Wholly Matrimony? by Sam Aurelius Milam III On March 25, 1996, San Francisco Mayor Willie Brown presided over some symbolic "marriages" that took place in San Francisco.  These marriages, which are not recognized by the state, were between 175 pairs of "same sex" couples who were publicizing their desire for government recognition of marriages between people of the same sex.1 If these homosexual people succeed in gaining government recognition, they will be losing a valuable opportunity.  Starting from scratch as they are, they could have marriages free of obligations to the state, based entirely upon love, and relying for success only upon the strength, talents, and commitment of the participants.  Instead, they're struggling to enter the same trap that other married couples occupy. The sad fact is that these homosexual people, like most other people today, believe that a marriage isn't real unless it is licensed by the government.  This attitude is probably caused by government and is certainly encouraged by it.  Actually, there's more than one source of legitimacy.  Marriage can be a contract executed between the participants.  A contractual marriage is entirely as valid as a marriage licensed by the government.  Indeed, marriage by mutual agreement predates the present government by a good many centuries.  Marriage can also be a Holy Sacrament, executed before God.  A marriage that has the sanction of God certainly doesn't need the recognition of mere government.  Also, as with contractual marriage, religious marriage predates the present government. Government cannot unilaterally acquire a legitimate jurisdiction over an ancient practice like marriage.  Such jurisdiction doesn't exist unless it is granted by the participants.  That grant of jurisdiction is exactly what happens when people apply to government for a marriage license. The only benefit of government recognition of a marriage today is the privileges granted by government to participants in "authorized" marriages.  The situation of the homosexual couples in San Francisco is therefore clear.  Their demand for government marriage licenses will not enable them to have legitimate marriages.  They could get that in a church.  What they'll get for their efforts is insurance benefits, tax breaks, adoption preferences, and all of the other privileges that the government uses to seduce people into its grasp.  In the process, they'll trade their right to be married for a privilege to be married and consequently to be regulated by the state. Throughout our culture, marriage has been converted into a regulated activity, licensed by government and undertaken for materialistic reasons.  This alliance between matrimony and the state is a despicable marriage of convenience that surely must have been made in Hell. 1  ^  NBC Nightly News with Tom Brokaw, Monday, March 25, 1996 What's the quickest way for a cop to earn a paid vacation?  Be filmed clubbing a suspect. Federal Investigations:  Credibility Gap;  Gullibility Fill by Sam Aurelius Milam III Why doesn't the FBI allow some objective third-party observers to watch during searches like the one of Ted Kaczynski's cabin?  Maybe that would make it too difficult for them to plant evidence.  Why did it take them so long to find that "original" manifesto?  Maybe they had to wait while somebody typed it on one of Ted's typewriters, so the print would match.  Suppose Ted were to claim that the cabin had originally contained only an army cot, an ax, and a wood stove, and everything else was hauled in by the FBI.  Lacking objective observers, it would be his word against theirs.  I believe he's as credible as they are.  Even if he is the Unabomber, the FBI has killed more people than he has. Even if he really had all of that stuff, so what?  It shouldn't be illegal to own or to build a bomb.  Neither is harmful.  A "threat" isn't harm.  This is fundamental to the doctrine of presumed innocence.  No matter how threatening somebody is, the government doesn't have a cause of action until he actually does harm.  The danger of criminalizing threats is that the prohibitions are gradually extended to ever more unlikely "threats".  Eventually there are only two kinds of actions:  required or prohibited. Message # 38915 posted on N0ARY Packet Bulletin Board System (PBBS) on 2 Apr 96 23:48 From:  KK6GV@K6TZ To:  DEBATE@ALLUS Subject:  WHO DO WE BELIEVE? Hi ALL: RE:  The Montana Freemen.  Who do you believe?  Do we believe the Freemen?  I don't think so.  It sounds to me that they are a bunch of anarchists who have been writing bad checks and terrorizing the folks in their area.  They don't sound much like the wackos at Waco or Randy Weaver.  At least they didn't seem to be bothering anyone. Do we believe the news media?  Not hardly!  Most of those folks couldn't get a story right if you wrote it for them.  Most "news" is so full of errors and personal opinion that it becomes worthless. Do we believe the government agents?  From what I have seen, they wouldn't recognize the truth if they stepped in it.  It seems to me that our government has been lying to us for so long that they would lie even when the truth would serve them better. Most of all, I can't believe I'm writing this.  Good luck, we'll need it. 73, Dennis KK6GV

