In article <40C24C464D6FD21189090000C0F06ACF56CDD5@>, Evans B <B.Evans@> wrote:
To the excomunicated Simon
I'm not *actually* excommunicated - I got thrown out by the local parish
priest. To get excommunicated you have to get thrown out by the Pope. I
could go for it - it would be cool to be excommunicated - but I can't be
bothered.
You should join my home church. Everyone has there Bible and Star Wars
Triology! They're rather a strange bunch, practising their Yoda voives over
the PA system!
The important thing remains our bizarre relationship. The only (nominally)
Christian bunch that would accept it are the Unitarian Universalists, as far
as I am aware. Were our sex-ratio inverted, we could probably slip it past
the "old style" Mormons, the ones that still practice "celestial marriage" -
but the modern-day Mormons are more anti-poly than most. I guess it's a bit
like being an ex-smoker.
As Jenny has pointed out elsewhere, *truly* fundamentalist Christians should
have no problem with non-monogamy, as the monogamy was only introduced
later, as a precondition of Christianity being accepted as the Roman State
Religion. Certain parts of the Bible (in particular Paul's letters) make it
clear that Paul was writing to people who practiced non-monogamy. He wasn't
disapproving, either - although he did say that priests should have only one
wife, so as not to upset foreigners. (1 Timothy 3:2, Titus 1:6)
ObSF: anybody interested in this sort of thing would do worse than to browse
some of the "heavier" novels of Robert Heinlein: particularly "Time Enough
for Love" and "Stranger in a Strange Land". The latter is particularly
apposite as it is quite strong on religion. Be warned: they were both
written in the 1950's, and therefore are a bit less than right-on when it
comes to sexual equality, tolerance of queer issues, or other things we take
for granted nowadays. Both are in the
IFIS library, of course.
In particular through the novels of RAH, but also through a number of others
(Donald Kingsbury, Spider Robinson, S.R. Delaney, the later Larry Niven,
even, if you want the scandalous truth, Babylon 5) there is a stronger
crossover between SF-folks and polyfolks than with "normals".
I like to think that it is because SF-folks have more chance of independent
thought.
Simon
---
"This too is meaningless, a chasing after the wind" -Ecclesiastes 4:16
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