Friday afternoon, I met Satan himself — or rather, I found his Web page.

He goes by the name “Steve,” and he is the “curator” of the Bastard Son of the Lord Homepage.

Let me explain. Rather than typing my paper for Journalism 202, I was surfing the net. Looking for something to brighten up my dreary day, I entered “Beavis and Butt-Head” in my Yahoo! search. While I was scrolling through the numerous sites, one caught my eye — “Beavis Christ.”

Being the inquisitive gal that I am (and still not wanting to do that darn paper), I clicked on the site, expecting to see a satire-filled shrine to everyone’s favorite blonde boy-toy. Instead, I was greeted with a picture of Beavis on a crucifix. There was a link to the right of the picture inviting me to “go to the previously mentioned page.” Curious, I accepted the invitation.

What I saw next took my breath away. I can truly say that I have never been so revolted in my entire life.

There was a cartoon of a bloody Jesus hanging by one arm from a cross. After being told that this was actually the official home page of the Messiah himself, I was invited to “click here” to receive a free, autographed vial of Jesus’ sperm. There were several other places I could go as well. One of these was a list of who was going to heaven, as well as one of people who were headed in the other direction (this list happened to include the Pope and Mother Teresa). There was also a song waiting to be downloaded, “Spank Me, Jesus,” and a 3-D stereogram picture of Jesus naked.

Not wanting to be violated any further, I immediately quit running Netscape. Suddenly, writing that paper didn’t seem like such a terrible task.

Yes, you read that right; I felt violated.

I felt like this “Steve” guy, whoever (or whatever) he is, had just tromped on every shred of innocence and purity that I had left. I felt like he had not only insulted me, but also my family, friends, even little old Sister Lenore, my second grade teacher.

In one fell swoop, this guy had managed to mock everything that I have ever believed in, as well as the thousands of years of tradition and goodness behind those beliefs.

I have been Catholic since birth, and while I will be the first to admit that I might not practice my religion as well as I should, I still do have certain beliefs. One of those is that whoever created this page should rot in Hell.

“Why should he go to hell?” you ask. “And what about free speech?”

Come on, guys. Honestly, can you just sit there and tell me that there is absolutely nothing wrong with a Web site such as this? Can you tell me that since there are millions of Christians in the world, that it was OK if just the two or three that happen to stumble on this site were offended? What about two or three thousand? Two or three million?

What really scares me is that while I am mature enough to take this for the (however shocking) fluff that it is, there are thousands of children out there with internet access that are probably a lot more impressionable than I.

Out of curiosity, I did a couple of searches just to see what restrictions there were on who could access certain sites.

There were 1,738 matches to my “sex” search, and none of them that I looked at had any type of restrictive measure to prevent children from accessing it. A couple of them had messages that said “you must be 18 or older to view this site,” but they were relying only on the honor system.

Sure, some of the sites, such as “the sexual life of an electron,” and “safe sex methods,” are important for educational and public service purposes, but I find it hard to believe that you need to visit “www.hardchannels.com” to find information for your senior thesis. Unless, of course, one of your class requirements is to make your own X-rated video.

It’s easy to simply say that if you don’t like the sites, just don’t go to them. While that might seem good in theory, it is relatively easy to innocently stumble on one of these offensive sites like I did. There’s often little or no forewarning as to what you’ll get when you click onto a link, and sites like this can pop up where you least expect them.

For example, when you do a search on “animals,” not all of the sites are about the cute little puppies and kittens that tend to come to mind. If you want to learn about having sex with animals, click on the “FAQ’s About Beastiality.” Yep, it’s there.

It might seem ironic that a journalist, of all people, should be promoting censorship, but I think there is definitely a need for something to be done to prevent sites such as these from being open to the general public. The internet is becoming so widespread and commonplace, soon those without access will be in the minority.

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Holly Benton is a sophomore in animal science from Early.