I recently did a cartoon on the groundbreaking event of Michael Sams being the first openly-gay individual drafted to play in the National Football League:

http://www.gannett-cdn.com/-mm-/df944be2baf18124825afeeb60a099b19d02434d/c=2-0-1200-900&r=x513&c=680x510/local/-/media/Phoenix/Phoenix/2014/05/18//1400463159000-RESENDUSETHISONEbenson--COLORvictorykiss051914.jpg
_____


Its publication resulted in the following predictable exchanges.

--The first, with a Bible thumper, who claimed that the Bible trumps the U.S. Constitution in power and authority:

"Dear Mr. Benson

"Are you a Christian? If you are, you are sadly misinformed as to your duty/obligation/ as a Christian. It is true, we should not judge other sinners or condemn them which I do not, because we are all sinners, but we should do what we can to discourage them from continuing their sinful behavior.

"Yes I am a sinner also but I have not had anyone condone and glorify my sins and encourage me to continue sinning or state such encouragement in the form of articles by paid professionals in dozens of newspaper articles. Why is that? Are my sins that much more serious than the sin of homosexuality?

"We should discourage sinners not encourage them. FOR THEIR SAKE. Why do you call me a bigot for doing that? The picture that you have drawn in today's newspapers is a despicable reminder of the sad liberal agenda.

"I will pray for you and I will pray that all sinners ask forgiveness for their sins and REPENT as the Bible asks and as common sense should dictate.

"Thank you for listening.

"God Bless you"

(name deleted)


--My reply:

"No.

"Now, answer me this:

"Where in the U.S. Constitution does it require American citizens to be Christians?

"And, further, where in the U.S. Constitution is homosexuality deemed impermissible behavior? Please cite the specific article and clause.

"To help you in your search, check out the 14 Amendment, which requires that equal protection under the law be afforded all citizens of this nation and which is increasingly being cited in court rulings protecting the constitutionality of gay marriage.

"Civics 101. Good luck."


--Same reader back:

"Dear Mr Benson

"You really should reread my email. You have obviously tried to skirt the issue with your constitution argument. First of all, The Lord and the Bible trump the Constitution and you really mustn't forget that. Worldly human writings are really quite easily dismissible. If you are not a Christian you wouldn't understand and I don't think I can help you.

"Only the Lord can open your eyes to the truth. What do you believe in. If you want to live your life with some sort of self proclaimed moral standards I can only pray for you. You really should read the Bible, at least a little bit. Maybe you should start at Proverbs 15:8 or the Book of Leviticus Chapter 18 as God commanded Moses to speak to his children of morality: see verse 22.

"If you are not a Christian I encourage you to accept Jesus Christ as your savior. I will not bother you again about this matter. I will leave you alone that you may join your other misguided friends wherever they might end up.

"God bless you and save you.

"By the way, Luck does not get you into Heaven my friend."

(name deleted)


--My reply:

"Contrary, to your claim, I read your email carefully. I have read similar apologetics before, so nothing in it struck me as new, profound or compelling. Indeed, your missive was not lucky (your word) enough to pass constitutional muster using the theocratic scaffolding you attempted to cobble together as a defense for your case.

"As you should know, there is nothing in the United States Constitution that condemns homosexuality as sinful; neither is there any reference in the Constitution to the Bible or to its scriptural content.

"Moreover, as I hope you are aware, federal courts are in the systematic process of declaring state-engineered laws against same-sex marriage as being violative of the equal protection clause of the 14th Amendment. Likewise, the U.S. Supreme Court has already struck down as unconstitutional Congress's Defense of Marriage Act, which unlawfully discriminated against same-sex partners in the military.

"Despite your misguided conviction to the contrary, the Bible does not trump the U.S. Constitution as the supreme law of the land. In that respect and as the Constitution itself makes quite clear, the ultimate power to define and enumerate the powers and limitations of government resides with "We the People," as explained quite succinctly in the Constitution's Preamble.

"Your email to me was nothing more than a Sunday School lecture, not an informed review of the realities of American constitutional law. Please confine your sermons to the former sphere where you are obviously more content; and I will concentrate on the latter.

"As to you praying for me, please feel free. You pray for me--and I'll think for the both of us.

"Thanks for writing. And thanks, as you say, for not bothering me again. I prefer to be left in the company of what you would surely regard as the "misguided" Founding Fathers who wrote a clearly secular Constitution for citizens of this nation, not a preacher's polemic for the piously-pewed.

"[P.S.:] As to your 'please-do-not-reply' request, I sent my email response to your latest offering without noticing said request, since it was the last thing you wrote in your chosen small-font size."

*****


--From another upset, anti-"aberrant-sex" homophobic reader on the same cartoon:

"You¹ve made a common error - disagreement does not equal bigotry. Homosexual behavior has long been equal to aberrant sexual behavior, regardless of present-day attempts to change that."

(name deleted)


--My reply:

"The common error you make . . . is that I should be agreeing with you.

"Keep in mind that until 1967 (Loving v. Virginia), interracial marriage was considered to be legally and morally aberrant sexual behavior. Also, take due note of the fact that the U.S. Supreme Court has ruled that state laws against sodomy are unconstitutional (Lawrence v. Texas).

"Time for you to get with the times,"


--Same reader back:

"Some things need change, such as the racial issue; other things remain true regardless of the times and should not change. What is legal or notis not necessarily right or not, obviously. I object to be calling abigot because I have a different viewpoint. As we know, name-calling usually kills any real debate. I do appreciate your response."

(name deleted)


--My reply:

". . . [P]eople were long using God and the Bible to insist that discrimination by race would not, and should not, change. They were wrong.

"Similarly-minded ideologues are wrong now about the historic, ongoing, obvious and clearly changing views regarding homosexuality/gay marriage. Oregon became merely the latest in an expanding list of U.S. states to have its heterosexual-only marriage law nullified by a federal court as being unconstitutional.

"The times, they are a-changin,' no matter what you want, no matter what you say and no matter how much you dislike the arrangin.'

"When it comes to opposition to homosexuality in general and gay marriage in particular, bigotry is a term that is increasing seen as describing homophobic points of view that are prejudiced, irrational and unjustified by known fact or constitutional law. The federal courts are increasingly saying that, despite your insistence otherwise.

"Thanks for writing."


--Same reader back:

"Thank you, and my final response is: convictions wouldn’t be worth much if we didn’t stand by them, huh?"

(name deleted)


--My reply:

"My final response:

"Convictions change as society progresses. I gave you a clear example of that in the past--slavery--and one that is clearly ongoing in the present--homosexuality.

"In time, this will become a dusty and irrelevant debate as the country moves forward to embrace and protect the targeted gay and lesbian minorities among us against hate, prejudice and bigotry."

*****


--from an angry, swearing reader who wants to banish photographs of gays publicly kissing (with essentially the same fate for cartoons that show the same thing):

'My wife and I enjoy the opinions page and read just about everything on the page every single day. I was even able to get past [your] larger Benson’s View; wishing instead you had reduced [your] footprint instead of growing it. When I opened the paper today to see [your] huge sketch of the kissing athlete. I closed the paper and put it in the trash. I could care less what folks do in the privacy of the bedroom, but I’ll be dammed if I’m going to ever enjoy seeing any depiction or photos a couple of guys kissing. [Your] moronic comparison of one of the greatest kiss photos to that recent TV display makes me sick."

(name deleted)


--My reply:

"Thanks for your email . . . .

"With all due respect, I say the bigger the better.

"That observation aside, when was the last time you complained when someone achieved something of significant public note and kissed their partner in front of the cameras in celebration? As I understand your argument, you now want cartoons reduced in size and camera shots altogether eliminated if they don't comport with your idea of appropriate;y-sized displays of affection? From this day forth, then, the only "greatest kisses of all time" that can be significantly publicized are the heterosexual ones?

"That's an interesting (and rather dated, I might add) way of thinking.

"Blacks used to be beaten (or worse) when caught publicly holding hands with White girls. To use your words, that PDA made certain people 'sick.' '

"(By the way, the correct phrase is 'I couldn't care less,' not 'I could care less.' If you could care less, you would be noting where you could be additionally caring less).

"Thanks for writing."

*****


--From yet another distraught reader over the "silly" thought of same-sex "boyfriend" relations:

"Your cartoon today shows once again what a silly little nobody you are screaming for attention. To compare that great photo from the 1940's with your sickening comparison of Michael Sam and his boyfriend is disgusting. I don't care what Sam does with his boyfriend, that's his business, but for you to have the gall to compare it to a great historic photograph from our country's history during a desperate era is just another sign of what a spoiled little brat and liberal loser you are. Besides, it was phony anyway as Sam had a deal lined up with Oprah to do a show about him and it was for her benefit. You screwed up again!"

(name deleted)


--My reply:

"Well, if I'm that silly and that much of a nobody, then why are you paying attention?

"Gotchya!

"Thanks for writing."

*****


--From still another distressed reader, banking on overwhelming me with his superior IQ:

"Benson,

"Your comparison of V-J Day and v-b day is an insult to everyone's intelligence but yours."

(name deleted)


--My reply:

"And when were you voted in as everyone's intelligence?"

*****


Another reader chimes in with tonsil-splitting gusto:

"V-J Day----V-B Day

"YOU ARE DISGUSTING IN COMPARING THE TWO IN THE SAME LIGHT!"

(name deleted)


--My reply:

"Both battles were fought—-were they not?--for equal human rights and their protection under the law--which in my playbook is not disgusting.

