[Foundation-l] Boycott in ace at wiki

[Mark Williamson]

I was raised areligious and I see a clear difference there. On the one
hand, you're talking about portraying a religious figure on a sex toy;
on the other hand you're just talking about portraying a religious
figure. Just on the grounds of being offensive, I don't think either
should be excluded from WP (we have a page about and an image of Piss
Christ and I'd not be against things far more offensive than that, so
long as they serve an illustrative purpose and their inclusion can be
justified). However, while I think it's perfectly reasonable to
include later depictions (many, though not all, of them from _within_
that particular religious tradition itself in the case of Muhammad) in
the main article on the religious figure, I don't think it's
reasonable to include the buttplugs. I'd have no problem with them
going in the article [[Baby Jesus Buttplugs]], but I can't see how
they can be considered to be more notable than the hundreds of far
more famous depictions of that particular individual. Similarly, I
wouldn't support the inclusion of many of the more recent images of
Muhammad - such as some of the more controversial ones from
Jyllands-Posten - because rather than simply depicting the individual,
they go far beyond that. Many people around the world are offended
(including for religious reasons) by sexual immodesty, yet we have
lots of images of nude people and images demonstrating sexual acts.
Images of certain animals are offensive to certain cultures. Wikipedia
is not censored; to me, that means we use any non-illegal images that
serve to illustrate an article. Despite my lack of reverence for
Jesus, however, I don't think those two cases are analogous.

-m
skype: node.ue



On Sat, Jul 17, 2010 at 4:15 AM, Fred Bauder <fredbaud at fairpoint.net> wrote:
>> Excirial wrote:
>>> *First: There are no authentic images of Mohammad extant.*
>>> As already mentioned in a previous response: are there any authentic
>>> images
>>> which display any god or prophet?
>>>
>>
>> Do they not have traditional images that go back millennia? If you
>> depicted images of Shiva as Yoda you'd get a whole load of grief from
>> Hindus, and the Christians were none too pleased about the image of
>> christ being fucked by a Roman Centurian (see Whitehouse v Lemon).
>>
>> Oh and I'll just mention in passing that wikimedia doesn't have nearly
>> enough photos of 'Baby Jesus Butt Plugs', nor are there anywhere near
>> enough drawings of Western politicians engaging in bestiality. I'm sure
>> that there are oodles of those out there, I know an artist friend of
>> mine draw a number of Ronald Reagun sucking a horses dick and shitting
>> nuclear missiles. Perhaps I'll take some scans and add them to:
>>
>> http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Ronald_Reagan
>
> Yes, indeed.
>
> What is wrong with using photographs of Baby Jesus Butt Plugs to
> illustrate the article on Jesus? Answer that question and you'll know why
> offensive images of Muhammad are not a good idea. The thing is, we're
> saying, "Hey, come off of it, no real harm is done is there are images of
> Muhammad" Why doesn't the same reasoning apply to the butt plugs? No real
> harm would be done. Or would there?
>
> Fred Bauder
>
>
>
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