Pride As Defense

Passages

Every passage tagged with this emotion in the Vela corpus. Search the body text, narrow by source or register, click through to a book’s profile to see how the passage sits with the rest of the work.

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• From Under the Banner of Heaven (2003)

  After the split, the Short Creekers had little further involvement with their counterparts in the Allred group. Taking care to fly below the radar of the Gentile culture, Uncle Roy and his followers were seldom noticed by the world beyond Short Creek. The Apostolic United Brethren wasn’t so fortunate. On the afternoon of May 10, 1977, Rulon Allred was treating patients in his office in Murray, a suburb of Salt Lake City, when two young women walked in, shot him dead, and calmly walked out. Allred’s killers turned out to be members of another breakaway fundamentalist sect known as the LeBaron clan. Founded by a man named Dayer LeBaron, who hailed from one of the Mormon colonies in Mexico, the sect had once maintained a loose association with Allred’s group. After Rulon Allred was convicted of polygamy in Utah in 1947 and jumped parole, the LeBarons even gave him refuge in Mexico for a period. Dayer LeBaron had seven sons. Three of the seven LeBaron brothers would eventually claim, at one time or another, to be the “one mighty and strong”; each regarded himself as a divinely ordained prophet comparable to Moses who would return the Mormon Church to the righteous path it had abandoned after the 1890 Manifesto. The oldest of the brothers, Benjamin, was fond of roaring at the top of his lungs in public to prove that he was “the Lion of Israel.” In one legendary incident that occurred in the early 1950s, he lay facedown in the middle of a busy Salt Lake City intersection, bringing traffic to a halt, and did two hundred push-ups. When the police finally persuaded him to get up off the pavement he proudly insisted, “Nobody else can do that many. That proves I’m the One Mighty and Strong.” Not long thereafter, Ben was committed to the Utah State Mental Hospital. In the 1960s, with Ben locked up in a psychiatric institution, two of the other LeBaron brothers emerged as the group’s guiding lights: soft-spoken, amiable Joel and tightly wound Ervil, who weighed 240 pounds, stood six feet four inches tall, and knew how to nurse a grudge. A dashing figure, he was found irresistibly attractive by many otherwise sensible women. Another LeBaron sibling, Alma, reported that Ervil “used to dream about having twenty-five or thirty wives so he could multiply and replenish the earth. . . . He wanted to be like Brigham Young, a great man.”

• From Under the Banner of Heaven (2003)

  In May 1861, Brigham Young happened upon this memorial as he was passing through the meadow during a tour of his southern settlements. According to Apostle Wilford Woodruff, who was accompanying the prophet, when Brigham read the inscription on the cross he pondered it for a short while and then proposed an emendation: “Vengeance is mine,” the prophet smugly asserted, “and I have taken a little.” A moment later one of the Saints in his entourage threw a rope over the cross and pulled it down, while others began dismantling the stones and scattering them. By the time Brigham’s party departed the Mountain Meadows, the monument to the slaughtered emigrants had been obliterated. Things had lately been looking up for the Kingdom of God, leaving the prophet in a cheerful frame of mind. The territorial governor installed by President Buchanan as Brigham’s replacement, a bureaucrat from Atlanta named Alfred Cummings, had turned out to be a patsy who was easily manipulated to do the Saints’ bidding. The despised Buchanan, moreover, had himself been replaced in the White House by Abraham Lincoln; after taking office, Honest Abe told a Mormon emissary, “You go back and tell Brigham Young that if he will let me alone, I will let him alone.” Brigham thus had good reason to be in an expansive mood. The Saints’ capital city had even become a popular travel destination for intrepid luminaries from afar, including the French botanist Jules Remy, the famous newspaperman Horace Greeley, and the English explorer Sir Richard Francis Burton. Greeley—the most influential journalist of the era—had interviewed Brigham in 1859 and then published a largely favorable piece in the New York Tribune, noting that the prophet spoke “with no apparent desire to conceal anything” and had “no air of sanctimony or fanaticism.” After Sir Richard Burton rubbed shoulders with Brigham, Porter Rockwell, and other Mormon eminences in 1860, the celebrated English adventurer had written, The Prophet is no common man, and . . . he has none of the weakness and vanity which characterize the common uncommon man. . . . There is a total absence of pretension in his manner, and he has been so long used to power that he cares nothing for its display. The arts by which he rules the heterogeneous mass of conflicting elements are indomitable will, profound secrecy, and uncommon astuteness.

