Thursday, August 05, 2004

A Sense of Proportion - Part Two

Now I will attempt to justify my peculiar assertion of the 30th of July, which might seem at first to put me offside with the Cardinal and the Australian Christian Lobby.

Historically and self-consistently, Christendom has sanctioned two valid paradigms of human sexual behaviour:
* a monogamous relationship open to the creation of new life, and
* chastity

All the usages of Sulva that we call 'birth control' Christian theologians historically and self-consistently have included with 'sodomy', as making barren that which is intended to be fruitful. These practices are still condemned unreservedly by the Orthodox right wing and Catholic centre of Christendom, notwithstanding their embrace by Christendom's 'lunatic left' in the last century.

After the two valid paradigms, a distant second best would logically be:
* a monogamous relationship not open to the creation of new life.

Historically and self-consistently, one kind of DINK has been considered the same as another. Indeed, there are two good arguments for preferring homosexual marriage over heterosexual marriage made fruitless by design.

Firstly, a homosexual orientation is a better excuse than most for not entering a fruitful monogamous relationship; certainly better than wanting more money to spend on DVDs and overseas holidays.

Secondly, and more importantly, a homosexual couple cannot fall into the sin of achieving fruitlessness by means that act through preventing implantation of a fertilised embryo (e.g., intrauterine devices and, to some extent, most forms of hormonal chemical contraception). Within the Christian and Muslim understandings of the nature of human life, more consistent with modern biology than the Talmudic view that the fertilised egg is a 'tissue of water' until forty days after conception, this sin explicitly violates the Noachian commandment against killing human beings.

A traditional and self consistent Christian (and Muslim) then, while having grounds to oppose homosexual marriage, ought to oppose the Pill much more. In fact, going on about homosexuality when there are so many other things more worthy of going on about shows an appalling lack of a sense of proportion.

Here are some things the Christian right should be worrying about more than the normalisation of same-sex marriage:

* Foreign debt
* Homeless vets
* AIDS
* Crack
* Bernie Goetz
* Hypodermics on the shore
* China's under martial law
* Rock and Roller Cola wars

Oops, that actually seems to be the last verse of Billy Joel's 'We Didn't Start the Fire'. But it is still true. Except possibly for Bernie Goetz.

2 comments:

Dr Clam said...

Oddly enough, for what a snazzy phrase it is, 'usages of Sulva' appears to be a googlewhackphraseblatt, if such a word exists. Sulva is the name of the earth's moon in the language of the Field of Arbol in C. S. Lewis' interplanetary trilogy, a world where the culture of death has triumphed, made sterile by design by its inhabitants.

Dr Clam said...

My last comment is no longer even remotely true; the phrase seems to have propagated enormously in the past two years!