Christian Author Pines For Days When Religious Leaders Got To Boss Hollywood Around

[NeoGreen]

http://www.patheos.com/blogs/friendlyatheist/2017/06/23/christian-author-pines-for-days-when-religious-leaders-got-to-boss-hollywood-around/

Christian Author Pines For Days When Religious Leaders Got To Boss Hollywood Around
June 23, 2017 by Robyn Pennacchia

Christian author Jerry Newcombe is not happy with Hollywood these days, specifically with how it’s ignoring flyover country. He longs for the “good old days” when the Motion Picture Production Code (usually referred to as the Hays Code, after Will H. Hays, president of the Motion Picture Producers and Distributors of America) allowed church leaders to have more of a say in what ought to be allowed in movies.

(snip)

For the unhep, the Hays Code was a set of guidelines “voluntarily” (i.e.: Not enforced by the government) adopted by the motion picture industry in order to avoid pictures getting banned in various states with strict “moral decency” laws, and, yes, in response to groups like American Roman Catholics harping on about immorality in films.

It didn’t just ban swearing. It didn’t just ban sex. It banned gay people (“any inference of sex perversion”), it banned mocking the clergy and Betty Boop’s flapper outfit. It banned sympathy for criminals or justification of crimes or people getting away with crimes. It was also incredibly racist! The code literally banned interracial romances — likely for the same reasons Bob Jones University banned interracial dating until 2000. The first “loosening” of that part of the code was the 1949 movie Pinky in which a white actress playing a black woman who was “passing” as white had a relationship with a white man.