How about it?

Nobody who doesn't have an excessive sentimental attachment to the word "God" can possibly be offended by that.

And people who do have an excessive sentimental attachment to the word "God" need to realize that their excessive sentimentality is not a valid basis for criminalizing speech.

- Jake

Friends come and go. Enemies accumulate.

I don't speak Russian, and I don't have a profound understanding of the Russian language, but I would like someone who does, to explain to me how you can accurately translate an adjective by a noun.

sran gospodnaya is the original phrase. The generally-presented translation is "God's shit", which appears, on its face, to refer to faecal matter excreted by Jehovah.

I understand that the Russian formulation is rather more ambiguous : more accurately, something like "faecal matter emanating from/pertaining to Jehovah".

In which case, and given the context of the phrase in the protest song, which is about Putin and the Patriarch using the Church for political ends, I suggest that the intent is better translated by "Holy bullshit", "Godly crap", "Pseudo-theological nonsense". A purely scatological reading just doesn't make sense in the context (and if anyone wants to proclaim that the whole text is nothing but scatological nonsense, I challenge them to review it line by line with me).

Now, I am happy to admit that the use of profanities may have a much greater impact in the Russian language; and this is probably why this particular phrase has been so gleefully seized upon. But I find its use defensible in the context, and I don't find that it insults God, or religious sensibilities, at all. On the other hand, it is very insulting against the Patriarch of the Orthodox Church. It will be perceived as an insult against God and against religion by those who are unable or unwilling to make the distinction between the institution and the thing itself.

The manifest intent of the prosecution to identify this political figure, the Patriarch with God is an indication, to my eyes, that PR's attack is well-founded.

_{It is rightly acknowledged that people of faith have no monopoly of virtue - Queen Elizabeth II}