US Religion

US religious campaigners of the Catholic League have complained about the latest episode of Family Guy. The 8th November episode launched a few barbs at the catholic church in an episode about a Christening.

Catholic League president Bill Donohue has written to Family Guy producers, Walt Disney, to complain about the jokes poking fun at the church. He asked:

• Why are so many in Hollywood bent on disparaging our Judeo-Christian heritage?
• Why do they single out Catholics?
• Why can't they treat us the way they treat Muslims and gays?
• Why is Fox muddying the name of Walt Disney?

Donohue detailed the segment of the episode he found offensive:

Meg (The Daughter): Where's the priest?

Lois (The Mother): Oh, the Church ran out of priests months ago because of all the diddling. Now they just have a rabbi fill in.

The scene then cuts to a rabbi at a baptismal font where he makes this comment while doing the baptism.

Rabbi: Welcome to the Christening. Now, before the child goes in the water, has it been at least 20 minutes since she ate?

Joe (Father of Girl being baptised): Yes, rabbi.

Rabbi: Let's dunk this kid like a doughnut. I hereby Christen this child in the name of Jesus Christ, who was killed by we-don't-know-who, it's not important. The last thing we want to do is point fingers.

After the Baptism, the rabbi makes a joke about the Eucharist.

Rabbi: Congratulations, sweetie, you're a Christian. From now on, every Sunday you get to eat a hard cookie and pretend it's a guy.

Perennial hindu whinger Rajan Zed has called on Houston Ballet to cancel the ballet La Bayadère.

Zed said in a statement saying that Houston Ballet, nation's fifth largest ballet company which claimed to be an "anti-racist organization", should not be in the business of callously promoting appropriation of traditions, elements and concepts of "others"; and ridiculing entire communities.

Zed said that this deeply problematic ballet was just a blatant belittling of a rich civilization and exhibited 19th-century orientalist attitudes. He urged non-profit Houston Ballet to apologize for such an inappropriate selection.

Zed also urged Houston Ballet Trustees Chair S. Shawn Stephens, Executive Director James Nelson and Artistic Director Stanton Welch to re-evaluate its systems and procedures so that such an inappropriate stuff did not slip through in the future. In addition, all Houston Ballet employees should be sent for cultural sensitivity training.

The perennial hindu whinger Rajan Zed is urging  Prairie Krafts Brewing Company from Illinois to apologize and rename/withdraw its Trishul Pale Ale; claiming it to be highly inappropriate.

Zed said that inappropriate usage of sacred Hindu symbols or concepts or deities or icons for commercial or other agenda was not okay as it hurt the devotees. Zed indicated that Trishul was an emblem of Lord Shiva and one of the principal divine symbols in Hinduism; and its three prongs denoted the powers of creation, preservation, destruction; and represented three gunas (fundamental principles of universe).

Breweries should not be in the business of religious appropriation, sacrilege, and ridiculing entire communities. It was deeply trivializing of divine Hindu symbol to be displayed on a beer can, Zed claimed.

Upset Hindus have urged Anheuser-Busch InBev, largest brewer in the world, to change the name of its popular Brahma beer, claiming it to be highly inappropriate. The perennial hindu whinger Rajan Zed said:

Creator god Lord Brahma was highly revered in Hinduism, and was meant to be worshipped in temples or home shrines and not to be misused as a toasting tool or selling beer for mercantile greed.

Anheuser-Busch InBev should not be in the business of religious appropriation, sacrilege, and ridiculing entire communities. Inappropriate usage of sacred Hindu deities or concepts or symbols or icons for commercial or other agenda was not okay as it hurt the devotees.

Rajan Zed added that Hollywood celebrities Megan Fox and Jennifer Lopez have reportedly acted in Brahma beer commercials.

Brahma was created by Swiss immigrant Joseph Villager in Brazil in 1888. The company is known throughout Brazil as beer number 1.

Update: Wrong Brahma

16th July 2020. See article from patheos.com

Beers sold under the Brahma name include a lager, a double malt, a wheat beer and a chocolate stout, all named after a smart English geezer called Joseph Bramah, who invented the draft pump valve. But the unnamed and ooh-so-touchy interfaith coalition is convinced that the name belongs exclusively to Lord Brahma, Hinduism's four-headed god of creation, and wants the brewer to find a new name for the product.

