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Excersus XCIV: The Quick and the Chaste
Chastity. I think Stephen Fry put this point particularly well in the debate that he and the much missed Christopher Hitchens put on some years ago. It is a lovely bit of oratory, and so if you'll indulge me I'll quote it in full here:
It’s the strangest thing about this church - it is obsessed with sex, absolutely obsessed. Now they will say we, with our permissive society and rude jokes, are obsessed. No, we have a healthy attitude. We like it, it’s fun, it’s jolly; because it’s a primary impulse it can be dangerous and dark and difficult. It’s a bit like food in that respect, only even more exciting. The only people who are obsessed with food are anorexics and the morbidly obese, and that in erotic terms is the Catholic church in a nutshell.
You can get people to do just about anything if you strangle their most basic of impulses and then reroute that energy into obedience and its close cousin, persecution. Cause pain, a lingering incurable pain, in your followers, and it is as simple as pointing to get them to unleash that pain on whatever is threatening you at the moment. So down go poets and artists and musicians and scientists and witches and people who make the sign of the cross with three fingers instead of two, and the bodies keep piling up until the glorious day that everybody wakes up and discovers that, lo and behold, whacking off is better than murder.
In other, happier, news, we are fast coming upon the last days during which you, for a paltry $10, can get some original art drawn painstakingly to your own specifications while knowing that 100% of that money is going to help a few brave teenagers try to put on a gay rights parade in their hometown, which happens to be the town where I live as well. They could use your help, and you could perhaps use an odd piece of quasi-historical/philosophical art to be puzzled at by visiting guests and dignitaries, so give it a whirl! Button clicking is ever so much fun!
Now, to today's comic. I think Stephen Fry put this point particularly well in the debate that he and the much missed Christopher Hitchens put on some years ago. It is a lovely bit of oratory, and so if you'll indulge me I'll quote it in full here:
It’s the strangest thing about this church - it is obsessed with sex, absolutely obsessed. Now they will say we, with our permissive society and rude jokes, are obsessed. No, we have a healthy attitude. We like it, it’s fun, it’s jolly; because it’s a primary impulse it can be dangerous and dark and difficult. It’s a bit like food in that respect, only even more exciting. The only people who are obsessed with food are anorexics and the morbidly obese, and that in erotic terms is the Catholic church in a nutshell.
You can get people to do just about anything if you strangle their most basic of impulses and then reroute that energy into obedience and its close cousin, persecution. Cause pain, a lingering incurable pain, in your followers, and it is as simple as pointing to get them to unleash that pain on whatever is threatening you at the moment. So down go poets and artists and musicians and scientists and witches and people who make the sign of the cross with three fingers instead of two, and the bodies keep piling up until the glorious day that everybody wakes up and discovers that, lo and behold, whacking off is better than murder.
- Count Dolby von Luckner
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