brendan@cs.uq.oz.au (Brendan Mahony) (04/09/91)
In <Apr.5.03.07.59.1991.9540@athos.rutgers.edu> fasano@unix.cis.pitt.edu (Cathy Fasano) writes: >Likewise (to put this in a context) -- we live in a society in which >drunken gangs of frat boys lurk around gay bars and beat up and kill >men who come out. To the extent that catagorical denounciations >of whole classes of people (even when the broadness of the denunciation >is purely rhetorical excess) encourage this kind of violence, they are >at least unwise if not actually sinful. Is it some quirk of the collective American personality that observing some action as sinful is tantamount to calling down holy Jihad on those participating in said action? For instance, "Gluttony is a deadly sin." Is this a call for people to maim and torture the overweight? Or, "Physical assalt is sinful." Is this a call for people to lynch muggers? -- Brendan Mahony | brendan@batserver.cs.uq.oz Department of Computer Science | heretic: someone who disgrees with you University of Queensland | about something neither of you knows Australia | anything about.
djdaneh@pacbell.com (Dan'l DanehyOakes) (04/14/91)
In article <Apr.9.02.42.19.1991.5063@athos.rutgers.edu> brendan@cs.uq.oz.au (Brendan Mahogony) writes: >Is it some quirk of the collective American personality that observing >some action as sinful is tantamount to calling down holy Jihad on those >participating in said action? If, O Most Australian of Correspondents, thou hadst taken but a moment of thy valuable time to peruse the dictionary, seeking the etymology of the very word which thou didst use in thy sentence, that very word being "Jihad," thou wouldst have seen indeed that it is not a specifically American phenomenon. Indeed, the killing of the Outsider is a ritual enacted by many peoples in many climes; indeed, such is shown by the history of thine own great land. Consult if thou wilt the history of that island which is separated from the main land by the Strait of Bass, which the vulgar call Tasmania, and thou wilt find that thy people have there committed perhaps the most successful such extermination in modern history. Indeed, O Southern Light, it taketh only the smallest difference to cause fallen Mankind to fall upon each other with violence. And if that difference is such as threatens their own egos, as is surely the case of the gay-bashers who fear for their own sexual purity, then the violence is swift and inescapable. Pray for Mankind, O Transequatorial Sage, and go in peace. KUWAIT: First there is a country, then there is no country, then there is. The Roach