2014-09-01
Explanation
The Joke
The comic is titled "The best way to ruin a protest is to join it badly." In the top panel, protesters hold signs reading "It's Adam and Eve, NOT Adam and Steve!" — a common anti-gay-marriage slogan. In the bottom panel, a woman has joined the protest with a sign that reads: "It's Lot and his daughters, NOT Lot and his sons!" — enthusiastically supporting the protesters' biblical-literalist approach but applying it to a deeply uncomfortable Bible story.
The Humor
The humor works on multiple levels. The original protesters are using a simplistic biblical argument against same-sex relationships. The woman who joins them takes their logic — that the Bible is the authority on acceptable sexual relationships — and applies it consistently to another biblical story: Lot and his daughters from Genesis 19, in which Lot's daughters get him drunk and have sex with him to produce offspring.
By carrying a sign that endorses the incestuous story of Lot's daughters using the exact same rhetorical structure as the anti-gay slogan, the woman exposes the absurdity of cherry-picking biblical narratives to justify moral positions. The protesters cannot object to her logic without undermining their own argument. She has "ruined" their protest by joining it with a sign that follows their exact reasoning but arrives at a conclusion they would find repugnant.
References
- "Adam and Eve, not Adam and Steve": A common anti-gay-marriage slogan used by religious conservatives to argue that the Bible only endorses heterosexual relationships.
- Lot and his daughters (Genesis 19:30-38): A biblical story in which, after the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah, Lot's two daughters get him drunk and conceive children by him, believing they are the last people on Earth.
- Reductio ad absurdum: The comic uses this logical technique — taking the protesters' premise to its logical extreme to demonstrate its absurdity.