2011-01-04
Explanation
A pair of parents are discussing their son Billy. The father says, "Honey, I think Billy'''s gonna come out of the closet. We'''d better be ready." The mother asks, "Really? How do you know?" He replies, "I overheard him practicing." They agree this is a chance to show compassion, tolerance, and unconditional love. The scene then shifts to Billy emerging from a literal closet and announcing: "Mom. Dad. I'''m a homeopath." The parents immediately respond: "And never come back!" -- rejecting him completely.
The comic is a bait-and-switch that plays on the "coming out of the closet" trope. The parents prepare themselves to be accepting and loving, presumably expecting their son to come out as gay. Instead, Billy reveals that he is a homeopath -- a practitioner of homeopathy, which is widely regarded as pseudoscience. The joke is that the parents, who were ready to embrace their son'''s sexual orientation with open arms, find his belief in pseudoscientific medicine so unacceptable that they immediately disown him. It'''s a pointed commentary on how some things (like rejecting evidence-based medicine) might actually be more worthy of parental disappointment than the things society traditionally stigmatizes.
The votey panel adds a brilliant homeopathy-specific pun: Billy calls out as the door slams, "It'''s okay! The less concentrated your love gets, the stronger it--" followed by "SLAM!" This references the central (and scientifically unfounded) principle of homeopathy, which claims that the more a substance is diluted, the more potent it becomes. Billy is trying to argue that his parents''' diminishing love will paradoxically grow stronger by homeopathic logic -- a perfect satirical jab at the absurdity of the belief system.