Tuesday, November 28, 2006

Offended in Chicago

A Chicago Christmas festival dropped one of its sponsors out of fear that it's product would be offensive to many people. The company in question? New Line Cinema. They wanted to run a loop of an ad for a new movie - The Nativity Story. It seems that anything that reminds people that a Christmas festival is associated with Christmas is now considered offensive.

At first glance this just seems like one more attempt to suppress all public references to Christmas but think about what is going on here. This is not a church or religious group. It is a movie studio. The reason for the suppression is that the movie has a religious content. Allowing the ad to run at the festival does not imply government sponsorship of religion. This is just another example of government selling out. If the movie had been "Deck the Halls" it would almost certainly have been allowed.

The reason given is interesting - seeing an ad for a movie about the birth of Christ might offend some non-Christians. Who? And why would such a thin-skinned person go to a Christmas festival? After all, some vendors sell (gasp) nativity scenes.

This goes a bit beyond the normal suppression of Christianity. It is suppressing a secular company for having a product that would have been permissible if it had a secular content. Now it is not only government sponsorship of religion that is unacceptable, corporations are now covered, also.

No comments: