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(LifeSiteNews) – DC Comics has taken the next bold step in transforming itself into a cartoonish propaganda arm of the transgender movement: one of their first 2023 releases, the fourth issue of The Joker: The Man Who Stopped Laughing, features The Joker becoming pregnant and giving birth to a son.

The event isn’t meant as a joke, either. The Joker, immortalized as one of the arch-villains of American pop mythology on both page and screen, is a sadistic, evil man – not a woman. But the new series by Matthew Rosenberg and Carmine Di Giandomenico features “his most bizarre caper yet,” The Joker becomes pregnant by the mother of his child, magician Zatanna.

This gender swap is intentional, and is intended to push the cultural moment and strain the boundaries of the audience’s credulity. One scene shows a man dressed as a jester remarking on The Joker’s pregnant belly: “I think you’re pregnant.” The Joker replies: “I think you’re right. Do we have a good OB-GYN we use?” According to the storyline, the pregnancy is the result of a spell cast by Zatanna, and ends with Doctor Phosphorous initiating the birth, peering at The Joker with his legs in stirrups before the villain vomits out the child.

Predictably, the storyline is getting mixed reviews. One fan noted that “this is why I stopped reading comics”; another that “comics have truly lost their way.” Many have already pointed out that the “pregnant man” storyline is part of DC Comics “social justice agenda,” while defenders of the piece are insisting that it is just a comic and that as such, anyone claiming that The Joker’s pregnancy is intended to push a social agenda is just a tightwad who can’t enjoy a joke (albeit a very weird one).

That might be a believable analysis if the American comic world hadn’t been using its heroes and stories to overtly push the LGBT agenda for several years now. In 2021, for example, DC Comics unveiled a new, bi-sexual Man of Steel, with Superman gaining a male love interest. The same year, DC Comics also queered Batman’s sidekick Robin by outing him as a bisexual as well, with the writer noting that she “wanted to pay tribute to the fact that sexuality is a journey.”

Even earlier, DC Comics launched a lesbian version of Batwoman; Marvel Comics got in the game by (and I’m not making this up) launching a non-binary superhero named Snowflake and his twin brother Safespace (to reclaim these words as positives, apparently). LGBT characters have been a staple of the X-Men stories for some time, as well, and the Marvel Universe film franchise has gone all in on the LGBT agenda, with the Thor 4 director proudly stating: “We’re all queer.”

In that context, it seems obvious that DC Comics’ decision to depict a male character as pregnant is simply part of a larger effort to mainstream the idea that men can get pregnant – something that, as I noted in an essay couple of years ago, the mainstream media has been working very hard on for some time by publishing a torrent of “human interest” stories featuring “pregnant men.” These stories – and now this new form of fiction – are a concerted effort to eliminate the instinctive shock and revulsion that accompanies the site of a man with a distended, pregnant belly. DC Comics knows it is pushing the envelope with this new story. That’s the entire point.

But they’ll tell us it’s just a joke – until it isn’t. Soon enough, it becomes unacceptable to laugh at it.

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Jonathon Van Maren is a public speaker, writer, and pro-life activist. His commentary has been translated into more than eight languages and published widely online as well as print newspapers such as the Jewish Independent, the National Post, the Hamilton Spectator and others. He has received an award for combating anti-Semitism in print from the Jewish organization B’nai Brith. His commentary has been featured on CTV Primetime, Global News, EWTN, and the CBC as well as dozens of radio stations and news outlets in Canada and the United States.

He speaks on a wide variety of cultural topics across North America at universities, high schools, churches, and other functions. Some of these topics include abortion, pornography, the Sexual Revolution, and euthanasia. Jonathon holds a Bachelor of Arts Degree in history from Simon Fraser University, and is the communications director for the Canadian Centre for Bio-Ethical Reform.

Jonathon’s first book, The Culture War, was released in 2016.

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