How an Underwear Malfunction Helped me Understand Christian Fundamentalists
Submitted by Martin on Sat, 03/08/2008 - 15:37.
Walking along Cambridge's famous Mill Road after work yesterday, something happened that caused me to have a revelation over religious righteousness, and begin to truly understand the mind of the fundamentalist. Let me share my parable with you.
I don't know how it happened. Maybe I had been careless after my last trip to the loo; maybe it was, as Jeremy Paxman recently observed, the lack of support in modern underwear; or maybe I had been a little too enthusiastic bounding off the bus at the Drummer Street bus station. Whatever it was, I rapidly realized that something was not in its proper place. One of my secondary sexual organs had slipped from its safety harness and was now uncomfortably trapped in the middle of a sawing motion between denim and cotton, the skin rubbing raw in its lethal fabric embrace.
This was unbelievably painful, something like I'd imagine giving birth to be, except that unlike a woman in labour I couldn't scream, or ask for an epidural. I desperately wanted to slip a hand down there, rummage around and free my tortured testicle, but I was in the middle of a crowded street, and had nearly a mile to walk until I would be in the privacy required to achieve release without ending up on Cambridgeshire's Register of Sex Offenders. And so I was forced to walk on, in agony, looking like John Wayne with a broken ankle.
My first thought was one of anger at society. Why shouldn't I be able to just reach down, do what I need to do, and walk on? No, instead, I had to suffer for another fifteen minutes, fearing every step that I would feel a small, bloody mass slide down my right trouser leg. I had to conform to society's expectations of good behaviour - "don't touch your genitals in public" as my Nan always used to say - but this was completely irrational, why should I have to suffer just to do what someone else has arbitrarily decided is the "Right Thing"? Why would it be so bad to ease the pain? Who would it offend?
I began to think about my plight. What if I saw another man coming towards me, releasing his own trapped testicle? How would I feel? I'd be furious. My venom towards him would know no bounds. I would howl in protest, demand that society exact appropriate retribution on him. In short, I would be a total hypocrite.
And then it hit me. This might be exactly how religious zealots think.
I wouldn't be pissed off because he was breaking the rules, I would be pissed off because he was breaking the rules and I wasn't, and there are only a few ways to rationalize that, if you think about it: either (a) I'm stupid or cowardly for following rules that are wrong; or (b) the rules are right, and he is an ignorant pervert deviant who should be punished by society.
http://layscience.net/?q=node/68
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