US Religion

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. "