Words of Warning

Dear Lobby of Libertines, Bodily Blasphemers, and God-forsaking Sodomites,

(OK, I know that last one isn't alliterative; but I don't think the Rule of Threes requires it to be so).

I'm tired of your rainbow flags. I'm tired of the rainbow-triangle, too.

The tipping-point for me with the new rainbow was when I saw it on a brochure for on-campus student housing at the Metropolitan University I attend. The same brochure made a loud point that the 4-person appartment units are not co-ed; and yet, there also is the rainbow triangle: it makes me wonder "what is the point?" Whether or not overnight-guests are allowed, if the Metropolitan Student Housing Management acknowledges a definite fraction of cases in which co-dwelling individuals may see eachother as objects of lust and approves acting on such perception however abstractly, howsoever small be the minority of such cases, it can only have forgotten the imperative underlying non-co-ed dormitories in the past.

Is that uncharitable of me? I suppose I can imagine another construction of this effectively hypocritical situation: namely, given that the Sexually Deviant Practice Protection lobby presents a threat of discrimination lawsuit, while co-ed dormitories presents a threat of harassment lawsuit and unintended babies, it's generally a better insurance against suit and scandal to have homogeneous dorm units and to explicitly approve of SDP. That is, however important the students in residence are, avoiding lawsuits and public scandal is more important.

In any case, I'm fed-up with that silly rainbow. Why use a rainbow? The claim is made that it symbolizes "diversity". In representing a political movement with a symbol of diversity, two claims are made:

1. Greater diversity is always good. (Or at least, more of the diversity we represent is always good)
2. We are diverse.

But in fact, greater diversity is not always good. For instance, within any given meal, a person can eat only so much food, and discern only so many flavours each in only so little a quantity: there is a limit to the diversity of foods conducive to an enjoyable meal. Similarly, any beauraucracy can support only so many divergent languages --- e.g. I don't think we've yet reached that point whence a citizen can reasonably insist on being tried or giving testimony in lojban. Anywhere. As for diversity of sexual practices, I have it on good authority that there is only one naturally lawful model of corporeal conjugal union --- and this is natural law backed-up by revelation.

And then, whether or not diverse sexual practices may be licit, in what sense can they be called diverse? Certainly they suggest that between any n people all can "do more stuff". On the other hand, it is underpinned by the propositions that it is always good to follow appetite, and that there is effectively but a single way to fully live out attractions or affections. The depth of universally reserved compassion and charity, and the great variety of chaste self-giving love are effectively portrayed as unimportant and even inferior by this lobby.

In short, to take a rainbow at all for any lobby, and particularly to apply it to this one is intensely dishonest. Never mind that it's usually out-of-order.

The earliest reference to the rainbow I can find is this

12 And God said: This is the sign of the covenant which I will give between me and you, and to every living soul that is with you, for perpetual generations.
13 I will set my bow in the clouds, and it shall be the sign of a covenant between me, and between the earth.
14 And when I shall cover the sky with clouds, my bow shall appear in the clouds:
15 And I will remember my covenant with you, and with every living soul that beareth flesh: and there shall no more be waters of a flood to destroy all flesh.
16 And the bow shall be in the clouds, and I shall see it, and shall remember the everlasting covenant, that was made between God and every living soul of all flesh which is upon the earth.
17 And God said to Noe: This shall be the sign of the covenant which I have established between me and all flesh upon the earth.¹

That's how God intended the symbol of the rainbow. The SDPP lobby has appropriated this symbol for itself, and to deny the work of God in Man and the meaning of that work. So if the rainbow shall no longer mean that God shall not again wash clean the face of the earth, under what covenant will you live and not be swept away by the waters?

Leave the rainbows alone, please.

your loving oponent,
Some Guy on the Street.

¹ Genesis 9:12-17, Douay-Rheims Bible, Challoner Revision.