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May 17, 2005
All Rights Reserved
World Copyright
© Martin Foreman
Column 4: Men only
The blessings of testosterone
By © Martin Foreman
Word Count: 752
Publication date: February 27, 2005
All Rights Reserved, including online and all electronic versions.
Subject to contract, this column is available for print publication at no cost and no obligation. Click for terms.
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(For a less sexually explicit column, click here.)
Life may be conceived in the womb and nourished at the breast, but most religions consider a penis and testicles more valuable. In many congregations women are relegated to second-class status and the leading branches of Judaism, Christianity and Islam insist that only men can be Priests, Rabbis or Imams.
You might think that intelligence, honesty and piety should be the primary qualifications for honoring God, but you’d be wrong. What the deity wants is testosterone.
Take the Roman Catholic Church. In 2002, seven women were ordained priests. Wasn’t that a great idea, especially since the Church has a problem recruiting young men to the priesthood?
So what was the Pope’s response to these people who wanted to serve God? He threw up his hands in horror at the fact that the seven had the spiritual, but not the physical, balls to be priests, and excommunicated them. Theologians disagree as to the implications of excommunication, but in some people’s eyes it is equivalent to sentencing the women to eternity in hell. Nice one, John Paul!
In older religions based on fertility, erect phalluses were frequently displayed and celebrated, Although this was most often in effigy, they clearly referred to the human version. This tradition has died out in most of the modern world, but there is a strong argument for restoring it to Jewish-Christian-Muslim services.
After all, since women can disguise themselves as men - and in 2004 a woman was only unmasked in al-Fateh Mosque in Bahrain when she was about to give a sermon – it seems reasonable to confirm the sex of the celebrant before the ceremony begins.
The simplest way of doing this is would be a ceremonial lifting of the robes to reassure the congregation that the PRIM has the penis and testicles that give him a direct line to God. In the larger churches, mosques and synagogues, where distant genitalia may not be easily distinguished, the whole congregation could reassure themselves by filing past the holy trinity while the robes were raised.
However, since the elderly and disabled may not be able to walk, an alternative might be to have someone inspect the relevant organ on behalf of the congregation…
On second thoughts, that wouldn’t work. The inspector would have to be a man, because he was now part of the ceremony. So someone would have to inspect his genitalia. And that person would have to have his inspected, and so on. By the time each man had checked the member of the man preceding him and had his own member checked, it would be time for everyone to go home.
But no matter how the celebrant’s masculinity is confirmed, it makes you wonder about God’s motives and his obsession with men. He may be male, but he’s not particularly heterosexual. Yes, he got it on with Mary once, but that was only in Christianity and only to pass on the family name. Most of the time he prefers the company of men.
Not everyone's God is misogynistic. Many believers are convinced that God finds breasts and a vagina as acceptable as a penis and testicles. Many sects even have women priests and rabbis. Muslims, as far as I am aware, have not yet got that far.
It doesn’t take a degree in psychology to realize that God’s supposed preference for the male sex reflects nothing more than men’s reluctance to share their privilege and power. They use every theological trick in the book to keep their exclusive links with their imaginary God, including the laughably circular argument that they speak for him.
In Catholicism this is known as Papal Infallibility; in plain English, this translates as “I say I speak for God. God says I’m right. That means you’re wrong, nyah, nyah, nyah!”
When it comes down to it, there are three possibilities. The first is that God definitely prefers men; if you ain’t got the testicles, talk to the divine hand because the divine ear ain’t listening.
The second is that God doesn’t care one iota about your genitalia; he also probably isn’t a great fan of men in long dresses hijacking his name. However, believers in this option are currently outnumbered - or at least outshouted - by believers in option one.
And the third possibility? No God. Forget the whole discussion and and see what’s on television. Better still, get and go for a walk or play a game of football. See how much simpler life is when God is out of the picture?
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THIS WEEK'S COLUMN
FOOD FOR THOUGHT
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"The United States prides itself on championing freedom and in enshrining the pursuit of happiness in its constitution. It is ironic that so many Americans espouse a moral code whose impact is to restrict both freedom and happiness. America needs moral values, but values that respect and honor every citizen."
What moral values?
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