This is blasphemy?
Posted on 02/09/2018 4:46:49 PM PST by marshmallow
A court victory for a designer accused of blasphemy
THIS week the European Court of Human Rights handed down a verdict, which law-and-religion pundits will be pondering for years to come. It vindicated Sekmadienis, a company selling the work of Robert Kalinkin, a Lithuanian fashion designer. The seller had been fined for using images of Jesus and the Virgin Mary which Catholics found offensive.
The case refers to a Kalinkin campaign in 2012 which featured a bare-chested young man and a woman, both with halos: the man was sporting jeans and tattoos, and the female figure wore a white dress with a string of beads. The captions consisted of lines such as: “Jesus, what trousers!”, “Dear Mary, what a dress!” and “Jesus, Mary, what are you wearing?”
After receiving some complaints about the images, Lithuania’s State Consumer Protection Agency (SPCA) consulted the bishops of the Catholic church, to which nearly 80% of Lithuanians adhere. This led to Sekmadienis being fined €580 ($723) for, among other things, “encouraging a frivolous attitude towards the ethical values of the Christian faith.”
This week’s ruling by the ECHR, an organ of the 47-nation Council of Europe, found that the company’s freedom of expression had been violated. It accepted that liberty of expression carried certain responsibilities, including a duty not to be “gratuitously offensive or profane” but it considered that the images in question did not fall into that category. It noted that freedom of expression extended to ideas which “offend, shock or disturb”.
(Excerpt) Read more at economist.com ...
He is sooo brave, as are all artists who chose to pick on Christianity.
So, to justify this judgement, let him do something concerning the Prophet of Death, Destruction, and Goat boinking.
If he does not, he is merely a simpleton quota idiot, such as Dorkbama the Muslim eunuch quota boy.
Well he’s wrongheaded. But I’m not sure it helps Christendom to pull the state into an issue like this. It’s more of a “Jesus wept” issue.
How about a picture of Mohammed beheading someone in front of his 9 year old wife? Would THAT be okay?
I’m sure his next design, “mohammed a$$less chaps” will be just as popular!
I confess I wrote a song about a redneck Jesus... but no tattoos. What kind of tattoo could Jesus have possibly had? A heart and Abba (Daddy)? Jewish law forbade it though.
I’d encourage orthodox Christendom to use such occasions to tell about Jesus. He even pardons those who blaspheme in ignorance and unbelief. Jesus is the Carpenter not just of wood but of rebuilt souls.
“You’ll lose your head over this.”
This is the state protecting its citizens at their request and being overruled by ECHR.
Follow the court’s ruling and print a T-shirt with Mohammed kissing pigs. Bet my next paycheck that the Christian-hating, neo-Nazi court finds that offensive and worthy of big fines, if not imprisonment.
It’s wrong. But the reason it’s wrong could be explained without losing our heads.
At an inappropriate request, I’d have to say from a bible view. This puts the state in a position of defending God. That’s going to be a ludicrous fail.
I see nothing wrong with it.
And to call it blasphemy doesn’t fit.
“Saying offensive things about God or religion”
It says nothing offensive about religion, and last time I looked Mary was not a God, though who knows what they’ll come up with next.
It’s wrong from a classic bible faith point of view. That doesn’t mean it’s right for a state to jump in and mediate it either.
If you’re a Catholic you’re going to be super sensitive about Mary and not debase her name and fame. If you’re Protestant you’re not going to want to talk about the departed Mary in hailing terms. So it’s wrong to both views.
Were she alive today, Mary could very well look just like that. Debasement is Piss Christ, not this.
It’s just crass, to sell clothes. I wouldn’t do it as a Protestant, and I wouldn’t expect Catholics to be copacetic either.
Jesus DID whip the money changers out of the temple. If He were to comment, it might well be an exhortation to don the garb of righteousness, not literal fabrics.
I guess you prove that people tend to think Mary could have looked like their own mother, tats and all.
Secularly I could see the idea. Hey, you can wear dresses as fine as Mary’s and maybe, jeans like Jesus the Carpenter Himself. Isn’t that grand?
Here’s where the wise Christian has a door the size of a barn’s to witness about what matters. It doesn’t matter if you’re wearing this designer’s physical garb or Walmart’s. If you’ve got the spirit of Christ you are dressed in righteousness. If you don’t, you aren’t.
I think it’s the Son that this designer showed in tats.
Again I try to imagine what this could plausibly look like. “Jesus loves the Father forever?” Not some tribal junk.
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