June 4, 2007 | 11:52 am

In China, the Bible is “obscene”

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

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HONG KONG—A debate raging over the morals of Hong Kong’s racy media took a bizarre twist on Wednesday with revelations that a decency watchdog had been flooded with obscenity complaints about the Bible.

The Television and Entertainments Licensing Authority (Tela), which oversees the publishing industry, said it had received 208 complaints that text within the holy book was indecent.

“I can confirm that the complaints were received,” said a Tela spokesperson. “The thrust of the complaints was that the Bible was obscene; that different parts of the Bible were offensive to readers.”

Tela refused to divulge details of the complaints, but local media reported that they referred to acts of violence, rape and cannibalism reputedly contained in the old and new testaments.

That is from the Mail & Guardian, Africa’s online newspaper. The photo is from the satirical site Landover Baptist Church.

June 3, 2007 | 1:23 pm

XXXChurch: Make love, not war, on porn

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

LAS VEGAS—If Craig Gross considers Jesus Christ his best friend, why is his arm around porn’s leading man?

“We are the world. We are the children,” Ron Jeremy sings as he and Gross draw a circus crowd at the Adult Entertainment Expo here.

During the past few years, the two—a conservative Christian who considers masturbation a sin and a secular Jew who has performed in 1,900 porn flicks—have grown close and, despite diametric career choices, have come to respect and appreciate each other.

“I have nothing against Ron Jeremy,” says Gross, an ordained minister who leads the anti-porn crusade XXXChurch.com “I love this guy. I love hanging out with him.”

Oh, how the war on porn has changed. The days of Christian groups prominently lobbying against obscenity are over. Enter the era of extending love and consolation to the adult industry and those touched by it.

Members of a Chatsworth church pray for the end of pornography and the healing of those it has harmed. Christian men gather to confess their Internet-fueled addiction. Rehab centers in Colorado and Kentucky provide short-term and months-long escapes more commonly used to treat drug abuse.

In the adult industry, it seems every dark corner has a ministry. The former strippers of JC’s Girls. Hookers For Jesus. And XXXChurch, the Web’s “#1 Christian porn site.”

XXXChurch, which runs a Web site where people confess their struggles and offers free anti-porn software, has made the biggest splash, using gimmicks at adult conventions—like Wally the Wiener, a 25-foot inflatable penis—to lure eyes, and hopefully minds, away from depictions of depravity.

The message is simple: porn separates husbands and wives, defiles teenagers’ minds and breeds lies. A tool of the devil, it can only be cured by God.

“People are blind to the consequences of this. They don’t realize the problems this will cause down the line,” Gross says, handing out Bibles. “This is a lie. This is not reality. Girls aren’t like this.”

That was the opening of the main story I wrote for Part V of the Daily News’ porn series, which began today. The lede was retouched by editors, but I preferred the original. Here is the rest of the story.

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June 2, 2007 | 1:45 am

Evangelicals leaning liberal?

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

Among American evangelicals, 42 percent say school boards should be able to fire gay teachers. Two in five might seem like a heavy ratio, but compare that to the percent of evangelicals who answered yes in 1987, the height of the Religious Right:

73 percent

Are conservative Christians losing their edge? Rediscovering themselves? Learning costly legal lessons? Certainly, each one of those possibilities could be convincingly argued or refuted with some discriminate Googling. The comment board awaits.

(H/T: Dallas Morning News)

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June 1, 2007 | 3:56 pm

The Orthodox rabbi and the Man/Boy Love Assoc.

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

He’s known as the NAMBLA Rabbi. NAMBLA, if you remember, is the North American Man/Boy Love Association, of which the defrocked priest Paul Shanley had “affiliations.” The man pictured is A.J. Horowitz, who according to The Awareness Center is a practicing rabbi and child psychiatrist in South East Asia—and a convicted sex offender.

It’s unclear when and where he was ordained after studying at Harvard, Duke and University of Iowa. Blogger Luke Ford posted a recent comment from The Awareness Center and an article Horowitz allegedly wrote for NAMBLA.

The Prison Experience: Some Psychosocial Comments
By A. Shneur Horowitz (AKA: Dr. Rabbi Alan Horowitz)

After graduating magna cum laude from Harvard College, A. Shneur Horowitz received the M.D. and Ph.D. degrees from Duke University, and is an orthodox rabbi. After twenty years of following these professional interests, Horowitz is now a political prisoner in the United States.

Did you ever have a dream where everything seemed quite logical, and yet even at the time a part of your mind knew that when you awoke, the sense would be completely lost? Not only would you be unable to make a reasonable recounting to anyone else, but even to yourself the dream-events would appear disconnected and the logic bizarre. Talking about prison to those who have not been there, and for whom incarceration is not part of their culture, is very much like that. Both dreaming and imprisonment are alternate realities in which the usual checks and controls have been removed and replaced with other rules for which our normal experiences have left us unprepared.

This severe culture shock applies to all prisoners who have lived their lives in the middle class or mainstream society. We child-lovers, however, suffer a more profound and pervasive psychosocial disintegration because of circumstances relatively specific to us. Personal accounts serve an important purpose, helping those who are not here to appreciate our experiences. However, I would like to use this space to comment on just what it is that makes incarceration different, and worse, for child-lovers than for virtually anyone else. The first section discusses the psychosocial impact of imprisonment with reference to child-lovers. The second deals with special factors which impede our adjustment to incarceration. The third section introduces ideas relating to the possibilities for growth and positive outcome.

It should be noted that much of the material in this article is not relevant to all persons jailed for participating in intergenerational sex.

Continue reading if you have an iron stomach and a numbness to nightmares.

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June 1, 2007 | 4:33 am

Fleeing Iraq to to be enslaved by sex trade

Posted by Brad A. Greenberg

The Cwzy Muslima nabbed a story I missed in the NY Times: “Desperate Iraqi Refugees Turn to Sex Trade in Syria.” Iraq’s refugee crisis—maybe it should be considered the world’s crisis—is acute. More than 4 million displaced, thousands arriving in Syria each day, many hoping to make it to Europe. The U.S. has only admitted 800 since 2003, but Wednesday announced it would accept 7,000. Here is what is happening to some of the women making it to Syria.

MARABA, Syria — Back home in Iraq, Umm Hiba’s daughter was a devout schoolgirl, modest in her dress and serious about her studies. Hiba, who is now 16, wore the hijab, or Islamic head scarf, and rose early each day to say the dawn prayer before classes.

But that was before militias began threatening their Baghdad neighborhood and Umm Hiba and her daughter fled to Syria last spring. There were no jobs, and Umm Hiba’s elderly father developed complications related to his diabetes.

Desperate, Umm Hiba followed the advice of an Iraqi acquaintance and took her daughter to work at a nightclub along a highway known for prostitution. “We Iraqis used to be a proud people,” she said over the frantic blare of the club’s speakers. She pointed out her daughter, dancing among about two dozen other girls on the stage, wearing a pink silk dress with spaghetti straps, her frail shoulders bathed in colored light.

As Umm Hiba watched, a middle-aged man climbed onto the platform and began to dance jerkily, arms flailing, among the girls.

“During the war we lost everything,” she said. “We even lost our honor.”

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