I’m against Proposition 8. I support the recent protests against the constitutional ban on gay marriage. I’m not, however, a supporter of the tactic of some gay rights supporters of attacking Mormon, Catholic, and Evangelical churches. In the long run I think it is a tactic that’ll backfire and cause more harm than good for their cause. A small group of Mormons, Catholics and Evangelicals support gay rights and gay marriages and they need all the support they can get to raise their voices within their churches and counter the church hierarchy and the more conservative parishioners who champion Proposition 8.

Recently I watched Amen, a Costa-Gavras film about an SS officer and a Jesuit priest trying to get the Vatican to denounce the Holocaust. It was very critical of the Pope for his feeble response to the atrocities being committed against millions of Jewish lives. How fair is that criticism? I decided to research the actions of the two popes during the 1930s and 1940s and see how they reacted to Adolph Hitler and his policy against the Jews. Pope Pius XI, the pope during most of the 1930s, was increasingly confrontational of Hitler and the Nazis as their actions began to affect more people. Pope Pius XII, the wartime pope, privately approved of sheltering Jewish refugees in church property, but he never publicly condemned the shipping of Jews in concentration camps and the killing of Jewish lives. The two different reactions of the two popes offers a microcosm of the way religion has dealt with authoritarian governments and atrocities against its citizens.

A short while ago I checked out from the library and watched Missing, a movie starring Jack Lemmon and Sissy Spacek. It’s an intense political thriller by director Costa-Gavras. I did not know anything of Costa-Gavras, so I decided to do a little research on him. Costa-Gavras is one of the most respected directors today, the creator of political thrillers that expose government corruption and deceit.

Though I am opposed to Proposition 8, it bothers me to see antiMormon, antiCatholic and antiEvangelical signs among the protests that have occurred since the passage of the ballot measure. Many Christians from each denomination have quietly opposed this measure against gay marriage. Though the more conservative elements from each denomination have dominated the religious dialogue, there have been more progressive Christian voices who have fought for gay rights and gay marriage. I worry that in their anger over the support of Proposition 8 by Mormon, Catholic and Evangelical churches, it may create a prejudice by gay rights supporters against all Christians. The Christian community is more politically diverse than the Religious Right let on and many progressive Christians, among them Mormons, Catholics and Evangelicals, are struggling within their denominations to fight to change attitudes.

I am against California’s Proposition 8, which puts a ban in the California constitution on gay marriages. When the ballot measure passed, I was disappointed, but I also thought that over time, people’s attitudes would change. So when I saw protests against the change in the California constitution, I was generally supportive. One of the things that bothered me about the protests, though, is the criticisms I see in some of the protest signs against Mormons, Catholics, and Evangelicals. I think that is a big mistake, for not all Mormons, Catholics or Evangelicals supported Proposition 8. A better way would be to appeal to the more liberal and moderate Christians that belong to each denomination to support the cause of gay marriage.

A few weeks ago Berke Breathed stopped doing his comic strip Opus. So this means from now on we won't be seeing the wonderful penguin that Berke Breathed created almost 30 years ago in his comic strip Bloom County and continued in his subsequent strips Outland and Opus. It's a loss for comic fans, as Opus was one of the funniest comic creations to ever grace the newspaper page. And it has been one of the most humorous commentators on the cultural and political landscape of America, continuing a tradition of social commentary in comic strips that includes Walt Kelly's Pogo, Al Capp's Lil Abner, and Gary Trudeau's Doonesbury.

As a struggling cartoonist, I often mail in cartoons that get rejected by editors and publishers.

Often there's a good reason for it. The cartoon is not funny. Or it makes an ambiguous point.

Even so, I often fall for a cartoon that no one else seems to care for. I usually work a few days drawing and inking the cartoons, and it's often hard to let go of these cartoons. So I hope you indulge me as I show some of these cartoons at this post.

Yesterday I read in the papers that Studs Terkel, oral historian and radio disc jockey, died last Friday. He was 96 years old. When I read about it, I had a sad feeling. I first started reading his books when I was in college and these books helped me to learn about the way Americans thought about race, class, and the way they thought about the times they were living. I enjoyed reading the stories of individual Americans, their experiences and insights and their resilience in the face of hard times.

First, some facts. Louis “Studs” Terkel was born May 16, 1912 in New York City. His family moved to Chicago while he was young and he met the workers and activists who shaped his world view. He got the nickname “Studs” from the character Studs Lonigan in the James T. Farrells trilogy of books about an Irish American man in Chicago’s South Side. Terkel graduated from the University of Chicago in 1932, studying law and philosophy. He worked briefly as a federal statistician and found employment in radio through the WPA Writers Project acting in soap operas. In the 1940s, he worked full time in radio as a disc jockey and hosted an early t.v. show “Studs Place” set in a fictional bar in Chicago.

Groucho Marx once said,

“Marriage is a wonderful institution. But who wants to live in an institution.”