• From Post Office (1971)

  Chinaski,” she said, “we have been wondering if you have filled out this application properly.” “Uh?” “We mean, the arrest record.” She handed me the sheet. There wasn’t any sex in her eyes. I had listed eight or ten common drunk raps. It was only an estimate. I had no idea of the dates. “Now, have you listed everything?” she asked me. “Hmmm, hmmm, let me think …” I knew what she wanted. She wanted me to say “yes” and then she had me. “Let me see … Hmmm. Hmmm.” “Yes?” she said. “Oh oh! My god!” “What is it?” “It’s either drunk in auto or drunk driving. About four years ago or so. I don’t know the exact date.” “And this was a slip of the mind?” “Yes, really, I meant to put it down.” “All right. Put it down.” I wrote it down. “Mr. Chinaski. This is a terrible record. I want you to explain these charges and if possible justify your present employment with us.” “All right.” “You have 10 days to reply.” I didn’t want the job that badly. But she irritated me. I phoned in sick that night after buying some ruled and numbered legal paper and a blue, very official-looking folder. I got a fifth of whiskey and a six-pack, then sat down and typed it out. I had the dictionary at my elbow. Every now and then I would flip a page, find a large incomprehensible word and build a sentence or a paragraph out of the idea. It ran 42 pages. I finished up with, “Copies of this statement have been retained for distribution to the press, television, and other mass communication media.” I was full of shit. She got up from her desk and got it personally. “Mr. Chinaski?” “Yes?” It was 9 a.m. One day after her request to answer charges. “Just a moment.” She took the 42 pages back to her desk. She read and read and read. There was somebody reading over her shoulder. Then there were 2, 3, 4, 5. All reading. 6, 7, 8, 9. All reading. What the hell? I thought. Then I heard a voice from the crowd, “Well, all geniuses are drunkards!” As if that explained away the matter. Too many movies again. She got up from the desk with the 42 pages in her hand. “Mr. Chinaski?” “Yes?” “Your case will be continued. You will hear from us.” “Meanwhile, continue working?” “Meanwhile, continue working.” “Good morning,” I said. 4One night I was assigned to the stool next to Butchner. He didn’t stick any mail. He just sat there. And talked. A young girl came in and sat down at the end of the aisle. I heard Butchner. “Yeah, you cunt! You want my cock in your pussy, don’t you? That’s what you want, you cunt, don’t you?” I went on sticking mail. The soup walked past. Butchner said, “You’re on my list, mother! I’m going to get you, you dirty mother!

• From Post Office (1971)

  I didn’t want the job that badly. But she irritated me. I phoned in sick that night after buying some ruled and numbered legal paper and a blue, very official-looking folder. I got a fifth of whiskey and a six-pack, then sat down and typed it out. I had the dictionary at my elbow. Every now and then I would flip a page, find a large incomprehensible word and build a sentence or a paragraph out of the idea. It ran 42 pages. I finished up with, “Copies of this statement have been retained for distribution to the press, television, and other mass communication media.” I was full of shit. She got up from her desk and got it personally. “Mr. Chinaski?” “Yes?” It was 9 a.m. One day after her request to answer charges. “Just a moment.” She took the 42 pages back to her desk. She read and read and read. There was somebody reading over her shoulder. Then there were 2, 3, 4, 5. All reading. 6, 7, 8, 9. All reading. What the hell? I thought. Then I heard a voice from the crowd, “Well, all geniuses are drunkards!” As if that explained away the matter. Too many movies again. She got up from the desk with the 42 pages in her hand. “Mr. Chinaski?” “Yes?” “Your case will be continued. You will hear from us.” “Meanwhile, continue working?” “Meanwhile, continue working.” “Good morning,” I said.

• From Under the Banner of Heaven (2003)