"By the way, screaming in capital letters doesn't do your case any more good. In fact, an NFL ref may flag you for unsportsmanlike conduct.

"Please douse yourself with an icebox of Gatorade, then get back to me.

"Thanks for writing. :)


--Same reader back:

"V-J day was a mammoth battle in defense of our country's freedom, V-B day is not a battle, it is deviancy propagated by homosexuals!"

[name deleted)


--My reply:

"The whole of WWII was a mammoth battle in defense of this country's collective freedom and of its citizens' personal individual liberty . . . .

"That kind of significant battle victory can be celebrated by straights and gays kissing in public as they see fit--and whether you like it or not.

"May I suggest you try getting past how other people choose to express and celebrate their sexuality?"


--Same reader back:

"It is disgusting to be force fed homosexual propaganda by their lobby, and than, you comparing their deviant overt actions to all the brave men who died or risked their lives defending our great country against the axis powers. If that makes me a bigot, I will wear the badge proudly."


--My reply:

"And I bet you regarded racial desegregation as force-fed on you, too."

*****


--From a reader who accused me of trying to kill the last surviving WWII vets with a cartoon:

"Are you trying to put the last few remaining WW2 vets in their graves? But then again, you penciled in Obama on Mt Rushmore. Hahahaha!!!

"Thanks again for being our Village Idiot!"

(name deleted)


--My reply:

"They were each their own unique battles, yes, but in the larger scheme of things, they both have historically played their respective roles in helping to preserve American national freedom and ideals, along with individual and personal constitutional liberty.

"Cartoons are metaphors. Try wrapping your arms around that concept, even if you can't personally bring yourself to wrap your arms around gays. That's OK. Under the 14th Amendment, the U.S. Constitution does what you won't.

"(And I didn't 'pencil in' Obama. I inked him in)."

*****


--From a reader who didn't care about whether Sam was gay but, rather, wanted to focus on his relatively low draft-pick spot:

"Good Morning Steve:

"Your cartoon today certainly caught my eye! As I understand it, Michael Sam was the defensive player of the year. Why in the world would he be drafted so low? I think the Rams made a wise move. Sexual orientation doesn’t have anything to do with playing football.

"Again we can count on the media putting the Sams story on the front burner so to speak. Seems to me that 'kiss' was planned. So be it. Maybe just a little more attention than it deserved. The real story was so many teams passing on an excellent player. Shame on them! I have always been a Steeler fan. I wish they had drafted Sams."

(name deleted)


--My reply:

"If it wasn't for the media, you wouldn't even know about the Sam story. Keep reading."


--Same reader back:

"Yes, I understand that. My point is that it is a story and should be reported as such. I was a journalism minor in college. As early as the 70’s honest journalism was replaced with the English tabloid approach to the news.t is being reported as a news story. It also is being legitimately commentated on by known and credible opinion writers. Don't confuse the two. They both have their specialized and uniquely identified roles in the the larger world of journalism that incorporates both approaches to news stories. As long as it is clear that the writer is either a reporter or an opinion writer, there is no problem."

(name deleted)


--My reply:

"It is being reported as a news story. It also is being legitimately commentated on by known and credible opinion writers. Don't confuse the two. They both have their specialized and uniquely identified roles in the the larger world of journalism that incorporates both approaches to news stories. As long as it is clear that the writer is either a reporter or an opinion writer, there is no problem.

"P.S.--Sorry if I misunderstood your initial point. I've been bombarded all day by bigoted bozos with a deep-seated personal axe to grind against gays."


--Same reader back:

"It is alright. I do like your work and enjoy contacting you from time to time. I am not anti gay."


(name deleted)

*****


--From a reader who was actually quite gracious:

" . . . I am going to frame [your] V-J Day and V-B Day editorial. In my life of 75 years I have learned so much.
Loving a nephew who came out as gay in the '80's, and meeting his partner only at his funeral was sad. Today I would love to have a picture of them embracing."

(name deleted)


--My response:

"Thank you . . . . Your nephew and his partner are fortunate to have a person like you in their lives."

*****


--From another angry reader who called, screaming, to express the deeply-thought-out view, carefully articulated to me as follows:

"That was sick and disgusting! I hate your ass!" *Click*

(didn't leave a name)

*****


To be continued . . .

(There were a couple more nice comments from other readers that I didn't include simply because the nasty ones above were a whole lot funnier).

:)



Edited 30 time(s). Last edit at 05/20/2014 04:30PM by steve benson.

A generation ago a cartoon of a black man kissing a white woman would have been horrific to most readers. Now, hardly a mention is made of race when there are two men kissing, it's the gender that is the issue not the race.

The religious nuts are a few years behind equality and kindness. It takes them a while.

