THIS week the European Court of Human Rights handed down a verdict which law-and-religion pundits will be pondering for years to approach. It vindicated Sekmadienis,a company selling the work of Robert Kalinkin, a Lithuanian fashion designer. The seller had been fined for using images of Jesus and the Virgin Mary which Catholics found offensive.
The case refers to a Kalinkin campaign in 2012 which featured a bare-chested young man and a woman, and both with halos: the man was sporting jeans and tattoos,and the female figure wore a white dress with a string of beads. The captions consisted of lines such as: “Jesus, what trousers!”, or “Dear Mary,what a dress!” and “Jesus, Mary, or what are you wearing?After receiving some complaints about the images,Lithuania’s State Consumer Protection Agency (SPCA) consulted the bishops of the Catholic church, to which nearly 80% of Lithuanians adhere. This led to Sekmadienis...
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Source: economist.com