The Worm in the Apple

 

If, in the year of the Lord 2004, you checked in into a motel in Maine, and through a crack in the blind you would have been spotted doing it doggy style with your own wife, then this could still have gotten you booked for "sodomy," should the peeping tom have called the cops. You find this hard to believe? Believe it!

Occasionally some overeager preacher of the supposedly “good news” tries to convince us that it is all about “love.” Loving your neighbor, loving your enemy, holding out the other cheek, this sort of thing. “Though I bestow all my goods to feed the poor, and though I give my body to be burned, and have not charity, it profits me nothing” (1 Cor. 13), says the apostle. “Charity!” Not quite the same as “love,” although he seems to understand that there is little charity without empathy, which clearly is an ingredient of love. So what has Paul to say in the cases where love, the real thing, actually matters, with your spouse, your family, your friends?

Well, first Paul has a few things to get off his chest: "Man did not come from woman, but woman from man; neither was man created for woman, but woman for man" (I Cor 11:8-9). That’s not what my mother told me, and I am sure not what Paul’s mother told him. But the old Taliban insists that therefore the woman has to be submissive to her husband "as unto the Lord. For the husband is the head of the wife, even as Christ is the head of the church" (Ephesians 5:22-24). With this out of the way Paul finally comes to the point: “It is good for a man not to touch a woman” (I Cor. 7:1). No ambiguities here. And the next sentence is pretty much the most degrading thing anybody has ever said about marriage: “Nevertheless, to avoid fornication, let every man have his own wife, and let every woman have her own husband.” You heard him right: marriage for Paul is merely the piss pot of our physical needs.

But perhaps all this is just a misunderstanding, the man may simply not have gotten the drift of what his boss was really saying?

We shouldn’t be too sure of that. Jesus Christ not only was downright rude to his own mother (Jn. 2:4; Mk. 3:21, 31-35) but after "Magdalene, Joanna, Susanna, and many others," had - what is the expression? - "ministered unto him of their substance" (Lk. 8:1) God’s golden boy has only this to say as a word of thanks for them: “If any man come to me, and hate not his father, and mother, and wife, and children, and brothers, and sisters, even his own life, he cannot be my disciple.” (Lk. 14;26). So much for Christian family values and for “love” where it really counts, Ayatollah Paul hadn’t got it wrong after all.

One is getting an inkling of the connection between sex and the Christian notions of “sin.” Where Paul may simply have lacked a competent therapist to sort out his emotions (read Romans 7:14-21) the highly intelligent Augustine first made damn sure that he had missed no opportunity for shagging out his brains, and only when he couldn’t get it up anymore he presented Christianity with the perfect push-button of ecclesiastical mind control: “original sin.” With this kind of internalized guilt complex it is not surprising that countless Christian women never experienced an orgasm in their entire life, would even have crossed themselves as if the devil was visiting if they had one.

For the Christian male it was a different story. The film-maker Bunuel once explained, that no Protestant, no Eskimo, and no Chinese, could possibly enjoy sex as much as a sin-stricken Catholic!

That must be it!

Northrop Frye has observed that Judaism, Christianity and Islam have descended from the same line of a revolutionary tradition, which "has tended to a good deal of prudery about the naked body, to iconoclasm, and to a rejection of spectacular art, especially when representational" (Northrop Frye, The Great Code  II:117). Moses' law has listed thirty-six crimes as punishable by death. Half of these involve sex, even "the uncovering of one's nakedness" (Exodus 20.26, 28.42; Levi 18.6-19). A prudery that seems to go with revolutions everywhere. For the Marxists in Russia and China the un-blurred view at our genitals is just as anathema as it is for Puritans and Ayatollahs, or the American television.

So here is my question: What has done more harm to mankind? The Bible, the Koran, or the Kamasutra? Before the introduction of Christianity in Europe, homosexuality had never been a civil crime.

In 168 AD. another Christian Taliban, a certain Tatian, published his tirade Against the Greeks and denounced an icon of Hellenic culture, the Greek poetess Sappho (631-572 BC.), who was then still considered only second to Homer. He called her names, said she was a "love-crazed fornicator who even sings about her own licentiousness." Ever since, Sappho's frank celebration of the senses has remained a scandal. “But,” says the poetess, "we shall enjoy it. As for him who finds fault, may silliness and sorrow take him." A sourpuss like Theodore, the Archbishop of Canterbury in 670 AD., would of course not listen. His penitential decrees that a nun caught alone with her dildo was to endure a good whipping and be excluded from the sacraments for a whole year. And when Theodore says that fellatio is "the worst of all evils," he really meant that licking pussy is worse than murder; it earned you a lifetime of penance. Killing a man got you a mere fifteen years tops.

