Bible drawn into sex publication controversy

From Reuters courtesy of Crooks and Liars:

A spokesperson for Hong Kong's Television and Entertainment Licensing authority (TELA) said it had received 838 complaints about the Bible by noon Wednesday.

The complaints follow the launch of an anonymous Web site -- www.truthbible.net -- which said the holy book "made one tremble" given its sexual and violent content, including rape and incest.

And

"If there is rape mentioned in the Bible, it doesn't mean it encourages those activities," said Reverend Wu Chi-wai.

Click here for the rest.

According to the article, there's actually a chance that the governing body in Hong Kong dealing with such issues may very well find the Bible to be obscene and make it unavailable to anyone under the age of eighteen. On the other hand, the good Reverend Wu Chi-wai is absolutely correct: the Bible depicts such activities explicitly for the purpose of condemning them. Actually, I'm only talking about the sex. As far as violence goes, these Hong Kong moralists make a pretty good point; as Noam Chomsky and others have observed, the Bible is the most violent and genocidal work in the Western literary canon. Especially the Old Testament. God's always smiting and destroying when he's not telling his chosen people to do it themselves. But that doesn't mean it's a good idea to restrict access to the Good Book. Even though I am not at all a Christian these days, I am a free speech absolutist, especially for speech with which I disagree.

Anyway, I'm really enjoying the irony on this one.

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