S-E-X Education, Part 1

Some more of those rejected cartoon ideas...

I tend to be pretty open-minded about people’s sexuality because none of us know why we think and feel what we think and feel and I’ve got some pretty weird shit stored in my mental attic, so whatever your kink is, I’m pretty much OK with it as long as you do it with consenting adults.

And now a true story about why I started thinking about all this:

I needed to draw a prison for a political cartoon so I went online to see pictures of prisons and figured why not draw Folsom Prison because I grew up just a few miles away from that World-Famous Establishment.

So I type “Folsom” into the Google search bar and before I can finish typing, it offers me “Folsom Street Fair” and being a world-class dope I think maybe it’s some kind of street fair in Folsom, California and maybe I’ll know some of the people in the pictures.

Turns out, I didn’t.  

Because “Folsom Street Fair” is actually a fair on Folsom Street in San Francisco and people go there to get their freak on publicly and instead of prison exteriors, I see pictures of semi-nude people wearing harnesses while pulling carts with other  semi-nude people in them and even more semi-nude people being led around on leashes and someone else wearing a horse’s head and not much else and I realize when it comes to sexuality my weird shit is actually pretty middle-of-the-road weird shit, so all-in-all I was pretty happy about that.

It was kind of like shoplifting a candy bar in a convenience store and feeling guilty about it and then finding out someone else robbed Ft. Knox, so your convenience store candy-bar heist seem pretty tame.     

So while it’s not my thing, if wearing a diaper, a pig mask and nothing else gets you off, I’m OK with that.

Also; apparently some men get sexually excited by being kicked in the testicles (and I didn’t make that up) and if you’re lucky enough to find someone who likes to kick men in the testicles (and I’m guessing about 72% of women who agree to blind dates set up by online match-making sites wouldn’t mind giving it a whirl) I’m thinking good for you as long as (and I’m about to repeat myself…again) everyone involved in the testicle-kicking is a consenting adult, which brings us to pedophilia which I’m definitely not OK with.

You can’t have consenting adults if the people involved aren’t adults.  

Timeout for Some Weird History

Google “how has the age of consent changed over the years” and you’ll be led to some articles that say it has varied widely and while it is now between 16 and 18 in all U.S. States, in 1880 the age of consent in most states was set at 10 or 12 with the exception of Delaware where it was 7.

One more time: S-E-V-E-N.

Which sounds like a law promoted by men and some pretty fucked-up men at that.

Also according to the internet: the age of consent in Missouri is 17 and in Kansas it’s 16 and I know I was still making some pretty bad decisions at those ages (a trend that continues today, although now I have the benefit of knowing they’re bad decisions, but making them anyway) and if you ask me how old you should be to decide you want to wear a horse’s head, be strapped into a harness and pull around a cart being driven by a fat guy with a pony tail who’s hitting you with a whip, I’d say approximately 102, but that’s just me – your mileage may vary.

(Feeling more normal already, aren’t you? Either that or you’re wondering where you can get one of those fabulous pony outfits. )

Anyway…

I wrote all that to point out that the age of consent varies by location and time and here’s a story that says the Philippines raised the age of consent from 12 to 16…in 2021.

https://newsinfo.inquirer.net/1493569/senate-oks-bill-raising-age-for-determining-statutory-rape-from-12-to-16

So being a pedophile is getting harder and harder and if you can’t afford your own private island and a jet to fly you and your celebrity friends there, you may have to settle for joining some organization that gives you access to kids and I drew the cartoon about the Boy Scouts of America when it was revealed that some adult members had sexually abused young boys.

A Complete Heterosexual

Just in case you’ve forgotten, Ted Haggard was an Evangelical Christian minister who spoke out against gay marriage right up until the male prostitute he was banging realized who Ted was and outed him.

The male prostitute also said Ted bought methamphetamine from him and Ted denied everything right up until a voicemail of Ted requesting methamphetamine became public and then Ted changed his story and said he bought meth, but never used it, which I think we can all file in our Mental Dewey Decimal System as:

“A Likely Story.”

But then a young male member of his church came forward and said Ted had an inappropriate relationship with him too and Ted’s church gave the accuser a six-figure settlement and then a couple more guys said Ted had touched them inappropriately and one of them was a minor.

As more accusations surfaced and Haggard started admitting some of them were true, Haggard underwent counseling by four ministers (because who better to counsel you about human sexuality than people with a King James Bible shoved up their butts) and one of the ministers said Haggard was “completely heterosexual” which inspired the following cartoon:

(Before any of us claim to be “completely heterosexual” I think we ought to be forced to spend 10 years in prison just to see if our attitude gets more flexible somewhere around Year 9.)

As is so often the case: a guy who preached against gay marriage and homosexuality was having gay sex, which would be like me leading a movement to Ban Irish Coffees.

I definitely blame the hypocrites who do that, but also reserve some blame for a Society that tells people they can’t be who they are or act on their feelings as long as (say it with me this time) everyone involved is a consenting adult.

A Michael Jackson Playdate

People get goofy about celebrities (and by “people” I mean everybody) and I once heard a celebrity say even celebrities get goofy around other celebrities and by the time I drew this sketch, news about Michael Jackson possibly having inappropriate relationships with minors had become public, so it seemed to me you had to be a remarkable idiot to let your kid go hang out in his Neverland Ranch amusement park.

A Catholic Education

And now, having insulted parents who put their children in a possibly precarious situation, let me confess I sent all my sons to a Catholic grade school and high school, not because I’m Catholic (I’m not) but because I thought they’d get a better education than they would in the Kansas City Public School System which for decades had been an Educational Disaster Area.

At the time the decision to send my kids to those schools was reached, it was known that the Catholic Church had a pedophilia problem, but many people still thought it was “a few bad apples,” but turns out it was “a bad apple orchard.”

Live and — hopefully — learn.

Today’s Lesson

What’s considered acceptable and normal changes all the time and if you enjoyed the movie 300 don’t forget that Spartan warriors often engaged in gay sex which doesn’t surprise me with all those buff dudes walking around wearing nothing but leather miniskirts.

But times change and while we’re now OK with all the hacking and impaling and beheading that went on back then, we’re not totally comfortable with two guys kissing.

Which brings me to today’s final cartoon about some military chaplains saying they were uncomfortable with the “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy:

So bottom line (and I just made an unintentional joke that I won’t charge you for) I’m OK with whatever sexual hijinks people want to get up to as long as those hijinks involve consenting adults, but as we’ve already seen the age of consent is up for debate although I feel pretty damn sure it’s not 7.

As I go through my rejected sketches, turns out I have a lot of them based on sex in one way or another, but couldn’t get them into the newspaper because we had a policy of being boring whenever possible and you can see how well avoiding controversy has worked out for us.

So stay tuned because S-E-X Education Part 2 is coming.

(Man, once you introduce the subject it’s hard to stop making sophomoric jokes about it, which probably means I might be able to “consent,” but might not qualify as an “adult.” All I can say is I’m working on it.)