Nutters of the Parents Television Council (PTC) are calling on US cable company, Comcast, to reveal exactly how much revenue it makes from adult content.

The PTC's tactic is supported by other nutter organisations: American Family Association, Focus on the Family, Citizens for Community Values, Reclaim our Culture Kentuckiana and the Coalition for Marriage and Family.

They believe that by calling attention to the fact that Comcast provides adult content on a pay-per-basis to adults in their own homes, the ensuing controversy could derail the company's planned merger with NBC-Universal. Comcast, of course, is hardly alone in providing those services—TimeWarner, Dish Network and DIRECTV do, as well.

Comcast is one of the most far-reaching distributors of pornography in the communities it serves, raising serious questions about whether the company meets the character and public interest obligations required of each company that holds a broadcast license, said PTC President Tim Winter.

New Zealand anti-violence groups are calling for a taxpayer-funded music video to be banned, slating the slasher-style clip as violent, misogynist pornography.

An extended, online version of the video for Nathan King's second single Forever depicts the rapper, who performs under the name Derty Sesh, crouching over a bound woman with a knife to her head, before stabbing her in a frenzy and cutting out her organs.

The clip, which features shots of mutilated women's bodies and body parts, then segues into the television version of the video, which shows the rapper stalking a young couple in a park, dispatching the boyfriend, then driving the woman to a secluded hut.

The television version ends with the woman screaming as the hooded rapper appears; in the online version, he assaults her.

Kim McGregor, director of Rape Prevention Education, has written to the prime minister and a number of cabinet ministers asking them to push for the video to be banned. She had shown the clip to a focus group of young professional women, who had been deeply upset by its content.

King said he had never really thought about the implications of the video: I understand where they're coming from but it's entertainment, it's fake. I don't really want to go around stabbing anybody, he said. It's me creating a scene from a movie in one song.

The main thing I wanted to do was just shock people, you know. Get people to be 'That's way out of line', and to push the edge visually. I thought I'd come with something different, a lot darker.

Maria McMillan, spokeswoman for the Roundtable for Violence against Women said: This isn't satire or commentary. It's simply another cliched depiction of a 'fantasy' of women being stalked, bound and [placed] in a state of terror, deliberately aimed to shock or titillate in the hope that it'll sell a bunch of unoriginal pop-rap albums. The last thing we need is another man celebrated for hurting women.

Update: Forever didn't last very long

31st March 2010. Based on article from nzherald.co.nz

A music video depicting the stalking and killing of a woman has been removed from YouTube by its record label, at the same time the censor's office is taking a look at it at the request of the Department of Internal Affairs.

The video for rapper Derty Sesh's second single, Forever, has been pulled from YouTube by Move The Crowd Records.

Anti-violence groups had called for the taxpayer-funded video to be banned from television over the weekend, with Rape Prevention Education director Kim McGregor describing it as depicting extreme misogyny.

Chief censor Bill Hastings told NZPA the Department of Internal Affairs had submitted the video to the Office of Film and Literature Classification.

The boss of the trade union behind the British Airways strike has admitted visiting a gogo bar while on official business in Thailand.

Derek Simpson and fellow Unite official Terry Pye went to enjoy a beer in the Playskool bar in Bangkok's Nana Plaza.

Simpson, the £105,000-a-year joint general secretary of Unite, and Pye, the union's national officer for the steel industry, were in Bangkok at the end of last month during negotiations aimed at averting the current series of BA cabin crew strikes over pay and conditions.

They flew to Thailand at union expense for a two-day stopover to meet union leaders from the Thai motor industry.

Simpson denied any impropriety. He said: It was entirely innocent, and I left before I finished my drink. I'd never been to Bangkok before, so it was a bit of an eye-opener for me. We walked to the bar, which was a stone's throw from our hotel. Actually, it's not my thing. I am, in fact, a tad prudish. I've been like that all my life.

Simpson's judgment was questioned by fuddy duddy MPs and women's groups.

Conservative MP Ann Widdecombe said: It does seem rather ironic that this man, who is preventing everyone else having a simple family holiday, should, at the union's expense, jet off to the other side of the world and conduct himself in a rather unseemly fashion. I wonder how the women members of the union will react to this, given that Mr Simpson is supposed to uphold the dignity of women, not exploit them.

The Association of Buddhist Relations have said that the film Nark Prok (Naga Hood) gave Buddhist monks a bad image and vilified the religion as a whole.

The association's chairman Adisak Wannasin said he would lodge a petition with the Thai Culture Ministry asking it to review its decision to allow the film to be screened.

Adisak said the film included inappropriate images like showing three men dressed as monks touching women - an act that is forbidden under the discipline of monkhood. According to the screenplay, the three saffron-clad men are bandits planning to rob a temple.

Somkiat Sorralump, a member of the House committee on religions, arts and culture, said his panel would take drastic action if the film ended up getting screened. He said the panel believed the movie was meant to make Buddhism look bad. The producers want to destroy Buddhism, he added.

Update: Temple thriller

29th March 2010. Based on article from bangkokpost.com

Romping, gun-slinging monks (spurious monks, it turns out) have roused 'anxiety' among Thai religious groups - and even a senator. What has happened since last week's release of the contentious film Nak Prok (In the Shadow of the Naga) is not so much a debate as grumbles and subterfuges.

Somchai Khemklad and Ray McDonald are crooks disguised as monks in a controversial movie which critics say harms the image of Buddhism.

Opponents are unhappy that the integrity of Buddhism is compromised by the film's posters, which show muscular men in precariously-clad saffron robes, baring fangs and swinging guns.

Members of a religious group marched to the office of Sahamongkol Film, who produced the film, demanding what I'm not sure, since Nak Prok has got the permission to play, with an 18-plus rating and warning captions.

The studio agreed to take off the posters by the end of this week. Meaning: after two weekends in the cineplexes, the film is likely to have generated the majority of its income and the removal of the posters will hardly matter. I don't know if the protestors were trying to get the film banned, which is impossible, since it had already passed the censors.

Nak Prok tells the story of two bandits who disguise themselves as monks and hole up in a forest temple. If nothing else, the film defines a new sub-genre: temple thriller.

The film was canned for three years for fear of a ban but is now making decent money.

An Ofcom investigation has suppoedly revealed 'millions' of children are bypassing strict guidelines and parental controls and watching shows meant for adults by using popular TV internet services such as BBC iPlayer.

Most TV catch-up websites, like iPlayer, ITV Player, and Channel 4's 4oD, operate a voluntary system which makes parents responsible for setting up a PIN or password to block access by children if they wish. Channel Five's web player Demand Five requires a log in and email address to access content which cannot be broadcast on TV until after 9pm when young children are in bed.

But TV regulator, Ofcom, found that 3% of children from five to seven have internet in their own bedrooms, which they can use to watch the TV-on-demand websites. It also discovered that only 12% of parents with children aged five to 15 had bothered to set up a PIN or password, and almost 40% of parents had no idea the safeguards even existed.

There are 19 million households with an internet connection in Britain, so this means that millions of children are downloading post-watershed adult material every day, sometimes without their parents' knowledge. [I think the Sunday Express really need to explain their nonsense reasoning here]

The Sunday Express has been shown exclusively a document on catch-up websites from the TV watchdog, Mediawatch. It details how easy it is for young children to access post-watershed shows featuring sex and violence and gives a comprehensive list of programmes they could access without a PIN or password. These include documentaries on sex and violence, dramas like Being Human, Misfits and Wallander and comedy such as Live At The Apollo.

I'm very disturbed by what I was able to access, said Vivienne Pattison, director of Mediawatch. I don't want these shows banned, just access to them restricted. It makes a mockery of the watershed.

Pattison has written to the Government, broadcasters and Ofcom urging that the Digital Economy Bill is amended to force catch-up sites to install compulsory PIN or password access.

A Culture Department spokesman said: Parental controls do already exist for video on demand services. Parents should be aware of what their children watch online and use these controls.

Pattison responded: Banning post-watershed material on catch-up players is a blunt instrument, but that may be the only way to do it.

Labour MP Barry Sheerman, Chairman of the Children, Schools and Families Select Committee, said: Our broadcasters who put this sort of filth online should be forced to ensure children are unable to access it.

Using his daily radio program - The Donny Osmond Show - as a platform, Donny Osmond today jumped into the controversy surrounding the recently released Lady Gaga Telephone video featuring Beyonce. The video has been criticized by nutters for its depiction of violence and sex.

Osmond said:

I'm all for freedom of speech and against any form of censorship...BUT...all I know is that I'm a parent and I'm upset about this.

Unlike 20 years ago, in today's modern, viral world in which content becomes instantaneously available irrespective of age, I wonder whether the music industry might need to rethink its marketing policies with regard to making an explicit music video containing profanity, sexual exploitation, nudity, and graphic violence available to anyone with Internet access. I wouldn't want my child to watch this video. Would you? What do you think? Should these two extremely gifted female role models for millions of young girls, maybe, have given a little more thought to the effect it might have on their core audience?

Janet Street-Porter is no fuddy-duddy. But here, she reveals her growing alarm over young Britons' obsession with social networking websites...

A year ago, I wrote Life's definitely too short to log on to Facebook. A series of tragic deaths has given that throwaway phrase a chilling new meaning.

Social networking isn't just - as I complained last year - a pointless waste of time, because for a worrying number of young people it is proving to be harmful, if not deadly.

...Read full article

On Thursday, 25th March, a number of cinemas in the UK will be screening Eric Idle's Not the Messiah – a musical version of The Life of Brian.

The film is being promoted by Classic FM – much to the annoyance of Britain's most comical Christian, who is demanding that CFM pulls its trailers for the movie, and ditch an accompanying competition.

Stephen Green of Christian Voice said in an email:

The film sponges off the life and sacrifice of Jesus Christ and this mock-oratorio parodies the glorious music of Handel's masterwork. It is even billed as a spoof of Handel's Messiah. It has the song from Life of Brian which 'Brian' sang while hanging from the cross, Always look on the bright side of life. Crucifixion is not funny. It even has Hail to the Shoe sung to the music of the Hallelujah Chorus. That isn't funny either.

While pretending Not the Messiah is not blasphemous or offensive, Idle is well aware of what he is doing – mocking the Gospel of Jesus Christ. According to Eric Idle: There is no controversy .. it's only people stupid enough to realise Christ is in the movie twice, and Christ isn't Christ, so there's no real controversy… It's very simple – you either get it or you don't.

But Eric Idle is an avowed atheist and a supporter and reader of both Richard Dawkins and Christopher Hitchens. He has a song on Atheist Nexus: Fuck Christmas. This is a man with an agenda and a big anti-Christ chip on his shoulder. I think we get it. He is out to mock religion and people of faith; and it's a great pity that Classic FM has joined him, showing contempt for their Christian listeners.

Update: Classic Misunderstanding

26th March 2010. Based on article from mediawatchwatch.org.uk

Stephen Green had a good crow after the Classic FM promotion of Not the Messiah came to an end. In a press release from christianvoice.org.uk he wrote:

Leading classical music radio station, Classic FM, have dropped all their promotion of Eric Idle's Not the Messiah, in response to a deluge of complaints from Christian listeners.

It took a couple of hours this morning for Classic FM executives to realise they had made a terrible mistake in promoting it.

Faced with hundreds of distraught emails sent over the weekend, and bombarded with so many telephone calls they stopped taking them, managing director Darren Henley ditched Not the Messiah quicker than you can say Whose bright idea was that?

Listeners were not amused to find their radio station promoting a militant atheist production insulting Jesus Christ and doing violence to Handel's Hallelujah Chorus in the run-up to Easter. By 10am on Monday morning the competition was over and all reference to Not the Messiah, including images from the show, had been removed from the website..

Stephen Green, National Director of Christian Voice, said: I am also pleased that Christian Voice was able to play a small part in explaining to Mr Henley the offence caused by the station's promotion of Eric Idle's atheist rant.

We give all the praise to God for the change of heart at Classic FM and we hope and pray they will be more discerning in future.'

But it appears that Stephen Green may have been a bit hasty.

Classic FM  Director Derren Henley explains that the Not the Messiah ad campaign had run its natural course, and Christian Voice's complaining campaign had nothing to do with it stopping.

Henley wrote:

Following an email campaign, a number of incorrect views about Classic FM's involvement in this event appear to have gathered momentum in the online community and I hope that you will allow me to take this opportunity to correct them:

1. Classic FM broadcast an advertising campaign for this event which ran from last Wednesday until last weekend. The station also ran a competition to win tickets to the event on the station's website which also ended last weekend. No further advertising activity was booked to run either on-air or online after the weekend.

2. At no point did Classic FM ever intend to broadcast this event on air, nor did it ever enter into any negotiations to broadcast the event on air, so any assertion that any programme content has been withdrawn from broadcast is simply incorrect.

3. Classic FM has never been a financial supporter of this event and nor was it ever the promoter of the live event – and that relationship has in no way changed over the past week.

Film censors were blasted by rent-a-quote nutters last night for handing a 15 rating to a film peppered with obscenities and violence.

Kick-Ass, co-written by Jonathan Ross's wife Jane Goldman, is billed as a comedy action adventure.

Tory MP David Davies, who sits on the home affairs select committee, said he was horrified the film would be seen by 15-year-olds.

And Vivienne Pattison, of Mediawatch UK, said: It just sets up a context of behaviour for 15-year-olds that they can go and see this and it reinforces this sort of behaviour.

In the film, a teenage boy decides to make a stand against street crime by becoming a superhero called Kick-Ass. The most 'shocking' scene shows actress Chloe Moretz, who was aged 11 at the time, playing heroine Hit Girl, using obscene language. She tells a group of assailants: OK you cunts, let's see what you can do now. She also repeatedly calls other characters motherfuckers.

On its website, the BBFC defends the swearing saying: Although some people might be offended by a child using this type of language, the predominant effect is comic.

Comment: Online Daily Mail Readers Kick-Ass

26th March 2010. From Shaun

It is interesting to note that in the Daily Mail, that the Kick-Ass film article reader comments get marked well down when someone suggests it should be censored.

Many respondents on the Daily Mail website seem to be against censorship rather than for it, when the subject comes up, which is often.

Not that that paper seems to learn anything from this.

Sri Lanka has refused to issue a visa to R&B star Akon, who was due to perform there next month, saying he offended the country's Buddhists.

The ban comes after protests over one of the star's music videos featuring scantily-clad women dancing in front of a statue of Buddha.

In a statement, the government said the video for Sexy Bitch by David Guetta, featuring Akon on vocals, triggered a lot of disappointment among Buddhists. It added some of Akon's lyrics were not suitable for public articulation.

On Monday, hundreds of people protested the head offices of the Maharaja Broadcasting and Television Network, the media sponsor of the planned concert.

Two Facebook groups protesting against the concert have surfaced: The We Hate Akon (Abuse Music Video Against Lord Buddha) group has more than 8,000 followers while another, Akon Who Disgraced Buddhism — STOP Sri Lanka Concert, has 800 adherents.

Considering the controversial video images, offensive song lyrics and strong protests coming from various cultural, religious groups and organisations in the country, the government was compelled to take this decision, the government said.

The Hindu perennial whinger, Rajan Zed, is asking for immediate restructuring of Central Board of Film Certification (CBFC) of India because of continuous increase in the unnecessary vulgarity and violence in Indian films.

Zed, in a statement said that it appeared that the Board of the largest filmmaking country had lost the sense of India's cultural milieu and was ignoring the directions given in the Cinematograph Act.

Zed, who is the president of Universal Society of Hinduism, claimed that they were fully supportive of the artistic freedom and expression and did not want any unnecessary censorship...BUT... were highly concerned about the increasing presence of the immodest and risqué scenes in the movies which were there simply for mercantile greed having nothing to do with cinematic elements.

Rajan Zed pointed out that CBFC chairperson Sharmila Tagore and her team needed to be retrained in what India stood for and what were our moral perimeters.

Novelist Philip Pullman has been threatened by religious nutters over his new book, The Good Man Jesus and the Scoundrel Christ.

He has received scores of letters condemning him to eternal hell or damnation by fire and accusing him of blasphemy.

Many refer to the title itself, for which there is clearly a passionate objection from some out there, said Pullman.

Published next week, the book is written in the form of a gospel. It says that a man called Jesus lived 2,000 years ago but that Christ, as the son of God, was the invention of the disciple Paul.

The letter writers essentially say that I am a wicked man, who deserves to be punished in hell, said Pullman. Luckily it's not in their power to do anything like sending me there.

Pullman, famous for the trilogy His Dark Materials, was partly inspired to write the book by Rowan Williams, the Archbishop of Canterbury. I was at a debate with him at the National theatre, and he asked why I had not put Jesus in His Dark Materials. So I told him that I would in my next book. And that's what I have now done. The two men will discuss the book on Radio 4's Start the Week on Easter Monday.

