A flood of complaints against the Bible, alleging that it peddles pornography, and incest, have been received by the licensing authority.
HONG KONG: For millions of practitioners of Christianity the world over, the Bible is ‘the Good Book’, a source of spiritual and moral strength. But in Hong Kong, which is currently in the grip of a debate over morality following the publication of a sex survey in a students’ newsletter, a public signature campaign has targeted the Bible as an ‘indecent’ and ‘immoral’ body of work.
A flood of over 1,400 complaints against the Bible, alleging that it peddles pornography, and condones rape, incest and bestiality, among other unspeakable horrors, have been received by the Television and Entertainment Licensing Authority (TELA), which oversees the publishing industry in Hong Kong. This follows the initiation of a signature campaign by a Chinese-language website (www.truthbible.net), which claims that it wishes to “lay bare the truth about the Bible” before the public.
The website cites graphic passages from the Bible as ‘evidence’ that the Bible qualifies to be classified as an ‘indecent publication’ in Hong Kong under the Control of Obscene and Indecent Articles Ordinance. If it is classified as such, only adults over age 18 can read the Bible, and in fact copies will have to be sold in sealed packs (like sex magazines), with a statutory warning that the contents are of an adult nature.
The signature campaign by the anonymous website run by a person with the handle “Oh My God” appears to be a response to a recent TELA ruling that a students’ newsletter that published a sex survey was “indecent”. Referring to the TELA ruling, ‘Oh My God’ says in his ‘sample complaint letter’ on the website that the Bible was in fact far more indecent than the sex survey, and should therefore be classified as an obscene publication.
In response to questions that DNA e-mailed, the website administrator said that since the campaign had been initiated, the website had come under a denial-of service attack. “We will reply to you after we have fixed this issue,” ‘Oh My God’ said.
The Television and Entertainment Licensing Authority said it was yet to decide on the complaints. There are an estimated 5,00,000 Christians in Hong Kong, which has a population of about 7 million.
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