Told more elegantly than I ever could on The Freethinker, the Voice of Atheism since 1881.
A BLASPHEMY complaint against a sports magazine has been dismissed by the press ombudsman in South Africa.
Sports Illustrated raised the wrath of a reader when, in March, it published a golfing joke featuring Jesus and St Peter in the context of an article about technology in sport.
Jesus portrayed as a golfing coach in this cheesy – and somewhat suggestive – ornament obtainable from CatholicShopper.com. How can one possibly resist it?
When Jesus (the Christian Messiah whose followers are responsible for much misery since his death in the first century CE) hooked his first tee-shot (the first ball hit by someone playing golf,) an angel (imaginary winged person who is supposed to watch over each person; also known as guardian angel) guided the ball back into play, the Dove of Peace (the same type of bird that Moses released to determine if the flood was over) caught the ball in its beak and dropped it on the green, from where the Holy Spirit ( in Christian mythology, a manifestation of the supreme being which shows itself sometimes as a gust of wind. Born agains who babble incoherent in "tongues" think they are possessed by the Holy Spirit.) blew the ball into the hole.
An exasperated St Peter (Jesus' right hand man in the Christian gospels; also said to be the gatekeeper at the entrance to heaven, i.e., Christian paradise in the afterlife) then said to Jesus:
Do you wanna play golf or do you wanna fuck around?
Clearing St Peter (and the magazine) of blasphemy, deputy ombudsman Johan Retief said yesterday that SP was expressing his feelings, not swearing or blaspheming, when he urged Jesus not to “fuck around” .
Retief revealed that the complainant, André Williams, insisted that the article went too far by telling a joke about Jesus, and that the word “fuck” was a swearword that amounted to blasphemy.
Williams also played the “you wouldn’t mess like this with the Muslims card” when he asked what would happen if the names of St Peter and Jesus were replaced with Mohammed and Allah.
But Retief ruled that the phrase ‘fuck around’ was used to express a feeling of irritation, and did not amount to swearing.
‘Fuck you’ would have been swearing. Although it can be said that the use of the phrase ‘fuck around’ constitutes bad taste, it does not, by definition, amount to a breach of the Press Code.
He also said the context of the joke in the story – that technology could turn sport into a joke in its pursuit of perfection – was of vital importance.
The fact that the joke had been published many times all over the world indicated a moral climate that tolerated it.
He said the question of what would happen if the names were replaced with Mohammed and Allah was hypothetical as each case had to be considered on its own merits.
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