Margaret, what did I miss? I know there have been some technical difficulties today, but what has happened with text and images? Did someone post some bad stuff?

I really hate to see you leave us. I respect your decision to leave, but I hope things get straightened out and you decide to stay.

Foxy.

I wonder what happened too. I must have missed something.

It's a short film advertizement on the side of each forum. It rotates with other, less repulsive fare and features a rear "up-skirt" moving picture of a nearly naked woman. Here it is, sort of, kind of, more or less. I put together a shortened animated gif of this thing. Click on the little image to see a larger version.

Dear one, I signed in under my 'name' no problem. I have managed to avoid that, since before Spike left. I have just waited a day or two, and moved on, not having to sign in and 'remember' my stuff.

Today I did. Today, I got a most distressing phone call from a friend, unbelievably offended by advertising here.

I don't have a pre-teen daughter. I don't HAVE TO HAVE a preteen daughter to be affected by my friends distress or feel my friends betrayal. How can we feel comfortable telling young persons about 'how to care for plants' when they can be so callousely distracted and led astray?

Well, I'm here championing Margarets indignation. I'm feeling her wound. I wouldn't have felt it myself, but that just shows my shallow nature, and the fact that I'm beyond being alarmed at the possibility of 'MY SON' seeing this image. I should annotate that boy wouldn't log on here unless his livelyhood was threatened!

Then there is this Log In crap, once again. Who turned the style at the GW mart today? We gotta all stand in line, swear to follow, or abide... What is the DEAL? Been there, Done That, Again, and Again, and Again. What is the benefit for the 'company' to have this happen over, again and again. We hide'n murderers? Who talk about their dark deeds? Who need to be found?

(I got a clue from a phone call, earlier. Ever hear anyone vibrate over the phone???? Yep.)

There is a possibility, now that I've outlined my position, I won't be back under this name. (How offensive was I?)

Isn't this just a workout ad from Nike? Isn't their slogan "Just Do It"? The pic is, what I believe to be, the derierre of world famous tennis player Serena Williams. Is the upskirt shot a mere shot of her tennis skirt?

The picture itself is no different from a Hanes Her Way or Victoria's Secret ad. Skin, derierries and breasts are plastered all over those ads/catalogs/TV commercials. Granted, you won't find the Nike slogan in any of those ads.

The text in the ad, "I'm proud of my butt and I think it's proud of me too", IMO, is nothing more than Serena saying to America, "I'm proud of my ample behind, even though it doesn't look like "America's" behind, and it's proud of me too- I'm a success."

There is nothing repulsive, vulgar, immoral or wrong with the picture or with what SHE is saying. And,I doubt Nike will be changing it's slogan anytime soon- it's worked for them thus far.

It's a shame that you ladies are offended by the ad and that you, Margaret, wish to leave GW because of it. You've contributed quite a bit to my enjoyment of GW and I always enjoy looking at your pictures. Wish you wouldn't leave....

GH

I take that ad the same way as you, GH. I think it's a positive, not a negative. Don't we want young girls to be proud of their butts, no matter what?

There's a world of difference between Nike's slogan - which they've used for years - and this particular ad campaign. They've changed ad campaigns over the years, no problem. But this particular campaign is strange, because Nike is trying to TARGET women by eroticizing women. It's the wrong way to go, and I wonder what marketing genius came up with this tripe. It's a totally wrong message: if you want women to feel empowered as women by your product, you don't make them see themselves as a man would see them. It's crazy. In this ad, the ideal viewer is clearly a guy... but if the ideal viewer is supposed to be the one who's buying your product... well, it's off the mark.

And while I am no prude, I find this ad offensive, and not because it is clearly sexualizing "some woman's" butt (you can say it's Serena Williams, but how the heck would I know? It's not like she has a face, or anything. I guess the butt's the only thing that's important?) I'm offended by this ad because it takes women apart. Think about how often, in film, tv, and advertising, that you see women in parts - you see her butt or her hands or that long slow camera pan up her body. That's called "fetishistic scopophilia," and it sounds like a disease because it's nasty like a disease. It takes women apart, dehumanizes them, objectifies them. It allows us to consume them - literally: eat them, like you would cut up a steak and chow it down - because they're not "real" anymore. They're all in bits and pieces.