  please his superiors, while another part raged inwardly against anyone who held power over him. Every now and then Ron felt compelled to let his keepers know that they didn’t own him. In those days, missionaries were required to wear hats. According to Dr. Wootton, who is Mormon, Ron “refused to wear a hat. In the summertime when it was hot and muggy in Florida, as it is, they were supposed to wear coats. He wouldn’t wear a coat. He made a statement at one time that he ‘wasn’t down there to make a fashion statement.’ He ‘was down there to convert people and fulfill a mission.’ ” Every morning Ron would roll out of bed at 6:00 A.M., don black slacks, a crisply pressed white shirt, and an ugly clip-on tie, and then study scripture for two or three hours before hitting the streets to troll for prospective converts. Like all LDS missionaries, to accomplish the latter he had to endure insults, threats of physical violence, flying spit, and callous rejection; typically he would have a door slammed in his face forty or fifty times a day. Ron, however, turned out to be astonishingly good at this line of work. Nothing fazed him. The incessant rain of ridicule and dismissal glanced off him as though he had a Teflon hide. Ron knew the LDS Church was God’s One True Church, and he was determined to share this glorious fact with as many people as he could. Typically, an especially dedicated missionary might convert no more than three or four people a year—and feel justly satisfied for this accomplishment. * Ron, in marked contrast, had baptized more than fifty people into the LDS Church by the time his two-year mission was over. While saving souls in Florida, Ron met a sweet young nursing student, fell in love, and married her at the conclusion of his mission. He then took his new wife, Dianna, to Utah, so they could live near his parents and siblings. Ron landed a good job operating heavy equipment for a construction company owned by a fellow Mormon, and settled down to raise a family of faithful Saints. Comfortably reestablished in Utah County, Ron functioned as the emotional anchor for the greater Lafferty clan. His younger brothers and sisters had looked up to him for counseling and emotional support since they were small children; he had tended to be the one who mediated family disagreements. One of Ron’s siblings affectionately characterized him as “a mother-hen type,” and he relished

• From Confessions of a Mask (1958)

  I had never dreamed that this could happen. I had failed to take into account the fact that Sonoko and her family might have an attitude toward the war markedly different from my own. I was a student, still under twenty-one, and working in an airplane factory ; moreover, having grown up during a series of wars, I had thought too much of the romantic sway of war. Actually, however, even during such times of violent disaster as these to which the war had now brought us, the magnetic needle of human affairs still remained pointing in the same direction as always. And up to now even I had thought I was in love. So why had I failed to realize that the everyday affairs and responsibilities of life went on even in wartime? As I reread Kusano's letter, however, a strange, faint smile came playing about my lips, and at last a quite ordinary feeling of superiority rose in me. I'm a conqueror, I told myself. A person who has never known happiness has no right to scorn it. But I give an appearance of happiness in which no one can detect any flaw, and so have as much right to scorn it as anyone else. Even though my heart was filled with uneasiness and unspeakable grief, I put a brazen, cynical smile upon my lips. I told myself that all I had to do was clear one small hurdle. All I had to do was to regard all the past few months as absurd; to decide that from the beginning I'd never been in love with a girl called Sonoko, not with such a chit of a girl; to believe that I'd been prompted by a trifling passion (liar!) and had deceived her. Then there'd be no reason why I couldn't refuse her. Surely a mere kiss didn't obligate me! . . . I was elated with the conclusion to which my thoughts had brought me: "I'm not in love with Sonoko." What a splendid thing! I've become a man who can entice a woman without even loving her, and then, when love blazes up in her, abandon her without thinking twice about it. How far I am from being the upright and virtuous honor student I appear to be. . . . And yet I could not have been ignorant of the fact that there is no such thing as a libertine who abandons a woman without first achieving his purpose. But I ignored any such thoughts. I had acquired the habit of closing my ears completely, like an obstinate old woman, to anything I did not want to hear. The only thing needed now was to devise a way to get out of the marriage. I set about the task exactly as though I were a jealous lover scheming to prevent a marriage between the girl he loved and someone else.

• From Macho Sluts (1988)

  Well, here we go. Things should speed up now. “You were arrested on the fifteenth of last month? For pornographic sexual activity?” “That’s why I’m looking for a straight job. I’ve put the number down there if you want to call and get the official details.” Members of a free society should have nothing to hide from one another, so my record must be accessible to all potential employers, lovers, friends, and taxi drivers. Her face gets a little stiffer at my arrogance. “I would rather not,” she says, distaste making a little rosebud of her mouth. “I think I can obtain all the relevant information from you.” I’m good at recognizing threats. They’re my stock in trade. I decide it’s time to give in to my lower instincts and lean on the nearest file cabinet. It creaks in protest, and a book lands on the floor. We both ignore it. “This ordinance covers prostitution and misogyny, and assorted other counter-revolutionary acts,” she lectures me. As if I didn’t know. “What exactly are you guilty of?” “Both. That is to say, the woman who was arrested with me got charged with prostitution. They don’t prosecute hustlers, just janes, buyers. They charged me with misogyny since I had hit her. Sexual harassment, too, because of my language. It was a felony since I’ve been busted before. Public assumption of sex roles. That’s a misdemeanor. Some cop didn’t like my haircut. But this time they got me on videotape in an alley, so they didn’t even need a trial. I was—” “I don’t want to hear any more of this,” she says, throwing out one hand to stop me. She averts her face and talks to the shrine. “It seems to me that your major contribution to our clinic would be an exposition on the anti-sexism code. We don’t have much need for jailhouse lawyers. Those of us who work here, and the women who come to us for treatment, have suffered greatly from the effluvia of the patriarchal mentality. I don’t think you would understand our process or fit into our collective, but I can’t make that decision independently. It will have to be discussed at our next general meeting, if we have time after handling the rest of the agenda. I’ll inform your case worker when we achieve consensus.”

