Yesterday, I got some books on the seven deadly sins from the library, and one of them had a chapter that was especially relevant to the contest I am running this week. The book is Creed or Chaos? by Dorothy L. Sayers, and the chapter was called "The Other Six Deadly Sins." It was given as an address in 1941 to some association whose name was omitted from the book. Here is the first paragraph:
"Perhaps the bitterest commentary on the way in which Christian doctrine has been taught in the last few centuries is the fact that to the majority of people the word 'immorality' has come to mean one thing and one thing only. The name of an association like yours is generally held to imply that you are concerned to correct only one sin out of those seven which the Church recognizes as captial. By a hideous irony, our shrinking reprobation of that sin has made us too delicate so much as to name it, so that we have come to use for it the words which were made to cover the whole range of human corruption. A man may be greedy and selfish; spiteful, cruel, jealous, and unjust; violent and brutal; grasping, unscrupulous, and a liar; stubborn and arrogant; stupid, morose, and dead to every noble instinct--and still we are ready to say of him that he us not an immoral man. I am reminded of a young man who once said to me with perfect simplicity: 'I did not know there were seven deadly sins: please tell me the names of the other six.'"
The sin she speaks of is Lust, the same sin I left out of my "The Other Deadly Sins" contest. I'm a humanist, not a Christian, and I'm not trying to start a theological conversation here. The point I would like to raise is that even today, what she says about lust, vis-a-vis the other sins, is true, and it is even reflected in the content of this site. Even today, people tend to identify immorality with lust more than with any other vice. Immorality has even become, in some ways, a synonym of lust, even though there is much more to to it than just one vice.
Consider what one of the biggest objections to the internet is. It is that people (and especially children) can download pornography from it. While there is also some concern about people reading hate propaganda over the internet, the uproar concerning this doesn't seem as great, and there seems to be dead silence concerning how the internet might fuel pride, envy, greed, gluttony, or sloth. Likewise, an X rating, whose original intention was to identify movies unsuitable for any children, has become synonymous with pornography. Gruesome violence normally just gets an R rating. A movie can show all kinds of wickedness, but so long as it doesn't have too much sex, it normally doesn't merit an X or an NC-17. And the first movie to get an NC-17 rating, Henry and June, was a wonderful movie with nothing objectionable about it except maybe a bit too much softcore sex.
Turning to the content of this site, so many strips are about lust in one way or another. It seems that lust gets more laughs than other sins do, because it remains more taboo. Also, strips on lust seem to be focused on the more taboo areas, such as anal sex, bestiality, and homosexuality. Speaking for myself, my own strips on lust are mainly on these and other taboo subjects, not about ordinary sexual desire between man and wife. There seems to be more humor in skirting around taboos than in going where taboos are absent.
In mentioning all this, I am not saying anything against the content of this site. I am just saying that it serves as a mirror to our culture. It reflects the taboos, concerns, and mores of society by playing with the subjects that are touchiest for many people. What I am concerned about is the lopsided way in which lust is given the brunt of people's moral condemnation. It is really damning to be called a pervert, but not so damning to be called vengeful, egotistical, envious, greedy, gluttonous, or apathetic. Comments?
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