diff --git a/actionpack/CHANGELOG b/actionpack/CHANGELOG
index d5e347ad6c..a064526e06 100644
--- a/actionpack/CHANGELOG
+++ b/actionpack/CHANGELOG
@@ -268,7 +268,7 @@
 
 * radio_button_tag generates unique id attributes.  #3353 [Bob Silva, somekool@gmail.com]
 
-* strip_tags returns nil for a blank arg such as nil or "".  #2229 [duncan@whomwah.com]
+* strip_tags passes through blank args such as nil or "".  #2229, #6702 [duncan@whomwah.com, dharana]
 
 * Cleanup assert_tag :children counting.  #2181 [jamie@bravenet.com]
 
diff --git a/actionpack/lib/action_view/helpers/text_helper.rb b/actionpack/lib/action_view/helpers/text_helper.rb
index 0b04bd323f..0b1b46b0f3 100644
--- a/actionpack/lib/action_view/helpers/text_helper.rb
+++ b/actionpack/lib/action_view/helpers/text_helper.rb
@@ -254,7 +254,7 @@ module ActionView
       # html-scanner tokenizer and so its HTML parsing ability is limited by 
       # that of html-scanner.
       def strip_tags(html)     
-        return nil if html.blank?
+        return html if html.blank?
         if html.index("<")
           text = ""
           tokenizer = HTML::Tokenizer.new(html)
diff --git a/actionpack/test/template/text_helper_test.rb b/actionpack/test/template/text_helper_test.rb
index 8825a24f14..bf008ae9df 100644
--- a/actionpack/test/template/text_helper_test.rb
+++ b/actionpack/test/template/text_helper_test.rb
@@ -321,6 +321,6 @@ class TextHelperTest < Test::Unit::TestCase
     %{This is a test.\n\n\nIt no longer contains any HTML.\n}, strip_tags(
     %{<title>This is <b>a <a href="" target="_blank">test</a></b>.</title>\n\n<!-- it has a comment -->\n\n<p>It no <b>longer <strong>contains <em>any <strike>HTML</strike></em>.</strong></b></p>\n}))
     assert_equal "This has a  here.", strip_tags("This has a <!-- comment --> here.")
-    [nil, '', '   '].each { |blank| assert_nil strip_tags(blank) }
+    [nil, '', '   '].each { |blank| assert_equal blank, strip_tags(blank) }
   end
 end