The Great Big Penis Debate, Enlarged…

Crucify Jello? Hello?

I guess like many new ideas, my proposal to crucify spammers is already encountering resistance. I may be on "shaky" ground here, so let me be more specific.

"Pinning down a spammer is like trying to nail down Jell-O."

So am I.

The hard core professional spammers, who use spoofed email address headers, hidden originating information (sent from computers that are not their own, and which point to websites that disappear a few days after a mass mailing), would only see the Schumer "Do Not Spam" list as a gold mine of email addresses for more -- guess what? spamming.

Putting your name on Schumer's new federal database would be the equivalent of answering a spammer by clicking on "Remove" (which only tells them you are alive and exist).

Gee, I hope Schumer isn't one of those guys who want to regulate what they cannot understand.

Wired also discussed foreign spam, especially concerns that if the FTC is given the broad new powers they seek to regulate foreign ISPs, foreign governments would have reciprocity to regulate American sites. (Something to be kept in mind, particularly in light of what happened to yahoo and ebay.)

But what about stuff like this? Is flying a plane (gratuitously offering a religious "cure" for homosexuality) over a gigantic homosexual festival a form of spam? By its nature, spam consists of unsolicited advertising; while the people who want to fly the planes over Walt Disney World claim to be operating for entirely altruistic reasons:

- It is the duty of individual Christians and Christ's Church to corporately bring the gospel to homosexuals and to speak out against the acceptance of sin in the culture.
- Efforts to convince society that homosexual behavior is normal should be opposed for fear of the judgment of God on individual homosexuals, society at large, and on the nation.

Here we go again. Altruism. Is it really that? Or is it the more insidious, more malevolent disguised form?

Is altruism-based spam less offensive than the commercial variety? Are well-meaning instructions "from God" on how to properly use your penis less offensive than commercial advertisements offering to enlarge it?

I try to be tolerant and understanding. I really do. As I said before, I also believe that there is just as much right to leave a lifestyle as there is to enter it. But I think that if you are bombarded with unwanted messages, you have a right to at least disagree with the "messenger." If they want to fly their plane over Disney World, then others should have similar rights. Commercial spammer A tells me to grow a larger penis. "Altruist" spammer B then wants to inundate me with his god's instructions on how to use it. Spammer B wants to do this based on religious freedom. Well, why can't spammer C proclaim the right to penis worship? (An old idea, revived here for the Great Big Penis Debate.)

As I want to be fair to both sides of the Penis debate, out of respect for tolerance and to increase my understanding I checked out the web site of those who want to tell me how to use my penis. The particular "altruists" who proclaim their right to lure-and-cure the homo tourists by means of aerial overflights, proudly link to this leading "Pro-Family News" site, displaying a prominent a get-tough editorial by a guy who's righteously in favor of sodomy laws:

We cannot successfully contend with the lawless by abandoning God's law ourselves.
In the main, the defense against the sodomite war machine has been built upon a flawed foundation, and it would appear we may soon be able to say "the ruin of that house was great." But should that happen, it will do no good to point fingers at each other; rather survival of our liberties and all hope of pushing back the black night of sexual anarchy which is fast descending dictates that we clear away the rubble of that failed structure which the sodomites so predictably destroyed in their thirty-year offensive. We must get back down to the foundation which caused the collapse and build a new one based on true law and plain truth.

Wow, that's cool! Did the image make it? (If you don't see it, just click on the rectangular shape above. I promise, you'll like it!)

"Homo fascist." Is that a new label? Let's see. Is it worse than worse than a "homocon"?

This Ovadal guy is almost as good as Richard Goldstein, who cooked up the term "Homocon" to insult non conforming gays like Andrew Sullivan and Camille Paglia.

The bloggers, however, won't let such con artists get away with it. This post makes for some very entertaining reading on the subject. An exceptionally gifted blogger tore Goldstein a new one (and the fact that the exalted Goldstein hates blogging makes it even funnier).

Time out -- for a plug, right here, right now: Read AgendaBender! Not only is he one of the most gifted writers in the blogosphere, but he has been kind enough to link to me. I've lived a long time, but I have never seen anyone with such exceptional talent at tearing someone a new one, or "Fisking" or whatever you want to call it. If you find a blogger who does a better job of new-one-tearings, please let me know.

I am falling behind in my work. I thought this was supposed to be about spam. I'm afraid this has now gone beyond the crucifixion of Jello, and touches upon a central problem with altruism: the misdirected form of it. I spoke of my personal experiences with Cichlid fish earlier, and in another post I cited the work of Pinker and other naturalists demonstrating the omnipresence of altruism in the animal kingdom.

Did Ayn Rand know about these studies? It is doubtful that she did, because she died in the mid 1970s before this newer research into animal altruism. I wonder what she would have thought had she seen clear evidence about the biological origins of altruism. I have reached the conclusion that fighting altruism is about as productive as fighting violence, or gravity. What does make sense, however, is to separate altruism from the fear of death, because the two were grafted together improperly. This, I think, might be what Ayn Rand would conclude were she alive today. She correctly spotted the connection which man had established between altruism and death, but incorrectly blamed altruism (as natural a phenomenon as death) for that connection.

It is also a mistake, in my view, to blame "altruism" for such antics as flyover offers of "cures" by the same people who promote medieval laws which would imprison those who refuse to submit to the cures. I know, I know, the people in the cure movement claim not to be bigoted. But I must ask: If imprisoning people for a lifestyle is not bigotry against that lifestyle, then what is?

Similarly, Torquemada claimed he was "helping" the people he put on the rack and burned.

No one -- not even a lowly cichlid -- would call this altruism. That some people still imagine that it is illustrates the problem -- a monstrous philosophical abuse of natural altruism.

(Sorry! I think by now the Jello has melted, and has fallen from the cross...)