Box Turtle Bulletin
News and commentary about the anti-gay lobby“Now you must raise your children up in a world where that union of man and box turtle is on the same legal footing as man and wife…”
News and commentary about the anti-gay lobbyJuly 22nd, 2008
I know you’ve seen them. You’ll usually find them deliberately left behind in some innocuous location where some unsuspecting soul can come across them and start flipping through the pages. You’ll find these strange little tracts just about anywhere: in car dealerships, dentist offices — for some reason I used to find them public men’s rooms.
As a Catholic growing up, I managed to run across the ones which painted the Catholic Church as the whore of Babylon and the Pope as the anti-Christ. That was one favorite theme for Jack Chick’s miniature comic books. Another one is the absolute, unblemished perfection of the King James Version and (and only the King James Version) of the Bible. Another still was the guy who was on his deathbed, facing the horrors of hell.
And, of course, there was homosexuality, with titles like Doom Town, Sin City, Birds and the Bees, and The Gay Blade. These were especially entertaining, laden with all the worst 1970s-style stereotypes, and they all seem to contain the same story of Sodom and Gomorrah. That is, after all, where fire and brimstone came from. But at the end of all the tracts is an invitation, like this charming one from Sin City:
If you choose Jesus Christ, all of your sins will be forgiven and you will receive God’s FREE gift of eternal life. If you do nothing, you’ll remain a condemned child of Satan…and one heartbeat from hell.
And in case you don’t think there’s a hell or a devil, Chick often included them in his tracts as well. In some of his comics they’re literally everywhere, usually standing just behind the evil-doer in case the reader is confused about who the bad guys are supposed to be. And sometime he places angels near the good guys, just so you’ll know.
Come to think of it, I think Chick ought to consider suing Oklahoma County commissioner Brent Rinehart for copyright violations. But I digress.
Anyway, it’s that last Chick comic that I mentioned, The Gay Blade, which caught my attention, because this one contains this so-called “fact” from our favorite Nazi-loving “researcher,” Paul Cameron.
I found this after a reader tipped me to an article in Battle Cry, Chick’s own monthly newsletter. (I was disappointed to find it was just an ordinary newsletter rather than a full-length comic book.) This article, “Homosexuals Hiding an ‘Inconvenient Truth’,” contains a similar claim:
Research by The Family Research Institute (FRI) of Colorado has discovered that the average lifespan of the male homosexual is only 39 years. Where 80% of married men lived past 65, only 2% of the homosexuals lived that long, as shown in the accompanying chart.
FRI found that sodomites “…were 116 times more apt to be murdered; 24 times more apt to commit suicide; and had a traffic-accident death-rate 18 times the rate of comparably-aged white males. Heart attacks, cancer and liver failure were exceptionally common. Twenty percent of lesbians died of murder, suicide, or accident—a rate 487 times higher than that of white females aged 25-44.”
In their web site at http:// www.familyresearchinst.org/ Default.aspx?tabid=73, FRI details the disgusting and unsanitary sexual practices that contribute to this early death sentence. The “outing” of the homosexual lifestyle in our culture has unleashed over 50 sexually transmitted diseases (STDs). AIDS is just one of them.
That link goes to Paul Cameron’s “Medical Consequences of What Homosexuals Do”, a brochure that I thoroughly investigated a few years ago in a project that gave birth to this very web site. And of course, a key component of Cameron’s brochure was his so-called “obituary study.”
It’s fitting that we finally got around to honoring Jack Chick as a Certified Cameronite. Chick joins other recent inductees like Insure.com and their CEO, Robert Bland and Oklahoma state rep. Sally Kern. They all make for some pretty good company.
But I didn’t want to honor Chick with our ordinary run-of-the-mill award that we’ve given to so many other deserving honorees. So I asked my good friend Bruce Garrett, a pretty good cartoonist in his own right, to see if he could come up with something special for Jack Chick.
So here it is, our Jack Chick Limited Collector’s Edition of the Certified Cameronite Award.
