After receiving more than two thousand complaints about violence and sexual content, the media regulator in Hong Kong has decided not to reclassify the Bible as an indecent publication.
This post is a follow up to lensman67's post entitled
Hong Kong Post Office Eyes Bible Ban.
Hong Kong's Television and Licensing Authority (TELA) said in a statement: "
The Bible is a religious text which is part of civilisation. It has been passed from generation to generation" and said that it would not submit the Bible to the Obscene Articles Tribunal for classification.
This latest hoo-haw is in response to an article in a student magazine that had been classified by the authorities as "indecent". The article is said to have asked its readers if they had ever fantasized about incest or bestiality.
Shortly after being classified as "indecent", a website popped up that was campaigning to have the Bible classified in a similar manner and the website even went so far as to cite various passages that have sexual and violent content that they claim go even further than their sex column did.
TELA received 2,041 complaints against the Bible this week, however, it said in its statement that the Bible "
had not violated standards of morality, decency and propriety generally accepted by reasonable members of the community".
It is a good thing that common sense has prevailed here. I understand that there are many passages that could be construed as being offensive, but I believe that most if not all of our world's religious texts would have to be classified in the same way.