• From The Decameron (1353)

  [Footnote 405: A play of words upon _mela_ (apple) and _mellone_ (pumpkin). _Mellone_ is strictly a water-melon; but I have rendered it "pumpkin," to preserve the English idiom, "pumpkinhead" being our equivalent for the Italian "melon," used in the sense of dullard, noodle.] [Footnote 406: According to the commentators, "baptized on a Sunday" anciently signified a simpleton, because salt (which is constantly used by the Italian classical writers as a synonym for wit or sense) was not sold on Sundays.] Then said the doctor to Buffalmacco, 'Thou wouldst have told another tale, hadst thou seen me at Bologna, where there was none, great or small, doctor or scholar, but wished me all the weal in the world, so well did I know to content them all with my discourse and my wit. And what is more, I never said a word there, but I made every one laugh, so hugely did I please them; and whenas I departed thence, they all set up the greatest lament in the world and would all have had me remain there; nay, to such a pass came it for that I should abide there, that they would have left it to me alone to lecture on medicine to as many students as were there; but I would not, for that I was e'en minded to come hither to certain very great heritages which I have here and which have still been in my family; and so I did.' Quoth Bruno to Buffalmacco, 'How deemest thou? Thou believedst me not, whenas I told it thee. By the Evangels, there is not a leach in these parts who is versed in asses' water to compare with this one, and assuredly thou wouldst not find another of him from here to Paris gates. Marry, hold yourself henceforth [if you can,] from doing that which he will.' Quoth Master Simone, 'Bruno saith sooth; but I am not understood here. You Florentines are somewhat dull of wit; but I would have you see me among the doctors, as I am used to be.' 'Verily, doctor,' said Buffalmacco, 'you are far wiser than I could ever have believed; wherefore to speak to you as it should be spoken to scholars such as you are, I tell you, cut-and-slash fashion,[407] I will without fail procure you to be of our company.' [Footnote 407: Syn. confusedly (_frastagliatamente_).]

• From Amplified Holy Bible (2015)

  20 Adah gave birth to Jabal; he became the father of those [nomadic herdsmen] who live in tents and have cattle and raise livestock. 21 His brother’s name was Jubal; he became the father of all those [musicians] who play the lyre and flute. 22 Zillah gave birth to Tubal-cain, the smith (craftsman) and teacher of every artisan in instruments of bronze and iron. The sister of Tubal-cain was Naamah. 23 Lamech said to his wives, “Adah and Zillah, Hear my voice; You wives of Lamech, Listen to what I say; For I have killed a man [merely] for wounding me, And a boy [only] for striking (bruising) me. 24 “If Cain is avenged sevenfold [as the LORD said he would be], Then Lamech [will be avenged] h seventy-sevenfold.” 25 Adam knew [Eve as] his wife again; and she gave birth to a son, and named him Seth, for [she said], “God has granted another child for me in place of Abel, because Cain killed him.” 26 To Seth, also, a son was born, whom he named Enosh (mortal man, mankind). At that [same] time men began to call on the name of the LORD [in worship through prayer, praise, and thanksgiving]. [Joel 2:32 ; Luke 3:38 ; Acts 2:21 ] Genesis 5 Descendants of Adam 1 T HIS IS the book (the written record, the history) of the generations of [the descendants of] Adam. When God created man, He made him in the likeness of God [not physical, but a spiritual personality and moral likeness]. 2 He created them male and female, and blessed them and named them a Mankind at the time they were created. 3 When Adam had lived a hundred and thirty years, he b became the father of a son in his own likeness, according to his image, and named him Seth. 4 After he became the father of Seth, Adam lived eight hundred years and had other sons and daughters. 5 So Adam lived nine hundred and thirty years in all, and he died. 6 When Seth was a hundred and five years old, he became the father of Enosh. 7 Seth lived eight hundred and seven years after the birth of Enosh, and he had other sons and daughters. 8 So Seth lived nine hundred and twelve years, and he died. 9 When Enosh was ninety years old, he became the father of Kenan. 10 Enosh lived eight hundred and fifteen years after the birth of Kenan and had other sons and daughters. 11 So Enosh lived nine hundred and five years, and he died. 12 When Kenan was seventy years old, he became the father of Mahalalel. 13 Kenan lived eight hundred and forty years after the birth of Mahalalel and had other sons and daughters. 14 So Kenan lived nine hundred and ten years, and he died. 15 When Mahalalel was sixty-five years old, he became the father of Jared.

