2012-04-06
Explanation
This comic takes on the claim that "AIDS is God's way of punishing homosexuals," a real argument made by some religious conservatives. A man makes this claim, and when asked how he knows, he points to the data: HIV/AIDS disproportionately affects gay men compared to straight couples, and he tells his companion to check the numbers on CDC.gov. The other character appears to actually look up the statistics.
The punchline comes in the final panel, labeled "Soon...", where someone in what appears to be a classroom or lecture setting asks "Why does God love lesbians so much?" while a nun looks on uncomfortably. The logic is devastatingly simple: if high disease rates indicate divine punishment, then low disease rates must indicate divine favor. Since lesbians have among the lowest rates of sexually transmitted HIV, by the bigot's own logic, God must especially love lesbians. The comic uses the homophobe's own reasoning framework to reach a conclusion that completely undermines his original anti-gay position.
The votey panel shows a fake Bible verse -- "Leviticus 18:22 1/2: But two chicks is totally hot" -- satirizing how people selectively cite Leviticus to condemn homosexuality while imagining a conveniently inserted half-verse that exempts lesbianism, further mocking the inconsistency and hypocrisy of using scripture to justify prejudice.