An attempt to distract university students in Maryland from late-night drinking with a feature-length porn movie was blocked on Thursday after state senators threatened to cut funds for the college.
The two-and-a-half-hour Pirates II: Stagnetti’s Revenge — the most expensive pornographic film ever made, at a cost of US$10 million — would have been shown at a University of Maryland student union theater today.
Organizers at the College Park campus, 16km north of Washington, had championed educational aspects of the screening, with health group Planned Parenthood planning to hold a presentation on safe sex practices beforehand.
The event was also previously seen by university officials as an “alternative to late-night drinking and other dangerous activities,” the Baltimore Sun reported before the cancelation.
Republican state senator Andy Harris, however, proposed an amendment to the state budget to deny millions of dollars in funding for any educational institutions that screen a porn movie.
Harris said he had been “shocked and dismayed” to hear the college was going to screen the movie, and denounced what he described as the “dangers of pornography.”
He said he was “extremely concerned that the policy of our public colleges and universities would allow hardcore pornography” to be shown.
“I am pleased to know that the university did the right thing and canceled this movie. However, I remain concerned that they do not have a policy prohibiting this,” the senator said in a statement after the university reversed its decision.
Harris said he was “working to seek assurances that this will not happen again.”
The Sun said that during a lengthy debate on Thursday morning at the state legislature in Annapolis, Maryland, senate president Thomas Miller indicated he would back Harris’ threat to cut millions of dollars in funding.
Linda Clement, the university’s vice president of student affairs, denied the cancelation was linked to threats made by state lawmakers.
“No, we canceled the [showing] because the educational context of the movie has been lost in the titillation that’s been associated with the movie itself,” Clement’s spokesman Millree Williams said.
“That’s hard to believe,” responded Adam Kissel, director of the Individual Rights Defense Program at the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education based in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.
The university’s claim, he said, was extremely unlikely because beforehand “university administrators had known about it, had expected it to go on and they had no problem with it.”
Kissel said his education rights group was “very concerned” about the likely constitutional violation, namely the First Amendment that protects free speech.
CONFRONTATION: The water cannon attack was the second this month on the Philippine supply boat ‘Unaizah May 4,’ after an incident on March 5 The China Coast Guard yesterday morning blocked a Philippine supply vessel and damaged it with water cannons near a reef off the Southeast Asian country, the Philippines said. The Philippine military released video of what it said was a nearly hour-long attack off the Second Thomas Shoal (Renai Shoal, 仁愛暗沙) in the contested South China Sea, where Chinese ships have unleashed water cannons and collided with Philippine vessels in similar standoffs in the past few months. The China Coast Guard and other vessels “once again harassed, blocked, deployed water cannons, and executed dangerous maneuvers” against a routine rotation and resupply mission to
GLOBAL COMBAT AIR PROGRAM: The potential purchasers would be limited to the 15 nations with which Tokyo has signed defense partnership and equipment transfer deals Japan’s Cabinet yesterday approved a plan to sell future next-generation fighter jets that it is developing with the UK and Italy to other nations, in the latest move away from the country’s post-World War II pacifist principles. The contentious decision to allow international arms sales is expected to help secure Japan’s role in the joint fighter jet project, and is part of a move to build up the Japanese arms industry and bolster its role in global security. The Cabinet also endorsed a revision to Japan’s arms equipment and technology transfer guidelines to allow coproduced lethal weapons to be sold to nations
Thousands of devotees, some in a state of trance, gathered at a Buddhist temple on the outskirts of Bangkok renowned for sacred tattoos known as Sak Yant, paying their respects to a revered monk who mastered the practice and seeking purification. The gathering at Wat Bang Phra Buddhist temple is part of a Thai Wai Khru ritual in which devotees pay homage to Luang Phor Pern, the temple’s formal abbot, who died in 2002. He had a reputation for refining and popularizing the temple’s Sak Yant tattoo style. The idea that tattoos confer magical powers has existed in many parts of Asia
ON ALERT: A Russian cruise missile crossed into Polish airspace for about 40 seconds, the Polish military said, adding that it is constantly monitoring the war to protect its airspace Ukraine’s capital, Kyiv, and the western region of Lviv early yesterday came under a “massive” Russian air attack, officials said, while a Russian cruise missile breached Polish airspace, the Polish military said. Russia and Ukraine have been engaged in a series of deadly aerial attacks, with yesterday’s strikes coming a day after the Russian military said it had seized the Ukrainian village of Ivanivske, west of Bakhmut. A militant attack on a Moscow concert hall on Friday that killed at least 133 people also became a new flash point between the two archrivals. “Explosions in the capital. Air defense is working. Do not