• From The Incendiaries (2018)

  He left the room, coming back with full porcelain teacups. Mulled wine, he said. Meanwhile, I jolted through pleasantries with Philip Hecht, also an Edwards student. I wondered when they’d reveal the punchline behind this evening. When, not if, I still thought. Philip asked where I was from; the girl, Jo, smiled. I started reciting lies I’d been telling since the first day in Noxhurst, the half-truths ballooning until, in moments, I turned into a different Will again, floating above the usual Kendall problems. I cut the strings. I had the balloonatic’s glee. Timelines cracked, shifted; my father pulled his emptied seat to the table. My mother’s little rental house sailed south from dull, meth-addled Carmenita to the hills of Los Angeles, expanding mid-flight into an open villa with the kind of misshapen pool no one but the rich would have. It lit up at night. I swam in its blue fire. While I talked, the mulled wine’s spiced heat coiled into me, melting caution, as on that first hot fall afternoon when I climbed three flights up Latham Hall, dragging bags. I’d found my suitemates in the living room, five men in polo shirts: about to go eat, they said, inviting me along. We shook hands. They were all sophomores, like me, but they’d been friends as freshmen. Jovial, polite, offering help with the luggage, they asked about my trip to Edwards: if I’d flown, or driven. I took the bus, I said. Well, multiple buses—from California— For a long instant, they looked alike, faces tight with surprise. By the time they rallied, I’d revised how I should be. My mother’s Pasadena family, rich but dissolute, had misspent the last of its fortune when she was still old enough to recall the luminous idyll she’d lost, and I could use the hacienda memories. Palm trees rising tall, June-night operas at the Hollywood Bowl. I drew on this inherited longing. I filled in peripheral details that helped me settle into who I was: that pool, for instance, the occasional fat plop as fruit from sunlit citrus trees ripens, drowns. In this life of blue honey, I don’t think of the waste. I lap; I crawl. Navel oranges shine from the tiles like medallions. A hired man whistles, fishing out the rot. No one lacks food, or falls ill. I tried to ask questions of Philip, as well. But he acted preoccupied, glancing past my head. The next time his eyes flicked up, I turned, too —I saw the figure at the doorsill, a clean white apron knotted around his waist. I saw him float; I looked again, and it was the filth, a half-inch of skin stained black at his soles, the heels split, flaking. Noticing I’d seen him, he nodded. He walked toward us, holding wine-glass bouquets in his fingers.

• From Amplified Holy Bible (2015)

