On this date in 1954, Pulitzer Prize-winning editorial cartoonist Stephen Reed “Steve” Benson was born in Sacramento, Calif., the grandson of Ezra Taft Benson, who served as secretary of agriculture under President Dwight Eisenhower and became president of the Mormons (1985-94). Benson was an Eagle Scout and graduated with a degree in political science, cum laude, from Brigham Young University in 1979. “I was on track to eternal Mormon stardom, reserved especially for faithful men in a church run by men,” he has written.
He worked briefly as an editorial cartoonist for the Morning News Tribune in Tacoma, Wash., before starting a long association as a cartoonist with the Arizona Republic in 1980, where he won a Pulitzer Prize in 1993. He and his wife Mary Ann, who had four children, left the Mormon Church in a highly publicized break in 1993, “citing disagreement over its doctrines on race, women, intellectual freedom and fanciful storytelling.” In a 1999 speech at FFRF’s national convention in San Antonio, he called himself “a Latter-day Ain’t.”
Benson listed among the benefits of leaving religion: “Another day off, a 10-percent raise and getting to choose his own underwear.” Among his favorite sayings was Mark Twain’s adage “Get your facts first, and then you can distort them as much as you please.”
An atheist, he has appeared at several FFRF annual conventions. He received a Tell It Like It Is Award (1999), an Emperor Has No Clothes Award (2002) and a Friend of Freedom Award (2003). The inspiration for the Freedom Award, a statuette of liberty, came from Benson’s cartoon that year. In the cartoon, filmmaker Michael Moore was pictured at the Academy Awards, where he won an Oscar for “best documentary,” holding not an Oscar but a small replica of the Statue of Liberty.
For several years starting in 2001, Benson teamed up with FFRF Co-President Dan Barker for the inimitable “Tunes and ‘Toons” production, an irreverent look at freethought and religion in the news. Some of their jointly written parodies, “Godless America” among them, are recorded on the “Beware of Dogma” CD.
He started a new chapter in his life in 2020 when he married Claire Ferguson. He suffered a debilitating stroke in 2024 from which he never fully recovered and died at age 71. His fascinating career and long association with FFRF are further detailed in this posthumous tribute. (D. 2025)
