[Stone Mountain]

Senator Louden is no "fool".

Perhaps, but he's acting pretty foolishly here. He's wasting government money on adults who are acting in a way that is both legal and consensual. And he's given a ton of publicity to this convention that it wouldn't have gotten before. I heard Howard Stern mention this on his show - how many more people are going to attend this convention that would never heard of it if Louden had just let it go?

The Last Temptation of Christ would have been an anonymous failure of a movie if it hadn't been protested and picketed by those who didn't want it to be seen...

[weegee]

Martin Scorcese and Willam Defoe are hardly unknowns the film would have still be seen and reviewed regardless. The film was protested before it was even made (the protesters sought to convince studios not to make it). Some earlier "urban legend" books (not Brunvand's) debunked the whole notion of an attempt to make a movie that was sacreligious to Christians.

The studios do know how to manipulate the protestors though. Mirimax planned to release a movie critical of the Catholic Church, Priest, on Easter weekend a few years ago. I believe that they ended up slipping the date out a few weeks.

[writmeister]

The Last Temptation of Christ would have been an anonymous failure of a movie if it hadn't been protested and picketed by those who didn't want it to be seen...

Agreed. BTW, I saw this movie and was confused. So, I tried to read the book, but it was terminally boring.