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Home and Away has responded to claims of censorship after cutting same-sex kissing scenes.

The soap recently aired the romantic scenes between Alex and her girlfriend Willow on New Zealand television, but those moments were cut from episodes that aired in Australia.

Related: Home and Away star praises shock death storyline after leaving the show

Fans in Australia have since taken to social media to share their confusion and disappointment at the missing scenes, one of which sees Alex kiss Willow in a bar, and another features a long emotional speech that also ends with a kiss.

In a statement (via ABC), Channel 7 claimed that it accidentally aired the wrong versions of two episodes in Australia due to "human error".

"As with any television show, numerous changes are made throughout the post-production process all the way up until final broadcast," the statement read.

Related: Home and Away star speaks out after shock death in 2020 season premiere

The network also said that "the final versions of those episodes" will be shown on its streaming service in Australia, 7Plus.

But needless to say, fans weren't happy when the scenes were initially cut:

Home and Away's UK broadcaster Channel 5 has confirmed to Digital Spy that the scenes will not be cut when it screens the episodes in the coming weeks.

A spokesperson told us: "This is not content that Channel 5 would remove."

Home and Away airs weekdays at 1.15pm and 6pm on Channel 5 (UK) and Mondays to Thursdays at 7pm on Channel 7 (Australia).

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Home and Away responds to claims of censorship after cutting same-sex kissing scenes - digitalspy.com

Paducah's Yeiser Art Center started 2020 with its annual Members Exhibition, putting local artists to the task of tackling censorship as YAC partners with the Carson Center to foster discussion around Ray Bradbury's "Fahrenheit 451" and the NEA Big Read program.

"It's an incredible opportunity for growth, exchange, and interaction with new audiences," YAC Executive Director Lexie Abra Millikan said. "I hope that this exhibition opens up some conversations regarding censorship; who makes decisions about art that is exhibited? Why do they make those decisions?"

The exhibit features more than 50 works from a wide array of mediums, including painting, drawing, fiber, ceramics, sculpture, woodworking and mixed media, all from members of the YAC.

"It's important to recognize our members because they are incredibly talented," Millikan added. "The YAC was founded by artists and has only survived because of the continued support of artists. It's also important because it gives the community the chance to see artwork by people that they might not normally get to see."

An opening reception Saturday evening afforded the artists and the public an opportunity to come together to see the fruits of their efforts. Josh Morehead, the director of education and assistant director of development for the Carson Center, handed out awards for the exhibit.

Robert Shapiro's "Return to Eden" took home first place, Michael Terra's "Redacted" earned second and "Works By Female Artists Are Prohibited In This Edition" by Fred Reaves received third place. "Chicken, Chicken," a piece by Anthony Woodruff with Eli Riley, was named an honorable mention.

The YAC staff selected two pieces, Deb Lyons' "Some Of My Favorites" and Lu Colby "Sew or be Sewn," as its staff picks.

Other activities revolving around "Fahrenheit 451" and the Carson Center's NEA Big Read program can be found by visiting the performing arts center's website.

Works in the Members Exhibition will be on display at the Yeiser through Feb. 29.

Located at 200 Broadway, the gallery is open Tuesday through Saturday from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Admission is $5 during regular opening hours, except Wednesday's when admission is free. Yeiser members always receive free admission to exhibitions.

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New Yeiser exhibit tackles topic of censorship in art - Paducah Sun

Album of the year

When We All Fall Asleep, Where Do We Go? - Billie Eilish

Record of the year

Bad Guy - Billie Eilish

Song of the year

Bad Guy - Billie Eilish, Finneas O'Connell

Best new artist

Billie Eilish

Best pop solo performance

Truth Hurts - Lizzo

Best rap/sung performance

Higher, DJ Khaled featuring Nipsey Hussle and John Legend

Best country pop/duo performance

Dan + Shay

Best comedy album

Dave Chappelle

Best rap album

Igor, Tyler, the Creator

Best pop duo/group performance

Old Town Road Lil Nas X Featuring Billy Ray Cyrus

Best traditional pop vocal album

Look Now Elvis Costello & The Imposters

Best pop vocal album

When We All Fall Asleep, Where Do We Go? Billie Eilish

Best dance recording

Got to Keep On The Chemical Brothers

Best dance/electronic album

No Geography The Chemical Brothers

Best contemporary instrumental album

Mettavolution Rodrigo y Gabriela

Best rock performance

This Land Gary Clark Jr.

