Hiatus

I just noticed that the offensive advertisements that have long been appearing on National Review Online are now at the bottom of my blog, attempting to lure readers to other sites via images of cleavage and lurid headlines like “20 Celebrities We Didn’t Know Were Gay Until They Came Out.”

As a Patheos blogger, I recognize that advertisements are necessary to subsidize the content. However, I find these ads particularly offensive in that they use exploitative sexual imagery and voyeuristic taglines.

The fact that other ads are less exploitative by comparison does not make these ads any more acceptable. They use exposed human flesh and exposed celebrity lives to lure viewers, thereby treating both their subjects and viewers as commodities rather than human beings. That is not Catholic and is not appropriate to a media outlet that seeks to promote a culture of life. These ads turn my blog and others on Patheos into part of the problem rather than part of the solution.

I have complained about the ads to Patheos and am going on hiatus from this blog until the problem is resolved. Posts about my apostolate will continue on my “personal stuff” blog, which is linked in other entries below.

Update: My editor at Patheos has informed me that the ads are being promptly addressed as per Patheos’s own policy. Good. I apologized to my editor for going public about the issue only moments after tweeting to her my disapproval of the offending ads, rather than giving Patheos a chance to remove them.

For now, I will remain on hiatus until I see that my blog is no longer bedecked with pictures such as that of Tim Curry in his film role as a “sweet transvestite from transsexual Transylvania,” a woman’s rear end in a “wedding gown that’s even better from the back,” etc. …