I have to admit I’m surprised, but apparently the Arizona Daily Star has decided that Trudeau’s current Doonesbury sequence would be just too much for the delicate sensibilities of the Christian conservatives in our midst.

It’s odd that those folks who have no hesitancy in trying to force their views on the rest of us are so tender-minded that they have to be protected against criticism by comic strip.

Perhaps the Star published an explanation for cutting this week’s Doonesbury and I missed it…but I bet they didn’t even have the courage to do that. (If I’m wrong I’m sure that some Citizen reader will point it out.)

You can read yesterday’s strip here. And don’t miss the scarlet A on the back of the woman’s clip board.

In today’s strip she meets Sid Patrick, one of the sponsors of the Texas sonogram bill. Insert your cursor here.

See it, that is.

Media writer Jim Romanesko (JimRomenesko.com) reports that some newspapers are planning to spike next week’s Doonesbury strips and and run fillers  instead. The reason? Trudeau is taking on the issue of abortion and the  invasive transvaginal examination that plays a part in what is viewed as  another attack on abortion by GOP religious conservatives.

Romanesko has text summaries of each day’s strip. Here are two:

Monday: Young woman arrives for her pre-termination sonogram, is told to take a seat in the shaming room, a middle-aged male state legislator will be right with her.

Friday: Doctor is explaining that the Texas GOP requires her to have an intimate encounter with her fetus. He begins describing it to her. Last panel, he says, “Shall I describe it’s hopes and dreams?” She replies, “If it wants to be the next Rick Perry, I’ve made up my mind.”

To read Romanesko’s column, including an interview with Trudeau published in the Washington Post go here.

And now the big question is: Will the Star run the strips or are they unfit to appear on the same page with Pickles?

The Data Port returned to find that the Arizona House has voted to allow high-schools to offer an elective course on “The Bible and Its Influence On Western Culture.”

On the face of it I have no great objection to this. The religious mythology of Christians and Jews has certainly informed the art, literature and law of the West. Every educated person should have some knowledge of it, just as they should have some knowledge of Greek mythology and Homer…the other great western religious mythology.

It is also important to understand the Bible as a book, since the Bible is not, in fact, a single book but a whole library of books, the parts of which had different authors and entered the canon at different times.

But there is a difference between teaching the Bible as a profoundly significant part of world literature, and teaching religion. Bringing the skills of historical  criticism and analysis to a study of the Bible harms neither personal faith nor the work itself. But there is always a danger that it can be taught  as a single great  religious truth and this might actually discourage a real understanding of the Bible’s spiritual message.

I favor the former approach but greatly fear the latter.