Frontiersman, October 2009

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Frontiersman, October 2009

Deliver Us From Evil
Sam Aurelius Milam III
On Monday, August 3, 2009, I watched, on The History Channel, part of a program in the Sex in the Ancient World series. The program focused almost entirely on the evidence of widespread prostitution in Pompeii. After about 10 minutes of the program, I became so disgusted that I turned it off and went into the bathroom to take a shower, brush my teeth, and go to bed. While I was in the shower, I decided that I should write an article about the program. By then, I was covered with soap so I had to finish the shower. Afterward, I turned the TV back on. The program was pretty much the same during the last 15 minutes as it had been during the first 10 minutes so I probably didn't miss anything important while I was in the shower.
Don't get me wrong. It wasn't the seemingly widespread practice of prostitution in Pompeii that disgusted me. It was the unquestioned and even unacknowledged assumptions about prostitution that disgusted me. The assumptions were so firmly implicit in the narration of the program that it wasn't necessary that they even be openly expressed. It was is if they were foregone conclusions, laws of nature, and universal axioms that had been so invariably true from the beginning of time that it wasn't necessary to even mention them. Among them were such notions as these.

• Prostitution is a sordid business.

• Prostitution is always associated with crime.

• Prostitutes are always forced by circumstances to be prostitutes against their wills.

Prostitution is a sordid business. That's because it's assumed in advance to be a sordid business. It is associated with crime. That's because it's defined in advance as being a crime. Under those conditions, prostitutes probably would prefer other work. Few of them would like to go into the bad part of town at night, dressed like why the riot started, and engage in a sordid, criminal activity. Prostitution is what it is because of our prior assumptions and definitions. Our expectations are self-fulfilling. However, prostitution isn't necessarily evil or necessarily good. Like a lot of things, prostitution is what we've made of it. Like a lot of things, it would be a good idea for us to first acknowledge that we've made some assumptions about prostitution, and then to reexamine them.
The idea that prostitutes are a source of disease is cited as a good reason for the prohibition of prostitution. Consider these two little paragraphs about nosocomial infections.

Nosocomial infections are infections which are a result of treatment in a hospital or a healthcare service unit, but secondary to the patient's original condition. Infections are considered nosocomial if they first appear 48 hours or more after hospital admission or within 30 days after discharge.... This type of infection is also known as a hospital-acquired infection [or more generically healthcare-associated infection].

— Wikipedia
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nosocomial

In the United States, it has been estimated that as many as one hospital patient in ten acquires a nosocomial infection, or 2 million patients a year. Estimates of the annual cost range from $4.5 billion to $11 billion and up. Nosocomial infections contributed to 88,000 deaths in the U.S. in 1995. One third of nosocomial infections are considered preventable. Ms. magazine reports that as many as 92 percent of deaths from hospital infections could be prevented.[3] The most common nosocomial infections are of the urinary tract, surgical site and various pneumonias.[4]

—Wikipedia
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nosocomial

So, anybody who advocates the prohibition of prostitution on the basis of epidemiology should also advocate the prohibition of hospitals.

The only important difference between the service provided by prostitutes and the

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October 2009

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services provided by doctors, beauticians, masseuses, barbers, pedicurists, and so forth, is that the business of prostitutes involves one form or another of sexual gratification. Other than that, the transactions in which prostitutes engage are not fundamentally different from other transactions in which a physical service is offered for a fee. Regarding that one particular difference, the only reason for objecting to it is that, with specific exceptions granted by the various religions, any sexually enjoyable behavior is declared to be a sin. However, a person would have to be either insane or brainwashed to believe that sexual pleasure is a sin. I'm willing to admit that the appropriate status of prostitution might be debatable for one reason or another. However, I'm not ambivalent about the appropriate status of sexual activity. Most of the harm that results from such activity is caused not by the behavior itself but, either directly or indirectly, by the reactions to the behavior by third parties who aren't involved and who ought to mind their own business. Most forms of sexual behavior are among the more pleasant and least harmful of the various things that people can do together. A person can participate or abstain according to his own beliefs but to declare such behavior to be sinful is idiotic, at best.

