Moscow's Coat of Arms, Porn and the Bolshoi Theatre

MOSCOW, Russia—Porn, penises and free speech in general are getting the once over in Moscow as officials are reportedly in the process of making it illegal for the city's coat of arms to appear in salacious places. According to The Moscow Times, "Moscow authorities are in the process of forbidding pornographers from showing the city's coat of arms in sex films. The coat of arms features a medieval depiction of a dragon being slain by St. George, the patron saint of the city's founder, Viking prince Yury Dolgoruky. "The ban," the paper continues, "is being pushed by the city's cultural heritage department, which regulates the use of state symbols in business endeavors." But porn is not the only place city fathers are worried about. "The coat of arms will also be banned from appearing within a context of violence or foul language," adds the Times. Similar feelings of vulnerability are also being felt about the country's 100-ruble bill, which contains a depiction of a human penis, though one would be hard-pressed to see it without the help of a magnifying glass. Still, a federal lawmaker wants the bill to be redesigned because of the exposed organ, which once appeared on the facade of Moscow's famous Bolshoi Theater, which features a statue of the mythological god Apollo. While the bill shows an early incarnation of the theater's facade that showed the penis, "On the actual theater, the penis was recently covered with a fig leaf during a renovation," the Times reports. There is of course nothing new about government officials retreating in shame from the ancients' acceptance of the natural form, nothing new at all.