Virgin Mary anal sex isn't blasphemy

The satirical image in question. Blasphemous? (Copyright T-Shirt Hell.com)

The Muhammad Cartoon Crisis still lives: In case you assumed people had settled down and moved on to important things like global warming or bombings of innocents you better think twice. Not only is the Sudan government actively using it to divert attention from their local strifes but in Denmark the Copenhagen police lawyer have had to decide if he could take a shop owner to court for selling a t-shirt. Yes, that was "court" and "t-shirt" in the same sentence.

The t-shirt depicts the Christian figure Virgin Mary, mother of Jesus in case you forgot, and has the controversial text "Mary Was Only A Virgin If You Don't Count Anal" printed. It's made and sold by an on-line shop. A shop somewhere in Denmark was selling it just like about 1000 shops around Europe. I'm sure people either find it funny or childish in which cases they either laugh or ignore it. So far. Because now that we've had the controversy over the Muhammad Cartoons some people are a little tense. A Catholic priest walks by the store and immediately starts convincing the store owner to remove the shirt from the shelves which he then does! Of course, the manufacturers are still printing them and 999 other stores are still selling them.

In Denmark we have a blasphemy paragraph. (Yes, it's year 2006.) A Muslim politician, Marwan Zobi (representing Socialists Peoples Party whom I didn't think were worrying themselves about blasphemy!?), asked the police to trial the shop for blasphemy. This is (roughly) what police lawyer Jens Rasmussen has just said:

"I don't think that saying Virgin Mary should have had a sex life including behaviour of the mentioned kind is to be considered mocking and subject to trial by the paragraph about blasphemy."

(For that quote alone I just had to type in a Newsvine article. Link to source in Danish)

Some Newsviners may think me welcoming blasphemy in general is inconsistent with my bashing of the Muhammad Cartoons. It isn't. I agree with the Nepalese Socialists press release: blasphemy is good in the sense that it's anti-religion, but the Muhammad Cartoons were part of an Islamophobic crusade on Middle Eastern people. Big difference. Christians saying "if you can't mock Muhammad, you can't mock Virgin Mary" are simplifying the issue. I can mock Virgin Mary because essentially she's part of an ideology indoctrinating my culture. Muhammad is part of someone else's culture so it must be someone else's job to mock him.

I'd like to own the Mary t-shirt myself. So far I only own one with an old rune carving hailing fertility and the text "heathens have better sex" on it. (Well, actually the words in Danish are a little more illustrative than that but we'll let that part rest.) It's probably better to say what one likes in ones own personality than saying what one doesn't like about other people's personalities anyway. Or perhaps this Virgin Mary t-shirt is really a Catholic counter argument to my heathen t-shirt!?

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