MediaWatch-UK have just published their Spring Newsletter.

They are leading of the lack of an effective age verification method for post-watershed TV programmes which are available 24/7 on iPlayer and the like.

Mediawatch-UK contend that Audio Visual media law mandates age verification:

If an on-demand programme service contains material which might seriously impair the physical, mental or moral development of persons under the age of eighteen, the material must be made available in a manner which secures that such persons will not normally see or hear it.

But their argument was easily countered by Ofcom who said that:

they consider there is no requirement under these Regulations for broadcasters to use protections for post-watershed content because material which has previously been broadcast on television without regulatory intervention is, by definition, not ‘material which might seriously impair’.

Mediawatch also highlight their legal contention that the infliction of point in the TV series Balls of Steel is a matter for the police:

Mediawatch-UK has been working with a lawyer whose legal opinion is that, whilst this infliction of pain may not have been in breach of the Broadcasting Code, it may well have been in breach of the Offences Against the Person Act regardless of whether or not the performers consented to this abuse.

Mediawatch printed this story as an ongoing campaign but it must have just missed the deadline that police quickly dismissed their notion and said that a criminal investigation was not appropriate.

Mediawatch also have a  piece about the strong language review by the BBFC. But nothing the BBC will ever do can keep Mediawatch happy with their uncompromising view:

We do not think strong language should be used at all before the watershed or in programmes likely to appeal to children. We believe the strongest swearwords should be barred at all times. Can there ever be a justification for using them? Are there really no other words which would suffice?

Lads mags also come under the nutter spotlight. Mediawatch are running a campaign to get MPs to sign up for:

Early Day Motion 412 from edmi.parliament.uk

That this House believes that politicians, retailers, publishers and distributors have a collective responsibility to protect children and young people from displays of sexually graphic material that they are not emotionally equipped to deal with; calls for an urgent review of existing guidelines drawn up between the Home Office and the National Federation of Retail Newsagents; further believes that such a review must consider the availability of sexually graphic publications to children and young people, the positioning of these publications on the shelves of retailers, and the potential for concealing these publications in bags and consider the question of age-rating such publications; and further believes that failure to follow the revised guidelines could lead to calls for legislation covering all aspects of the availability and display of sexually graphic material to children and young people throughout the retail and publishing industries.

It is currently signed by 149 censorial MPs

The advertising censors are to allow condoms to be advertised on daytime TV in defiance of church nonsense that it will encourage under-age sex. A new code will permit condoms to be promoted before the 9pm watershed around any programme, providing it is not designed for children under ten.

The move follows claims from the Government's Independent Advisory Group on Sexual Health and HIV that greater access to condoms is necessary to reduce the levels of teenage pregnancy and sexually transmitted disease.

But bishops and family campaigners say it will normalise the idea of children under 16 having sex. The Catholic Bishops' Conference of England and Wales said: It is profoundly inappropriate to advertise condoms to children. Promoting the use of condoms cannot be separated from promoting sex, and the sexualisation of the target audience, which will be extended to children from ten to 16.

A spokesman for the Catholic Church in Scotland said: Government sexual health strategies including public health advertising in recent years have amounted to pouring petrol on a fire. Every public health message has contributed to a worsening of the problem and allowing unrestricted advertising of condoms is likely to do the same.

The new UK Advertising Code, announced yesterday, also puts the TV industry at odds with church leaders on both pornography and gambling. It will allow pornographic films and magazines to be advertised on subscription adult TV channels.

Proposals to allow commercial abortion clinics to advertise their services on TV and radio have been delayed. It is not clear if they will be pursued.

A little over a year ago, Amarillo's swingers geared up for their New Year's Eve party at Route 66 Party and Event Rental, a downtown business owned by a prominent couple, Mac and Monica Mead.

Few in this conservative, church-heavy city knew about the weekend parties, and the swingers liked it that way. Everybody in the lifestyle has to be very, very discreet, says Mac.

The Meads enforced strict rules at the members-only club: no drugs, no single men, no audio-visual equipment. Most couples, even ones who had been in the lifestyle for years, are on a first-name basis only. The location of the club is (or was) to be kept strictly private. So imagine the swingers' surprise when they arrived at their New Year's Eve bash to find two dozen protesters, local media in tow, holding signs and singing songs. This was a most unwelcome coming-out party.

Some protesters, mostly young men in their teens and early 20s, wore black hoodies and military fatigues. The men, Amarillo would soon learn, were foot soldiers of Repent Amarillo, a new, militant evangelical group that advertises itself as the Special Forces of spiritual warfare. Their leader, David Grisham, a security guard at nuclear-bomb facility Pantex who moonlights as a pastor, explained the action. We're here to shine the light on this darkness, Grisham told the Amarillo Globe-News. I don't think Amarillo knew about this place. This is adultery. This is wrong. There's no telling how many venereal diseases get spread, how many abortions. The goal, Grisham says, was not just to save the swingers' souls, but to shut the club down.

For the past year, this Bible Belt city of 200,000 has been consumed by a culture clash between Repent Amarillo and their targets, a list that includes everything from gay bars to liberal churches. For the Route 66 swingers, Grisham's special forces have been a near-constant presence. Jobs have been lost, families estranged, assault charges filed and businesses shuttered. So far, no public official has stood up to defend these businesses, which operate legally. To the contrary, Repent Amarillo has managed to turn the city's own laws and employees into an effective weapon. Amarillo, it turns out, doesn't have the stomach to stick up for gays, swingers, strippers or even Unitarians. Absent a peacekeeper, the conflict might end up being settled the old-fashioned way, frontier-style. This will not end until somebody gets hurt, either us or them, one swinger warns.

Repent has made it clear that its crusade won't end with the swingers. Last January, community theater group Avenue 10 was set to open Bent, a play about the persecution of homosexuals during Nazi Germany. The day before opening night, the fire marshal, police and code enforcers showed up, tipped off by a Repent associate, according to Sirc Michaels, co-founder of the theater. Avenue 10 didn't have the right permit for holding events, and the space was shut down.

What's next for Repent? They've posted a Warfare Map on the group's Web site. The map includes establishments like gay bars, strip clubs and porn shops, but also the Wildcat Bluff Nature Center. Repent believes the 600-acre prairie park's Walmart-funded Earth Circle, used for lectures, is a Mecca for witches and pagans. Also on the list are The 806 coffeehouse (a hangout for artists and counterculture types), the Islamic Center of Amarillo (Allah is a false god), and compromised churches like Polk Street Methodist (gay-friendly).

Many women would argue that the very idea of being chaperoned is restrictive and demeaning.

And yet among today's teenage girls, the chaperone has made a surprising and - as we shall come to see - disturbing comeback.

Today's chaperone is called, in teenspeak, a third wheel. And she is not being forced on girls by concerned or controlling adults worried about honour and etiquette.

Type the words sex pictures into Google and it returns 83 million results in less than one-tenth of a second

The third wheel (the verb is to third wheel') has been re-invented by the girls themselves because they want protection from the sexual demands of their boyfriends.

When I spoke to many teenage girls in researching the subject, they told me these demands are both 'disturbing and upsetting, and they are certain they're being fuelled by what their boyfriends are watching online: hard-core, explicit porn.

This deeply worrying trend is finally starting to be noticed by those in authority.

Psychologist Dr Linda Papadopoulos has just published a government report into the sexualisation of children, and is certain that exposure to porn is having an adverse affect on the lives of today's teenagers.

...See the full article. The comments are worth a read too.

Comment: Unobjective

By Shaun

Many males find female nudity stimulating They have evolved do to so. BUT The vast majority of them DO NOT go on to treat their women as objects. It's simply complete rubbish and fake science to make such an assertion.

Milton Diamond, a professor of anatomy and reproductive biology at the University of Hawaii at Manoa has just published a study asserting that the OPPOSITE is true and that rape and sex crimes ALWAYS reduce wherever pornography is freely available, and there is MUCH evidence from around the world to support this.

Do a search on Google for: Pornography, Public Acceptance and Sex Related Crime: A Review

Objectification is specifically mentioned and there is research which shows it simply does not happen. Note that the paper also asserts that strict religious upbringing collerates highly with sex crime, so where's the appropriate control on religion I wonder?