All this sounds really academic, but it's NOT. It's stuff that we see everyday. And yeah, OF COURSE, women should not be ashamed of their butts. But they shouldn't be ashamed of their butts, not because they're big or small or round or flat, but because they are worth more than their butts. Their butts are not the sum of their value. And what would you say if the vision of butt-beauty featured in this ad campaign swept the runways? Then every girl would want a rounded butt. And all the skinny-butt girls would feel left out and ugly. You know, this ad doesn't empower women or emancipate them from some socially-constructed standard of beauty. All it does is change the standard. But the standard's out there, and there's always going to be someone who doesn't make the cut.

Anyway... omg, I could rant about this all day. I'm interested in hearing what some other people have to say about this.

Shelly

I think the ad is being taken a little more seriously than it's meant to be taken.

I'll just agree to disagree w/ those of you who are offended by it.

Apparently this ad is a few months old. This article about it is from August.

Here is a link that might be useful: Nike's Big Butt is Bold and Beautiful

I'm not that old or young that I don't realize the dangers of this ad. I know all to well what a randy teenager does when he's visually stimulated. I wouldn't wish that on my enemy.
I try very hard to teach my daughter modesty, that means you cover your private areas. How in the world are you supposed to continue to teach modesty if there is this sort of cr*p all over the place. I'm not asamed of my behind, but it's not for everyone in the world to see but my husband only. I'm not prudish either, I used to wear some pretty suggestive clothes, but that was when I was a toothpick and in high school, women need to grow up and stop flashing their undies to anyone who asks, it's degrading and not becoming to your body or how people think of you.
When it's time to teach my son about women and men being different, he's not going to think belly button rings, or tatoos, or bare midriffs, or butts. He's not going to be taught there are no morals anymore so it's ok to do and say anything you please, because my morals are different than yours and it's all ok, and nobody is going to h*ll in a handbasket, because there is none. He's going to respect women, not think of them as eye candy.
I'm not sure if I'd be back, I probably will, because it looks like they've removed the ad.

I don't agree with David Kilney's take on the ad at all. First of all, he's a guy, not a woman. He's the ideal viewer, with the "gaze" of a male. The fact that he uses this as a springboard to address male image problems in advertising is a big indication of how little he tries to step out of this "way of looking." I'm not saying that guys are not allowed to speak out on women's issues. I'm just saying that if you're an ad's ideal viewer, and your intention is to give a critical response to that ad, then you have to be aware of who you are in the game, and how the ad is trying to manipulate you. And he doesn't seem to have that awareness.

Secondly, he's saying that this ad speaks to "everywoman." I strongly doubt that the North American "everywoman" has a body like Selena Williams. She's a professional athlete!

And, like David Kilney, I have no problem at all with professional athletes doing advertising - more power to them. But this ad doesn't feature her athletic prowess. It features her *$$ - and I use the dollar signs for a reason. Advertising is Big Bucks with Capital Letters, and it would be irresponsible not to take it seriously. Advertising is a HUGE cultural force - in my opinion, it's one of the strongest forces in determining how we (especially women) judge ourselves, where we place value. Do we want to tell women that their worth is located mainly in their posterior ass-ets?

Thirdly, he compares this ad to the Dove ad. What a load of gobbledygook! The Dove ad features six or seven women of varying body types - none of whom are unhealthily overweight or underweight, and all of whom I think are more like "everywoman" than Serena Williams. For instance, they're *not* professional athletes, with professional athletes' bodies. Also, in the Dove ad, we see the ENTIRE woman. There are shots of particular body pieces, but they're contextualized within the image of the women's entire bodies. These women are not objectified by some outsider's gaze, looking at them in bits and pieces. And in the Nike ad, there's not even "bits and pieces" - there's one bit and one piece: her butt.

As you can tell, I'm really disturbed by this ad, and I want to thank you, Margaret, for bringing it to our attention. I've respected Nike's advertising towards women in the past. I think Nike empowered women, helping them realize that they could be active and beautiful without worrying about breaking a sweat or breaking a nail. Now, of course, the point of all advertising is to manipulate us into thinking we need 1) the type of product being sold and 2) the brand of the advertiser. But within that framework, I thought Nike was above the eroticization that we see in this ad. Turns out I was wrong.

Margaret-please don't leave us. I am glad you showed the ad. My first thought was-that is a nice butt. I was not offended by this ad-I just do not like any ad and really, there is so much garbage you can get over the net, it is something we all put up with... **ck buddy, penis enlargement etc.on my e-mail account and on and on. I just spent 2 days traveling in an airport and saw butts, boobs and belly buttons all over the place. This butt is totally allowed out in public so I guess you need to close your eyes if you do not want to see it.

These are indeed strange times!

