The Moral Majority continues its diktat, but the Simpsons are 'coming out'

Since Janet Jackson's "wardrobe malfunction" at last year's Super Bowl, the U.S. Congress has been working on a new bill that would raise the fine for 'indecency' from $32,500 to $500,000 for a company and from $11,000 to $500,000 for an individual entertainer. It just overwhelmingly passed the House Wednesday on a 389-38 vote.

Now it seems that the simple idea of switching channels or worse still, turn it off altogether, has yet not reached most Congressman – except for Representative Jerrold Nadler, Democrat of New York who dared to voice that amazing new technological concept.

The beauty of the whole thing is that most broadcasters are actually doing the job themselves – they are censoring themselves, just to play it safe. A famous example is last year's "Saving Private Ryan" airing episode when TV Stations declined to broadcast the movie for fear that violence and language would land them in hot water with the feds. This is exactly what the Hollywood studios did in the 50s, so afraid were they of the repercussions of the witch-hunt and the moral pressure.

The question of what defines 'decency' has really not been thought through of course! That would take too much brain work. But it’s starting to hit home - imagine, Bush himself has acknowledged, in a C-Span interview that his Federal Communications Commission has had some trouble figuring out what exactly constitutes television indecency. The commission defines obscene material as describing sexual conduct "in a patently offensive way" and lacking "serious literary, artistic, political or scientific value." Indecent material is not as offensive but still contains references to sex or excretions (I like the 'excretion' one!). So what about a work that has "serious literary, artistic, political or scientific value." and still contains 'sex'? Who's to decide that something has a rtistic value? The ‘artistic police’? The government? For an administration that based its rhetoric on less government intervention, the contradiction is blatant.

Now I suppose this is nothing that should surprise those of us who tend to follow the news . Remember when in 2002, during the war against the Taliban, when US Attorney General John Ashcroft appeared in front of female, art-deco "Spirit of Justice" statues whose nudity had been carefully covered with black curtains. More recently, the FCC launched an investigation after some viewers complained about a parade of actors portraying naked statues during the opening ceremony of the Olympic games (Among them were the satyr and the nude male statues, kouroi, both emblems of ancient Greece's golden age.). These are signs of the times we live in.

Now in this bleak picture, however, there is a glimpse of hope:

• ­cable and satellite channels are not subject to indecency fines (even though they can just as easily be accessible to children.
• in tonight's episode of 'The Simpsons', “There’s Something About Marrying”, the town of Springfield decides to legalize same-sex marriage (to boost tourism, ) and one of Sprinfield's own comes out of the closet. (and for the first time in the show's history, the episode bears a "Viewer Discretion" warning).

Now I think the essential question is - who will come out of the closet?