[Hat tip: John Thorp]
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Willie Hewes
July 22nd, 2008
Nice. Excellent work Bruce. :)
Popsiclestand
July 22nd, 2008
That’s special edition award is the cat’s pajamas!
Should put it on a t-shirt.
John
July 22nd, 2008
Wow, what a great piece of work, Bruce!
I find these tracts in bus stops here. I’ve seen the one about the KJV, but none dedicated specifically to gays. But I am familiar with the little demons on the shoulders of the bad guys. Weird.
Popsiclestand
July 22nd, 2008
And also, that one entitled “Bird and Bees” is hilarious and kind of disturbing. Most specifically, the quote from one of the kids that says:
“If anyone tries to make you Gay, stay away from them!”
WTF? Make someone else gay? I think that says more about Chick’s irrational fear of the “other” than it says about any supposed “gay agenda”. He’s afraid that acknowledging gay people as equal will someonehow make a straight person also gay? Projecting much!?
Patrick
July 22nd, 2008
It’s also worth noting that the bad guys are usually drawn with stereotypical Jewish features. The anti-semitism is pronounced in the anti-evolution tract “Big Daddy”. Compare that with the wholesome (and blond) hero.
Patty
July 22nd, 2008
Great artwork and very appropriate, Bruce! I used to pick up a couple new Chick tracts from the tract rack every Sunday night on my way into church when I was a kid and read them during church. *g* Now I wonder what all I learned by a steady diet of those. It seems like my dad ordered them all–there was a never-ending supply.
Bruce Garrett
July 22nd, 2008
Thanks Much to Jim for giving me the opportunity to take a cartoon swing at Chick…something I’ve been chafing at the bit to do for years now.
Willie: Thanks, from one cartoonist to another!
Patrick: I noticed that very thing while trying to mimic Chick’s style. Some of his villains could have come right out of the crudely drawn antisemitic tracts you see from time to time. I couldn’t say if it is a conscious thing with him or not, but it was very striking to realize.
Jim: I didn’t know you’d grown up Catholic. Yeah…Chick’s vitriol toward Catholics and the Catholic church is just amazing. Before I read them I hadn’t realized how deep the hatred toward Catholics is in some quarters. I was just flabbergasted.
Chick is a kind of pornographer. He trades in hate, not sex, but its the same sort of crude, hot and sweaty button pushing. His tracts aren’t all that different in kind from the old “Tijuana Bibles”. Seriously…google “Tijuana Bible” and look at the artwork and tell me you can’t place Chick in their ranks easily.
GDad
July 22nd, 2008
I take all that I ever see in public places and destroy them. I do the same things if I find needles on the ground. They’re all dangerous things that I don’t want kids to find and that make me sad.
homer
July 22nd, 2008
Those “comics” always gave me the creeps.
Jon M
July 22nd, 2008
What I always noticed about Chick’s anti-gay tracts is how extremely effeminate gay men are drawn. They look like their all wearing eye shadow, of course, they’re limp wristed, and in the case of “Sin City”, on duty uniformed cops are wearing big earrings! Now when was the last time you EVER saw an on duty uniformed cop wearing ear rings?
Lastly, there’s the ever present name “Sodomite” applied to all gays. I don’t know about anyone else, but I’ve never been to Sodom, I sure wasn’t born and raised there, and I definitely don’t have an address there. So, I guess I’m not a “Sodomite” after all!
TJ McFisty
July 22nd, 2008
Can’t recall if he’s ever included lesbians either. Without going through them all over again, which is always entertaining, I’m willing to go out there and say that he doesn’t or their presence is so minimized as to be negligible.
Again, he’s a guy and thinks only about guys having the buttsecks because he doesn’t like the idea of himself doing the buttsecks with another guy so no guy should like it either.
cowboy
July 22nd, 2008
“Chick is a kind of pornographer…” B. Garrett
Not kind of…that’s exactly what he is.
