Bizarro is brought to you today by Taliban's Discount Clothiers.
Since yesterday's cartoon sparked such a lively debate about religion's place in law making, I decided to post this cartoon from last January, which, if memory serves, appeared on this blog back then. I'm too lazy to look it up.
When this first ran, I got a couple of complaints from people who accused me of bigotry toward Islam. This plays into yesterday's theme about gay marriage because less important than my silent respect for another person's religious beliefs is the rights of the victims of those beliefs. The burqa robs a person of her identity, as this cartoon shows, and places her irrevocably as a second-class citizen. I don't believe religion is an acceptable excuse for oppression, bigotry, murder, imprisonment, or any number of other atrocities visited upon the world by people, and I think it is important to make a stand against it, both here and abroad.
That being said, I think this cartoon is funny. I've often thought of one of those cheesy photo studio shots taken of a Taliban man, his wife, and their three daughters, with all the women in burqas. Does he carry it in his wallet to show people? Does he remember which ghost is which kid? Can he even be sure that the people under the robes are his family?
