SPCS

SOCIETY FOR PROMOTION OF COMMUNITY STANDARDS INC.

Minister Hon. Rick Barker Fails to Replace Lame-Duck Board Censors

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Media Release 24/10/07

The Minister of Internal Affairs, the Hon. Rick Barker, has failed to replace three members of the nine-member Film and Literature Board of Review (“the Board”), whose positions expired on 31 March 2007, almost seven months ago. The Society, which has raised numerous concerns with the Minister and his predecessor, the Hon. George Hawkins, over their respective failures to comply with their statutory duties regarding Board appointments; says that these three lame- duck members – Peter Cartwright, Dr Lalita Rajasingham and Stephen Stehlin – have played no active role in Board proceedings since 27 April 2007. However, it points out that the Board is required by law to have NINE fully-functioning members (not just six), each fully capable of participating in all review processes, who reflect the breadth of cultural, ethical and standards-based concerns found in New Zealand Society in the area of censorship (safeguarding the “public good”) [1].

The Board has continued this year to convene hearings, deliberate on critical reviews and issue decisions, but has done so since the end of April without any input from the three lame-duck members concerned. While it is true that the Board can operate with full authority and carry out its functions in law as a quorum of five [2], the non-participation of three members due to their positions having expired, is not sanctioned in law, says the Society. The quorum provision is only there for pragmatic reasons – to overcome genuine unavailability (sickness, family commitments, work conflicts etc) of members. It is not a provision put in place to assist a tardy Minister, unable or refusing to carry out his statutory duties. [Read more…]

Chief Censor Bill Hastings and Hardcore Pornographer Steve Crow

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In a press release issued last year to explain why his Office had banned the Otago University student magazine Critic, which featured a controversial essay on drug rape, Chief Censor William (Bill) Kenneth Hastings described a male pornographer whose profile was also featured in the magazine, as one “who makes a living by filming the extreme degradation and humiliation of women for sexual arousal.” [1]. The man concerned has done well financially making obscene hard-core pornography, just like flamboyant 50-year old New Zealand pornographer Steve Crow – dubbed NZ’s “Porn King” by the media. Crow became infamous in 2002 for seeking unsuccessfully to use the facilities of the Waikato District Hospital to film the birth of his aspiring ‘porn star’ Nikki’s baby, so he could incorporate the birth scene into his sleazy porn film entitled “Ripe” [2].

Crow, who recently failed in his bid for the Auckland mayoralty, continues to promote his most visible enterprise Erotica Adult Lifestyles Exhibitions (“SeXpo”),  promoting it via his “Boobs on Bikes” parades of topless pornstars in various New Zealand cities. He boasts that his business is the largest supplier of “adult” explicit sex publications (DVDs etc.) to the New Zealand commercial market. According to a North & South report, [in 2002] “he, his ex-business partner Fiona Gibb and his company Vixen Direct” faced no less than “135 criminal charges” – pleading guilty to 33 of the lesser charges – relating to the distribution of “objectionable” publications [3]. A Listener report in 2004 notes that he remains perfectly happy to be called a “pornographer” and a “sleazeball” [4]. He is managing director of the so-called “adult entertainment” (porn) empire CVC Group Ltd.

Hastings, like Crow, also has a job dealing with hard-core porn sleaze, earning about $190,000 a year censoring publications featuring the extreme degradation and humiliation of women for sexual arousal, paedophilia, sexual violence, necrophilia, bestiality, sex involving human faeces, and other “objectionable” content. However, one key difference between the two men is that Crow invests his own money into making, watching and selling degrading moral filth, while Hastings gets paid by the tax-payers of New Zealand to watch and re-watch it and study it in excruciating detail.

Hastings, dubbed “Mr Clean” in a recent NZ Herald article [5] and his dream team, predominantly women, operate from a plush office on the 4th Floor of BP House in Wellington, with spectacular commanding views over the harbour. They write lengthy reports that provide the legal justifications for why this hard-core porn garbage can be viewed by those 18 years of age and older – classifying most of it as serving the purpose of “entertainment” – serving the purpose of adult sexual titillation etc. Hastings would maintain that by writing these lengthy reports detailing the finer nuances of all these explicit and degrading sex acts, etc. they are strictly fulfilling the requirements of the legislation by viewing and classifying the publications. [Read more…]

Are “gay” couples demanding “special rights” in seeking same-sex ‘marriage’?