Best metal performance

7empest Tool

Best rock song

This Land Gary Clark Jr., songwriter (Gary Clark Jr.)

Best rock album

Social Cues Cage the Elephant

Best alternative music album

Father of the Bride Vampire Weekend

Best R&B performance

Come Home Anderson .Paak Featuring Andre 3000

Best traditional R&B performance

Jerome Lizzo

Best R&B song

Sayso PJ Morton, songwriter (PJ Morton Featuring JoJo)

Best urban contemporary album

Cuz I Love You (Deluxe) Lizzo

Best R&B album

Ventura Anderson .Paak

Best rap performance

Racks in the Middle Nipsey Hussle Featuring Roddy Ricch & Hit-Boy

Best rap/sung performance

Higher DJ Khaled Featuring Nipsey Hussle & John Legend

Best rap song

A Lot Jermaine Cole, Dacoury Natche, 21 Savage, & Anthony White, songwriters (21 Savage Featuring J. Cole)

Best rap album

Igor Tyler, the Creator

Best country solo performance

Ride Me Back Home Willie Nelson

Best country duo/group performance

Speechless Dan + Shay

Best country song

Bring My Flowers Now Brandi Carlile, Phil Hanseroth, Tim Hanseroth, & Tanya Tucker, songwriters (Tanya Tucker)

Best country album

While Im Livin Tanya Tucker

Best new age album

Wings Peter Kater

Best improvised jazz solo

Sozinho Randy Brecker, soloist

Best jazz vocal album

12 Little Spells Esperanza Spalding

Best jazz instrumental album

Finding Gabriel Brad Mehldau

Best large jazz ensemble album

The Omni-American Book Club Brian Lynch Big Band

Best latin jazz album

Antidote Chick Corea & The Spanish Heart Band

Best gospel performance/song

Love Theory Kirk Franklin; Kirk Franklin, songwriter

Best contemporary Christian music performance/song

God Only Knows For King & Country & Dolly Parton; Josh Kerr, Jordan Reynolds, Joel Smallbone, Luke Smallbone, & Tedd Tjornhom, songwriters

Best gospel album

Long Live Love Kirk Franklin

Best contemporary Christian music album

Burn the Ships For King & Country

Best roots gospel album

Testimony Gloria Gaynor

Best Latin pop album

#ELDISCO Alejandro Sanz

Best Latin rock, urban or alternative album

El Mal Querer Rosala

Best regional Mexican album (Including Tejano)

De Ayer Para Siempre Mariachi Los Camperos

Best American roots performance

Saint Honesty Sara Bareilles

Best American roots song

Call My Name Sarah Jarosz, Aoife ODonovan, & Sara Watkins, songwriters (Im With Her)

Best Americana album

Oklahoma, Keb Mo

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Grammys 2020: Censors bleep basically everything and viewers kick off - Metro.co.uk

President Donald Trump holds up an executive order on antisemitism in the East Room of the White House December 11, 2019. (Tom Brenner/Reuters)Requiring the government to consider someones political views to determine whether their conduct is punishable leads to no good.

These are challenging times to be Jewish in America.

I attend synagogue, and my children attend Jewish day school, under the watchful eye of armed guards. When I explained to my young daughter why my husband was out the other night he attended a simulated security drill at our synagogue, where he serves on the board she asked whether I thought bad people might come to our synagogue and whether I would find her and protect her if they did. Needless to say, my heart broke into a million pieces.

Whats particularly distressing about the current moment is that the antisemitism feels like it comes from every direction. White supremacists and the progressive Left, for example, have practically nothing in common, yet members of both groups can be found trading in antisemitic tropes and stereotypes. Its a bit too much like that line from Tom Lehrers National Brotherhood Week, where he sings,

Oh the Protestants hate the Catholics,and the Catholics hate the Protestants,and the Hindus hate the Muslims,and everybody hates the Jews.