Book Review by Don Cormier Bruce Olds' Raising Holy Hell is one of the best novels published in 1995, and probably the best novel of American history published in the last decade. It tells the story of John Brown — the abolitionist martyr whose "terrorist" raid on Harper's Ferry was a blazing portent of the War Between the States. Olds' method of telling this familiar story is the thing which makes the novel so fascinating.  The book is a collage of excerpts from various genuine historical documents, combined with fictional, dramatized scenes.  The effect is tremendously cinematic, and also a bit like solving a puzzle.  Much of the author's meaning is conveyed by the clever juxtaposition of elements, rather than by things directly stated. The author's culling of old diaries and newspaper articles documents the degree to which racism permeated the thought of white Americans in the nineteenth century.  To judge by the written evidence, most whites, northern or southern, affirmed that blacks were subhuman. Although race relations and slavery were mixed together in nineteenth century American thought, the two issues should have been considered separately.  Slavery may or may not have been sanctioned by the Bible, and may or may not have been consistent with the democracy — good arguments were made on both sides of the question — but the race of the slaves never was relevant to the morality of slavery as an institution.  The prevalent intellectual confusion inhibited realistic discussion and contributed greatly to the eventual outbreak of war. John Brown's ideas on race relations were in stark contrast to those of the general population.  Brown was a devout Christian, and because Christ preached that all men were equally loved by God, Brown came to believe that members of different races should learn to love one another as equals.  He even stated that he would be happy to have a black woman as a daughter-in-law. Brown further believed that it was his Christian duty to fight slavery and to rescue the oppressed blacks — that his eternal salvation depended on doing so.  His thinking mirrored the tragic muddle of the time. It is frequently forgotten that prior to the War Between the States, the Federal government was obligated by the Constitution to uphold slavery.  This led to Brown's attempt to overthrow the federal government and, of course, explains why he was attempting to seize the arsenal at Harper's Ferry. His violence shocked and repelled those Northerners who did not share his love for blacks and who, although they sympathized with Brown's disapproval of slavery, would have liked to find a compromise solution to the slave problem.  Brown's violence completely alienated Southerners, who mistakenly decided that his attitude was typical of the Yankees. It's safe to say that the publicity generated by John Brown's activities made further compromise on the slave issue impossible — although it may have been impossible in any case.  Judging by the examples provided by Olds, the various peaceful compromise schemes put forth at the time were laughably unrealistic. It could be that the Unabomber is the modern equivalent of John Brown.  Although most people would condemn the Unabomber's use of violence, a significant number of people sympathize with his ideas, and his ideas are of a sort which would seem to require violence to be implemented.  The next century may see another civil war, so-called, or perhaps a true revolution, based on the issues raised by the Unabomber.  Raising Holy Hell reminds us that it is sometimes considered holy to raise hell — but that it helps to be on the winning side. •     My thanks to Running Bear, of Colorado Springs, for the procurement of a more powerful computer for this newsletter. •     My thanks to Mars, of Silicon Valley, for procuring, repairing, and maintaining the newsletter copier.  The color insert last month was possible because of his efforts. — editor Sesame Suite   Bernie: Hey!  Look, Burt, it's a bunch of cows! Burt: Herd. Bernie:  Heard of what? Burt:  Herd of cows. Bernie: Of course I've heard of cows! Burt: No!  No!  A cow herd! Bernie: That's alright, Burt, I've nothing to hide from her! Burt: Aaaaahh, Bernieee!