 The bright and well educated church father Origen (182-251 AD.) who had denied the historicity of critical sections of Scripture and believed that we all will eventually be saved, all on sudden felt the urge to take Jesus’ advise (Mk. 9:47; Mt. 5:29) literally and did a DIY job on his own testicles. His colleagues felt this wasn’t playing fair, celibacy had just became too easy. Origen was asked to hand in his membership card and leave the keys with the concierge. From now on, at the investiture of new pontiffs, it became customary for the electoral college of cardinals to pass single file underneath an elevated chair with a strategic gap in the seating area. Only after a peek at the holy scrotum and the announcement that “all is well with the testicles” (W.E.H. Lecky 1838–1903, History of European Morals), the new custodian of the angelic vision was at liberty to amuse himself with his choirboys.

The Roman Popes had the most expensive sound equipment money could buy, vaults and domes in marble that carried a crystal clear sound, so naturally it grated on the Holy Father’s heightened sensitivity to hear the boys losing their soprano voices during puberty.

But there was help.

Up and down in Italy the pediatricians advertised their services with a note on the door: “Here, boys will be improved.” It was a career move and a mother with vision would bring her boy to Doctor Snip. Not before 1928, the Vatican finally renounced the practice. In other words, even now, victims for whom the decree came too late might still be walking among us.

I must admit I have a hard time to accept any of this as normal behavior. I mean, one can of course endlessly coo over church choirs and Hildegard of Bingen and “modern” convents with the wide-eyed little angels singing their little souls out. I know, the colored glass windows are pretty. But for that scene in Paradise, Michelangelo had to paint boobs on a young man, because in Renaissance Rome he couldn’t get a female to model for his Eve. (I always wonder what Eve on the fresco had been doing before she reached for the apple: give Adam a blow-job? Just look how the naughty Michelangelo has positioned the two.)

As late as 1929, with the Fascists already knocking on the door, the Holy Office still had nothing better to do but to condemn every book “which deals with fleshly passion,” because “no other danger is greater.” And with a truly breathtaking chutzpah the cardinal continues: “The necessity to suppress publications for the wellbeing of the public, has particularly been proven lately, when even civil governments, have used preventive censorship to protect the judicial system and public order. This shows us how well it corresponds with true liberty” (sic! Palazzo del S. Uffizio, Festa del S. Cuore di Gesu 7th of June 1929). In 1958, Angelo Roncalli became Pope John XXIII, no doubt one of the better shepherds of the Church, but I am not aware that even he progressed beyond Cardinal Merry del Val’s statement. Contraceptives have remained off limit and the fever pitch in the greenhouse atmosphere of a catholic seminar on “moral theology” is as steamy as ever.

The nuances these celibates discuss!

I mean we all know that the creation of Eve was merely an afterthought and ad hoc expedient for Adam's boner, but is it still sin to have inter-femoral contact (penis between thighs) or is it deserving of penance, and if so, how much? One week worth of "Hail Maries" and sweeping the chaplain’s chimney? What about lesbians rocking in unison on the two knobby ends of the same double-ended dildo? (Something more filling is needed after all, isn’t it, ladies?) Still three years of penance? And anal intercourse? Fellatio? What if boys are caught kissing but keep their hands to themselves? Does age matter? How to categorize a kiss with tongue? And suppose kissing leads to “emissions,” what are we going to do then? Worse still, what, if they don’t keep their hands to themselves? What if they masturbate each other? Or heaven forbid, the two are past their twenties? What do we do, if the spillage is hitting the floor unused? Or is getting stuck in a condom?

Choices! Choices! “Clearly the “...” (fill in the blank) “we think off is worse than the one living next to us,” says the seraphic Bonaventura (1221-1274), a sexually particularly screwed up specimen of catholic sainthood. He watched with approval a nun sucking off the scabs from a leper and getting an orgasm - pardon - a vision of Christ, when swallowing it. He could never sit with his own mother in the same room without breaking a sweat if there was no chaperone around, out of fear she might jump him would be my guess. For him it was a given that “a woman is bitterer than death, her body's orifices are the gates to perdition; her insatiable lust and her uterus perpetuate evil for ever” (malleus maleficarum).

One of the great ironies of history is that Gutenberg’s innovation, which should have made freedom of speech accessible to the underprivileged, was also the one which made it feasible to censor a book even before it goes to the printing press. Already in 1487 the farsighted Pope Innocent VIII had required that no manuscript should go to the printer without the papal imprimatur. Under Pope Paul III, in 1542, the licensing office became a branch of the Inquisition. In 1559 Pope Paul IV, then, issued the first edition of the infamous Index Librorum Prohibitorum. Some five thousand books are listed in the Index by now; the last edition was issued in 1948, the last new entry is from 1944. Voltaire is on it not just for his anticlerical gripes; his poem La Pucelle has a reputation for being seriously pornographic.

