{"id":6138,"date":"2011-08-17T16:35:23","date_gmt":"2011-08-17T20:35:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/news\/?p=6138"},"modified":"2011-08-17T16:35:23","modified_gmt":"2011-08-17T20:35:23","slug":"la-times-lebanon-bans-lady-gaga-album-as-offensive-to-christians","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2011\/08\/la-times-lebanon-bans-lady-gaga-album-as-offensive-to-christians","title":{"rendered":"LA Times: Lebanon bans Lady Gaga album as &#8220;offensive to Christians&#8221;"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Boxfuls of Lady Gaga&#8217;s newest album &#8220;Born this Way&#8221; were intercepted and impounded at Beirut&#8217;s international airport by Lebanese authorities late last week as potentially offensive to the country&#8217;s Christian population.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Despite having sold millions of copies worldwide, Lady Gaga&#8217;s album isn&#8217;t for sale in Lebanese music stores for now,&#8221; reports the <em>Los Angeles Times.<\/em>\u00a0&#8220;Instead, cartons of the new release are stacked in police offices. But officials cautioned that no final decision had been made on whether Lady Gaga&#8217;s sizzling hot second studio release would be formally banned.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>According to the newspaper:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>&#8220;We collected the CDs on the grounds that the music was offensive to religion,&#8221; said one official from the office of censorship, which is part of the country&#8217;s notorious General Security, a powerful branch of the Ministry of Interior. &#8220;They are still in our offices. We are still deciding what to do with them.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>He refused to give his name without citing any reason for insisting on anonymity.<\/p>\n<p>Lady Gaga&#8217;s latest album is filled with Christian imagery. Having received a traditional Catholic upbringing, the singer is infamous for her provocative music, drawing on themes of religion and sexuality.<\/p>\n<p>The video above is for one of the album&#8217;s songs, &#8220;Judas,&#8221; which was banned from Lebanese radio stations earlier last April.<\/p>\n<p>The music video presents the 12 disciples of Christ as rugged bikers in leather jackets dancing around the singer who is part of a love triangle with the handsome and enticing depictions of Judas and Jesus, the latter adorned with the crown of thorns.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;In the most biblical sense, I am beyond repentance,&#8221; she sings.<\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><strong><a href=\"http:\/\/latimesblogs.latimes.com\/babylonbeyond\/2011\/06\/lebanon-l.html?cid=6a00d8341c630a53ef01538efd96df970b\" target=\"_blank\">CLICK HERE to read more<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Boxfuls of Lady Gaga&#8217;s newest album &#8220;Born this Way&#8221; were intercepted and impounded at Beirut&#8217;s international airport by Lebanese authorities late last week as potentially offensive to the country&#8217;s Christian population. &#8220;Despite having sold millions of copies worldwide, Lady Gaga&#8217;s album isn&#8217;t for sale in Lebanese music stores for now,&#8221; reports the Los Angeles Times.\u00a0&#8220;Instead,&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":270,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fbia_status":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[32],"tags":[1219,1444],"class_list":["post-6138","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-christian","tag-lady-gaga","tag-lebanon"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v23.9 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>LA Times: Lebanon bans Lady Gaga album as &quot;offensive to Christians&quot;<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2011\/08\/la-times-lebanon-bans-lady-gaga-album-as-offensive-to-christians\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"LA Times: Lebanon bans Lady Gaga album as &quot;offensive to Christians&quot;\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Boxfuls of Lady Gaga&#8217;s newest album &#8220;Born this Way&#8221; were intercepted and impounded at Beirut&#8217;s international airport by Lebanese authorities late last week as potentially offensive to the country&#8217;s Christian population. &#8220;Despite having sold millions of copies worldwide, Lady Gaga&#8217;s album isn&#8217;t for sale in Lebanese music stores for now,&#8221; reports the Los Angeles Times.\u00a0&#8220;Instead,&hellip;\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2011\/08\/la-times-lebanon-bans-lady-gaga-album-as-offensive-to-christians\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Beliefnet News\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2011-08-17T20:35:23+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"LA Times: Lebanon bans Lady Gaga album as \"offensive to Christians\"","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2011\/08\/la-times-lebanon-bans-lady-gaga-album-as-offensive-to-christians","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"LA Times: Lebanon bans Lady Gaga album as \"offensive to Christians\"","og_description":"Boxfuls of Lady Gaga&#8217;s newest album &#8220;Born this Way&#8221; were intercepted and impounded at Beirut&#8217;s international airport by Lebanese authorities late last week as potentially offensive to the country&#8217;s Christian population. &#8220;Despite having sold millions of copies worldwide, Lady Gaga&#8217;s album isn&#8217;t for sale in Lebanese music stores for now,&#8221; reports the Los Angeles Times.\u00a0&#8220;Instead,&hellip;","og_url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2011\/08\/la-times-lebanon-bans-lady-gaga-album-as-offensive-to-christians","og_site_name":"Beliefnet News","article_published_time":"2011-08-17T20:35:23+00:00","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2011\/08\/la-times-lebanon-bans-lady-gaga-album-as-offensive-to-christians","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2011\/08\/la-times-lebanon-bans-lady-gaga-album-as-offensive-to-christians","name":"LA Times: Lebanon bans Lady Gaga album as \"offensive to Christians\"","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/#website"},"datePublished":"2011-08-17T20:35:23+00:00","dateModified":"2011-08-17T20:35:23+00:00","author":{"@id":""},"breadcrumb":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2011\/08\/la-times-lebanon-bans-lady-gaga-album-as-offensive-to-christians#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2011\/08\/la-times-lebanon-bans-lady-gaga-album-as-offensive-to-christians"]}]},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/2011\/08\/la-times-lebanon-bans-lady-gaga-album-as-offensive-to-christians#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"LA Times: Lebanon bans Lady Gaga album as &#8220;offensive to Christians&#8221;"}]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/#website","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/","name":"Beliefnet News","description":"Top Religious News From Around the World","potentialAction":[{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/?s={search_term_string}"},"query-input":{"@type":"PropertyValueSpecification","valueRequired":true,"valueName":"search_term_string"}}],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":"Person","@id":"","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/author"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6138","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/270"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6138"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6138\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6140,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6138\/revisions\/6140"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6138"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6138"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6138"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}