Comment: Our biology knows what it needs

By IanG

We may believe we are far nobler and that we seek some deeper emotional and intellectual friendship with our sexual partners, indeed, this non-sexual bonding is usually reserved for same-sex friends and those whom we are not sexually attracted to. However, when seeking our soul mate we generally consider a long term partnership in terms of physical, emotional and intellectual compatibility. If one of these aspects remains unfulfilled then the relationship can be compromised - the eye can wander in search of more physically appealing partners, the mind may seek new challenges or like-minded souls and, as a consequence, the emotional ties, the things we call love and trust that bind soul mates together, can become strained.

It may be convenient for some to consider the mind and body as separate entities but, we are one whole, one complete being. Indeed, the idea that the flesh may be weak while the spirit is strong is deeply flawed. The flesh is controlled by the spirit, the psyche, the thought, the reflex, our hopes and dreams. We do as our mind directs (and often subconsciously). The body is but a vessel for the mind and, despite everything society may believe, our mind is but biology and our biology knows what it needs not just for our personal survival but for the survival of our very species and what's best for our offspring.

In terms of sexuality, only rapists (and perhaps traffickers/pimps) treat other people as sex objects to be used and abused. Where there's mutual attraction or some mutually beneficial arrangement (i.e. partnerships and/or paid-for sexual encounters') there's no objectification but, indeed, a degree of mutual respect, social interaction, even pleasure in the fulfilling of some inherent socio-sexual need for all parties involved (that maybe sexual for one and, perhaps, monetary for the other but, it could be emotional, re-humanising, de-fusing and satisfying nonetheless).

And it should be stressed that it is far better for hormone-filled young lads to work off their excess testosterone with pictures of naked ladies than getting their 14-17 y/o girlfriends pregnant - isn't it?

Our sexuality is only something we alone can control and, how we choose to do that is our business alone. It should be noted that pornography has always been part of human society. And just because some religiously deluded twits in the middle of the 19th century thought they could protect children by turning sexually explicit materials into 'obscenity' has done nothing to protect children from sexual abuse and, indeed, has only increased their naivety and vulnerability to sexual exploitation and abuse.

Comment: Boys Abusing Women

9th March 2010. By Dan

Just been reading all the crap on the Daily Mail.

Underlying all this is the belief that male sexuality, and in particular young male sexuality is dangerous, sexist and a threat to women. Young boys looking at pictures of nude women in magazines is apparently abusing women.

Anti-religious commentary distributed by media outlets can create tensions and incite violence and therefore must be banned, said Vatican and Muslim representatives.

Attacking religion in the mass media especially via satellite television channels must be opposed considering the dangerous effect that these broadcasts can have on social cohesion and on peace between religious communities, said a statement issued after the annual meeting of officials from the Pontifical Council for Interreligious Dialogue and from al-Azhar University in Cairo, Egypt.

The Feb. 23-24 meeting in Cairo focused on the role religions can play in either causing or preventing religious violence.

The meeting's final statement said greater attention must be paid to the fact that manipulating religion or religious beliefs for political or other interests can lead to violence. It called for ending discrimination on the basis of religious identity and said that if laws are to be just they should guarantee the fundamental equality of all people regardless of religious affiliation. The ideals of justice, solidarity and cooperation between all people must be promoted so as to foster peace and prosperity, it said.

The American Family Association has announced today that the organization's founder and longtime leader, Donald Wildmon, has resigned after more than 30 years as chairman of what has long been one of the leading anti-gay organizations in the country.

According to a press release, Wildmon has resigned due to ongoing health concerns caused after he was bitten last summer by a mosquito carrying the St. Louis encephalitis virus. Wildmon said that he will continue to work with AFA, and that his son, Tim, who has been with the organization for 24 years, is expected to succeed him as chair.

According to the press release: The retired United Methodist minister [Donald Wildmon] began AFA in 1977 in his dining room with a typewriter and a used offset press. Today the ministry operates on a $20 million annual budget with 175 employees. The ministry owns and operates 180 radio stations, a monthly magazine with a circulation of 170,000 and an internet presence of 2.5 million supporters.

Here are just a few examples of how Wildmon has used his budget and his influence to try and stall LGBT rights:

• Wildmon is first national religious leader to call on GOP officeholders to purge their staffs of LGBT people after the Congressman Mark Foley scandal in 2006.
• Wildmon calls on his supporters to take action against McDonald's after the fast food chain joins the National GLBT Chamber of Commerce in 2008.
• Wildmon and his AFA troops worked to pass Proposition 8 in California in 2008.
• Wildmon called for a boycott of PepsiCo because the company supported gay rights.

Jonathan Ross's wife, Jane Goldman. has caused 'outrage' with a film she has written featuring a 'foul-mouthed' 11-year-old assassin called Hit-Girl

The character, called Hit-Girl, slices off people's legs and shoots bullets through a man's cheek. In one scene, the young serial killer – played by 13-year-old American actress Chloe Moretz – screams at her victims: Okay, you cunts, let's see what you can do now.

In another, she tells her vigilante father she wants a puppy for her birthday. When he looks surprised, she says: I'm just fucking with you, Daddy, and asks for a razor-sharp knife instead.

Kick-Ass, released next month, is based on a comic book series that is advertised with the slogan Sickening violence: Just the way you like it.

The film has already provoked complaints in the U.S. after children were allowed to access violent trailers of the film online. Nell Minow, a lawyer and one of the complainants, said: These particular trailers are even worse than normal because they depict a child and so are more interesting to a child. Isn't there a limit to what we can ask children to do on screen?

Robert Thompson, professor of popular culture at Syracuse University, said: It's still enough of a real taboo that when you hear some of those words coming out of the mouth of an 11-year-old kid, it's really shocking. But that's the whole point.

Protests about the film have also erupted in Australia where John Morrisey of the Family Association said: The language is offensive and the values inappropriate – without the saving grace of the bloodless victory of traditional superheroes.

...Read full nonsense

DStv, the South African satellite pay-TV is considering broadcasting pornography in one if its channels or creating a new channel, Die Burger newspaper reports.

The newspaper reports that MultiChoice has been immersed with requests for adult entertainment on DStv.

Jackie Rakitla, general manager of corporate affairs at MultiChoice, is quoted as saying: At this stage we're merely doing research to determine the extent of interest in adult content, and we're looking at the feasibility of implementing such a service.

MultiChoice is looking different broadcasting options, such as the broadcasting of mixed pornography - hardcore porn between 21:00 and 05:00 and soft porn between 05:00 and 21:00 – or hardcore porn 24 hours per day, or soft porn 24 hours per day on DStv.

Nutters Unimpressed

Based on article from mg.co.za

If DSTV went ahead with plans for a channel featuring pornographic content, it would be like pouring fuel on the fires of sexual abuse and exploitation, the Christian Action Network have claimed.

CAN international coordinator Taryn Hodgson said in a statement that considering the high incidents of rape, child abuse and sexual violence against women, it was unacceptable for DSTV to be be considering a porn channel.

Should DSTV introduce such a channel they would be supporting those that exploit, objectify and degrade women, she said: Porn violates women's constitutional rights to dignity and equality.

CAN has urged its affiliates, who are DSTV subscribers, to fill in the channel's online survey on the issue. Should DSTV go ahead with such a channel, the Christian Action Network will urge its affiliates to cancel their DSTV subscriptions, Hodgson said.

Update: Ministry of No Fun

9th March 2010. Based on article from eyewitnessnews.co.za

IMinister of Women, Children and Persons with Disabilities Noluthando Mayende-Sibiya said she would fight the launch of a DSTV pornography channel.

An art exhibition portraying Jesus as the gay son of a prostitute has been closed after the organisers at Granada University in Spain admitted that furious protests from churchgoers meant that they could no longer guarantee the safety of its creator, Fernando Bayona.

The exhibition also shows Jesus having sex with Mary Magdalen before turning gay. There is a lot of anger and there have been some very serious threats to both the artist and our staff, said a worker at the university.

Measures outlined by the secular parties to tackle the premature sexualisation of children don't recognise the gravity of the problem, according to Christian Democratic candidates planning to contest coming General and local elections.

Speaking to party supporters over the weekend in Newham, the Christian Peoples Alliance leader, Cllr Alan Craig, said that Britain should adopt and extend policies on sexual imagery being introduced by Australia's Labour government. These require mandatory ISP filtering of Refused Classification(RC)-rated internet content.

The Christian Peoples Alliance forms the opposition on Newham Council and represents one of the most deprived parts of the capital.

