OTTAWA – Dean Blundell’s CFNY-FM’s (102.1 The Edge, Toronto) morning show managed to bother yet another listener, who pushed their complaint all the way to the Canadian Broadcast Standards Council.
The hosts of the show made jokes about Easter and Jesus Christ’s last day alive and while CBSC observed “many listeners would have found the remarks to be in extremely poor taste,” they did not violate the Canadian Association of Broadcasters’ (CAB) Equitable Portrayal Code.
In the week before this past Easter, Blundell and others made jokes about Jesus’ choice to spend his last day with his 12 male disciples. “Using stereotypically effeminate voices, the hosts imagined what Jesus and his disciples did and said, implying that they may have engaged in homoerotic behaviour,” reads the release. A listener complained to the CBSC that the dialogue was offensive to Christians. The station cited the CAB Code of Ethics and pointed out that the irreverent treatment of this religious story was not hateful of Jesus or abusively discriminatory towards Christians.
The CBSC’s Ontario Regional Panel “observed that it was troubling that the station broadcast this dialogue at all, let alone so close to Easter, but that religion is not immune from humour and parody.”