How Sacred Now, Dead Brown Cow? By Sam Aurelius Milam III Here's an excerpt from an essay (Ravin' Evermore) that I completed on August 12, 1991. For years the religious nuts and the scientific nuts have been arguing creation versus evolution.13  The scientific nuts won't admit that God might have created the world with the fossils in place, as a test of faith, and the religious nuts won't concede that God might have used evolution as a handy tool, just because He damned well felt like it.  The religious nuts must love their evangelism a lot more than their religion, and the scientific nuts must love their dogma more than their science.  Otherwise, they'd each leave the other alone, and simply live their lives. Maybe God is Limited by Noblesse Oblige, or maybe not, but I expect that He can still make a few Choices in how He runs His universe.  If He wants us to evolve, then we'll damned well change from something into something else, and if he wants to create a planet with fossils, what's to stop him? (Here's a conundrum for you.  Is God limited?  If not, then He can encompass all possible universes.  That means He can't possibly create a universe so large that He can't encompass it.  But if He can't create a universe that large, then that's a limit on what He can create, so He's limited.  Religious nuts, go figure!)14 Amidst the brouhaha, some ideas have been overlooked.  At least, I've never seen them in the literature.  Presuming that life arose spontaneously, then it must be possible for life to arise spontaneously.  Well, who can argue with that?  And, if it's possible once, it's possible more than once.  What?  UnGodly thought!  More than one sacred spontaneous generation of life?  Not on your Holy Bunsen burner!  Now I'll have both the religious nuts and the scientific nuts after me.  Clarence Darrow and William Jennings Bryan can both turn over in their graves. Well, sorry guys, but there's no reason why I have to be related to spiders.  Maybe their ancestors and mine came from completely different spontaneous origins, and their adenine and cytosine just happens to look like mine.  That stuff's just a theory anyway.  I also question the charts which arrange the animal kingdom in the form of an evolutionary tree, starting with the amoeba, and ending with us.  How could we possibly evolve from amoebas?  They're contemporary occupants of the planet.  Not only that, they've been through countlessly more generations of evolution than we have.  Well anyway, it seems that they have, since they have a higher generation rate than we do.  So, if there's anything to the evolution theory, then amoebas are a more likely end product than we are.  And unlike us, they're not fouling their own nest, so maybe they're more intelligent.  Or maybe intelligence is a deficiency they've outgrown.  Maybe that's why they've headed south.  Maybe they're just trying to put as much evolutionary distance as possible between us and them, to get themselves as far from our environmental niche as possible, before we destroy it.  And before we discount them because of their small size, recall that our reproduction depends upon little critters of comparably small size, while the amoebas don't need giants to make more amoebas.  I'm reminded of the theory that a human being is nothing more than a gamete's method of producing more gametes.  If so, amoebas are more efficient. There's no reason whatsoever to assume that all life on Earth arose from a common ancestor, or that all life originated at the same time.  There need not have been a single magic instant and location which was uniquely suited to the spontaneous generation of life.  For ages, and at countless locations, conducive conditions probably existed, if they ever did.15 Here's another interesting idea.  Why does life have to spontaneously arise in the ocean?  Why couldn't it happen in the blood stream of an already existing critter?  Some animals live a long time.  Maybe even a hundred years. That's a long time in the evolutionary history of a microbe fresh off the theological drawing board.  Just think!  Within your own body, at this very instant, the AIDS virus could be spontaneously generating! 13  ^  Check the famous "Monkey Trial" (1925), in Dayton, Tennessee. 14  ^  Thank you, Jonathan, for the conundrum. 15  ^  Perhaps they still do.  Would we recognize new, spontaneous life if it arose today?  Most likely, we'd exterminate it. "Ooow Harold!  What a horrible bug!  Where's the Raid?" — from the essay Ravin' Evermore, by Sam Aurelius Milam III So, what about the origins of life?  I never did develop a good definition of the difference between the living and the non-living.  No matter what characteristics I used to define the difference, I could always think of some annoying exception.  In that vein, consider BSE — the so-called Mad Cow Disease that has recently created such a stir.  BSE makes the difference between the living and the non-living impossible to define.  BSE is caused by a non-living "agent", a protein that not only causes the infection of one animal from another, but even reproduces.  OK, it doesn't have babies like us or divide like an amoeba, but the result is the same.  It makes more like itself and gives them the ability to do the same.  It reproduces, yet it isn't a living thing.  It has no organic structure or function.  It's just a protein, yet it multiplies and has effects typical of living infectious organisms.  I think it's an example of the transition between the non-living and the living.  I believe we've seen a miracle, the spontaneous origin of new life — in a cow.

