Skip to main content

Same Sex and the End of the World



Plumbing is under attack!  You know what I mean.  Like pipe fittings:  male and female threads.  


That--over there--is an elbow, with female threads on one end, and male threads at the other.  The male threads are out there on the droopy end.  The female threads are the part the male threads fit into.  (You have to cut me some slack, here:  I am trying to be delicate.)


Anyway, that is how plumbing works.  The male part fits inside the female part.  It is how God first imagined plumbing should be.  It was probably The Good Lord's  plan all along, but when Adam, in the Garden of Eden, complained that he was lonesome, God threaded Adam and made a female thing sort of like . . . well, you know the story!


Theologians call things like this, "natural law".  It is just natural that a male pipe should fit inside a female fitting.  Of course, as you know, it is possible to have two pieces of plumbing that are threaded pretty much the same.  Let me show you:  



You can see the problem, right there!  That is not natural!  In order to save plumbing, Legislatures all over the country are proposing laws that specify that "Plumbing" is a name that has to be reserved for members of the opposite thread, only.  Male-male, or female-female pairs shall not be called "Plumbing", although (in some liberal States) they may have the right to pass water, and things like that, just so long as they do not call themselves "Plumbing".  

Here in Minnesota, where the Republican majority, temporarily putting aside problems they are having with the budget, and health care, and Medicare, and road and bridge maintenance, and inadequate schools, and funding the universities, and keeping the Vikings in town, have taken up the threat to natural plumbing and are doing their golly, gosh-darn, darndest to think their way through the natural order of things, and endorse a constitutional amendment to limit Plumbing to what God intended it to be.  

This isn't just about keen thinking, and being rational, and logical, of course, so they invited Pastor Bradlee Dean to open their session with prayer and a ponytail.  The Reverent Mr. Dean, whose ministry is called, "You Can Run But You Can't Hide", is a bit of a controversial figure, known for suggesting that people of the same thread should be put in jail, and maybe even executed.   

In his prayer, Mr. Dean implied that President Obama was not a Christian, and called Jesus Christ the Head of the Denomination, which every other President has acknowledged (whatever that means).  Afterwards, the Good Reverend expressed some admiration for the time when Plumbing was not a union between two union joints, or a connection between two nipples, but a good, old-fashioned joining together of one male and one female threaded thing forever, til rust do them part.  

Oh, good Lord, what a furor!  The Speaker of the House, Mr. Zellers, had trouble being heard over the chanting of the Plumbing Defense League outside, and the odd oddly-threaded members of the House howled in protest, and the guy who had suggested that Mr. Dean pray said he had been had, so Mr. Zellers did the only sensible and rational thing: he asked the regular House Chaplain to pray, and they said the Pledge of Allegiance again, and took another attendance vote.  

And what lies at the root this breakdown of our society and our Plumbing?  The insistence that Plumbing is not simply between a threaded male thing and a threaded female thing!  If we condone--let us say--both fine and coarse threads, or even hose threads, Plumbing as We Know It, will be destroyed!  What will be next?  

No wonder the world is ending today!  

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Friends-- My step-father of 35 years died this morning. His name was Conrad Royksund. He was 86 years old. He was born into poverty on a farm near Puyallup, WA. He was the first member of his family to attend college and earned a PhD from the University of Chicago. He paid his way through all of that by fishing in Alaska. He spent his professional career as a college professor. I met him when I was just 3 years old and don't actually have any memories of my life befor e he was in it. He was intimidatingly smart, funny as hell, and worked his ass off. He taught me to meet people with kindness and decency until I was certain they could not be trusted. He taught me to meet ideas with carving knives until I was certain they could. I will remember him as one of the bravest, most curious, and funniest people I have ever met. He left this world with a satisfied mind. We are so grateful. Dan Hubbard
1 comment
Read more

Caliche Busters and Government Work

When I was young and both stronger and smarter than I am now, I put my might and brain to work doing nothing useful, unless it might be thought that hand/foot/eye coordination might come in handy.  Those were skills to be learned and practiced.   I found an iron bar our grandfather had shaped in his blacksmith shop.  He took old car, truck, or wagon axles, and made tools from them for digging post holes.  He sharpened one end to a tip, and the other to a blade.  Washington State, like many places, had a hard layer of soil, probably created by water and limestone, or some such materials, that made digging holes a miserable chore.  The bar chipped through the natural concrete so that a shovel could take it up.   I found Grandpa's iron bar, and since I was young and dumb and strong--or so I thought--decided to punch a hole down to hardpan and ultimate truth.  I knew how to do that.  Raise the bar vertically with both hands, and then slam in straight down.  On the second try, aimi
Post a Comment
Read more

The Sea is Rising

Let us just step back:  two hundred and fifty years ago, or so, the ships of England and Spain had drifted onto a whole new continent, as they saw it, from far north to a savagely cold south; pole to pole, as if there were such things. Millions of people already lived here, some of them still hunters and gatherers; some of them very wealthy, indeed!  Gold and silver stolen from the southern Americas funded Spanish and English dreams. There was land, lots of land, under starry skies above, rich land, and oil and coal and iron ore.  The whole western world learned how to build industries not on simple muscle power, but on steam and oil.  We farmed, too, of course.  All we needed was cheap labor--slave labor from Africa, mostly, so the ships came with slave labor.  Chinese labor built railroad beds where there had been rock cliffs. Europeans, long used to killing each other for good, religious reasons, brought their religious savagery with them.  Even when all they wanted to do w
Post a Comment
Read more