. . . after years of attempts by my uber-Mormon family to hammer me into a hard-core conservative. We won't get into politics here, but just let me say that I ultimately rebelled against such inhumane efforts because, to put it simply, I don't like being mean to genuinely-oppressed minorities.

I just got off the phone with an upset reader who argued that he was right when it came to opposing gays kissing in public because 90% of America, he insisted, agrees with him. I reminded him that a majority of WW II-era Germans agreed with Hitler's plan to exterminate the Jews. Numbers, in other words, don't automatically translate into morality. It is the targeted minority that oftentimes, through the shield of law, requires constitutional protection from the tyranny of the dominant majority.



Edited 5 time(s). Last edit at 05/19/2014 07:02PM by steve benson.

yep +1000
Gotta love the good ole 'ad populum' fallacy

Kind of screwed the not be judgmental part right here.

"but we should do what we can to discourage them from continuing their sinful behavior" No further reading needed.

Tell him he is a bigot because of the "Buts". Bet that’ll spin him up!

I get so sick of the hatred coming from so called Christians that are obsessed with other people's sex lives and believe that their religion is the right one and everyone should believe as they do.
They are the sick ones.

I really enjoy them throwing out 'liberal' as if it is some nasty insult. Shows how bigoted they truly are. I don't care what your political or religious leanings are, if you have well thought out reasons, fine. Most of these individuals writing you wouldn't recognize a well-reasoned argument if it made-out with its same gendered counterpart right in front of them.

Steve, you're one of the reasons I'm glad I didn't die young. These angry letters to you read like they were written in the voices of my childhood oppressors. Your replies reflect many things I wished I'd been able to say years ago. Society is evolving in the direction of tolerance and lifestyle liberty. Now the old guard is crying crocodile tears, and I'd like to tell them what they told me: Tough break for you if you don't like the way things are.

. . . Sam and his same-sex partner kissing in response to the good news that he had been drafted by the St. Louis Rams.

I informed the caller that it was drawn from an actual photo of the two locking lips which has been widely disseminated in the last few days and which has, in fact, sparked the current controversy over the propriety of gays engaging in PDAs in front of thin-skinned, easily-offended, sexually-intolerant straight people.

The reader replied that he didn't know anything about the photo or that I had used it as reference for my cartoon, apologized and thanked me for my time.

It was a curious call, to say the least.



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 05/20/2014 04:44AM by steve benson.

That must be the strangest part of your job description - having to deal with a lot of angry people who just can't resist commenting. I don't know how you deal with that crap without losing your patience.

. . . of where we, as a society, are at a given moment in both geological time and in our human historical evolution.

I find many of those responses hilarious, some instructive, quite a few disappointing and a handful hopeful.

It largely depends on the day and the mood of the uninformed, the bigots and the crazies (who are quite often the ones who write or call to complain).

:)



Edited 3 time(s). Last edit at 05/19/2014 11:20PM by steve benson.

From a persistent Christly gay-basher who keeps writing me back, while ordering me not to reply to him:

"Mr Benson

"You may bow down to the Supreme court and you may bow down to the will of human misguided ideology but you will one day bow down to the Creator and ruler of all or suffer the consequences. Don't be a fool. By the way my reference to luck was to point out to you that you facessiosly ended your facetious response to my first message to you by saying 'good luck'. I guess you didn't catch on to that. Not surprising. Please save your time and effort by not replying. Any further email from you will not be read. I have done what I can for you. The Lord will take over from here. You can bet your (after)life on it."


--My reply:

"I respect the constitutional law of the American Republic that you say must ultimately bow to your primitive, make-believe God.

"And you, sir, are being blocked. Good day."

*****


--From another reader who doesn't see value in letting the people speak who disagree with him:

"Common sense does not require an election. You have made a comparison that the millions of Americans of every culture who died, lost loved ones and even those who returned home as survivors of the war in the Pacific would find appalling.

"Wake up and wise up before you draw something this stupid again."


--My reply:

"'Common sense does not require an election.'

"That would be a nice slogan in Communist China."

*****


When I responded to a complainer who objected to being "force-fed" homosexuality by noting he probably also opposed being "force-fed" racial desegregation, he responded as I strongly suspected he would:

"You are absolutely wrong. Racial desegregation should never have been part of our heritage. Freedom is the basis of Natures Law."


--My reply:

"Pegged you. Racist."


--Same reader back, this time claiming he didn't mean what he wrote:

"My bad. 2 to[o] many letters [He emphasized what he meant by highlighting as follows: "DEsegregation"], then added, "Even a liberal like you can understand a oversight in typing."

(name deleted)


--My reply:

" . .. [T]he scary thing is that, coming from you, it didn't sound like it was a typo."



Edited 5 time(s). Last edit at 05/20/2014 11:33PM by steve benson.

Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 05/20/2014 04:44PM by steve benson.