Shelly, you hit the proverbial nail on its proverbial head. To a degree that is almost spooky. The presentation of this "butt" is made to appear at first as if she is totally nude, and it is presented in what appear to be reverse bites. Never mind whether it's everywhere else. GW was my "safe haven", a place where I could meet you all without having filth shoved in my face(or down my throat would be almost as correct an analogy considering this particular piece of "it").

I'm not a prude, either, gee whiz, check out Fern in her bathtub. I think you can have a perfectly modest nude and have studied a bit of figure drawing in my time. I enjoy the exercize, in fact. This piece is anything but modest, though, it's extremely disturbing to me.

I will be around until I can sign in under my usual user name, at which time I will be removing everything I have in Hortiplex, so if somebody wants to comment, I'm listening.

I love you all and when/if I find a gem like the "old" GW, I'll let you know.

Hi all,

Well, this certainly is interesting. And it so interesting I'm having a hard time separating all of the issues that this advertisement is invoking. So I would like to try to separate them and comment on each one individually.

As others in this thread have proclaimed, I'm no prude either. After living on this planet for 50 years, although I have not seen at all, I think I've come pretty close to it. lol As a male, I really don't find this advertising to be that titillating. It's pretty much an in-your-face advertisement and I am not that fond of somebody sticking their bottom in my face. I also don't even think it's a very good ad. If my marketing director couldn't come up with an ad anymore imaginative than this I would fire him. No, this ad is not the worst I've ever seen. I see a lot worse on TV. The Victoria's Secret adds come to my mind. Women suggestively dancing around in their underwear is a little embarrassing to me when it comes to mixed company and especially if my mother is in the same room. I often think that if I had a 15-year-old boy how this is something that I would not want him to see on TV. I think there is a time and a place for most things. In my opinion, the Nike and the Victoria Secret's ads really belong in a men's magazine.

Next, is the broader subject of how society sells its products. Yes, sex and the sensational sells. I wonder where and why we have come to this place. These are the kinds of ads that give young girls and young women identity problems. Very few girls or women are ever going to have a body like what is seen in the Victoria secret's ads. The more we see ads like this the more girls and women have trouble with their body images. Increasing cases of anorexia and bulimia are, in my opinion, a result of these aggressive sexually titillating advertisements. And, I'm not sure that it is healthy for boys and young man to see women displayed as sexual objects in everyday advertisements. I think it really devalues women in the eyes of these young people.

So we come to Nike's ad on garden web. I think there is a time and a place for most things and having a woman's backside provocatively displayed in GW is a little over the top. In my opinion, it would also be as equally inappropriate to have a Victoria's Secret ad or Sports Illustrated swimsuit ad showing women practically falling out of their swimming suits on GW. Although I respect anyone's opinion who says that these ads are not offensive to them They are offensive to some people as indicated by all of the negative entries that we are seeing in this thread. And if they are offensive to some of the people in this thread you can be sure that they are offensive to a lot more people visiting garden web who we will never hear from.

Over the years GW has been a haven devoid of sexually suggestive advertisements. It amazes me why they think it is time to change that philosophy. Though I have a feeling that they hadn't even thought of it. I hope the powers that be read some of these comments from longtime GWers, take note and take that Nike ad off the forum.

Larry

Hi Margaret-

I am a GW newbie, relatively speaking, but I hope you don't leave us. I see at the bottom of this page a "Letters and Comments" option that we can use to let the iVillage folks know our opinions about the site itself; I hope everyone who was offended by The Butt will consider sending them a message!

Best wishes,
Ana

Well, I'm me again, sort of, kind of(I miss my capital n and my member page. Oh h3ll, I miss GardenWeb.). They're changing the servers for Hortiplex but once I can edit everything out of there, I'm gone. If anybody finds another place like the old GW I'm anxious to hear about it.

Nigella,

I'm sure that a lot of people will be sad to see you go, when you do make sure to keep in touch with the friend's you've made here because they'll want to hear from you or participate with you wherever you go.

I've seen you post this post in various forums and the one thing I don't understand is; if the ad affected you so tremendously as has been pointed out and you find it so offensive. Why would you make it into a shorter gif and why you would post it on other forums so even more people could be offended?

You're only hurting yourself and exposing more people to the ad who had not seen it. All the ads on GW are block for me. I didn't see the ad until I saw you post it. Don't subject yourself to something you don't like and don't subject others to it, either. Life's too short to let things like that get to you. You'll only hurt yourself in the end. Trust me I've seen it happen with family memebers.