Spinoza's dictum that "the word 'dog' cannot bark" has never cut it with the censor who is keeping his hand firmly on his fly to gage the true effect of the text or tape under scrutiny from the sudden swelling further south. No surprise then when these days the academic pundits dismiss out of hand a wit and libertine like the Earl of Rochester (1647-1680) as a merely “minor” author, because Rochester's work has remained a seminal goldmine for the vocabulary of going down in front, behind, on top and below; and his Lordship dished it out with elegance and wit. He was an aristocrat who would have listened to our use of euphemisms and the jargon of political correctness with undisguised contempt, as a typical sign for low breeding.

Our beeped out "fucks" and “cunts” are a Pavlovian delight. What better way to cement profanity in the mind? Beep, beep, beep - there, I said it! I’m getting a hard-on already. In my age not something I lightly can let go to waste.

Lenny Bruce, a comedian of the sixties, faced trials in Philadelphia, Beverly Hills and Chicago for his stand-up routines, and in 1964 - would you believe it - was even deported from the United Kingdom. His trial for obscenity in Chicago focused on the comedian's mockery of religion. Obscenity is a form of irreverence and censors find it extremely uncool. It is a telling fact that virtually all “obscene” remarks snipe at religion and authority.

The authorities respond with naked vandalism; they use scissors and paint like any old thug who disfigures subways and public toilets with his can of spray paint.

In 1558, Pope Paul IV commissioned the painter Daniele da Volterra (1509-1566) to cover under drapes and clothing the offending nudities of Michelangelo’s fresco in the Sistine Chapel. It earned the painter the nickname "braghettone" - the breeches tailor. And yet this seemed not nearly enough for the American Postmaster General. In the central panel, God (with a naked little Ganymed at his side) is busy dividing day and night, while the Son of the Morningstar continues to moon the viewer with his bare tush. So in 1933 a judge in New York ruled the fresco to be obscene.

Voltaire's La Pucelle is still begging for a translator, so it has escaped scrutiny, but in 1930 U.S. Customs seized even Voltaire's Candide on charges of obscenity. Under the Comstock Law the U.S. Mail can hold on to every book in your birthday parcel. Officially known as the Federal Anti-Obscenity Act from 1873, this law bans the mailing of "lewd", "indecent", "filthy", or "obscene" materials. Not enforced at present, the law is still on the books; a ticking time bomb. Accordingly for decades The Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure; Lysistrata, the Canterbury Tales, the Decamerone, Moll Flanders, and the Arabian Nights changed hands in the USA only underneath the counter. The Catcher in the Rye is the most frequently censored book, while at the same time being the book most frequently taught at public schools.

Neither, in my opinion, is justified. The Catcher always struck me as a stale emulation of the format for Mark Twain’s Huckleberry Finn, (an adolescent is hiding his awakening sensitivity behind tough talking), but it is lacking the humor of the original. The censors pretend to be put off by the novel's 860 profanities.

The term "bowdlerize" comes from an English family that has pioneered the commercial castrating of literature. Thomas Bowdler published the Family Shakespeare, and it became the bestselling Shakespeare of the 19th century. Before The Catcher in the Rye, Shakespeare and Chaucer had always been the most censored authors in the English language. Chaucer is safe now - who can read him these days without a dictionary? In 1826, The Family Gibbon, a sanitized gloss on Edward Gibbon's The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, came out to replace the real thing. Sanitized of what, I wonder?

The interesting thing is how censorship is actually affecting the circulation of books. Already 2,000 years ago, the Roman historian Tacitus observed that "as long as the possession of these writings was attended by danger, they were eagerly sought and read; when there was no longer any difficulty in procuring them, they fell into oblivion." The producer of The Life of Brian saved a lot of money on his promotion campaign because the censors did all the promoting free of charge. At least he should have sent them a thank-you card.

We cry "foul" should children catch a glimpse of one inch of penis or the pubic area of a pussy. I heard intelligent people defending censorship for fear of having "kids carrying pornography in their satchels." The laughter almost gave me a whiplash. These days kids pack cigarettes, drugs and handguns; but, ooh, beware of pornography! So what? The boys wank it off over a centerfold from Playboy, while girls manually explore their feelings further south under a glossy of Tom Cruise on the bedroom wall and most of the girls do it already at an age when boys not even think of wanking. How does a censor think he came into this world? As a case of angelic insemination? What makes him think he is the only one immune to the “filth,” nay so superior to the rest of us, that only he can protect us from something that will do no harm to him? Fuck you, Sir!

