Delirium-
I think the primary difference is that photos can be shocking, while text generally isn't.
That very much depends on your definition of shocking. Blasphemy laws are still on the books even in liberal European countries, including Germany. I have a copy here of an anti-clerical book called the "Pfaffenspiegel" by Otto von Corvin. My edition was published in 1996. It is in fact a censored edition according to Article 166 of the German criminal code, based on a verdict from 1927 which apparently remains in effect. I have through a friend acquired an uncensored (19th century) copy of the same book and the censored passages in question are fairly harmless in comparison with the rest of the book.
The point is that offense is in the eye of the beholder. Of course an openly held anti-blasphemy point of view would be quickly ridiculed and rejected. However, the hypothetical question of whether to split away the criticisms of Mother Teresa is not so hypothetical at all; there was even an edit war and a poll about it. Some made arguments, others just split away the criticisms without discussion or removed it entirely (and edit warred about it).
If a simple majority (for example) would be sufficient to get "offensive" material moved away, it would be fairly easy for a group of people -- even within Wikipedia -- to organize and win a vote on the matter (well, at least when I'm not watching). Supported by policy, these people would argue that even if the text is not offensive to non-believers, those non- believers will have to admit that it is clearly offensive to any devout Catholic or admirer of Mother Teresa, and surely linking to it is no big loss. Given that this almost happened even *without* an offensive content policy, it is not hard to imagine that it would have quickly happened with such a policy in place.
While it is true that text is generally considered less offensive than images, I can think of many other articles where such a policy would have an effect, specifically those dealing with violence and religion. Now you can say that this effect is in fact desirable and necessary, on text as well as on images. But it is the effective end of the NPOV idea.
If the [[Mother Theresa]] article *did* include truly shocking text, like referring to her with epithets of some sort,
Christopher Hitchens called his movie about her "Hell's Angel" and originally wanted to call it "Sacred Cow". Would mentioning this, in attributed form, be offensive to some? You bet.
Photos, however, are pretty easy to make shocking. I might wish to read an article about [[clitoris]], for example, but find it rather difficult to do so when there is a photograph of a woman spreading open her genitalia with her fingers in the sidebar.
I still fail to see a plausible situation where you want to read an article about genitalia but are unprepared to see a small thumbnail image. Nevertheless, I would support a "hide images" button which would make all images on a page invisible. That would be fairly easy to implement.
Regards,
Erik