That being said I don't find anything wrong with the ad and if anyone has ever been on msn,yahoo or aol.com you've been exposed to worse. And those are sites that have limits on what they'll show. That ad is no different than the pictures of models sticking their butts out on the packages of underwear you see in the department store.

Anyway, sorry to see something bother you so much and hope that wherever you land it will be just as good if not better than what you had here.

Good luck.

:0)

This place hasn't been as good as it was in a year. Sigh. I miss GW. And Spike. As for you, I'm not surprised somehow that it doesn't offend you.

OK, so what's up with the caps thing on sign-in? What's the purpose of that, and how did you guys know how to handle it? I didn't have a capital, since the "o's" were just fillers (to give me the required # of digits on another forum long ago) I had to put an initial capital "o" in in order to log in this time, but it looks like it's not showing up that way anyway. Weird.

Shelly-- I think you said it eloquently! A woman ought to be more than the sum of her parts, no matter the size, shape, and societal appraisal of said parts.

As for you, I'm not surprised somehow that it doesn't offend you.

what's that suppose to mean? Feel free to not be so vague.

Ooojen,

Can I still use the O for your name? I dunno what's up with the capitals but I think it may be for the best in the long wrong. I'm part of another forum where the people are no where near as nice as here. They allow you to have your name in caps and in lower case. Because of that you can have people sign up as Ooojen and oojen and even an oOjen. People take advantage of being able to change just one letter and copy people's handles to harrass other or impersonate them. Sometimes it gets really out of hand.

Maybe it's a good thing it's all lower case letters.

MrBrownThumb, you have very vocally disagreed with me on every issue I've ever mentioned so it doesn't surprise me that you're doing it in this thread too.

I'm waiting for the new owneres to finalize the Hortiplex servers so I can go in and remove my pictures from there. Nice to find out how much lying has been done on the part of the management concerning that issue as well. Now that the horse is out of the barn so to speak.

nigella,

Oh I see what you mean now. I didn't know we were suppose to be keeping score :0) The only two things I can remember commenting on was when you suggested being able to sell plants and seeds here on GW like on ebay, and when you wanted them to shorten the amount of exchange pages. I found those to be interesting discussion, who knows if they'll ever do anything about them. And since you're going to be leaving I guess there's no point talking about them anymore.But they were things to ponder.

From looking around at other forums where you posted this I see that I am not the only one that wasn't offended, so I don't feel too bad about it. But I'll give you that it does take a lot more to shock me.

Anyway, wherever you land I hope that you're able to grow more plants and friends. Have a good one.

Why do I love the dramma. I could not wait to get on and see what everyone was saying. I really hope I never hurt anyone's feelings and I really hope to continue to enjoy the dramma of the Garden web. It is actually the info that I love. Happy New year to everyone-it has been somewhat dramatic for me-including all of this. And, I still say the first thing I thought about that butt-pretty nice.

My biggest concern right now is why must I log on so much and what about the unsecure server thing? The cap thing does not mean anything to me as I have no caps in my thingy.

Well, I too have most ads blocked so I hadn't seen that Ad 'til I came here & saw it.

That said, I am offended by it also, not that it's a butt, rather by the fact that it's JUST a butt. Too darn objectifying. I'd be OK w/ it if it were a shot of the entire woman, albeit shot from the back so her butt would still be visible.

I even went into the link of the Nike Ad & posted some comments abt WHY it was so darn offensive.

It's not that I'm a prude, it's that it's disembodied body parts & this society already does enough objectifying of women. I think it's an ad designed by men for the pleasure of men. I can't imagine that this ad appeals to women.

To paraphrase myself from what I wrote in the ad's commentary area: should the day ever come where we market by advertising penis size, then maybe men might get the idea. I'd guess so many men would feel sheepish, embarrassed &/or utterly inadequate that maybe then, they just might begin to get the idea.

Dear Larry,

Personally, I found yr. comments refreshing & am pleased to see there are still some reasonable & modest men out there (I'm just a year younger than you) who still have a sense of appropriateness (is that a word?). I myself have also considered Victoria's Secret TV ads & in particular their TV 'show' as basically soft porn, whose more appropriate venue would be mens' magazines.

It's not abt being prudish at all (being 49, I am sort of a former hippie, was raised in the age of 'free love' & all of that, which I cerainly did enjoy ;>) ); but the salient point of this is that I CHOSE the time, place & occasion rather than being assaulted w/ it by someone's else's whim!

