Tuesday, 4 September 2001 : "FBFW"

• Comic controversy [St. Petersburg Times, snagged from Romenesko's Media News]
  On Thursday, Lawrence returns as the best man in a wedding. That upsets the mother of the bride, who doesn't want a gay person in the wedding party. "But Deanna," the woman says to her daughter, the bride-to-be, "this is a church!!"
  
  Amy Lago, vice president of comics for United Media, the company that syndicates the strip, said that as of Aug. 29, two dozen newspapers had requested alternative strips that make no mention of Lawrence being gay.
  
  "When I first did the Lawrence story, the biggest problem was for the very small papers in the United States. The editors may have agreed with it, but they couldn't run it. One editor told me someone broke windows at his paper, and another said his kids got beaten up at school and someone spray-painted his dog."

• Pattersons, cartoonist will retire [St. Petersburg Times]
  Johnston confirmed that For Better Or For Worse will come to an end in 2007.
  
  "I have six years to go on my contract and plan to wrap up my strip then," Johnston said. "I have a neurological illness, and I think there are times to end things..."