We received notice from Apple last evening regarding their rejection of our resubmission of the Manhattan Declaration iPhone/iPad app to the Apple App Store. This is an appalling response from Apple. Nearly 500,000 Christians have signed the Manhattan Declaration including representatives from many major Protestant denominations, leading Catholic Bishops and leaders of the Orthodox Church.
Apple is telling us that the apps’ content is considered “likely to expose a group to harm” and “to be objectionable and potentially harmful to others.” Inasmuch as the Manhattan Declaration simply reaffirms the moral teachings of our Christian faith on the sanctity of human life, marriage and sexual morality, and religious freedom and the rights of conscience, Apple’s statement amounts to the charge that our faith is “potentially harmful to others.”
It is difficult to see how this is anything other than a statement of animus by a major American corporation against the beliefs of millions of Protestant, Catholic and Orthodox citizens. It is our sincere hope that Apple will draw back from this divisive and deeply offensive position. The corporation’s leaders must be made to understand that they do the country no good service in capitulating to efforts to stigmatize, marginalize or defame people on one side or the other in important moral debates.
We will be taking this to Apple’s App Review Board after they come back from the Christmas and New Year’s holiday observances they mention. If Apple is in good faith, perhaps they will be willing to submit this matter to arbitration. We will keep you informed. Until there is more to report, we will not be making further comments on this matter.
Full article here.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Readers too numerous to mention individually for the heads up.]
Apple doesn’t want to be associated with controversial content. That is their right. Go pitch your message via other means.
This is just plain old stupid for Apple. Either you support free speech or you censor like the Chinese do.
Good for Apple.
They are not “capitulating to efforts to stigmatize, marginalize or defame people on one side or the other in important moral debates”.
They are staying out of it.
The whole purpose of this app is to be rejected so some group can vent it’s disingenuous sanctimonious outrage. It succeeeded.
@ Ubermac:
The US government has to honor our right to free speech. Private corporations are under no such obligation. Don’t confuse the two.
Has there ever been a time in history when nonsensical Religious Faith hasn’t resulted in harm to “others”?
@ Ubermac
Supporting free speech doesn’t mean that you have to provide the forum for every nutcase out there. Apple isn’t trying to prevent them from posting on Android, they’re just showing some minimal standards on their own store somewhat like a free market would allow. Following your line, either you support Obama, or you’re a Fascist trying to overthrow the government…
Attention-whore1: “If we launch this little web app on the web, nobody will notice.”
Attention-whote2: “But if we submit an app to Apple and they will reject it we can tell all the click-whore news outlets about it and gain a ton of attention!”
Attention-whore3: “Yeah! Let’s do it!”
Same goes for all so-called *apps* that does not need iOS and could be done better on the web than as a waste of space on someone’s small screen.
Imagine what Fox News would have to say if Apple approved a similar Muslim app…
Are you liberal posters so blinded by your stupid ideology that you think this is good for Apple!? You wouldn’t be saying this if they had removed an app for controversial gay marriage. This is censorship all the way which the left is only against when it affects them.
Religious sects or movements or organisations, however numerous, have no right fo demand other organisations, groups or individuals kow-tow to their demands.
It’s a sad day when Apple sensors and some MacUsers consider Christian teaching as dangerous, undesirable and intolerant. I thought I was a citizen of the USA, not the USSR, Nazi Germany or Facist Italy.
If you don’t like the App don’t buy it. The App is not vulgar or obnoxious. Apple sensors and it’s supporters are the intolerant and obnoxious ones. Shame on all of you!
What if 500,000 christians wanted to put out an app that declared slavery of african-americans to be part of their religion. Would that be called “freedom of speech”? How about honor killings? How about selling your daughters for money? That’s in the bible, so it must be ok.
Just because bigotry is hiding behind religion does not make it decent or moral. Apple has my full support on this and good for them not to buckle under harassment. If only Obama had the backbone Steve Jobs has.
And by “controversial content”, I am talking about gay-bashing and anti-science nitwitisms such as these two:
1) “Each of these signers has committed to speak and act in defense of biblical truths with respect to the three issues it addresses.”
2) …“the Manhattan Declaration simply reaffirms the moral teachings of our Christian faith on the sanctity of human life, marriage and sexual morality”.
Religious kooks can go and do their holy roller stuff in their churches, where they preach that the universe is 8,000 years old (biblical truths) and gays can “cure” themselves by embracing Christ (marriage and sexual morality). And it seems they are always concerned about human life as long as it is a fetus inside someone elses’s body; I’ve yet to see religious kooks picketing outside of some jail after a boyfriend is jailed for beating the daylights out of his girlfriend’s 2-year-old child.
They can stop demanding that Apple participate in helping them to promote their worldview.
Don’t they say the same thing as the “God hates f@gs”. I think it is a duck. Apple is right on this one.
Good. And for anyone crying about free speech, it doesn’t apply. The app
Store is a store just like Walmart. Walmart doesn’t carry porn because they don’t want too. Such is life. Apple’s retail store wouldn’t carry something with this message why do you expect anything different from the App Store?
@Bikercrd
Yes, you are spot on. They just hide their “God hates f@gs”-message behind wholesome sounding rhetoric that seems hard to argue… unless one thinks about what their agenda is all about.
Before you knee-jerk libs or progressives or whatever you pinko commies are calling yourselves today go ape-shit:
In the last U.S. presidential election, neither Biden nor McCain nor Obama nor Palin supported “same-sex marriage.”
“Apple’s statement amounts to the charge that our faith is “potentially harmful to others.”
Never a truer word was said.
appropriately, the magic word is “clearly”.
Is the Manhattan Declaration akin to declaring Iran’s nuclear ambition like the Manhattan Project? In which case Apple has every right to kick that running dog Ahmadinejad in the bollocks!
@ Reality check:
Same-sex civil unions seems a reasonable compromise to the “marriage” issue.
But opposing full-fledged, in-your-face, “we’re queer and we’re here and we want to have first dibs on adoptions just like straights so we can feel fully equal and accepted”-gay rights is not what the kooks behind the Manhattan Declaration are trying to oppose. They are promoting the view that gays are doing evil by acting out on their feelings and that the only proper remedy for being gay is lots of prayer to their god to cure their disfunction.
@ Seeker of the Truth
<snark>Apple gets to do what Apple wants to do: They are a private company. Either you are in favor of free markets (Apple get to do what it wants) or you are a Communist.</snark>
I am a liberal and I actually wouldn’t have a problem with that app in the App Store. If you want to be a Christian zealot, go right ahead. There’s enough in that “Declaration” that’s anti-Christian to make my blood boil. And at times the “Declaration” seems to contradict itself. And throughout it, it is self-serving. As a Catholic, I would never sign it.
One point: Most of this “pro-life” screed goes after abortion. Yet, not once, is mentioned anything about being anti-war, against the death penalty, nor a call to speak out against deadly dictatorial regimes with which America does a lot of business. This is hypocritical. And anyone who signs it is a Christian in name only.
Americans are getting a reputation for wackjob religious fanaticism just like those we criticize.
Apple has full right to take a stand, and not get whipsawed into being a tool of the right wing Faux news crowd.
They are against “Don’t suck, Don’t swallow”. Good.
@X
Then they shouldn’t suck and swallow.
@X
And if they are against,
” rel=”nofollow”>fudge packing, they shouldn’t do that either.