The condemnation of sexual behavior as being sinful is particularly annoying to me. The only reason for declaring anything to be a sin is so that the thing can then be used to control people. That is, if the thing is a sin, then people can be punished or threatened with punishment for doing it. A sin is more useful as a tool of control if people are strongly motivated to engage in the behavior, regardless of the risks. There isn't much point in condemning something that people don't want to do anyway. Sexual behavior is one of the behaviors in which people will reliably engage, regardless of the risks. That makes it very useful as a sin. People know that they're going to do it so it serves as a source of fear and guilt. People can be threatened with God's eternal wrath. Given the aggressive evangelism of reformers, a sin will inevitably become a crime. Then, people who don't even care if it's a sin can still be punished for doing it, by the government.

The idea that sin was invented by God is an idiotic notion. Rather, sin is a vile creation of certain members of the clergy who wanted to be able to intimidate and control people in large numbers. That's why sin was invented. For centuries, maybe for millennia, members of the clergy have been using sin for that purpose. It keeps the pews occupied and the offering plates full. It provides a secure or even a bountiful living for the members of the clergy. It also enables them to mobilize large resources for any big project that they want to undertake.

Sexual pleasure is only one of the sins that the clergy uses as a weapon of intimidation and control but it provides the most powerful such weapon. It appears to me that sexual pleasure, defined as a sin, has led to the prohibition of and the punishment for more different variations in human behavior than all of the other sins combined. If sexual pleasure wasn't a sin, then the most powerful weapon in the arsenal of religious intimidation and control would be missing. Maybe then the preachers would have to find something useful to do for a living. They might actually have to go out and work, instead of sponging off of the funds that they presently extort from their congregations. Indeed, if sexual pleasure wasn't a sin, then the various religions of the world that rely upon it for the intimidation and control of their various congregations might not exist at all.

Regarding sexuality, consider this scripture.

God created man in his image; in the divine image he created him; male and female he created them.

— Gen. 1:27, New American Bible

In my spare time, I'm working on an essay in which I plan to present the unexpected conclusions that must necessarily follow from a belief in the validity of that scripture. For now, it's sufficient to note that if "male and female" is the divine image, then there isn't any sin in sex. So, as the Christians pray for deliverance from evil, they might not understand exactly what they’re praying. There isn't anything sinful or evil about sexuality. Rather, the abiding evil resides in those members of the clergy who rant against the divine image when they declare sexuality, in any form, to be a sin. Deliver us from evil? Deliver us from the clergy.

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October 2009

Unpleasant Prospect
Sam Aurelius Milam III

It must have been about 1960 when Poppa taught me an important lesson. I'd been going to school for eight years and, in 1960, I entered high school and the brainwashing intensified. I came home one day and started telling Poppa how much of a threat the Russians were. I started to explain the Domino Theory to him. He interrupted me and said, "Son, you're in more danger of losing your freedom to your own government than of losing it to the Russians." To this day, I remember that lesson. Poppa also tried to teach me another lesson. He said, "Son, people are just too damned stupid to be worth bothering with." For all of these years, in spite of the evidence in support of Poppa's position, I've resisted the temptation to agree with him on that point.

Several months ago, while I was riding in a friend's car, I had to listen to a news report that was playing on his radio. It was his car and I was getting a ride from him. I didn't want to object to his choice of radio programs so I had to listen to the report. The news report was about some wonderful new procedures at the airports. The new procedures allowed people to get through the security checks (AKA gestapo thug checkpoints) much more easily than had previously been the case. The only comments reported were about how easy and convenient the new procedures are, as compared to the previous procedures. Nobody commented about the violations of the fundamental principles of liberty that are embodied in the procedures, either the new ones or the previous ones.

I've spent more than 20 years trying to educate people but things are immeasurably worse now than they were when I started. After all of these years I'm still trying hard to not believe it but maybe Poppa was right. Maybe people are just too damned stupid to be worth the trouble.

