sponsoring student clubs based on sexual orientation or gender identity. ...

Rep. Gene Wu, D-Houston, emphasized that these clubs exist because of a long history of oppression against the LGBTQ+ community. He warned against demonizing students and teachers for discussing gender and sexuality.

“The real monsters are not kids trying to figure out who they are,” Wu said during the House discussion. “The monsters are not the teachers who love them and encourage them and support them. They are not the books that provide them with some amount of comfort and information. The real monsters are here.”

Lawmakers shared personal stories about LGBTQ+ youth. Rep. Rafael Anchía said his daughter was a vice president of a pride club at her school. He stressed that these clubs “are no more about sex than 4-H or ROTC or the basketball team.” ...

Anchía also told the Texas Tribune he “didn’t sign up for five anti-LGBT bills this session.”

Those bills include one denying transgender Texans the right to have accurate, up-to-date identification in state documents. HB 229 has passed both houses of the Texas legislature and is certain to be signed into law by transphobic Governor Greg Abbott.

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If I had read more than the initially cursory reporting Sunday of the fatal shooting death of actor Jonathan Joss in San Antonio, that might very well have been the topic of my cartoon this week instead of SB 12. It hasn't received quite the media attention the attacks in Boulder and Washington D.C. have, but it should.

Joss, 59, was the voice of King of the Hill character John Redcorn, and portrayed Wamapoke Chief Ken Hotate on Parks and Recreation. The Native American was openly gay, and had married his husband, Tristan Kern de Gonzalez, on Valentines Day this year.

The two have been subjected to years of homophobic and transphobic threats (Tristan is a transman),  duly reported to San Antonio law enforcement, but to no avail. Those included threats to burn down their house, a threat which someone appears to have carried out on January 23, resulting in the deaths of their three dogs.

On Sunday, June 1, the Joss-Kerns returned to their destroyed home to pick up any mail, and found the skull and harness of one of the dogs prominently displayed there. From de Gonzalez's statement on Redcorn's Facebook page:

"This caused both of us severe emotional distress. We began yelling and crying in response to the pain of what we saw.

"While we were doing this a man approached us. He started yelling violent homophobic slurs at us. He then raised a gun from his lap and fired.

"Jonathan and I had no weapons. We were not threatening anyone. We were grieving. We were standing side by side. When the man fired Jonathan pushed me out of the way. He saved my life."

A neighbor, Sigfredo Ceja Alvarez, 56, has been arrested and charged with Joss's murder. Astonishingly, however, the San Antonio Police Department has since announced that in spite of the history of harassment complaints, the likely arson, the cruel display of the dog's remains, and the unprovoked attack, they don't believe that this obvious hate crime is a hate crime.

“Our investigation has found no evidence whatsoever to indicate that the Mr. Joss’s murder was related to his sexual orientation. We take such allegations very seriously and have thoroughly reviewed all available information. Should any new evidence come to light, we will charge the suspect accordingly.”

Given that the alleged murderer is named Sigfredo Ceja Alvarez and not Buford T. Redneck IV, one assumes that the Texas justice system will result in a conviction and prison sentence — if not deportation to a concentration camp in El Salvador or Libya — even without a hate crime penalty attached.

Unless, of course, the case ends in a mistrial because Joss's widower identifies himself under oath as Tristan Kern de Gonzalez rather than his deadname.

Q Toon: Don't Go Queer the Water

Presidential stalking horse Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., has been under criticism recently for a number of outrageous statements he has made during the COVID-19 pandemic: alleging that the virus was somehow engineered to spare Chinese and Jews, and likening vaccination with the Holocaust.

So it is hardly surprising that he has also promulgated some highly dubious anti-LGBTQ claims.

Democratic presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has a history of repeatedly sharing unfounded conspiracies that man-made chemicals in the environment could be making children gay or transgender and causing the feminization of boys and masculinization of girls.

Experts dispute the claims from Kennedy, an environmental lawyer and anti-vaccine activist, and told CNN’s KFile his theories that “sexual identification” and “gender confusion” among children could be from their exposure to “endocrine disruptors” found in the environment are completely unfounded.

“I want to just pursue just one question on these, you know, the other endocrine disruptors because our children now, you know, we’re seeing these impacts that people suspect are very different than in ages past about sexual identification among children and sexual confusion, gender confusion,” Kennedy said on his podcast in June last year. “These kinds of issues that are very, very controversial today.”

...

The baseless claim that chemicals – particularly in tap water – could turn people gay has gained popularity with conspiracy theorists over the years, most memorably with conservative radio host Alex Jones, who said chemicals in the water were “turning the friggin’ frogs gay.”

On numerous podcasts between March 2022 and June 2023, Kennedy has alleged that certain chemicals, particularly atrazine, are responsible for the gaying of a generation, largely based on the pesticide's effects on frogs. 

While it is certainly true that mankind has been disposing of all manner of chemicals and medications and toxic fumes into our air and water, most experts who actually know what they are talking about dismiss Kennedy's allegations that atrazine is turning kids gay and trans, delaying puberty in some and accelerating it in others. CNN interviewed  Dr. Linda Kahn, assistant professor in the departments of pediatrics and population health at New York University, who rebutted that comparing frogs to humans is an “apples and oranges thing, it’s not appropriate.” For humans, atrazine is metabolized and excreted from the body within 12 hours, she said.

