Explain SMBC — the wiki for Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal

This comic satirizes the "how do we explain this to our children?" argument that was commonly used against gay marriage. A senator tells a reporter that gay marriage shouldn't be allowed because it's hard to explain to children. The reporter takes this reasoning at face value and extrapolates: if the senator's ethical framework is to oppose anything that's hard to explain to kids, then he must also oppose war, foreplay, and arithmetic. The final panel shows a news headline: "Senator opposes gay marriage. (Also war, foreplay, arithmetic.)"

The comic exposes the logical weakness of the "think of the children" argument by demonstrating where that reasoning leads if applied consistently. Many complex and important aspects of life -- from international conflict to mathematics -- are difficult to explain to children, yet nobody seriously proposes banning them for that reason. By highlighting these absurd parallels, the comic argues that difficulty of explanation is not a valid basis for moral or legal prohibitions, and that the argument was always a rhetorical cover rather than a genuine ethical principle.