Letter to the Editor

I just had the chance to glance at your latest newsletter, and I think there may have been an error in the article titled "Vapor Standard." [page 2, September issue] I think that what the bank is doing is this: when a customer uses a debit card (not a credit card) the amount of the purchase (withdrawal from their checking account) is rounded up to the next dollar, and the difference between the purchase price, say $5.40, and the amount taken out of their checking account, in this case $6.00 is deposited into their savings account. The $0.60 goes from the customer's checking into the customer's savings account and the amount the bank is holding doesn't actually change. The idea is that it is a painless way to get morons to save a tiny fraction of the gobs of money they spend at Starbucks every day.

—Lady Nancy the Enchanting

Stray Thoughts
Sam Aurelius Milam III

Status Check — In the past, it was often the case that one difference between a slave and a free man was that a slave was prohibited from bearing arms. Do you have the right to walk down the street in town, fully armed?

Giving Blood
Original Source Unknown. Forwarded by BLA, of Schertz, Texas.
Many years ago, when I worked as a volunteer at Stanford Hospital, I got to know a little girl named Liz who was suffering from a rare and serious disease. Her only chance of recovery appeared to be a blood transfusion from her 5-year-old brother, who had miraculously survived the same disease, and had developed the antibodies needed to combat the illness. The doctor explained the situation to her little brother, and asked the boy if he would be willing to give his blood to his sister. I saw him hesitate for only a moment before taking a deep breath and saying, "Yes, I'll do it if it will save Liz." As the transfusion progressed, he lay in bed next to his sister and smiled, as we all did, seeing the color returning to her cheeks. Then his face grew pale and his smile faded. He looked up at the doctor and asked with a trembling voice, "Will I start to die right away?"
Being young, the boy had misunderstood the doctor. He thought that he was going to have to give his sister all of his blood. Attitude, after all, is everything.

Please use the enclosed envelope to send a contribution. I prefer cash. For checks or money orders, please inquire. For PayPal payments, use editor@frontiersman.my3website.net.

October 2009

Frontiersman, ^c/o 4984 Peach Mountain Drive, Gainesville, Georgia 30507

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Frontiersman
^c/o 4984 Peach Mountain Drive
Gainesville, Georgia 30507

Democracy must be something more than two wolves and a sheep voting on what to have for dinner.

— James Bovard
Civil Libertarian, 1994

Acknowledgments

My thanks to the following: SantaClara Bob; Lady Jan the Voluptuous; my mother; Dewey and Betty; Eric, of Soledad, California; and Joseph, of Northridge, California.

— editor

Court Quotes
From Humor in the Court and More Humor in the Court, by Mary Louise Gilman, editor of the National Shorthand Reporter. Forwarded by Don G.

Q:		This myasthenia gravis, does it affect your memory at all?
A:		Yes.
Q:		And in what ways does it affect your memory?
A:		I forget.
Q:		You forget. Can you give us an example of something you've forgotten?

One Burger Short of a Happy Meal
Original Source Unknown. Forwarded by Don G.

I recently went to McDonald's and saw on the menu that I could order 6, 9 or 12 Chicken McNuggets. I asked for half a dozen.

"We don't have half a dozen nuggets," said the teenager at the counter.

"You don't?" I replied.

"We only have six, nine, or twelve," was the reply.

"So I can order six but I can't order half a dozen?"

"That's right."

I shook my head and ordered six McNuggets.

Frontiersman

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Reprint Policy — 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. I do not have the authority to give permission to reprint material that I have reprinted from other sources. 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.

Submissions — 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.

Payment — This newsletter isn't for sale. If you want to make a voluntary contribution, then I prefer cash, prepaid telephone cards, or U.S. postage stamps. For checks or money orders, please inquire. For PayPal payments, use editor@frontiersman.my3website.net. The continued existence of the newsletter will depend, in part, on such contributions. I don't accept anything that requires me to provide ID to receive it. In case anybody's curious, I also accept gold, silver, platinum, etc.

— Sam Aurelius Milam III, editor

Please use the enclosed envelope to send a contribution. I prefer cash. For checks or money orders, please inquire.
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October 2009

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