In Defense of Plain Speaking

“Ezekiel rails against the adulterous idolatry of the Israelites by using sexual imagery of  the most graphic sort. He uses obscenity to reveal the real obscenity of doing such things in defiance of God’s law . . . Ezekiel was more concerned about the obscenity he was exposing than the obscenity he was using . . . Phineas certainly observed a man and a woman copulating, but he was not doing so as a voyeur. His interest was ethical; he was taking aim” (Fidelity, pp. 15-16).