Dear Margaret,

I DO hope you change yr. mind, you're certainly a regular here & I'm certain many of us would miss you & yr. often excellent contributions!

I never saw that ad. I see the ads but I don't pay attention to them. Now that I see it, it doesn't bother me at all. It's not my butt being exposed with underware. I see worse ads on tv than here on the GW. Things like that don't phase me.

Dawn

I'm on Firefox so not seeing anything. Thank God! I have a peculiar motto - if even one person finds something offensive I think it's worth considering that there's something wrong with it. This world is so much about majorities! That doesn't make them right.

I've got your back on that one, Marguerite. The majority does not always have the right to decide what's best or necessary for the minority peoples who are being oppressed.

As far as seeing this type of display of women everywhere in advertising, that doesn't make THAT right, either. This may be a bit of an exaggerated parallel, but starvation, poverty, domestic slavery, and war are pretty common, too. I can't imagine anyone here saying that these evils are okay, or that we should just close our eyes to them and focus on stuff that doesn't upset us. Again, yeah - making that comparison is a really big stretch, and I certainly don't compare MY oppression as a privileged, white, educated woman living in the west, to a the oppressions of a domestic slave or refugee of war. But at the same time, you don't enslave people or bomb their village unless you can think of them as an "it" instead of a person. And these representations of women in the media turn women into "its."

One thing that I wrote in my first post has been bothering me, though. I wrote that "While I'm not a prude, I find this ad offensive..." But now that I think about it, I'm embarrassed by my remark. Whether I'm a prude or not doesn't matter. Someone with the most antiquated, victorian sexual moralities has as much right to find this ad offensive as the most 'liberated' person out there. The reasons why certain people might find the ad offensive will likely be a reflection of personal sexual morals, but it doesn't make it any less valid.

In the end, though, I hope you decide to stick around, Margaret. This crap IS everywhere, and if you refuse to be in a place where you'll see it, I fear you'll end up never leaving the house :) GW was once a sort of utopia - well, except when things got political, and people got Disneyed. I really thought that was unfair. And it hasn't really been the same place since it was sold. But the people here are the same...

Shelly

Good grief, I saw that ad yesterday and it didn't bother me as much as the jumping ones that hurt my eyes. From what I've read, the ads we're seeing are being programed in by ad companies not GW or ivillage.

Gauging by the reaction to this ad I hope they don't have any plans to advertise Coppertone. I'll bet a real case could be made about that poor little girl being accosted by that puppy pulling down her bathing suit! IMO sometimes an ad is just an ad. Yes some are clearly distasteful, but to me, this just isn't one of them. Sandy

Shelly and Margaret-- I agree... Although the ad doesn't bother me personally, the fact that children can and do enter the forum means they should think about that when considering their ads. And Shelly, it is completely taking a woman apart.. making an object. Also, the pose. I mean... really.. The situations where I have struck that pose had nothing to do with exercise. I think the pose is really what gets me about the ad.

yeah, the pose, and the words, "Just do it"...

Hi,

I'm not as outraged as Margaret and Shelly are about the Nike advertisement, but I do understand their point and am very sensitive to it. I find the advertisement tacky, but it's not going to ruin my day and I'm not going to leave the GW over it. That in no way discounts Margaret's, Shelly's and others' disappointment and even outrage over the ad and what it represents. Lots of times when similar situations come up I ask myself a simple question. Is it really necessary? Is it really necessary for Serena Williams to stick her butt out with a stupid caption that doesn't even make sense. "I'm proud of my butt and I think it is proud of me?". I don't know about anyone else here but the last time I checked, my behind wasn't capable of making any judgments like that. Like I said above, it's not a very good ad and its simplemindedness is a little insulating to any adult audience in my opinion.

This is not the first time I have seen marketing people and editors do something inappropriate to sell the product. My wife is involved with the sale of a magazine in the holistic health arena. They had an article on breast health in one of the issues. So marketing has this picture of the top half of a nude woman in the shadows. It may have been slightly shadowed but there was no question about what it was. It was a picture of a naked woman. The question begs itself, "Was it really necessary"? Another example I can think of was an issue of Time magazine that had an article on breast cancer. The picture had an unclothed woman with one arm across her chest so that we didn't get to see "too much". In that same issue or the next issue there was an article on prostate cancer. The picture with that had a man fully clothed. I guess it was "too much" for the man to be naked but not the women. But that's another area for debate.

Larry

That certainly is another debate Larry-very good point.