According to Cllr Alan Craig, the pledges don't go far enough: As welcome as David Cameron is to the discussion about the sexualisation of children, both he and Ed Balls have failed to grasp the gravity of the problem, especially as it impacts inner city districts such as Canning Town. Here children are begetting children.

The problem is pervasive and complex, linked to issues of social inequality and the disempowerment of young men. The reality is that it is internet imagery, social networking sites and the ubiquity of new generation, internet-enabled mobile phones which are feeding sexual desire. Adolescents are saturated with media images that suggest it is their right to express themselves in sexual relationships. The social consequences are devastating.

Alan Craig said that instead of optional filtering, stronger measures are needed to require big internet and phone providers in Britain such at Sky, Virgin Media and British Telecom to mandatory block R18 material sent down broadband into family homes or to mobiles. He is pointing to what the Australian government says is the ability of internet filtering to deal with the problem.

The first was the Quentin Tarantino movie Inglourious Basterds.

I should have remembered that Tarantino's signature is extreme and graphic violence, even though it is purportedly tongue-in-cheek - and an in-joke on other movies - and is therefore considered the last word in fashionable postmodern irony.

What's more disturbing by far than the actual images of blood and gore, however, is the psychopathic sadism and indifference to suffering displayed by the Brad Pitt character and his band of killers, who beat heads to pulp and twist fingers in open wounds.

All of this is played for laughs. But what exactly are we supposed to be laughing at? Sadism? Suffering? Genocide?

Yet for such a stomach-turning farrago, Tarantino receives mass adulation. Apart from the Baftas, Inglourious Basterds has received eight Academy Award nominations and the Best Actor award at the Cannes Film Festival. Michael Winterbottom

The second shock to my system at 38,000ft up was the American thriller Law Abiding Citizen.

...what makes it so repellent is the extreme sadism of the murders that the vengeful victim carries out, slowly dismembering his family's attacker in order to inflict upon him as much agony as possible - and in which the perpetrator of this torture, the supposed victim of injustice, takes a psychopathic pleasure.

If there's supposed to be some message in these movies about revenge or justice, it certainly evaded me. These are simply exceptionally nasty, cynical pieces of celluloid trash.

The slickness in their making barely disguises the fact that these films are seriously sick. What is so disturbing is the sadism - the fact that the characters take such pleasure in causing other human beings extreme agony.

In one of the latest examples, the British director Michael Winterbottom has defended scenes in his film The Killer Inside Me that portray extreme violence against women.

This, apparently, depicts brutal scenes of rough sex and murder; the violence, carried out to a soundtrack of classical music, is depicted in close-up shots that leave little to the imagination.

So awful is all this that, when the movie was screened last weekend at the Berlin Film Festival, there were walk-outs and booing.

Winterbottom claimed he had deliberately set out to shock. If you make a film where the violence is entertaining, I think that's very questionable, he said.

That's why it is so sick. Winterbottom says it wouldn't lead to actual violence against women because such acts are depicted as ugly and the central character, a policeman with a secret liking of sadomasochistic sex, is an unattractive figure.

But this isn't how such films work on people's psyche. Their main danger is that they have in general a desensitising or brutalising effect - and may indeed inspire a few disturbed individuals to commit acts of violence themselves.

They break the taboos against extreme behaviour simply by portraying that behaviour - and thus help destroy the constraints that preserve elementary norms of decency.

...Read the full article

Comment: War on Fictional Violence

25th February 2010. From Dan

Saw the bit about Melanie Phillips and in flight torture porn. To hear a woman who supports the illegal mass murder of thousands of Iraqis and the Israeli war machine's slaughter of Palestinians bleating about the damaging effects of violent films is hilarious!

Ulemas in Aceh have lambasted a transvestite contest held at the hall of state radio station RRI in Banda Aceh.

We strongly deplored the contest as this event has tainted the implementation of the strict sharia law in Aceh, secretary general of Aceh Ulema Association Tgk Faisal Ali said.

Faisal said that the contest was inappropriate whatsoever because it was clearly against the sharia law, which had been implemented in the whole province: Whatever the reasons, it is against the sharia law and we ask the organizers to be responsible for the event which is not in line with the local culture and Islam.

Transvestites in Aceh joined the contest to select the Aceh Cultural and Social Envoy 2010, an event which was also designed to enable transvestites to hold a get-together.

Psychiatrists are to give official recognition to dozens of new mental disorders, including a condition nicknamed Mary Whitehouse syndrome — the thrill of being appalled by pornography and other obscenities.

Absexuality appears to have been inspired by the zeal of Whitehouse, the campaigner who railed against smut on television.

Although there is no evidence that Whitehouse got a kick out of salacious viewing, there is no disputing her passion for attacking broadcasters if she felt their standards had slipped

emark points out though: Sadly I think the Times have got it wrong - I don't think this is in the DSM proposal (I can't find it on www.dsm5.org ), rather it's a proposal by someone else, Carol Queen.

The condition is one of many mood disorders and personality traits that are likely to be added to the next edition of Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, the psychiatrists' bible.

The disorders, which also include hypersexuality — the desire for multiple partners, perhaps characterised by the golfer Tiger Woods — reflect changing social patterns. Critics believe, however, that their classification as psychiatric problems may lead them to be exploited for profit by drug companies.

emark notes: The Times also falsely define hypersexuality as merely "the desire for multiple partners". It's sad to see this level of misreporting, especially on an issue that many people won't know much about.

Other new conditions include sluggish cognitive tempo disorder, which some would regard as simple laziness, and relational disorder, in which two people — often a separating couple — struggle to get on. People who whinge constantly may be suffering negativistic personality disorder. Intermittent explosive disorder — otherwise known as adult tantrums — is also defined for the first time.

Comment: Self Diagnosis

Dan adds

How to diagnose Mary Whitehouse Syndrome....

• Do you get a kick out of watching sex, porn and filth on TV just to get offended?
   
• Do you feel the need to write to the Daily Mail in utter outrage every time you see a bare breast on TV?
   
• Do you often get offended by things you haven't seen or heard and which you just read about in the right-wing tabloid press?
   
• Have you ever thought of joining Mediawatch UK?

If the answer to any of the above is yes then you have Mary Whitehouse Syndrome!

Tighter official regulation of violent computer games was called for by nutters of the Church of England general synod last night.

In a brief debate, members queued up to condemn the availability of ultra-violent games and the relative lack of restrictions on what children can see.

The church is still whingeing about Manchester Cathedral being used without permission in the violent game Resistance: Fall of Man. The cathedral staff secured an apology - but not the withdrawal of the game from its worldwide market.

The cathedral's dean the Very Rev Govender Rogers told the synod: Sony's response was: What is the church worried about? It's just a game. I had to tell them: It may just be a fantasy game to you, but violence is really serious on the streets of Manchester. We eventually managed to elicit a grudging apology.

Initiating the debate, synod lay member Tom Benyon, a former Tory MP, said: There is a bubbling sewer of gratuitously violent and sexual pornography and games all around us … I have seen [their] pernicious effect: a family member saw a so-called game and he had nightmares. The images remained with him for months.

Benyon offered to show members extracts of violent games on a compilation DVD: Why is it acceptable, indeed lawful, to portray the killing and burning of a woman in Fatality, the sawing up of a woman in Mortal Combat, playing football with severed heads; the chainsaw killing of a man in Saw III, rape, torture and so on? I have all these terrible games collected and if anyone has the courage to watch it, please do so.

We are in a great muddle over regulation and the cost… can be seen in the rising crime statistics year by year. To control this material by expecting parents to control their children with warnings is like King Canute's performance with his waves. This is not just a matter of conscience and morality. It's a public health and an economic issue.

The synod called on the government to review the regulatory system for advertising video games to prevent the targeting of children, offered support for carers and parents to prevent children, young people and vulnerable adults being damaged - and promised that the church would keep an eye on the games market to monitor what was being released.

Update: Games Save Lives

16th February 2010. Thanks to David. See article from uk.videogames.games.yahoo.com

This should get the Jack Thompsons of the world - and the Church of England's General Synod, who were blaming the world's ills on violent video games last week - mightily confused...

The Vancouver Sun, reports that a Texas teenager has been arrested after bragging online about an upcoming killing spree.

A British Columbian gamer may have saved the lives of American teenagers after reporting comments by an Xbox LIVE gamer based in San Antonio, Texas. According to the report, the disgruntled US teen was bemoaning recent grades and began naming specific targets for a possible high school shooting.