Tiff
July 22nd, 2008
It’s honestly kind of scary that Chick tracts are still being made. One of my favorite quotes is from “Angels?” a tract about the dangers of Christian rock. The Devil maniacally says “Everyone loves [rock and roll] because it all sounds the same!” Later in the tract, two band members become gay (and instantly get AIDS) for no apparent reason.
And I can’t believe no has mentioned “Dark Dungeons” which shows how playing Dungeons and Dragons will apparently train you for sorcery.
Thom
July 22nd, 2008
When I was in elementary school I attended a Baptist school. One of our substitute teachers used to have a briefcase FULL of Chick tracts that he let us browse instead of doing our assignments. At the time? He rocked. Now? There’s not enough lube in all of the US to put that briefcase where it ought to go….
Nice work, guys.
Milo
July 22nd, 2008
Is the “INTO YOU LIFE” drawn from a Chick typo?
Jim Burroway
July 22nd, 2008
Milo
I think that was inadvertent. I don’t know how many times Bruce and I looked that over and missed it. Fortunately, Bruce sent the photoshop file so I could edit it. It’s corrected now.
Bill S
July 23rd, 2008
I’m always amused by the way characters in his tracts never argue when presented with these Bible stories. You’d think one of them would say, “So, you’re equating me with a rapist? Fuck off.” or “Wait, it should have been pretty easy to find 50 people worth saving-all he’d have to do was go to an elementary school or a home for the aged.’ or, “So you’re saying I deserve to burned alive? Wow, the God you worship is a sadistic asshole!”
But then again, nobody behaves like a normal human being in any of these. He doesn’t just lie about gays and Catholics. His tracts on the origin of Halloween are laughable-especially the one where a little boy is murdered by somebody in the neighborhood while out trick-or-treating. The parents just can’t understand why his surviving friends are acting so bizarre, until someone suggests they’re possessed by demons.
Chick’s a bigot, a loon, and an idiot.
GDad
July 23rd, 2008
Bill S.,
I’m always amused that the non-Christians are always people who just haven’t heard about Christianity or God. Huh? It’s not too likely that anyone in western society over the age of five hasn’t been exposed to these things in depth.
Michael Bussee
July 23rd, 2008
Here’s a bit of trivia. The Chick Track, “The Gay Blade” was actually the inspiration for EXIT and later EXODUS. About 1974, I found the tract at the Melodyland bookstore and was so appalled that I asked that it be removed. It was.
Noticing there was nothing else on the subject in the bookstore, I then asked the Melodyland leaders if we could start our own ministry to reach out to gays in the church and to try to change some of the negative stereotypes presented in the tract.
EXIT was formed in 1974. We hosted the first EXODUS conference in 1976. So I guess that, in a way, you can thank Mr. Chick for EXODUS.
johnson
July 23rd, 2008
OMG, those comics are hilarious–I have to get some of those!
Bill S
July 23rd, 2008
I’ve noticed that too GDad. There seem to be Christians in real life who believe this. They’re under the impression they need to tell strangers, living in this country, about Big J.
Wasn’t there another gay-themed Chick tract, “Wounded Children”? I’ve never seen it, but I’ve read a description of it, and it’s almost sympathetic by Chick’s standards. I can’t seem to find any copies online. Has anybody else seen it?
Andy
July 27th, 2008
It doesn’t seem that Chick’s “Wounded Children” tract is available online, but some people on YouTube adapted it for video and re-enacted it for comic effect.
Michael Bussee: thanks for sharing that story. I never would have expected one of his tracts to have an impact like that, but if nothing else Chick seems to be an excellent (and despicable) marketer.
Timothy Kincaid
July 28th, 2008
Those looking for Wounded Children can find it here, along with some less-than-favorable commentary.
Taylor
September 11th, 2008
Part of me wants to see the Christian rock one, but it’d probably make me need brain bleach afterwards.
Taylor
September 11th, 2008
I actually did look at “Angels” and “Sin City”. Sin City looked like the cops had gauges actually (which amused me no end), and Angels was as advertised. What really annoyed/scared me was that probably about 1/3 of the tracts had “adapted for a black audience”–talk about racist…
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