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This question is addressed in the Video Documentary Gay Rights / Special Rights: Inside the Homosexual Agenda marketed in New Zealand by Living Word Distributors (Hamilton).  The Society is most grateful to the Wellington-based “gay” rights activist, Calum Bennachie, for producing a full transcript of the video – excerpts of which are reproduced below to address the question under consideration.

To view go to:  http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=7664929225320091404

Mr Bennachie prepared the transcript (in the public domain) as part of a voluminous submission to Film and Literature Board of Review (“the Board”), in which he successfully sought, on behalf of Human Rights Action Group (Wellington), to have this video banned.

Excerpts from Living Word Video Gay Rights/Special Rights

(Note: The video has now been classified “unrestricted” by the Board following a unanimous Court of Appeal decision to quash the flawed High Court decision that had upheld the ban by the Board).

Lou Sheldon: “Homosexuals have equal rights under the First Amendment, the Fourteenth Amendment, (CUT TO A SCENE OF TWO WHITE MEN SEATED UNDER A TREE, HOLDING EACH OTHER. ONE IS DRESSED IN A SINGLET AND SHORTS, THE OTHER IN SHORTS ONLY) and the State Constitutions of every State in which they reside. (CUT TO A SCENE OF TWO WHITE WOMEN LINE DANCING WITH EACH OTHER). But the issue here today is special rights. A special category of protection. (CUT TO LOU SHELDON WITH BLACK MEN BEHIND HIM. THE TITLE SAYS “LOU SHELDON CHAIRMAN, TRADITIONAL VALUES COALITION”). They want to be elevated from a behaviour based lifestyle, to a true minority status that would then give them special rights.”

Ralph Reed: [EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR, CHRISTIAN COALITION]. “No one should (FADE IN TITLE “RALPH REED… “) have special rights or privileges, or minority status because of their sexual behaviour. (FADE OUT TITLE) We don’t have it for people who are polygamists, we don’t have it for people who have affairs on their wive’s or husband’s …”Peter Marshall: [CONSTITUTIONAL HISTORIAN]. Voice over: “If you give, homosexuals special rights in America, first of all you open a Pandora’s Box … to every deviant behaviour group logically being able to line up and bang on the same door, and insist on, special rights for themselves. You have totally destroyed, … really, … a realistic understanding of Human Rights.”

Edwin Meese: [FORMER UNITED STATES ATTORNEY GENERAL]. “Homosexuals [in ordinary conduct] today, ah, should not be discriminated against, and generally are not. Ah, they’re entitled to the same constitutional rights of, ah, free speech; ah, if anything, ah, they have used, ah, free speech to the point, ah, where their conduct is [probably] offensive, ah, to most people.”

For Full Transcript of GayRight/Special Rights video go to:

http://www.christian-apologetics.org/html/Gay_rights_Special_rights.htm

For Full Transcript of the other Living Word video AIDS: What You Haven’t Been Told go to:

http://www.christian-apologetics.org/html/Aids.htm

What is Wrong with Gay Marriage?

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Stanley Kurtz examines the social dangers of sanctioning gay marriage.

"A clear majority of the American public opposes same-sex marriage," says Stanley Kurtz of the Hudson Institute. "And yet this opposition, though real, is by-and-large silent. So striking is this general silence, that one cannot help but wonder about the reasons for it."

To read complete article go to:

http://www.orthodoxytoday.org/articles/KurGayM.htm

Also see:

Gay Marriage — and Marriage
Sam Shulman

"…In a gay marriage, one of two men must play the woman, or one of two women must play the man. "Play" here means travesty–burlesque. Not that their love is a travesty; but their participation in a ceremony that apes the marriage bond, with all that goes into it, is a travesty. Their taking-over of the form of this crucial and fragile connection of opposites is a travesty of marriage’s purpose of protecting, actually and symbolically, the woman who enters into marriage with a man. To burlesque that purpose weakens those protections, and is essentially and profoundly anti-female."

To read complete article go to:

http://orthodoxytoday.org/articles2/SchulmanGayMarriage.php

NZ Forum on the Family

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imageThis Forum to be held in Auckland on Monday 15th of October 2007 will bring together a national network of pro-family and pro-life organisations, scholars, lobby groups and leaders that seek to promote and protect the well-being of families, the role of parents and the welfare of our children.

For more details, go here.