What is more likely is that in societies where LGBTQ+ members are more likely to be accepted, LGBTQ+ persons are more likely to be out and open about themselves. There was no sudden increase of environmental endocrine disruptors in Weimar Germany, the court of Edward II, or the Sacred Band of Thebes.

More worrisome than Kennedy's charges themselves is the implicit message that there is something intrinsically wrong with LGBTQ+ persons.

Not to mention how this, taken together with his anti-vax hysteria and racist claims that COVID-19 was designed to target some ethnic groups and not others, makes it easier for skeptics to disregard honest environmentalists as crackpots crying wolf.

Toon: Cooler Heads Must Prevail

It is nearly impossible to satirize the level of desperation at Fox News.

This week, they got caught lying about President Biden's putting America on a vegan diet, and about every immigrant child receiving Vice President Harris's book as a welcome gift. 

Then, perpetually perplexed Tucker Carlson actually urged his viewers to report to the police any children wearing protective masks in public. Because, I guess, the police don't get in enough trouble responding to non-emergency calls.

No, it's because COVID-19 is safe and effective, and has been since Easter of last year, just like our Trump and Savior promised it would be. Or something like that. Anyway, as any parent knows, you can't catch diseases from children. 

It's masks that are dangerous. Them and vaccines.

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In my inked version of this cartoon, I had Larry Kudlow offering Tucker Carlson a "bacon-based beer," but I decided I had better change it in Photoshop.

I've watched enough episodes of "Chopped" to know that someone has undoubtedly produced and sold a beer made with bacon. 

And some Connor Sewer undoubtedly buys it.

This Week's Sneak Peek

Oh, let's just go ahead and post the whole cartoon!

Q Toon: Borsch Belt

Researching for this week's cartoon, one of the first news accounts I read was this one from RIA Novosti. Headquartered in Moscow, РИА Новости is the Russian equivalent of the Associated Press in the U.S. or Agence Press-France in (duh) France. At the top of the story, in boldface print, RIA Novosti warns:

This article contains information not suitable for readers younger than 18 years of age, according to Russian legislation.

You will not find lurid accounts of hot and steamy sex in the РИА Новости news article. The headline, "Amid Gay Boycott, Stolichnaya Downplays Russian Identity," pretty well sums up the content of the article. But that's enough, under Russia's puritanical new antigay laws, to warrant the boldface warning.

Anyway, LGBT rights organizations have launched a boycott of Russian products in response to those repressive laws, and one of the most visible targets has been Stolichnaya Vodka. Here's what I wanted to highlight from the news article part of the RIA Novosti news article:

"Technically, to define it as a Russian vodka in the US, it needs to be produced, bottled and distilled in Russia. Yes, it’s distilled in Russia, but it becomes a vodka in Latvia," when the alcohol from Russia is added to the mixture and then bottled, said Marco Ferrari, chief marketing officer for the Luxembourg-based SPI Group, which owns the Stolichnaya brand. "Our ingredients are Russian but technically it’s not a Russian vodka."

If you go to the RIA Novosti story, you will notice that it is illustrated with a photograph of a row of Stolichnaya bottles, and right there on the bottom of every one, in print every bit as bold as the brand name, are the words "Russian Vodka." The Stranger (Seattle, WA) columnist Dan Savage notes that "On January 1, 2014, Stoli becomes a Russian vodka again. The SPI Group -- which will be distributing Stoli in the USA before the Olympic games begin this winter -- is owned by Yuri Scheffler, one of the 100 richest men in Russia."

At any rate, Stoly has gone into overdrive to salvage its image in the LGBT community, posting a banner on its Facebook page stating that "Stolichnaya Premium Vodka stands strong & proud with the global LGBT community against the actions & beliefs of the Russian government." And, sure, it does have a Stoly Pride page and a #Stoliguy hashtag teeming with hunky dudes, not to mention all those reruns of Absolutely Fabulous, to tempt the gay consumer.

We're not big vodka drinkers at our house -- we're more likely to order brandy old fashioneds, although at home, my better half has been perfecting the mint julep lately -- so our joining the vodka boycott won't make much of a difference. Instead, and in spite of my scores of Russian on-line readers, my contribution to the boycott will be not including that boldface content-not-suitable-for-under-18 warning in any more of my blog entries.

This Week's Toon: the Pall Bearer

Cartooning about youth suicide is dicey. It's not funny, and you don't want to glorify one suicide and thereby inspire others. (I'm not even going to link to the story that inspired me to concentrate on this topic, for that very reason.) For this week's oeuvre, I started out trying to come up with some incisive observation for a grieving parent to make, but ended up turning my focus to someone else:

When kids commit suicide, their parents are permanently devastated. Their friends grieve for years, but heal and go on with their lives. But do the bullies who drove them to it even notice? Or do they just grow up and continue to leave their mark on the world by posting insults on internet comment pages?