And yet, antisemitism often goes unacknowledged, particularly at Americas colleges and universities.Thats why, in December, many people cheered the presidents new executive order on antisemitism for addressing a problem that too many have turned a blind eye to: the rise of antisemitism on college campuses.

Last spring, for example, the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill hosted a conference entitled Conflict Over Gaza: People, Politics, and Possibilities. The conference featured Tamer Nafar, a Palestinian rapper, performing what he proudly called an anti-Semitic song. Undercover video taken by filmmaker Ami Horowitz showed Tamer asking the audience to join in, saying, I cannot be antisemitic alone followed by audience members singing gleefully along as Tamer sang, Im in love with a Jew ... When confronted with the recording, UNC defensively stated that it misconstrued the breadth of discourse that took place at the conference. It is difficult to imagine such indifference from a university if similar rhetoric had been directed at almost any other group.

As both an advocate of free speech on campus and an observant, pro-Israel Jew, these problems have been on my mind a great deal. Unfortunately, the relief at finally having the reality on campus acknowledged has, for many people, obscured problems with the executive order that threaten everyones freedom of speech in the long run.

First, the good news: The order promises robust enforcement of campus anti-discrimination laws to prevent antisemitic harassment. The longstanding policy of the Department of Education is that discrimination against Jews is covered by Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, specifically its prohibition of discrimination based on national origin, and the portion of the executive order locking in this policy signaled the administrations commitment to robustly enforcing it.

But unfortunately, the executive order did not end there. Instead, it directed federal agencies, in considering whether conduct was antisemitic, to consider a very specific definition of antisemitism and very specific examples of it. Those examples include protected political speech, such as drawing comparisons of contemporary Israeli policy to that of the Nazis and denying the Jewish people their right to self-determination, e.g., by claiming that the existence of a State of Israel is a racist endeavor.

Many Jews may find these views noxious. And yes, some of the people who hold these views may, in fact, be antisemitic. But requiring the government to even consider someones political views to determine whether or not their conduct is punishable is a recipe for disaster and will ultimately only hurt the people it was intended to help. Do we really want the federal government defining all of the worlds -isms? What happens when President Joe Biden issues an executive order on Islamophobia directing the government to consider things like denying the Palestinian people their right to self-determination or drawing comparisons between Hamas and the Nazis as evidence of a prohibited anti-Muslim or anti-Arab motive? Or when opposition to affirmative action, or even a vote for Donald Trump, are legally considered evidence of racism?

When we open the door to drawing distinctions among speakers based on their political views, that door will not easily be closed again and all of our rights are at risk.

We are already seeing evidence that people are seeking to use the executive order to justify censorship of protected speech. For example, several Jewish organizations are demanding that the University of Michigan cancel an upcoming Youth for Palestine conference being hosted on its campus, and are citing the new executive order in support of their argument that the conference could lead to harassment of Jewish students. Now of course, if conference participants do harass Jewish students, that could indeed be grounds for a Title VI complaint. But the idea that the university should impose a prior restraint by canceling the conference because of the views of its organizers and attendees is wholly inconsistent with the most basic principles of free speech and association.

The fear that I and other Jewish people feel right now is real. But that fear cannot justify infringing on our most fundamental liberties. Instead, we should focus our energies on ways to fight antisemitism, on campus and beyond, without compromising freedom of speech. For example, we can support legislative efforts to forbid, at institutions of higher education, discriminatory harassment based on religion. We should also work diligently to expose campus antisemitism to public scrutiny, as Ami Horowitz did when he took and publicized video of the viciously antisemitic rhetoric at the UNC conference.

As Supreme Court justice and committed Zionist Louis Brandeis famously said, sunlight is the best disinfectant.

More:
An Executive Order against Antisemitism Is Being Used to Justify Censorship - National Review

A Missouri state representative has heard about all these Drag Queen Story Time shenanigans at public libraries, and he is very upset at the thought of all those communist preverts practicing their commie preversions in the sight of little kids, what with the drag queening and the reading and the proximity of people wearing things he does not approve of in the presence of children. Clearly, the answer is to comb through library collections and censor all the books that might upset parents, which is why state Rep. Ben Baker has introduced the Parental Oversight of Public Libraries Act, which would require all library districts to elect a review board that would have the authority to approve all library materials and events. Any library that failed to set up such a censorship board would lose its state funding.

