What Brion said. In the policy we put together, we stated that offense was to be in the eyes of the offended, not in the inoffensive motives of the creator of the name. Certainly there are all kinds of religious belief and practice, sincerely followed, that may be offensive to others, even to co-religionists. Tom Parmenter |From: Sheldon Rampton <sheldon.rampton(a)verizon.net> |Date: Tue, 28 Jan 2003 18:19:36 -0600 | |Brion Vibber wrote: | |>Offense is only taken, not given. There is no objective measure of |>offensiveness that I can perform; actual reactions and quanitifable |>results as to how the project is affected are much more convincing to |>me. | |This is a good point. There's no way of knowing simply from the |phrase "Crucified Christ" whether the speaker means it as a joke or |as some sort of actual statement of religious belief. | |Mormons actually regard the crucifix itself as offensive. They argue |that using it as a religious symbol is tantamount to worshipping the |weapon used to murder Christ. Obviously, most traditional Christian |religions don't share this attitude, but it has a certain logic to it. | |I remember taking a Japanese Buddhist on a visit to a Catholic church |once. She walked around the chapel, looking at the depictions of the |stations of the cross, with Jesus dragging the crucifix and being |tortured with his crown of thorns and blood dripping down his |forehead. I don't know if she was "offended," exactly, but she |certainly found it scary. |-- |-------------------------------- || Sheldon Rampton || Editor, PR Watch (www.prwatch.org) || Author of books including: || Friends In Deed: The Story of US-Nicaragua Sister Cities || Toxic Sludge Is Good For You || Mad Cow USA || Trust Us, We're Experts |-------------------------------- |_______________________________________________ |WikiEN-l mailing list |WikiEN-l(a)wikipedia.org |http://www.wikipedia.org/mailman/listinfo/wikien-l |