The Texas teen was promptly taken into custody by local police, and now faces charges.

Port Alberni RCMP Staff Sgt. Lee Omilusik told the Vancouver Sun: This incident demonstrates the power of the electronic world and how different enforcement agencies can quickly work together to protect the citizens they serve, regardless of obstacles such as international barriers. In this case, the suspect was quickly arrested and no one was hurt thanks to the information received from a concerned citizen.

Turkish playwright Ozen Yula has written a play that has angered Islamic fundamentalists in Istanbul.

Ozen Yula, a leading Turkish playwright who is spending most of 2010 working and teaching in Cleveland, got an unwelcome invitation earlier this month.

It was an invitation to join a list of people who wound up dead, hunted or silenced after being condemned in Vakit, Istanbul's most widely followed Islamic-fundamentalist newspaper.

Yula earned that distinction as the author of a comedy that was scheduled to open at the Kumbaraci50 theater in  Istanbul.

In the play, Yala, Ama Yutma (Lick but don't Swallow), an angel gets sent back to Earth to do good works in the body of a pornographic movie actress. Or maybe the play is about a porn star who dreams she's an angel. Like many serious comedies, it's ambiguous.

But ambiguity is not something Islamic fundamentalists tend to appreciate. Vakit (Turkish for Time) condemned Yula and his play for smearing human dirt on angels, according to one translation of the newspaper's online Turkish text.

Deliberate or not, the Vakit story has touched off a sensation. The mayor of Beyoglu, a member of Turkey's ruling Justice and Development Party  shut down the venue where the play was supposed to premiere Monday.

Cheryl Cole's new video has reportedly offended the perennial Hindu whinger Rajan Zed.

The Girls Aloud singer has been accused of portraying the Indian goddess Kali, in her video for her new single Parachute.

Kali is associated with divine energy and is widely worshipped in the faith.

According to Digital Spy, Zed, president of the Universal Society of Hinduism, has said: The goddess Kali is highly revered in Hinduism and she's meant to be worshipped in temples, and not to be duplicated in music videos for publicity stunts or thrown around loosely for dramatic effects. This should not be taken lightly. No faith, larger or smaller, should be ridiculed. The inappropriate use of Hinduism concepts and symbols is not OK.

Tighter official regulation of violent computer games was called for by nutters of the Church of England general synod last night.

In a brief debate, members queued up to condemn the availability of ultra-violent games and the relative lack of restrictions on what children can see.

The church is still whingeing about Manchester Cathedral being used without permission in the violent game Resistance: Fall of Man. The cathedral staff secured an apology - but not the withdrawal of the game from its worldwide market.

The cathedral's dean the Very Rev Govender Rogers told the synod: Sony's response was: What is the church worried about? It's just a game. I had to tell them: It may just be a fantasy game to you, but violence is really serious on the streets of Manchester. We eventually managed to elicit a grudging apology.

Initiating the debate, synod lay member Tom Benyon, a former Tory MP, said: There is a bubbling sewer of gratuitously violent and sexual pornography and games all around us … I have seen [their] pernicious effect: a family member saw a so-called game and he had nightmares. The images remained with him for months.

Benyon offered to show members extracts of violent games on a compilation DVD: Why is it acceptable, indeed lawful, to portray the killing and burning of a woman in Fatality, the sawing up of a woman in Mortal Combat, playing football with severed heads; the chainsaw killing of a man in Saw III, rape, torture and so on? I have all these terrible games collected and if anyone has the courage to watch it, please do so.

We are in a great muddle over regulation and the cost… can be seen in the rising crime statistics year by year. To control this material by expecting parents to control their children with warnings is like King Canute's performance with his waves. This is not just a matter of conscience and morality. It's a public health and an economic issue.

The synod called on the government to review the regulatory system for advertising video games to prevent the targeting of children, offered support for carers and parents to prevent children, young people and vulnerable adults being damaged - and promised that the church would keep an eye on the games market to monitor what was being released.

A new Indonesian horror movie about a menstruating ghost has run foul of the country's highest Islamic body.

Hantu Puncak Datang Bulan (The Menstruating Ghost of Puncak) made its debut in Jakarta and was quickly condemned by senior clerics in the mainly Muslim country.

I watched that horror movie... it contains sex scenes, violence and decapitation. I call on the film censorship board not to approve its screening, Indonesian Ulema Council official Amirsyah Tambunan told AFP.

Muslims have the right to watch the film but I suggest they don't because it contains scenes that are against Islamic principles, he added.

But Tambunan said he council, which is the highest Islamic body in the land, had no plans to pass a fatwa or religious edict forbidding Muslims from watching the film.

Update: Spirited Off

6th February 2010. Based on article from news24.com

An Indonesian production company said it had now withdrawn a film about a menstruating ghost from the cinemas following protests from conservative Muslims who considered it pornographic.

The film, Hantu Puncak Datang Bulan, has been put off indefinitely due to the controversy, said Evelyn Nainggolan, manager for K2K Production.

I was surprised by the brouhaha surrounding the film, Nainggolan said. The film has passed censorship and it's intended for adults.

It's the biggest day of the year for US advertising with companies spending between $2.5m and $2.8m to ensure their product is seen by the widest possible audience, but this year's Super Bowl Sunday threatens to be overshadowed by controversy over one of the 30-second slots.

The advert in question? A commercial on behalf of the evangelical Christian organisation Focus on the Family, featuring the University of Florida's star quarterback Tim Tebow and his mother Pam, which is expected to focus on her decision to ignore medical advice to have an abortion.

The almost $3m advert, which Focus on the Family says was paid for by donations, contravenes a network policy regarding the type of ads shown during the Super Bowl. Several online petitions have called on CBS to pull the ad and 2,288 people joined a Facebook group pointing out the hypocrisy by saying: Tell CBS Reject The Focus On The Family Ad Or Accept The UCC's! UCC refers to the United Church of Christ.

...Read full article

T-shirt slogans supposedly condoning rape and featuring semi-naked and gagged women have 'outraged' Australian nutters.

An Australian website, run out of Los Angeles, allows designers to sell T-shirts with slogans such as It's not rape if you yell surprise, Rape, murder, arson … I like rape, and I want rape.

Menswear company Roger David has also been embroiled in the furore through two of its T-shirt labels. One T-shirt, by Los Angeles-based company Blood Is the New Black, shows a woman who appears gagged and roughed up. The other, by US brand Chaser LA, has two semi-naked women with a strip across their eyes. The image used by Chaser LA was largely copied from the 1974 Country Life album cover by British rock band Roxy Music.

The graphic T-shirts have angered women's groups, while a Facebook group called Roger David: NOT ok to promote violence against women! has more than 800 members.

Women's advocate and co-founder of the anti-exploitation group Collective Shout, Melinda Tankard Reist, says the T-shirts must be outlawed: [They are] mocking the serious crime of rape, she said. I don't think there has been any consideration of the message it sends sexual assault survivors.

They're taking messages you would normally find in pornography or the sex industry and mainstreaming them in what was once considered conservative menswear stores.  Is this how Roger David likes its women? Is this how it thinks women should be portrayed?

Chrystina Woody, a spokeswoman for Blood Is the New Black, suggested the T-shirts, as art, would spark debate. Art is meant to inspire and educate, and the meaning and interpretation is left in the hands of the viewer, she said via email.

The letters and emails come in a daily tide. Filth! they cry. Shame on you; You are a very sick person; The soul that sinneth shall DIE. For the past six months, the head of Glasgow's museums and art has been under siege from Christian fundamentalists, who have vowed to oust her from her job.

Dr Bridget McConnell, head of Culture and Sport Glasgow (CSG), the £100 million charity in charge of the city's culture, says she is alarmed by what she describes as a personal witch hunt against her.

It is almost like being physically abused, she said. You get knocked down by it every day and you pick yourself up, but then you come in the next morning and it happens all over again. It's attrition.

Since July, when a row broke out over an art exhibition at the Gallery of Modern Art (GoMA) featuring homosexuality and religion in which comments were written on a Bible, Dr McConnell — whose organisation funded the exhibition — has been targeted by an organised group of protesters. Related Links

She has received up to 2,000 letters, e-mails and phone calls attacking her and objecting to the art show. There have been petitions and personal visits to her office. Her office has been routinely picketed by groups with a loud hailer, calling upon her to repent, and her staff have been harassed.

Police are known to be concerned at the targeting of Dr McConnell and on at least one occasion officers had to be called to demonstrations outside the art gallery when staff were seriously intimidated.

On a website linked to an English organisation called Christian Watch, www.csgwatch.com, the campaigners openly declare their intention is to have Dr McConnell removed from her post.

The controversy began last summer as a result of an exhibition called sh[OUT]!, which contained works by renowned artists such as David Hockney and Robert Mapplethorpe, and had as its theme the representation of gay people in art. The exhibition was part of a wider contemporary art programme on themes including violence against women and sectarianism. A secondary exhibition within sh[OUT], called Made in God's Image, invited visitors who felt excluded from the Bible, especially on the ground of sexual orientation, to record their names in its margins.

But some people recorded doodles and obscenities. The Bible was placed behind glass but the story reached the newspapers where, in Dr McConnell's view, it was distorted by parts of the media to suggest that people were being actively encouraged to deface the Bible. The story was picked up by the international media and stirred outrage around the world. The majority of people who are complaining didn't see the exhibition, but were responding to the Daily Mail story, she said.

On the website set up by Christian Watch, www.csgwatch.com, the protesters state their aim is to stop the city supporting events and programmes that insult Christ, the Bible, Christians and to have Bridget McConnell removed from her position.

Australian Labor MP Amanda Rishworth is urging music videos portraying women as 'sex objects' be censored and should be individually rated or banned from children's viewing hours.

She warned that without tough intervention the nation could be left with a generation of women with low self-esteem and body-image issues.

The call received support from the professor of Public Ethics at Charles Sturt University, Clive Hamilton, who described the imagery in some music videos as almost pornographic.

Ms Rishworth, a psychologist, will introduce a private member's motion in Federal Parliament calling for further debate on the objectification of girls in mainstream media: There is no silver bullet - the industry does need to consider content and what ratings they are giving it. She said a rating of PG or M could give parents a guide to what was appropriate for their children.

This is not about being a prude...BUT...about providing good role models, Ms Rishworth said. It's more than just sex, it's about the role women play in them. She said scantily clothed women in the clips were gyrating around men and giving suggestive looks. Many just looked like props for men, she said.

Prof Hamilton said there was nothing wrong with some censorship to protect the innocence of young girls: It's been clear for some years that the wall between music videos and pornography is becoming thinner.

A Senate report on sexualisation of children in the contemporary media made several recommendations in 2008, including urging broadcasters to review their classification of music videos with regard to sexual imagery.

In its never-ending campaign to decide what adults can see and hear, Morality in Media (MIM) is squaring off against web hosting company GoDaddy.com over its upcoming commercials for Super Bowl XLIV.

According to news reports, GoDaddy.com commercials will again appear during the Super Bowl game, which this year airs Feb. 7 on CBS at 6:30 p.m. EST, MIM President Robert Peters said in a press release.

It is no secret that GoDaddy.com loves to 'push the envelope' when it comes to the content of its ads, Peters continued, and it would appear that this year's Super Bowl ads may push as close to the indecency line as CBS network 'censors' will allow, which could be as close as CBS thinks it can get away with. Sure looks like lesbian strip performances to me.

Not content merely to fan the flames of homophobia, Peters also goes after GoDaddy.com for hosting legal adult websites.

But the content of [GoDaddy.com's] Super Bowl ads is not the only problem. GoDaddy.com also provides services to businesses that distribute over the internet, free of charge and without proof of age, hardcore adult pornography that depicts, among other things, urination, fisting (sticking a fist into the vagina), double penetration (sticking two penises into a female's anus [sic]), bondage, incest, teen sex, rape and bestiality.

But Peters isn't finished. No MIM press release is complete without an utter bastardization of the Constitution.

Now, it may be that GoDaddy.com is often not aware that a website it is providing one or more services to is offering for sale hardcore adult pornography on the internet. It may also be, depending on the nature of the service, that GoDaddy.com would have a defense under the law.

But if GoDaddy.com, knowing the hardcore nature of a website's content, provides some of its services to a site which is later charged with violating internet obscenity laws, I think GoDaddy.com could be charged with aiding and abetting (or facilitating) violations of these criminal laws.

In Scott Stewart's supernatural action thriller, Legion, which opens in the US on January 22, actor Paul Bettany portrays a machine-gun toting Archangel Michael who cuts off his wings and proceeds to help protect the unborn child of actress Adrianne Palicki at a remote diner on the edge of the Mojave desert on Christmas Eve.

The American Society for the Defense of Tradition, Family and Property (TFP) has described the film as blasphemous, saying that it mocks the faith.

According to TFP, in the film, Michael - a rebel angel - becomes the hero in a fight against Gabriel and his hosts who are bent on destroying humanity because of God's anger.

The film presents a complete inversion of roles: instead of defeating Satan and the rebel angels in the great heavenly battle, the movie presents Saint Michael as the fallen angel who revolts against God, said TFP: Saint Michael's downfall was caused by his wish to save humanity when God, finding the human race no longer worthy of Him, decides to end humanity's existence.

TFP has called for individuals to let Sony know that they are insulted by the film.

Actor Dennis Quaid said that he liked the script because it was twisted: I don't think it is going to be on the Vatican must-see list.

Legion puts a negative spin on Christianity, said the Catholic League for Religious and Civil Rights in a press release. ... [it] promises to be an abortion of a movie.

Indigenous Australian leaders have expressed 'outrage' at an Aboriginal dance routine by Russian ice dancers Oksana Domnina and Maxim Shabalin.

The Russian world champions perform in dark-skin bodysuits adorned with leaves and white body paint markings.

Indigenous leader Bev Manton has decried the ripping off of Aboriginal culture as offensive and disrespectful. From an Aboriginal perspective, this performance is offensive, Mrs Manton writes in an editorial in the Sydney Morning Herald: Our dance, our ceremony, our image - and, importantly, how they are depicted - are sacred to Aboriginal Australians. Interest must be expressed in a way that is respectful. The ripping off of our art and songs is not, and nor is this depiction of my culture, she wrote.

A BBC News presenter has been subjected to a deluge of personal abuse after fronting a documentary about one of the most controversial events in recent Indian history.

Sonia Deol was forced to delete her page on the Facebook website amid a barrage of criticism from fellow Sikhs over her film about the Indian army storming the Golden Temple in Amritsar, one of the faith's most holy shrines, in 1984.

Now protesters are planning a mass boycott of the licence fee in disgust at what they see as a slur on the controversial religious leader Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale, who was killed in the raid.

Many Sikhs consider him a saint and are furious that in Ms Deol's documentary, 1984: A Sikh Story, he was described as a militant. They also claim he was depicted in the film in a similar way to Osama Bin Laden.

Indian prime minister Indira Gandhi ordered the assault on June 4, 1984, after Bhindranwale and up to 500 armed supporters took refuge in the holy site, apparently fearing arrest amid rising Sikh-Hindu tensions. Around 500 people died in the ensuing battle, which some Sikhs now refer to as our 9/11. As troops moved in, Bhindranwale's followers fired missiles at Indian tanks.

The BBC has received 52 complaints about the documentary, which attracted 1.3 million viewers and was billed as Ms Deol's emotional journey back to India in a bid to discover how such an attack could ever have taken place.

However, community TV station The Sikh Channel says it received more than 8,000 calls to a phone-in about the film. Channel owner Davinder Singh Bal said: The documentary contained many sweeping statements and didn't attempt to uncover the truth of what happened. Our viewers were not happy. BT said that our exchange was going into overdrive. The BBC is not responding to the Sikh community and we are thinking about organising a campaign to invoke the non-payment of licence fees by the 700,000 Sikhs in Britain.

Dr Sadhu Singh, chairman of the Council of Sikh Temples, said many viewers were angered that the BBC showed him [Bhindranwale] looking like Bin Laden. He said: They used pictures of him wearing a turban and holding a gun. To someone who doesn't know what Sikhism is about, it would be very misleading.

A BBC source said Ms Deol's documentary was never intended to be an investigation, saying: It was her personal journey, a look at her reaction to rediscovering her faith as a Sikh. It was for a mainstream channel, BBC1 and there's only so much you can say in an hour. A lot of the attacks on Sonia have been because people think that the documentary reflected her views on Bhindranwale, but she did not give her opinions about him at all.

Details of trucks filled with explosives and European terror networks emerge in Jyllands-Posten newspaper plot case.

US citizen David Coleman Headley and Tahawwur Hussain Rana, a Canadian citizen and native of Pakistan, are already in police custody for their alleged roles in the plot against the newspaper in retribution for its printing of the Mohammed cartoons.

