They have been calling for his head since it broke my guess if hes not already gone he soon will be. By they I mean the racing team owners!

PS Bil ya gotta listen to the BBC they have been coveing it since it came out.

Well you know, we did fight a war to defeat them ratzi bastards. Of course I don't think we were fighting against sado-masochistic orgies per se, so maybe if he would have just left the nazis out of it things would be okay.

Right?

This quote is from the NY Times article on the incident: "In a letter on Saturday to the head of Germany’s motoring federation, he renewed his insistence that the Chelsea session was a private matter, and added, in a reference to the F.I.A.’s role in promoting road safety around the world: “Had I been caught driving excessively fast on a public road or over the alcohol limit, I would have resigned the same day. As it is, the scandal paper obtained by illegal means pictures of something I did in private, which, although unacceptable to some people, was harmless and completely legal.”"

All of the major car manufacturers are calling for his resignation and there is speculation that if he does not resign, he will be fired.

So - let me ask this question of those who may find the depiction of Nazi's or US prisoners (that was his claim about the uniforms) or even the sadomasochistic content of his "scene" distasteful and punishable by.....???

How is this situation different from the way the justices of the Supreme Court of the United States felt about the activities of Lawrence when they ruled in Lawrence v. Texas?

From the Time Magazine article I linked:

In the secretly filmed video, the paper reports, Mosley "barks orders in German as he whips two hookers dressed in striped uniforms reminiscent of Auschwitz garb while girls in Nazi uniforms look on."

The video, which has been removed from the newspaper's web site, also captures a prostitute commanding Mosley to strip before she inspects his head and genitals for lice, which the paper suggest was "mocking the humiliating ways Jews were treated by SS death camp guards in World War II." Placed in chains, Mosley leans over a torture bench and whimpers as a dominatrix strikes him with a rod, saying "You're going to be shown how we treat prisoners in our facility." Later, when Mosley takes hold of a whip, he states that a blonde inmate "needs more of ze punishment."
...
Mosley's background ensures that he won't get off that easily. His mother, Diana Mitford, was a celebrity British Nazi sympathizer in the prewar years, while his father, Sir Oswald Mosley, founded and led the British Union of Fascists — a guest of honor at their wedding in 1936, at the Berlin home of Joseph Goebbels, was none other than Adolf Hitler.

As I said in my post, I don't have a problem with getting laid and involving fantasy play, bondage or whatever really turns your crank. My sole point was that this obviously has other overtones that poor Spitzer's scandal didn't.

Since Europeans are rather more sexually free than us Americans, they're sex scandals are also - shall we say - a little more adventurous. If this had broken with an American CEO instead, the morals police here would have thrown in the stocks.

Should he resign? It was a private matter between him and consenting adults. He shouldn't have to - especially since it was filmed in secret without anyone's permission. But you have to admit, as far as taste goes, this is degrading not just for the participants but for the untold number of Jewish people gassed in the chambers and held prisoner by the Nazis. To get off on the deaths of millions may not be criminal, but it sure as hell is rather sickening on a human level.

Lawrence v Texas was about the ability for two consenting adults to have sex - period. I think calling for Mr. Mosley's resignation is more about degrading families of people who watch the sport he reigns over when he uses the death of their loved ones for his sexual pleasure.

Ah, but Bil - the fact that these were five consenting adults engaging in a consensual form of sexual expression remains the core issue.

I'm not debating or even commenting on his choice of fantasy. As to whether it was morally repugnant - well, that's a slippery slope. Had the dissenting votes in Lawrence v. TX been the majority....

Let me quote from a discussion of Lawrence v. TX (http://www.law.duke.edu/publiclaw/supremecourtonline/commentary/lawvtex":

"Justice Scalia, joined by Chief Justice Rehnquist and Justice Thomas, dissented. He said that the Court was not justified in overruling the precedent of Bowers v. Hardwick. Justice Scalia's dissenting opinion argued that states should be able to make the moral judgment that homosexual conduct is wrong and embody that judgment in criminal statutes."

The majority opinion, written by Kennedy, establishes the fundamental right for consenting adults to engage in private sexual activity. (same URL)

"Justice Kennedy's majority opinion forcefully declared that there is a fundamental right for consenting adults to engage in private sexual activity. Justice Kennedy said that this right is protected under the word "liberty" in the due process clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. Justice Kennedy spoke eloquently of the importance of this interest. Justice Kennedy wrote: "The Court began its substantive discussion in Bowers as follows: 'The issue presented is whether the Federal Constitution confers a fundamental right upon homosexuals to engage in sodomy and hence invalidates the laws of the many States that still make such conduct illegal and have done so for a very long time.' That statement, we now conclude, discloses the Court's own failure to appreciate the extent of the liberty at stake. To say that the issue in Bowers was simply the right to engage in certain sexual conduct demeans the claim the individual put forward, just as it would demean a married couple were it to be said marriage is simply about the right to have sexual intercourse." He further stated: "When sexuality finds overt expression in intimate conduct with another person, the conduct can be but one element in a personal bond that is more enduring. The liberty protected by the Constitution allows homosexual persons the right to make this choice."

