Is Banning A Decades-Old Dire Straits Song That Uses An Anti-Gay Slur Censorship Or A Way To Protect A Minority?

An update on a previous post, the Globe and Mail reporting on the response to a ruling Wednesday by the Canadian Broadcast Standards Council banning from the public airwaves the 1985 Dire Straits’ song Money for Nothing because it contains the word “faggot” as a part of its lyrics, Ron Cohen, the chair of CBSC saying that most respondents “are certainly saying that this is a song that’s been around for a long time and they don’t think it should be interfered with,” adding that “Virtually nobody is saying the word is okay.” Cohen said that the CBSC never ruled on the song previously because no one had ever complained, and that the panel judged that if the word passed before, in 2011 is should not, the decision stating in part that the “Panel concludes that, like other racially driven words in the English language, ‘faggot’ is one that, ever if entirely or marginally accepted in earlier days, is no longer so.” Helen Kennedy, the executive director of Egale Canada, a national gay rights advocacy group, underscores the pejorative power the word can hold, saying “It’s the word that is used most often in hate crimes motivated by sexual orientation, which we know are the most violent, against gay men.” Don Neil, the general manager of St. John’s, Newfoundland OZ-FM, said the station will abide by the ruling, and will air an edited version of the song, but claims “that this is a form of censorship. What they’re saying is that the word was acceptable 25 years ago and it’s not acceptable any more. But music is an art form.”It should be noted that the Dire Straits greatest-hits album actually edits out the entire verse, and that Mark Knopfler, the author, has historically replaced the word with other words when performing the song in concert. Luke Doucet, a Canadian, who is straight, and whose song New York from a debut solo album Aloha, Manitoba used a number of anti-gay slurs when telling the tale of a transgender boy who escapes abuse and alienation through a move to New York – a song, incidentally, that Doucet was modelled on an actual incident, says “I’m all for trying to restructure our popular vernacular or the lexicon ... so it doesn’t put minorities in harm’s way, but I also think that censoring a song like (Money for Nothing), with a lyric like that, will only serve to fetishize those words in the first place.”