2011-09-21
Explanation
This is a long-form comic that tells an absurdist alternate-history story structured like a documentary or historical narrative. It begins with economists noticing that gay couples tend not to have children, so they spend more money improving their local environment. From this observation, an economist declares that if they can get each community to be "a little gayer," the standard of living will increase for everyone.
The unlikely possibility is then turned into a political crisis, with a politician declaring that "undergayed communities" have been left to languish in poverty and demanding that he be able to walk down any street and say "this neighborhood is pretty gay!" It becomes an international issue, with a newscaster warning that only one in ten American children will grow up to be gay, and that the U.S. is being "massively outgayed" by Holland, Belgium, and the United Kingdom. The patriotic becomes mandatory, with Uncle Sam (and his partner, Uncle Dan) announcing free hormone injections for all children. When economists try to reverse the tide by explaining that the data was wrong -- gay people spend differently, but not more -- the president's "Gay New Deal" collapses.
The final panels show an economist reading from a book called "Technical Truths" and noting that no gay nation has ever made war upon another gay nation. But rather than achieving peace, they had just given the world one more resource to fight over, as a newscaster announces that Japan has invaded San Francisco, concluding: "May God have mercy on our gays." The votey panel shows a Japanese military figure saying "I fear we have awakened a gay giant," parodying the famous quote attributed to Admiral Yamamoto after Pearl Harbor. The entire comic satirizes how political systems latch onto simplified economic data and escalate it into absurd policy, while also playing on the real-world debate around gay rights by imagining a world where gayness is treated as a strategic national resource.