I am a tennis fan. I have really followed the Williams sisters. Serena has really worn some very strange outfits that I found to be .....what word comes to mind...not attractive...too revealing.....odd....not tennis womanly....She played in a body suit in one series where you obviously could see her shape and I thought she had a big butt. But now I wonder if I was having racist thoughts.

On a lighter subject, What fish are you thanking people for Nigella?

Well, sheesh. I'm still waiting to pull stuff from Hortiplex so I'm not outta here yet. The reference to the fish is from Douglas Adams' fabulous "HitchHiker's Guide to the Galaxy" series of books.

In the meantime I wonder if anybody would mind taking a peek at the jewelry I have been working on and commenting? I would appreciate any advice or criticism you can offer. Here's the URL:

http://photobucket.com/albums/v205/plantdreams/glitter%20critters/Jewelry/

Oh, and btw, it's just me, Margaret. Apparently I've been "sent to Disney" except that these days when you're sent to Disney you just get redirected to the main page of GW.

Has anyone seen the ad in question lately? I haven't seen it all day. I wonder if they voluntarily pulled it.

Larry

When I saw the title to this thread I thought, 'Wow, I can't believe there is such a lengthy discussion about The Guide!' I think I was a little off... LOL

I have to say that I completely agree with everything that Shelly has said. I also think the fact that so many people are not bothered by the ad is just proof of how problematic this type of advertising really is. 7 people said that they are offended by the ad (6 women, 1 man) and 6 people said they are not (5 women, 1 man). It has become so common that we have become desensitized to the ad's implication. Larry's example of the pictures in the breast and prostate cancer articles is a good one.

I would definately urge everyone who is bothered by this type of advertising to write a letter to the company expressing their views on the subject.

Larry,

The Ad is still there, it's just up at the very top of the thread.

LunaM,

I agree on principle, but to actually take the time to write to all producers of offensive materials, yikes, one would need a separate secretary for that alone!!!

But I'll admit that I did go into the very Nike ad on top here (but I think it was BusinessWeek's Survey) to register my displeasure at the ad & why it offended me.

America! Love it or leave it! Just don't try to change it. Censor your children but please don't try to censor the world. It's not the American thing to do. Maybe if this was Cuba, then people could control what you see, speak, read, and write. It's not a majority - minority type of thing...It's a Constitutional right. Part of what makes America a free Country. Just like you have the freedom to post anything you want to say on this forum. It's not a relegion thing. Does the bible say that a nice butt is a sin? Some people are upset because they saw a butt whith clothes on? Please, disconnect your internet, turn of the TV and never go to the beach, or river, or anywhere for that matter!
Not one person commented on the phrase that seems to stereotype all women..."her butt thinks", "her but is proud of her"!

John

Some Cuban trivia - apparently, (and I learned this three or four years ago, so it might be outdated now) but Cuba has one of the highest literacy rates in the world, higher than either Canada or the U.S., despite the fact that the country has almost no paper. This is totally a propos of nothing. Just something I found interesting.

Shelly

And Canada is one of the countries in North America where you can leave from and arrive (directly, I believe) in Cuba, in order to view Melocactus quernavarca cv. 'Fidel' in habitat.

As Casey Stengel used to say, you can look it up.

Cuba may be far from perfect, but they do indeed have a lot more going for them economically, educationally, etc. than a number of their Caribbean neighbors.
Actually, John, you don't have the right to post/say anything you want on this forum. There are a number of rules, and while not all are consistantly enforced, one can be banned from participating here if one posts in a manner considered inappropriate by the site managers. Yep, it's America, and we have to right to free speech, but we don't have the right to say or do whatever we want wherever and whenever we want. Some things are appropriate in some places, but not in others. A guy in a Speedo at the pool is fine, but I don't want my little daughter's school teacher coming to work in such attire. When we're on someone else's turf, we have to play by their rules...and in this case, majority rule can be a good thing. When others share similar standards, it makes for a place where we feel comfortable. (Now, arresting someone for wearing an anti-war T-shirt is unconscionable, but that's another matter!)
As to being a religious thing, I believe the poster who initiated thread this is an agnostic.

Qulindo será traerla a Cuba
La reina de la Mar Caribe
Quiero sólo visitarla allí
Y qué triste que no puedo, ¡vaya!
Yes, you can post anything that you want to say. The Mods have the right to remove it and ban someone from the site. But no laws are broken. That's what I mean.

Qué triste, indeed! I've only seen it from the air. Maybe someday.

True, no laws are broken, and I agree that that's the way it should be.