Minyan

Come on, people. Jack H is growing dissatisfied. Insufficient attention is being payed, and that just reflects badly on y'all. The radiant glory of a dazzling sun has its objective beauty, but what benefit, if it shines in the infinite void, a mote in God's eye, sole object of creation, prior even to the angels, preeminent of created things, most worthy of unquestioning admiration? And since all this describes Jack H so wonderfully, it is inexplicable to every rational being, mundane or divine, why, in a Jack Heliocentric universe, any eyes at all should be diverted from his glory. It makes you look bad, is what it is. So if you can stop batting at balls of string and refrain from digging little holes so you can fill them in again long enough to direct your wayward minuscule attention span for a brief moment whither it belongs, Jack H will stoop to pat your flat little heads and instruct you as to what you should think, and why.

A while back I boiled it down to what I think is the essence. Marriage is about stability. Its soundness in a society is as that of the bricks in a building. They are, each, fundamental units, not of mere appearance, but of strength and durability itself. Soundness. The direct application was that this is the reason such a strange artifact as "gay marriage" is dangerous. It undermines the integrity of society in the same way that mafia-supplied bricks would undermine a building.

Of course this is just argumentation. I posit that marriage is the basic unit of society. No proof, just an axiom. But it's one of those things that can't be proven, only asserted. Because it is a core value, and they are axioms, not proofs. Take honesty: not everyone thinks it's best -- they might prefer expedience. Take faithfulness: same deal.

My evidence -- since there can be no proof -- must find its roots in that foundational document of Western Civilization, the Bible. Adam alone was not a society. An individual is not a society. Adam with God, and Adam with animals, is not a society. It takes, well, not a village, but certainly some interaction with a peer. Hence, Eve. Those two together might have formed their own society, but to fulfil that mandate, of fruitful multiplying, something else was needed, and it took shape in that pairing we would call marriage. You must surely remember it? -- about a man leaving his father and his mother and cleaving unto his wife, and their being one flesh? You know, marriage.

Now I know for a fact that a man can cleave to another man and sort of be one flesh. Brokeback Mountain was on cable last night, and I got an eyeful before I picked up on that fact. But mere cleaving doesn't meet the full requirement of the mandate. It's that fruitful and multiplying part. Childless couples do count, because there is at least the theoretical possibility of compliance. Recall the barren, Elizabeth, say, and Hannah, who became blessed. But sterility is the hard case, from which we do not form a general understanding. Society, as I have intimated, deals with generalities.

As for axioms, we can question anything. We're at a point in our civilization's decline where we're questioning marriage, and accepting a redefinition, so that it means any sexual pairing over time that consenting adults agree to and want to make public. And who's to argue with that? Which brings me to it.

Incest. Why not? Adult siblings ... adult child and parent. Why not? Your blood should be running cold right about now. What business is it of yours? Adult. Consenting. End of discussion.

Except for this concept of family. Why gay marriage, which utterly redefines and renders meaningless the very concept of marriage, and not incest, which undermines what family is? Why not? Why reject one taboo and retain the other? The gay horse is out of the barn. As for that other, the name not to be spoken again, it's about the violence such acts must do to what a family is. We know its harm from the pain and dysfunction it causes in the individuals. We understand, intuitively, that any adult who engages in such conduct must have been destroyed, somehow, as a child. Its appearance in an adult can only be a reappearance, risen up again from the sick soul of an abused child.

You see my point. We're not at a place, yet, where we can look at this horror. The absurdity of sodomy as an equal of actual sex is accepted -- although I expect mostly because the act itself hides behind euphemisms. What euphemism will this next abomination use? It must start as a sick joke, like the word gay, and then somehow be twisted into a movement of pride. You think not? I am certain that sexual child abuse is more common than congenital homosexuality, if there is such a thing at all. I think there isn't. I think every single case of compulsive homosexuality is the result of some form of abuse, subtle or gross. Where there should have been nurturing, there was indifference, or worse, or worse still. Maybe I'm wrong. But I'm not wrong about what a family should include, and what it should exclude.

Well, that's it then. I just wanted to draw out the parallel. It is hatespeech, but that's what I'm all about. It's just that I have another word for it. As gay is to real marriage, hatespeak is to truth.

I was going to end silly, the way I think I need to do sometimes. But the jump from sick would be too abrupt. I'll leave it at this: however large the town of Sodom was, it had not ten righteous men. Why not even ten? Ten is a minyan -- the number it takes to comprise a synagogue. Sodom didn't have a church. Another of those fundamental units of society.

Huh. That's good. See what happens when I don't end silly? The things I think of. I'm wonderful.


J