"Faggot" phobia.

When Green Day sing that they are the faggot America" in their hit single "American Idiot," they are rejecting the "redneck agenda" and "paranoia" that in their view are sweeping the nation. So there is some irony in the fact that the word "faggot" has been bleeped out of the song on a number of radio stations across the country, presumably because of its indecent nature.

Finding out the procedure for such an absurd act of censorship is not easy. Wade through the policy statements and obscenity violation documents the Federal Communications Commission makes available to the public, and you will fast get lost in a sea of legal jargon. A spokeswoman for the FCC, however, says the FCC has no capability to police the airwaves and that the organization only responds to complaints from the public. "Only then can we determine the context of the complaint," she says.

That leads the search to Clear Channel Communications. The radio giant announced this year that it would institute a policy of "zero tolerance" for indecent content, Despite repeated calls to get an answer about the Green Day bleeping on Clear Channel stations, company representatives were unavailable for comment. Maybe they were avoiding any press, since that very week Howard Stern announced that he was leaving all Clear Channel stations and was headed to satellite radio system Sirius, which is not liable to fines from the FCC.

"Bleeping a word like 'faggot' in this instance is not because the FCC has ever ruled on a case like this, but because people are afraid," explains Elliot Mincberg, vice president and legal director of People for the American Way. "It's, unfortunately, one of many examples of the chilling effect the FCC has had in causing many broadcasters to go far beyond the definition of indecency to block artistic works."

"'Faggot' is not a word which would qualify as indecent," believes Marjorie Heins, founder of the Free Expression Policy Project in New York City. "This is clearly an instance of corporate censorship on the part of Clear Channel. Since the FCC is not involved, the First Amendment doesn't read that as an issue. Clear Channel is deciding that for its own marketing strategy or corporate ideology that it wants to bleep out a word, and therefore it's not a First Amendment issue. However, it is a serious problem. It wouldn't matter if they only owned a couple of stations, but they own over 1,200."