Baker told NBC News the bill isn't aimed at censoring anything, heavens no! Instead, he explained, he just wants these danged drag queens stopped.

See? Not a bit of censorship; Baker just wants to protect the innocent children from people reading picture books while being fabulous. And if any librarian allows "age-inappropriate sexual material" in the library, that would be a misdemeanor punishable by up to a year in jail and a $500 fine. Gotta let those com-symp Library Science majors know who's boss. No word on whether the bill would also take action to eliminate the "sexy librarian" stereotype.

In an interview with the Neosho Daily News, his hometown paper, Baker made clear he's simply very concerned:

And what particular event was he worried about? A drag queen story hour in Houston last year where a convicted sex offender read to kids. Yes, the library should have screened the volunteers! But no kids were harmed at the event and the guy was never left alone with kids. By that reasoning there'd be a better statistical case to close all schools and Catholic churches than to end the drag story events.

Baker continued: "There are many other stories that will turn your stomach that are happening across the country and some in our own state. This bill is both reactionary and preventative." Like, if the very idea of people in drag turns your stomach, mostly.

He also explained that there's simply no truth to the notion that his bill would violate the First Amendment, because INTOLERANT LIBERALS and they want to silence him and the guy really is full of conservative victimhood talking points. (Assholes have been threatening him, he says, and that's wrong -- but it doesn't mean he's right, either.)

As to whether his bill amounts to censorship, the text of Baker's non-censorship bill is pretty clear. The review boards would have the power to "order any material deemed to be age-inappropriate sexual material to be removed from public access by minors at the public library." The boards' decisions would be final, so no damn liberals in libraries or municipal government could reverse a ruling on materials. The bill does generously allow that a judge could order library materials back to the shelves, so there's that.

Baker insists that's not censorship, it's just making sure parents can make wise parenting decisions:

Isn't that nice? No more worries that a 14-year-old who's unsure about their sexuality would encounter even the most chaste YA novel suggesting being gay is normal. Damned if they'd ever ask mom or dad to check it out for them. Instead, the kids could continue being sure they're freaks, like in the good old days.

Not that this bullshit would ever pass muster with the courts.

Also, for all Baker's fretting about drag queens, the bill is far more specific about giving local would-be censors the power to eliminate dirty books and other materials from libraries than anything else. The bill specifies that "Age-inappropriate sexual material" means

(a) Taken as a whole, appeals to the prurient interest of minors; (b) Is patently offensive to prevailing standards in the adult community with respect to what is appropriate material for minors; and (c) Taken as a whole, lacks serious literary, artistic, political, or scientific value for minors;

Read strictly, that wouldn't even apply to drag queen story events, seeing as how the readers tend to leave their clothes on. But of course the bill seems aimed at letting the local boards define stuff like "sexuality" as broadly as possible, so sure, this would presumably treat even fully-gowned drag performers as if they were actually part of Miss Divine's Cavalcade of Perversion.

But whatever Baker says, the bill only specifically mentions library materials, not events or programs -- this is a censorship bill through and through, and is clearly aimed at restricting young people's access to ideas conservatives don't like. The American Library Association is dead set against it.

Gosh, It's almost as if Baker's trying to take advantage of conservative outrage over drag queen story hours so he can push through a far more sweeping measure to sanitize public libraries. How shocking that is.

And exercise YOUR right to read by joining us Sunday for the second installment of our latest Book Club, OK? We're reading the Iraq War expos Hubris: The Inside Story of Spin, Scandal, and the Selling of the Iraq War, by Michael Isikoff and David Corn, chapters 8 through 14. You don't even need to have done all the reading!

[NBC News / Lake News Online / Missouri House Bill 2044 / American Library Association / Image: San Jose Public Library photo by Treasure Nguyen, Creative Commons License 2.0]

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They've Found This Year's Culture War And It's Drag Queens, Books - Wonkette