Q Toon: Exeunt Exodus

As much as I would have liked to have known when I drew this week's cartoon on Sunday night how yesterday's Supreme Court rulings on DOMA and Prop 8 would turn out, my crystal ball has no bars downstairs at my drawing board.

Perhaps the guys in charge of pray-away-the-gay ministry Exodus International were able to foresee the Court's ruling, however, and decided that this was as good a time as any to fold up its tent and sell off the circus animals.

"I am sorry that some of you spent years working through the shame and guilt you felt when your attractions didn't change," [Exodus President Alan] Chambers wrote in a statement on his website. "I am sorry that I ... failed to share publicly that the gay and lesbian people I know were every bit as capable of being amazing parents as the straight people that I know. I am sorry that I have communicated that you and your families are less than me and mine."

(Chambers is different-sex married, with children, although he admits still being attracted to men.)

One side story to this cartoon: I looked through a couple of my books for a picture of a hearse as a model for the one in the background above. One of those books was of Chas Addams cartoons; and while there were a couple of cartoons set in cemeteries, there were no hearses in any of them. There was, however, a cartoon featuring a Supermoon, which some of you may recall was the celestial highlight outdoors and on Facebook on Sunday night.

To share this find with my own Facebook friends, I located an eBay page where someone has been offering that very cartoon up for sale. You have to click on the image for a pop-up so you can read the caption, which is a bit more well-phrased than the title the seller has given it.

Cheap Toon: North West Heir Lines

Observant fans of this blog will notice that the image in this week's sneak peek doesn't appear in this cartoon. This week's Q Toon will come out in due time. Meanwhile, I made a snarky little comment on Facebook a few days ago, and then decided to draw a tawdry little cartoon about it.

Yeah, I know: with the Supreme Court poised to rule on marriage equality today, having just opened the doors so that Dixie Republicans can impose all the Jim Crow voting laws passed by their Republican brethren up north, there are more important things to spend valuable drawing board time on than the peculiar name some celebrity couple have saddled their baby with. But let's lighten up for just one moment here before all hell breaks loose, okay?

This Week's Sneak Peek

We're whistling past the graveyard this week.

Q Toon: Clandestine Gay Network

Pope Francis received the long-dreaded report last week about the Vatican's lobby of homosexual priests, bishops, cardinals, and butlers -- a clandestine network so entrenched that they even have their own dating site.

Say, wasn't Clandestine one of those medieval popes?

Know Your Station

I noticed a little something while checking out news coverage of an event held at work last week. Here's the picture at the top of the Mount Pleasant - Sturtevant Patch.com site:

It's a shot of the Sturtevant Amtrak station. Nice enough picture: blue skies, spring greenery, and the Waxdale windmills towering in the distance. I suppose that the station, which opened in 2006, is the most distinctive building in Sturtevant or Mount Pleasant other than the prison. It appears on the Sturtevant village letterhead, village sign, and village web page, (The lone image chosen for Wikipedia's Sturtevant page is of a warehouse with a caption informing you that "Distribution warehouses are a common sight along the western side of Sturtevant.")

And here's the picture atop Patch.com's Caledonia page:

That building on the left? It happens to be the old Sturtevant Milwaukee Road/Amtrak station, which was moved to a Caledonia field on Five Mile Road just east of State Trunk Highway 38 in 2009.

P.S.: Sturtevant's logo is actually based on the old train station, as shown in this photo from 2003. The new station was built to specifications so that the village wouldn't have to change all its signage and stationery.

P.P.S: Even Attica, New York doesn't use its prison in its town logo.

Speculantur Amicti de Septimanae Huius

Hey!

We're over here!

Never mind. We'll just look over your shoulder.

Q Toon: Pardon the Interruption

Since all the news today is about the massive database amassed by the U.S. government of every phone call, fax,  instant message, tweet, Facebook post, Google search, and garage door code for every person in the world, it's quite possible that you have forgotten the news items at the heart of this week's cartoon.

But rest assured that there is someone at the National Security Agency who remembers Ellen Sturtz, the woman who heckled Michelle Obama about employment non-discrimination, and they know what the PIN for her credit card is, how often she uses her microwave oven, and where she drove yesterday. If it's not someone at the NSA, then it's at least some high school dropout tech geek who got a job at some NSA subcontractor by virtue of his skills at Tomb Raider.

And, as that NSA subcontractor geek well knows, Chris had our TV tuned to the French Open on Sunday morning watching Rafael Nadal beat David Ferrer when one of the antigay yet homoerotic Hommen protesters stormed the court with a flare. Which was a great thing as far as I was concerned, thanks to the fifth law of editorial cartooning: Two Things Make a Cartoon. It's also been months since I've had an excuse to draw a guy without his shirt on.

It's also been over a year since I've had any use for my high school French.