Antonine Scallia is just plain scary. How the hell did a facist like him get on the court, and how can he be impeached?

There is nothing impartial about his deliberations on anything that conflicts with his prudish morality. He probably uses copies of the constitution and Bill of Rights for toilet paper, as much respect as he shows for them.

Instead of protesting for a free Tibet, maybe we should start protesting for a free America.

This is what you get when a country swings too far to the right. Hitler was quite the moralist himself you know.

Ricci, your analogy is, I think, way off the mark. Lawrence v Texas had to do with the consitutionality of criminal laws outlawing sodomy.

This has *nothing* to do with criminal law. Nobody is suggesting that Mosley should be put in jail.

The issue here is whether it's appropriate -- and, even more importantly, good for Formula One's business -- to have, as head of this organization, someone (particularly someone, I'm afraid, with his background) who exploits and appropriates the suffering of the Jews at the hands of the Nazis, for his own pleasure. The fact that it's sexual pleasure is largely irrelevant. The outcry would be similar if this were just playacting with no overt sexual element. Viz., the outcry when one of the royal princes wore a Nazi uniform to a party.

I also don't believe this is any kind of civil rights or employment discrimination issue. There are no laws, and never will be, protecting people from being fired because they playact Nazi-Jew fantasies. Or because they slaughter puppies. Or lots of other things. Condemning homophobia does not logically mean one must also condemn those who disapprove of what Mr. Mosley did. Everything is *not* the same.

Donna

The issue here is whether it's appropriate -- and, even more importantly, good for Formula One's business -- to have, as head of this organization, someone (particularly someone, I'm afraid, with his background) who exploits and appropriates the suffering of the Jews at the hands of the Nazis, for his own pleasure. The fact that it's sexual pleasure is largely irrelevant. The outcry would be similar if this were just playacting with no overt sexual element. Viz., the outcry when one of the royal princes wore a Nazi uniform to a party.

I think the fact that it's sexual pleasure makes it easier for me to take. If it were something like Black face, taking non-sexual pleasure in the suffering of another group of people, that'd be pretty horrible.

But sex stuff? I generally don't care about that. And if he were secretly video taped it makes it all the worse.

To host Nazi S/M orgies is a natural part of the human condition; to film another person having sex without their consent is despicable.

"To host Nazi S/M orgies is a natural part of the human condition; to film another person having sex without their consent is despicable."

Aye, I'll go with that. We don't do things by halves over here, you know. ;-) Felix (UK)

So many of you so obvisouly have no clue about F1 raceing its not his little nazi sex orgy that is but icing on the top of the cake.Mr Mosley has ruled F1 with a iron fist and managed to make enemies out of the team owners who btw pay his nice fat salery.This just may be what ends his rule if he already has not been told to go.

Hey, whatever gets you through the night. As long as every has a safe word, uses protection, and is consenting, I'm not sure what the big deal is. I could go for a little frauline action (I'll skip the Nazi part). Those leiderhosen are effin HAWT!

With most sex scandals, I really don't see the issue. It was practiced safely, responsibly, respectfully and consensually (unless, of course, he didn't consent to the taping... and I doubt he consented to the distribution of said tape). That beats the hell out of a lot of mainstream het "vanilla" relationships.

Okay, so there were Nazi trappings, German accents, what we don't know is what significance it had to him. Guilt alleviation? You never know. People can find some of the strangest things cathartic. There are a lot of things that I raise my eyebrows at and don't "get," but I no longer tend to get "offended" about much.

I doin't know him; I'm sure that the media will only print the sensationalistic half of the story; I see no reason to defend or vilify.

Timing is everything! Today's New York Times has a movie review of a new film that opens today called "Stalags" that deals with pornography popular in Isreal in the 1960s that used the Holocaust as its basis.

http://movies.nytimes.com/2008/04/09/movies/09stal.html

Eyeing Pornography That Uses the Holocaust as Titillation

By LAURA KERN
In early-1960s Israel pornographic, possibly anti-Semitic novels that detailed sensational tales of the torture and rape of male concentration camp prisoners by curvaceous female Nazi guards rapidly rose from marginal pulp reading to mass-market popularity.