A few bigmouths with the media’s eager and ready ear, who believe neither in his position nor the God he worships, are lambasting Pope Benedict for stating in his end-of-year address to the church’s central administration that protecting relationships between men and women is as important as protecting the environment.

Arguing that the entirely fictitious peril of manmade global warming is more important than the deliberate and concerted attacks on the institution of marriage and the rights of individuals and institutions to decide whether to endorse marriages between same-sex couples, homosexual activist groups accused the Pope of justifying "homphobic bullying" and "gay-bashing."

But Pope-bashing is just fine, of course, as is the desecration of churches, which homosexual radical groups have made quite a pastime.

The poor performance of the pro-atheism children’s movie The Golden Compass, along with declining numbers for the genre in general (athough it is still quite profitable), appears to have scared off a major investor in Walden Media’s acclaimed and audience-grabbing Narnia film series.

After the first installment, The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe, brought in $745 million worldwide and the second, Prince Caspian, dropped to a still-impressive and highly profitable $419 million, Disney has decided not to exercise its option to co-produce the third planned film, The Voyage of the Dawn Treader.

Walden is looking around for a new partner, and may well find one, but the downward trend for children’s fantasy films, emphasized by the poor performance of The Golden Compass in U.S. theaters and subsequent cancellation of plans for a sequel, will make it difficult to find full financing for the film.

Now that the media in India are finally out from under the constricting government regulations that have hamstrung them for decades, critics are complaining that freedom is bad and the media are irresponsible. The complaints have come in response to the media’s handling of the Mumbai terrorist attacks.

The reporting has been denounced as sensationalistic, emotionally overwrought, prone to reporting rumors as fact, and too quick in blaming Pakistan for the attacks. The newly created National Broadcasters Association quickly revealed a new set of rules and standards for the industry, and some in India’s parliament are pondering creation of a regulatory agency to rule over private news channels.

Translation: instead of allowing newly freed media people to find their way to sound and responsible journalistic standards, India’s elites are banding together to call for the government to go back to regulating the media with an iron hand. That will make things much better, as despotism always does.

—S. T. Karnick