In 1930 the suits in Lever Inc. were silly enough to order the breasts of Venus dotted out from their wrappers for soap-bars. It was the same decade when the brassiere industry increased cup sizes and launched a sales offensive on the Samoan islands, while at home the mustachoid dictator and his elite - “strength through joy” - had a lunch brake at the art gallery, counting with straight faces the pubic hair depicted in oil and marble. Speaking of double standards and the commercialism at the foundation of our morals. When Michelangelo (1475-1564) unveiled his "David," the bigots threw stones at the statue and broke off an arm, the repair marks are still visible.

The mutilation of genitals, for real or in effigy, has always been as popular with the religiously challenged, as it is in the dungeons of the Lublyanka, or in Guantanamo, or on the graffiti in the public toilets. Most statues that have survived from antiquity are disfigured at their noses and penises.

"Panta kathara tois katharois,” unto the pure all things are pure, says the poetess Sappho, and surprisingly none less than the apostle Paul is quoting her with approval. There might have been hope for this chap after all! Credible studies have shown that pornography is beneficial even for the instruction of dirty old censors, although they won’t admit it of course. Sex improves with practice. Even people who think it is all in the gene don’t stop training the dog. We fine-tune inherited behavior, that’s how domestication works. This is also known under the big fancy cooking word “culture.”

In the 3rd century AD. Longos wrote his charming Daphnis and Chloe, the story of two youngsters herding their goats and discovering their hormones. Surrounded by their animals who do “it” all the time, the kids somehow manage not to have a clue before we reach the last page. In 424 BC. was the premiere of Lysistrata. 26,000 people filled the amphitheater with waves of roaring laughter. It is a sign of the age. Hard core pornography is proliferating on our computers, but bawdy humor is on the retreat, I wonder why? In our porn flicks the couples fuck as if it is for the Olympics.

In 1922, the postmaster general ordered to seize and burn James Joyce’s Ulysses. In the end Judge John M. Woolsey ruled that the book was "not pornographic." It was hailed a s a landmark decision. Was it really? Perhaps! But for all the wrong reasons! God forbid that a book should affect us as an aphrodisiac - in legalese: "dirt for dirt's sake" (Judge John M. Woolsey, 1936, in his ruling on James Joyce's Ulysses). The legal definition of the word "obscene" is: "tending to stir the sex impulses or to lead to sexually impure and lustful thoughts" (Judge John M. Woolsey). Impure? What’s impure about lust? And why this fly-fishing for legal definitions in the first place? What business is it for secular legislation to interfere in my privacy and enforce a religious taboo?

More and more countries surround their web-users with firewalls, even license the use of modems, and so bar literally billions of people from uncensored access to information. The legislator requires the ISP provider to cache files for further inspection if the frequency of hits is going beyond a certain margin. In Singapore it automatically leads to denials of access if it is a site with lasses and lads having a spanking good time in the buff.

Ours is the beginning of the golden age of censorship, and not just of the censor-chip in our appliances, which has opened the floodgate to still un-thought of possibilities. Thank you Mr. Clinton, but no, thanks; keep the cigars.

There can never be any censorship without a totalitarian agenda, no matter how jovially the slap on the back and how gimmicky the promise of a “conducive environment” on the censor’s own webpage (aided and abetted by krypton lit prison cells hidden under the country club’s polo pitch), and no matter how deeply entangled in the cant (cunt?) of political correctness. Somebody is telling me how to live my life. Somebody is assuming an authority he neither has nor deserves. I did not invite this somebody into my bedroom. I don’t appreciate this threesome - Mimi, me and the censor.

The mother of all censorship, the Greek philosopher Plato once said: "We must remain firm in our resolution that only hymns to the gods and praise of famous men are to be admitted. If we allow amusement to enter, not law and reason, but pleasure and pain will rule the State." Plato’s remedy was inflicting maximum pain: star chambers, secret trials before the state-inquisition, segregation of the classes, marching bands instead of books, and the breeding of the blondest with CT cams pointed at you in the act; don’t you dare spilling. Now, where have we seen that, recently?

The censor is pimping to the most screwy and murky instincts in human nature; he is the Mr. Hyde of the Maquis de Sade.

Behind the floor-long curtains the prison wardens are ready to jump you with tracer guns. Electricity is a big thing here, electric fences and the “telephone” - ask the Vietnam veteran next door what this means. In the censored world habeas corpus and legal representation is strictly illegal. But in the end it all goes down to the genitalia. The prisoner is made to strip and the interrogator attaches electrodes to his testicles, or, if you are a woman, extinguishes a cigarette on your teats. Among consenting adults of course, this, too, could be a form of sex, but in the Lublyanka, or in Guantanamo it is the accepted form of rape. The psychologist will notice the sexual element even in torture, you can dock the tail, but the lovely beast will jump at you and lick off your makeup when you least expect it.

The animal to tame is rape, not sex, and in his eagerness to prevent sex to be enjoyable the censor is making himself the accessory to rape.

 

© - 3/19/2008 - by michael sympson,

3,900 words, all rights reserved