Lucas Rossi, Head of Communications for Anheuser-Busch InBev's Latin America subsidiary, appears not be be intimidated. He said:

After explaining that the spelling was changed from Bramah to Brahma to make the name work better in the Portuguese language, and that the Brahma brand s very important to the culture of Brazil which has a tiny minority of Hindus.

All 23 seasons of the Comedy Central cartoon South Park are available on HBO Max -- except for five episodes that depict the religious character Muhammad.

The missing episodes were not part of the 23-season package provided by Viacom to streamers last year, and Viacom had made the decision to exclude them in agreement with series producer South Park Studios before the show was licensed to HBO Max.

The episodes not available on HBO Max include:

• season 5: Super Best Friends
• season 10 Cartoon Wars Part I and Cartoon Wars Part 2, although those episodes can still be streamed on the South Park website.
• season 14: 200 and 201 . Those shows had previously been removed from a streaming deal with Hulu and also were axed on the official South Park website.

The US Conference of Catholic Bishops has called on the US government to confront supposed harms wrought by the pornography industry, which has experienced a surge in website traffic because of the coronavirus pandemic.

In an April 30 letter to Attorney General William Barr, the Conference urged the U.S. Department of Justice to enforce obscenity laws, investigate website owners for criminality, and to encourage state and local governments to crack down on the industry.

The Conference also accuses porn companies of exploiting people's growing sense of isolation and heightened levels of stress caused by the worst public health crisis in more than a century. The letter says:

As pastors, we frequently see the pain that results from a pornography habit. Marriages that are injured or even broken by a spouse's pornography use, which some divorce lawyers report as a factor in over half of their cases, have a ripple effect on children.

As pornography becomes more mainstream, so do its potential dangers. Unprecedented, unlimited, and anonymous access to pornography via modern technology has led users to seek more and more extreme videos. Thus, non-enforcement or lax enforcement of obscenity laws against producers and distributors may provide a gateway for this demand to metastasize, increasing the incidents of trafficking, child pornography, other abuse, and broader unjust conditions.

The Mississippi House of Representatives quietly let die two unlikely bills that targeted online porn.

Mississippi bills, House Bill 1116 and HB 1120 , would have relied on neighboring Southern states -- Georgia, Arkansas, Louisiana, Alabama, Kentucky, Tennessee, West Virginia and Oklahoma -- to enter into an interstate compact for the purposes of banning online pornography and related marketing campaigns on social media platforms.

The bills would also have established a Southern states commission on obscenities prohibition and prescribe its powers and duties.

The bills proposed by pastor Tracy Arnold were designed to find an area of moral decency for the Internet.

The perennial hindu whinger Rajan Zed is urging Three Hills Brewing in Northamptonshire to apologize and withdraw its Veda India Pale Ale; calling it highly inappropriate.

He said that inappropriate usage of Hindu scriptures or deities or concepts or symbols or icons for commercial or other agenda was not okay as it hurt the devotees. Vedas were revealed Sanskrit texts considered as eternal-uncreated-divine-direct transmission from Absolute. Vedas were foundation of Hinduism and included Rig-Veda, world's oldest extant scripture. Zed claimed:

Using Vedas to sell beer was highly insensitive and trivializing of the immensely revered body of sacred and serious knowledge.

Shavasana Ale

Rajan Zed is also urging Newport (Oregon) based Rogue Ales & Spirits brewery to apologize and rename its "Shavasana" (Imperial, Granola Blonde Ale) beer; calling it highly inappropriate.

Zed stated that Shavasana, a highly important posture in yoga, was the ultimate act of conscious surrender and was also used in Yoganidra meditation. Yogis slipped into blissful neutrality in Shavasana. "

Detroit Institute of Arts (DIA), one of the premier art museums in the United States, removed a finger puppet depicting the religious character Ganesha from its Museum Shop website in response to the perennial whinger Rajan Zed.

Hindu spokesman Rajan Zed thanked DIA for understanding the concerns of Hindu community, which thought such a product was trivialization of their greatly venerated deity. But they were still waiting for formal apology from DIA Director-President-CEO Salvador Salort-Pons and Board Chairman Eugene A. Gargaro Junior.

Zed suggested that DIA should send its executives for training in religious and cultural sensitivity if it was serious in meeting one of its goals of being relevant to a broad and diverse audience by 2021 and to better understand the feelings of communities.