Dear visionaries,
Everybody take a few deep breaths. If that doesn’t help, put your head between your knees for a few minutes.
Just a couple thoughts.
On the subject of female toplessness, Thomas moaned, “We Americans look like bumpkin country jakes to most of the civilized world . . .” But there is a difference between fin de siecle jadedness and civilization. I’ve been around the world also, and when some of these other countries start mastering the basics of hygiene and central heating I’ll start worrying about their views about American rubes.
Second, why did this toplessness hubbub happen? We had no laws on this at all for a few years. The controversy was not started by conservative women wearing burkas, offending all the feminists downtown. It was caused by those who do not know what it means to live charitably in community with others. The need for hyper-legalistic definitions was therefore insisted upon by those who want to abuse their freedoms at the expense of others. Instead of a law, I would have been happy to continue with a community consensus that simply asked everyone not to be a jerk. But apparently this concept is beyond some people.
And last, I reiterate my point that this represents a profound form of erotic retardation. We resist those who want us to agree with their attempts to make a woman’s body a commonplace object with no more erotic value than a street sign or a mailbox. Trinitarian Christians object, not to the wonderful sexual expression of the marriage bed, but to the sexual vandalism of your dull egalitarian flatness. What a boring and ugly world you want!
But, if you don’t agree, as is your constitutional right, I am still waiting on the proposed wording of the law equalizing male and female bodies in all sexual harassment situations. You know, a man can currently pat a male co-worker on the chest. You mean he can’t do this same thing to Suzie Q in the next office cubicle? Thunder! Lightning! Blue ruin! Tyranny! Dragons! Flood! Goose-stepping soldiers! O tempora! O mores!
“Apologetics in the Void” are repostings from an on-going electronic discussion and debate I had some time ago with members of our local community, whose names I have changed. The list serve is called Vision 20/20, and hence the name “visionaries.” Reading just these posts probably feels like listening to one half of a phone conversation, but I don’t feel at liberty to publish what others have written. But I have been editing these posts (lightly) with intelligibility in mind.