depends on context. Not in and of themselves lying in a bookshop, but if you were to get a gang together with flaming torches to stand outside “G-A-Y” and started reading the nastiest bits of Leviticus through a megaphone, you’d get your collar felt.

Which is indeed worth noting if you’re looking at the inconsistencies here, since the most disturbing images on the web which are easily avalable tend to be manga.

“References to a photograph also include—
a tracing or other image, whether made by electronic or other means (of whatever nature)—
which is not itself a photograph or pseudo-photograph, but which is derived from the whole or part of a photograph or pseudo-photograph (or a combination of either or both); and
data stored on a computer disc or by other electronic means which is capable of conversion into an image within paragraph and subsection (8) applies in relation to such an image as it applies in relation to a pseudo-photograph.”

That sounds to me as though sculpture is OK but oil or watercolour paintings would be illegal if the prosecution could find photo references.

So statues of Pan-on-goat or cartoons of girl-on-zombie action remain OK. Non-photorealistic CGI should also be OK, although it wouldn’t surprise me if the definitional problems cited by Picador put off many artists.

(AIUI Canada is even madder than the UK in this respect, criminalising the posession of extreme pornography in written story form…)

Actually, the problem with prior restraint on speech is that if there is any ambiguity at all in how to read a law, its effect will be to chill any speech that could conceivably fall within its bounds. A “literal interpretation” is perhaps the best case anyone could hope for; but of course, when the class of speech that results in a prison term isn’t capable of precise, literal definition (most forms of speech aren’t), we must be very careful to avoid saying anything that we fear a judge might possibly interpret as falling within the bounds of the statute.

A hit! A palpable hit!

Nah, I’ve only heard of it via comics-blog mockery of the items in the monthly ‘Previews’ catalog of upcoming releases.

Now, that’s just rude.

But we don’t live in Mills time. We live in the age of the Internet, which could be equivalent to an angry crowd gathered at the corn dealers door?

A lot of the 2006 protest was used as a way of saying “all religions are stupid, so they deserve mockery.” Given the mainstream acceptance of Amis/Dawkins/Hitchens et al. “muscular liberal” case against Islam, this was something to be cheered. I as a British Asian on the receiving end of all this don’t distinguish much between them and the BNP, but anyway, I came to terms with one of my loved comedians Stewart Lee stepping out of satire and into all-out religion-bashing on TV.

The homosexuality case is at least a bit more black-and-white. Anyone considering deriding homosexuality is rightfully dismissed as an idiot by all liberals. The religious and Muslims in particular don’t get equal treatment.

On slightly less firm territory, it might be interesting to see how the links between homophobia and certain religious views have made the anti-religion and the LGBT movement one and the same.