cloning as heresy (Re: Fresh Hell)

[Meyer Wolfsheim]

On Sat, 18 Jan 2003, Harmon Seaver wrote:

>   Ah, now I see. Before, I was thinking that he was talking about the passage
> where Onan pulls out and spills his seed on the ground, which, somehow, became a
> prescription against masturbation, although reading it, especially in context,
> is clearly just about pulling out. Or possibly against birth-control.
>  "Thou shalt not pull out.", thus saith the Lord, "or in any other way deprive
> thy partner of the power of thy final orgasmic thrusting."
>
> 8-)
>
>  Weird, isn't it, that this became so associated with masturbation
> that a very successful company -- "Onan" -- even would choose their
> name for generators, i.e., "self power" or "do it alone", etc., from
> that passage. Even weirder that it doesn't have the slightest thing to
> do with jacking off, but with someone not willing to accept their (at
> the time) societal duty to support his dead brother's wife and father
> her children.

The irony, of course, is what the Catholic Church would have to say if the
brother-in-laws of modern widows resumed this practice.


-MW-