(45a) Queerbasher Revenge Redux

Strip #45 was another one I liked well enough to re-draw for reprint.

(45) Queerbasher Revenge

In my previous job, a co-worker seriously opined one day that all the queers should be lined up and shot.

Is there less violent homophobia today than there was then? It seems like it. Or at least it's gone underground. At any rate, today I'd go straight to our HR person and file a written complaint. If there was anything I could've done in 1982 to respond, I didn't know it.

If I could rename Murphy's Manor, I would call the strip Weekend Revolutionaries because it is about ordinary gayfolk who take activism into their own hands. Here is my modest proposal of what to do about violence: kill it with love and kisses. Especially the latter.

(44) Sid Jacobs' Elixir of Love

Sid's continuing adventures as an opera performer. Elixir of Love continues to be a favorite of mine.

The sorcerer's snake oil song is notable for its successors: Gilbert's parody for John Wellington Wells, and Sondheim's "Pirelli" song in Sweeny Todd come to mind.

Although I think I over estimated how many really are opera fans.

(43) Genderfuck

Genderfuck? Does anybody use that term anymore?  Maybe I better clean translate.  Genderfuck used to refer to the shock value of appearing in public dressed as the opposite sex. Transgender?  Never heard of it!  A good example of Genderfuck was gay men who paraded around San Francisco on roller skates dressed as nuns.  They wore beards, and made no real attempt to pass themselves off as female – but they were nevertheless in drag.

In 1982 I was graduating from being a gay Newbie. I'd found certain groups of guys at PRO regarded themselves as butch or fem - and the fem guys were called girls. Oh, it was mostly a joke, intended as genderfuck. So mostly I went along with it, but I still thought it was rather artificial. Is this simply the manifestion of Trans under obsolete terminology? It doesn't seem so to me. Looking back, some men who put on the swishy persona I think truly were trans, but others did it as a joke, or a way of telling society rethink gender roles. I don't think I'm gong to try to unravel this just now.

(42) A Sexy Weather Forecast

Jeff has never heard of Tom Lehrer, but he would agree that ...

When correctly viewed,

Everything is lewd

As for getting ten inches in Toledo - it could still happen! Snow storms in April are not unknown.

(41) Gay Men Love Opera - If They Can Stay Awake Through it

Jeff takes the hint to live up to the gay stereotype by loving opera. Which he'll do just as soon as he learns to distinguish Wagner from Bizet.

As Jeff commented earlier -- he'll try anything -- once.

(40) Just Like Luciano Pavarotti

"We've got a stereotype to live up to." Sid's attitude reflects my view of Gay culture at the time: let's have some fun doing the things gay people are supposed to do.

I didn't dwell much on what Murphy's Manor characters did for a living. Sid started out as a demolitions expert with the considerable talent it takes to be an opera singer. At the end, he was Pope of a gay bar. Details later!