Malachi

God, Horses, and Lizards

There is today an unwritten but widely accepted rule which has three parts to it, together with its own sanction. First part: if you discuss any issue which specifically concerns human beings—marriage, divorce, abortion, fetus experimentation, brain modification, nudity, Virginia school textbooks, love, civil rights—you may do so really on any basis you like except a religious one. Second part: a discussion on such issues from a religious viewpoint is to be disqualified as partisan, irrelevant, subjective. Third part: if you do violate this rule, no one is going to quote the rule to you. Instead, a quite simple and effective sanction is applied: such a discussion is not seriously entertained; it does not even get a hearing.

MM

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Malachi B. Martin

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God, Horses, and Lizards

There is today an unwritten but widely accepted rule which has three parts to it, together with its own sanction. First part: if you discuss any issue which specifically concerns human beings—marriage, divorce, abortion, fetus experimentation, brain modification, nudity, Virginia school textbooks, love, civil rights—you may do so really on any basis you like except a religious one. Second part: a discussion on such issues from a religious viewpoint is to be disqualified as partisan, irrelevant, subjective. Third part: if you do violate this rule, no one is going to quote the rule to you. Instead, a quite simple and effective sanction is applied: such a discussion is not seriously entertained; it does not even get a hearing.