Additional conspiracy charges were recently filed against Ilyas Kashmiri, who has been identified as a leader of terrorist organisation Harakat-ul Jihad Islami (HUJI) in Pakistan and Abdur Rehman Hashim Syed, a retired major in the Pakistani military. Neither man is in police custody.

According to documents released by US authorities, Headley met Rehman and members of the Lashkar terrorist group in Pakistan. Rehman is said to have introduced Headley to Kashmiri who allegedly came up with the idea of the truck bomb. Kashmiri is also reported to have put Headley in contact with various associates in a number of European countries who could provide Headley with money, weapons and manpower for the newspaper attack.

Police have launched a terrorism investigation in Paris after two men tried to set fire to an Algerian feminist playwright and actress, who stars in a play said to portray Muslim men in an unflattering light.

The attackers are reported to have sprayed Rayhana, known only by her first name, with petrol and threw a lit cigarette in her face. The petrol did not ignite, possibly because of the extreme cold.

Rayhana is appearing in and directing her own play about the oppression of women in Algeria. She was walking to a theatre in a north-eastern suburb of the city when she was insulted in Arabic and attacked. A fortnight ago, she was approached in the same area by two men who said: We know who you are, you miscreant whore. This is a warning.

Detectives are examining the 'possibility' that she was attacked by a radical Islamist group, although her play is equally critical of the treatment of women by radical Islam and secular authorities in Algeria.

A pressure group for the rights of women of North African origin, Ni Putes, Ni Soumises (neither whores, nor submisssives), has called for a demonstration of solidarity with Rayhana outside the theatre.

Following the attack, the playwright staggered into an upmarket restaurant but was refused help. She carried on to the theatre, La Maison des Metallos, and took part in that night's performance. Her sell-out play A Mon Age Je Me Cache Encore pour Fumer, (At My Age, I Still Hide To Have A Smoke), is about a group of women who chat about their lives during a visit to a spa.

Muslim leaders in Italy are demanding the removal or destruction of a priceless 15th century fresco in Bologna that they say offends Islam by showing Muhammad being cast into the flames of Hell.

The row over The Last Judgment by Giovanni da Modena, in Bologna Cathedral, could threaten the already strained relations between the Roman Catholic Church and members of Italy's Muslim community.

The recently established Union of Italian Muslims has written to the Pope and Cardinal Giacomo Biffi, the outspoken conservative Archbishop of Bologna, complaining that the fresco shows clearly Muhammad, the founder of Islam, among those condemned to burn in eternal flames.

The protesters said that Giovanni da Modena had shown Muhammad being thrown into hell, completely naked, with a snake wrapped around his body and a demon next to him about to torture him. They said that Muslims had never depicted Jesus or the Virgin Mary on the walls of a mosque.

In the letter they called for the barbarous fresco to be removed from the wall of the Bolognini chapel, inside the 14th-century cathedral of San Petronio.

Adel Smith, the head of the Union of Italian Muslims, appealed to the many thousands of Italian Muslim residents of Bologna to attend a rally outside the main mosque in Rome.

A spokesman for the cardinal said that it was absurd to suddenly discover after 600 years that our most famous treasure is offensive to the Islamic religion.

Don Oreste Leonardi, prefect of the sacristy of Bologna Cathedral, said that the identification of the figure in the fresco in tiny Gothic writing was so small that it is almost invisible.

He said that the fresco, painted in 1415, was one of Bologna's greatest treasures, and the artist had merely reproduced the popular medieval vision of Hell.

The Union of Italian Muslims says that it has a large following and that the painting is unacceptable to Muslims throughout the world. In its letter to the Pope it said: It constitutes an even graver offence to the religion than that caused by Salman Rushdie's The Satanic Verses.

Signor Smith said that the problem had started in the Middle Ages with Dante, Italy's national poet, who had placed Muhammad in the ninth circle of Hell in his Inferno. He demanded that the teaching of Dante be suspended in Italian schools in immigrant areas.

The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York said several images of the Prophet Mohammed were removed from a collection.

The New York Post said that the removal of the images from the museum's Islamic collection comes after a number of conservative Muslims opposed the inclusion of the Mohammed images based on their religious beliefs.

The critics reportedly wanted the images removed because images of the Prophet Mohammed are not acceptable in their religion.

A source with inside knowledge of the museum told the Post the Metropolitan's decision to pull the controversial images reflects the museum's apparent policy to avoid criticism.

Danish police have shot and wounded a man at the home of Kurt Westergaard, whose cartoon depicting the Prophet Muhammad sparked an international row.

Westergaard was at home in Aarhus when a man broke in armed with a knife. Police arrived and shot the man after Westergaard pressed a panic alarm.

Police said he was shot in the knee and the shoulder after threatening officers who tried to arrest him. Preben Nielsen of Aarhus police, said the man was seriously hurt but his life was not in danger.

Danish officials said the intruder was a 28-year-old Somali linked to the radical Islamist al-Shabab militia.

Police said the man had entered Westergaard's house armed with a knife and had shouted in broken English that he wanted to kill him.

Westergaard said he had grabbed his five-year-old granddaughter and run to a specially designed panic room where he raised the alarm.

He has now been taken to a safe location, but said defiantly that he would be back, the newspaper reported.

Update: Charged

3rd January 2010. See article from news.bbc.co.uk

A Somali man has been charged with trying to kill a Danish artist whose drawing of the Prophet Mohammed sparked riots around the world.

The suspect, who was shot by police outside cartoonist Kurt Westergaard's home in the city of Aarhus on Friday, was carried into court on a stretcher.

Police say he broke into the house armed with an axe and a knife.

The suspect, who denies the charge, was remanded in custody. Police say he has links with Somali Islamist militants.

The radical al-Shabab group in Somalia hailed the attack.

Kurt Westergaard Sept 2006 I locked myself in our safe room and alerted the police. He tried to smash the entrance door with an axe, but he didn't manage Kurt Westergaard

Al-Shabab spokesman Sheikh Ali Muhamud Rage told AFP news agency: We appreciate the incident in which a Muslim Somali boy attacked the devil who abused our prophet Mohammed and we call upon all Muslims around the world to target the people like him.

Update: Mohammed Cartoons Reprinted

9th January 2010. Based on article from theaustralian.com.au

The Norwegian newspaper Aftenposten has published reproductions of controversial cartoons of the Prophet Mohammed by Kurt Westergaard, the victim of attempted murder last week.

In an article on Westergaard, the daily printed small versions of six out of the 12 drawings by the Danish cartoonist that had infuriated Muslims around the world when Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten first published them in 2005.

Several of the drawings were seen as linking Islam and the Prophet Mohammed to terrorism and suicide bombings, including the turban bomb cartoon.

Update: Cartoon Apologist

1st February 2010.  Based on article from mediawatchwatch.org.uk

Pakistan's Daily Mail carries a story claiming that the Norwegian ambassador to Pakistan has strongly regretted the re-publication of the Turbomb Motoon in the pages of Aftenposten.

Robert Kvile allegedly is of the view that the Norwegian government would strive to reform understandings and to devise a strategy to stop such practices in future.

Kvile had been summoned to the office of the Federal Minister for Religious Affairs Syed Hamid Saeed Kazmi.

Conservative figures in Egypt are furious over an Egyptian moviemaker's plan to produce a drama series about a woman with several husbands.

Filmmaker Mustafa Mahram told Al-Arabiyya that there was no reason he should not go ahead with the series, Hajja Zahra and her Five Husbands, because it happens in real life.

Egyptian lawyer Nabil Al-Wahsh is submitting a complaint to the public prosecutor to prevent the filming of the series on the grounds that it is an affront to Islam.

These are poisonous ideas that people are calling for and we must fight them, he told Al-Arabiyya. How can this be in accord with the law and the religion? When this matter is turned into a drama, we cannot remain silent.

The issue is feeding off religious sensitivities which were already enflamed by an Egyptian newspaper's recent publication of a Saudi writer's opinion piece regarding polyandry in Al-Masri Al-Yawm. In her article, My Four Husbands and I, author Nadine Al-Budeir asked why Muslim men were allowed to marry several wives but Muslim women could not do the same.

The series is planned to be screened during the month of Ramadan. Viewer ratings soar during this month, and it has, in recent years, become the main season for launching new Arabic television series.

Mahram said the series had nothing to do with religion and dealt with a new concept prompting discussion about the dangers involved rather than promoting it.