Jesus Has Two Daddies

As I was scrolling through my news feeds yesterday, I came across a cartoon by one of my conservative colleagues. It was his annual Easter cartoon. It was smart of him to post it a few days early so his clients will have time to put it on their Easter Sunday opinion pages. Their Christian readers will be so pleased. But I have an issue with it.

I’ve explained this before but I’ll repeat it. I’m agnostic. I don’t consider myself a full-fledged atheist because we don’t know anything about what happens after we die. Neither the Pope nor Neil DeGrasse Tyson are experts on life after death. I believe claiming you know what happens after this mortal life kinda makes a person an obnoxious asshole. You can say, “I believe,” but when you say that you know, you’re teaching something you don’t know anything about. We are all ignorant about this. So, I’m agnostic.

I don’t have an issue with the Easter cartoons because I don’t agree with them. I disagree with a lot of things that get published by news outlets but that doesn’t mean I don’t think they should be published. Part of my disagreement is the Christian fundamentalism being spread by newspapers. I hate to see journalistic institutions treat myths as established facts. Also, it discriminates against non-Christian readers. Are the Christians the only readers editors want? I did have a Catholic editor at my last employer tell me once that Catholics should receive special treatment from our newspaper, which he told me after the newspaper published an apology for a cartoon of mine that really pissed off Catholics.

While I don’t know what happens after we die, I am pretty positive there never was a Jesus Christ. By that, I’m open to the idea there may have been a non-white guy running around in a robe about 600 years ago preaching peace and love and was murdered for it. But I don’t believe he was the son of a god. I don’t believe he rose from the grave three days later. Who wrote the Bible, George Romero? I don’t believe anything in the Bible is true. Keep in mind that I’ve read a lot of the Bible (not the entire thing because the prose is ridiculous). I grew up as a Christian and even attended a private Baptist school for a year in Georgia against my will. It was horrible. But, I know where these people are coming from. I know the culture. I know what they preach. Little did I know as a child that I was doing research for my future career.

So, while I am not a Christian or believe in Jesus, I believe in the message of peace, tolerance, being nice to people, and not judging or looking down on others (not that I’m good at following the message because I look down on a lot of people). I’m with Jesus’ anti-hate agenda. So, this is why I have a problem with these Easter cartoons.

My right-wing colleagues spend the entire year pushing a hate agenda. They support the racism of Donald Trump and Tucker Carlson. They’re on board with the hate and discrimination of Greg Abbott and Ron DeSantis. They defend the white nationalists who tried to destroy our democracy and install an unelected orange racist potentate. Now, if you disagree with them on their hate agenda, they’ll accuse you of being a pedophile. A pedophile. Where did this shit come from? Why is this allowed? They get upset if you call them a racist when they do racist shit but can accuse us of raping children because we don’t like their legislation? I call bullshit on this. Anyone who calls another person a “groomer” on social media should have their accounts deleted and be banned from the platform. Over the past week, I’ve been called “groomer” on Truth Social and Instagram repeatedly for pointing out their hate. I’ll be called that again for this cartoon.

So, after spending an entire year hating on people, these right-wing goosestepping talking point fascist-loving racist assholes wanna preach Jesus to us. They pause from shaming children to tell us “He has risen.” Screw you and the white horse you rode in on.

First off, they’re bad political cartoonists. This is opinion journalism that should be used to punch up, not down. We’re supposed to go after those in power, not the weak who they attack. When I first got into this business, Dick Locher, a Pulitzer-Prize-winning cartoonist who also drew Dick Tracy, told me that political cartoonists watch the battle and when it’s over, go down and shoot the wounded. It’s a good line and Dick Locher was a great guy, but he was wrong. We shoot the winners. Right-wing cartoonists go after the victims. When Donald Trump says “Send them back” or Ron DeSantis points his bony racist finger at kids and scolds them for wearing face masks while calling them “ridiculous,” my right-wing colleagues yee-haw over it.

Second, they’re hypocrites. They don’t see their own hypocrisy by teaching and supporting hate all year then drawing a cartoon about Jesus. Do they believe when they spread hate that they’re spreading love? Do they believe Jesus would support bullying children or throwing them into cages? Maybe their inability to understand love comes from their love of hate. They support legislation banning schools from talking about having two daddies while going to Sunday school where they preach about their savior who had two daddies. What would Jesus do? He probably wouldn’t force a 13-year-old girl to have her rapist uncle’s baby.

So, to all those right-wing hypocrites drawing Easter cartoons praising a guy who doesn’t support their hate agenda, this cartoon is for you. If you can use Jesus for your hate, I can use him to take you and your hate down. The bad thing is most newspapers would rather publish their religious zealotry than my cartoon attacking hate.

You MAGAts have and always will be on the wrong side of history. If you were alive in the early 1860s, you would have fought to preserve slavery and divide our nation. If you were around during the 1940s, you would have been Nazis. If you were around in the 1950s and 1960s, you would have fought against the Civil Rights movement. You were here when Russia offered you a racist stupid orange shitgibbon as president, and you took it.

And if you were around 2,000 years ago, you wouldn’t have been following Jesus. You would have been the Romans nailing him to a cross.

Music note: I listened to The Black Keys while drawing this cartoon because I’m a lonely boy.

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