Auchtoon!

Pretty soon (this week, I think), the United States Supreme Court will determine whether Michigan’s 2004 ban on same-sex marriage is constitutional. When a case gets on the Supreme Court schedule, citizens and groups are free to file a brief to advocate for one side or the other. Briefs generally have no real effect on the justices themselves, but they can reveal a lot about the thinking and motivations of the people who file them.

Michigan’s current leading defender of moral righteousness, Gary Glenn, filed such a brief on behalf of the American Family Association of Michigan. In it, he clings to various questionable arguments (the majority rules of 2004 trumps the majority rules of 2015, gay marriage is a slippery slope to polygamy, etc.), but the most audacious to me was that the Founders of this nation would be on his side — it’s pretty much a direct quote from Mr. Glenn in panel 2. There is so much wrong with that, I had to send him back in time for Mr. Jefferson to, um, straighten him out.

As mentioned in yesterday’s post (and for many of you readers, in an email I sent), MLive has cut back on its budget for freelance content, so for now my cartoons will appear in the Sunday paper once per month instead of once per week. Again, I would very much appreciate it if you send a brief email to Todd Fettig, Director of Presentation at MLive, urging MLive to reconsider and make my cartoons available online: tfettig1@mlive.com

For nearly 20 years — first with the Grand Rapids Business Journal, then with the Grand Rapids Press and eventually MLive — I have drawn at least one editorial cartoon every week. Through child births and child raising and business travel and work conflicts and illnesses and holidays and occasional writer’s block, I never missed a deadline. I’m afraid if I stop now, I will pull a muscle. So for my own safety (and because I really, really like to draw), I plan to continue and see where it leads….

About the Cartoon: In Michigan we are coming up for a vote next month on Proposal 1. Proposal 1 is a train wreck of a piece of legislation with mostly good intentions. The basic idea is to fix our bad roads. And when I say “bad,” I mean “embarrassingly, historically, economically, horrendously awful” roads. We are well beyond “something needs to be done” and well into “this is figuratively and sometimes literally killing us.”

Unfortunately, our legislators shirked their duties and punted to the citizens a ballot proposal that’s (as the cartoon says) hopelessly complicated. And I’m conflicted. Because it is something I know I need …wrapped around a turd. Much the way I feel about dealing with cell phone contracts, cable company plans, and health insurance claims.