 
 
 

Frontiersman  435 South White Road  San Jose, California  95127  Produced at Mere Keep   U.S.A. OUT of North America     The Bicycle Trader — Purveying Feminist Hypocrisy as Well as Bicycles by Sam Aurelius Milam III The Bicycle Trader, P.O.Box 3324, Ashland, Oregon 97520, routinely runs a section titled "Women Specific", wherein it advertises items for females only.  The publication does not have an equivalent "Men Specific" section. Buck Hunter Shoots Off His Mouth Dear Buck Where did you learn to come up with such stupid answers? — Can't Believe It Dear Can't Believe It From watching C-SPAN. The Owl Who Was God as retold by Sam Aurelius Milam III;  author unknown Once upon a starless midnight, there was an owl who sat on the branch of a tree.  Two ground moles tried to slip quietly by, unnoticed.  "You!" said the owl.  "Who?" they quavered in fear and astonishment.  "You two!" said the owl.  The moles hurried away and told the other creatures of the forest that the owl was the greatest and wisest of all animals because he could see in the dark and could answer any question.  "I'll see about that," said a secretary bird, and he called upon the owl.  "How many claws am I holding up?" said the secretary bird.  "Two" said the owl.  "Can you give me another expression for 'that is to say,' or 'namely?' " asked the secretary bird.  "To wit" said the owl.  "Why does a lover call on his love?" asked the secretary bird.  "To woo" said the owl.  The secretary bird hastened back to the other creatures and reported that the owl was indeed the greatest and wisest because he could see in the dark and answer any question.  "Can he see in the daytime, too?" asked a fox.  All the other creatures laughed loudly at this silly question.  Then they sent a messenger to the owl and asked him to be their leader.  When the owl appeared among the animals, it was high noon and the sun was shining brightly.  He walked very slowly, which gave him an appearance of great dignity.  He peered about himself with large, staring eyes which gave him an air of tremendous importance.  "He's God!" screamed a Plymouth Rock hen, and the others took up the cry "He's God!"  After that they followed him wherever he went, and when he bumped into things, they bumped into things too.  Finally he came to a concrete highway, and started up the middle of it.  All the other animals followed him.  Presently, a hawk observed a truck coming toward them at 50 miles per hour.  He reported to the secretary bird and the secretary bird reported to the owl.  "There's danger ahead," said the secretary bird.  "To wit?" said the owl.  The secretary bird asked him, "Aren't you afraid?"  "Who?" said the owl calmly, for he could not see the truck.  "He's God!" cried all the creatures again, and they were still crying "He's God!" when the truck hit them.  Some of the animals were merely injured but most of them, including the owl, were killed. Moral: It's too easy to fool too many of the people too much of the time. If you don't want to keep receiving this newsletter, print RETURN TO SENDER above your name and address, cross out your name and address, and return the newsletter.  When I receive it, I'll terminate your subscription. Back issues or extra copies of this newsletter are available upon request. Permission is hereby granted to reproduce this newsletter in its entirety or to reproduce material from it, provided that the reproduction is accurate and that proper credit is given.  Please note that I do not have the authority to give permission to reprint material that I have reprinted from other publications.  For that permission, you must go to the original source.  I would appreciate receiving a courtesy copy of any document or publication in which you reprint my material. I solicit letters, articles, and cartoons for the newsletter, but I don't pay for them.  Short items are more likely to be printed.  I suggest that letters and articles be shorter than 500 words, but that's flexible depending on space available and the content of the piece.  I give credit for all items printed unless the author specifies otherwise. This newsletter isn't for sale.  If you care to make a voluntary contribution, you may do so.  The continued existence of the newsletter will depend, in part, on such contributions.  I accept cash and postage stamps.  I don't accept checks, money orders, anything that will smell bad by the time it arrives, or anything that requires me to provide ID or a signature to receive it.  In case anybody's curious, I also accept gold, silver, platinum, etc. I'm sure you get the idea. — Sam Aurelius Milam III, editor