Wednesday, January 26, 2011

Dire Straits Song Banned Due to Homosexual Reference

In a scary precedent, the Canadian Broadcast Standards Council (CBSC) has banned the 25 year old song Money for Nothing by Dire Straits from the radio because it contains the word "faggot". This amounts to censorship of the worst kind. I'm ashamed to say this all originated from a complaint received at OZFM, a local radio station here in St. John's.

I do not believe that we ought to persecute homosexuals or to treat them badly. This is also the position of the Church. However, no group of people should be afforded more privileges than any other group. Songs are written every day about any number of types of people, many of the lyrics are very insulting. Yet, no special protection is given for these groups. It comes down to freedom of speech.

The problem here is that homosexual activity has reached a status in Canada whereby any disagreement with them on any matter is considered hate speech, rather than legitimate debate or discussion.

This brings me back to Fr. Alphonse De Valk. He is a Canadian Catholic priest of the Basilian order who simply spoke on the Church's constant teaching concerning homosexual activities and gay marriage. He was fined for hate speech and had to spend thousands of dollars defending himself in court.

Does anyone think this would happen if someone spoke up against the Catholic Church? Of course not. It would probably air on prime time on CBC.

There is an enormous double standard when it comes to homosexual comments. People can blaspheme God all they want and make false and derogatory comments about the Church and no one bats an eye, but make one verbal misstep about an homosexual issue and you could land yourself in court.

The Catholic Church acknowledges that people who consider themselves gay have the same rights as everyone else when it comes to human rights, but there are legitimate reasons to take someone's homosexuality into consideration when making decisions.

A statement by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith states:

10. “Sexual orientation” does not constitute a quality comparable to race, ethnic background, etc. in respect to non-discrimination. Unlike these, homosexual orientation is an objective disorder (cf. Letter, no. 3) and evokes moral concern.

11. There are areas in which it is not unjust discrimination to take sexual orientation into account, for example, in the placement of children for adoption or foster care, in employment of teachers or athletic coaches, and in military recruitment.


The banning of this song from the radio is indicative of a larger issue. The government is trying to squelch religious free speech and impose its own morality on the people. We must not let this happen.

2 comments:

  1. I feel a respectful case for OR against the beliefs and practices of ANY group of people should be permissible and not given special sensitivity treatment.

    In a similar sense to the special treatment homosexuality is given, I've noted Islam in particular as well being given disproportionate treatment over all other religions with Islamophobia being the trendy word. Nothing negative can be stated about the teachings of Islam, but it's not just the religion itself. Any negative critique of political positions supported by Islam and the Qur'an/Hadith, any cultural aspects of countries whom are governed by Islamic law are also met with the word Islamophobia.

    Jewish people were given the same after WW2 as well. I think it has to do more with our idea that to be sensitive we cannot disagree with another person's beliefs or practices - which is a false idea.

    There's vast difference between between disagreement and being disrespect. Unfortunately when you disagree with someone they more often are offended and call it disrespectful rather than disagreement, even if your disagreement was well stated in a respectful manner. To the offended party, you've simply offended them and for many that's all they need to feel justified in calling things disrespectful, hateful and a phobia.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Yes, I agree with you AW. Nobody has any problems with being quite nasty in their remarks of Christianity and Catholicism specifically. In fact, they often cross the line of decency. I think it's important to be respectful to others, but I don't think disagreements should be banned. If something is happening that is wrong, then we should speak out and not simply attribute it to cultural differences.

    ReplyDelete