  Is not Hamath [subdued] like Arpad [her neighbor]? Is not Samaria [in Israel] like Damascus [in Aram]? 10 “As my hand has reached to the kingdoms of the idols, Whose carved images were greater and more feared than those of Jerusalem and Samaria, 11 Shall I not do to Jerusalem and her images Just as I have done to Samaria and her idols?” [declares Assyria]. 12 So when the Lord has completed all His work [of judgment] on Mount Zion and on Jerusalem, He will say, “I will punish the fruit [the thoughts, the declarations, and the actions] of the arrogant heart of the king of Assyria and the haughtiness of his pride.” 13 For the Assyrian king has said, “I have done this by the power of my [own] hand and by my wisdom, For I have understanding and skill. I have removed the boundaries of the peoples And have plundered their treasures; Like a bull I have brought down those who sat on thrones. 14 “My hand has found the wealth of the people like a nest, And as one gathers eggs that are abandoned, so I have gathered all the earth; And there was not one that flapped its wing, or that opened its beak and chirped.” 15 Is the axe able to lift itself over the one who chops with it? Is the saw able to magnify itself over the one who wields it? That would be like a club moving those who lift it, Or like a staff raising him who is not [made of] wood [like itself]! 16 Therefore the Lord, the GOD of hosts, will send a wasting disease among the stout warriors of Assyria; And under his glory a fire will be kindled like a burning flame. 17 And the Light of Israel will become a fire and His Holy One a flame, And it will a burn and devour Assyria’s thorns and briars in a single day. [2 Kin 19:35–37 ; Is 31:8 , 9 ; 37:36 ] 18 The Lord will consume the glory of Assyria’s forest and of its fruitful garden, both soul and body, And it will be as when a sick man wastes away. 19 And the remaining trees of Assyria’s forest will be so few in number That a child could write them down. A Remnant Will Return 20 Now in that day the remnant of Israel, and those of the house of Jacob who have escaped, will never again rely on the one who struck them, but will truly rely on the LORD , the Holy One of Israel. 21 A b remnant will return, a remnant of Jacob, to the mighty God. 22 For though your people, O Israel, may be as the sand of the sea, Only a remnant within them will return; The destruction is determined [it is decided and destined for completion], overflowing with justice (righteous punishment).

• From History of the Christian Church: The Complete Set of Eight Volumes (1858)

  Ignatius, in his epistle to Polycarp, expresses himself as yet very moderately: "If any one can remain in chastity of the flesh to the glory of the Lord of the flesh" [or, according to another reading, "of the flesh of the Lord], let him remain thus without boasting;722 if he boast, he is lost, and if it be made known, beyond the bishop,723 he is ruined." What a stride from this to the obligatory celibacy of the clergy! Yet the admonition leads us to suppose, that celibacy was thus early, in the beginning of the second century, in many cases, boasted of as meritorious, and allowed to nourish spiritual pride. Ignatius is the first to call voluntary virgins brides of Christ and jewels of Christ. Justin Martyr goes further. He points to many Christians of both sexes who lived to a great age unpolluted; and he desires celibacy to prevail to the greatest possible extent. He refers to the example of Christ, and expresses the singular opinion, that the Lord was born of a virgin only to put a limit to sensual desire, and to show that God could produce without the sexual agency of man. His disciple Tatian ran even to the Gnostic extreme upon this point, and, in a lost work on Christian perfection, condemned conjugal cohabitation as a fellowship of corruption destructive of prayer. At the same period Athenagoras wrote, in his Apology: "Many may be found among us, of both sexes, who grow old unmarried, full of hope that they are in this way more closely united to God."

• From Girls & Sex (2016)

  I planted myself near a concession stand, where no fewer than thirty girls over the course of about fifteen minutes asked me to snap their picture beside a life-size poster of Cyrus displaying her famous tongue. A few made “duck lips” or “faux surprise” face—I’m fun! I’m ironic!—but most imitated their idol. I asked one girl, a nineteen-year-old named Emilia, to explain the appeal of the pose. “I guess it’s to say, ‘I don’t care,’” she said. “You don’t care about what?” She shrugged. “I just don’t care!” A twenty-one-year-old women’s studies major from San Francisco State University stood nearby dressed in a black-and-white striped romper, her hair wound into pigtail buns, a slash of red lipstick on her mouth. “I like Miley because she is just herself,” she explained. “I loved Hannah Montana. I’ve seen every episode. But I’m grown up now, and so is Miley. She needed to break free and show that she wasn’t the Disney star anymore.” The girl looked around the hallway. “And she did.” “She is the epitome of perfection,” enthused her friend. “And she’s not going to fit into any cultural ideal. Everyone tells you who you’re supposed to be as a girl, but Miley? She is just who she is.” The show itself was a kaleidoscope of quasi-psychedelic images. A caricatured animated Miley (conceived by Ren and Stimpy creator John Kricfalusi), bug-eyed and buck-toothed, with huge, flopping butt cheeks, cavorted on-screen as the real-life version performed with those plush stuffed dancing bears, pinching and palpating more backup dancers. A giant bed disgorged dancers of both sexes, who joined Miley in a mock orgy. She simulated intercourse with a “little person,” pantomimed fellatio on a dancer dressed as Abraham Lincoln (“party in the USA!”). She urged her audience to make out with each other, drawling, “The more tongue, the better. The dirtier, the better.” The “nastiest” couples, she said, would be projected onto Jumbotrons flanking the stage. (“Girl on girl is always appreciated,” she said with a smirk.)

• From Amplified Holy Bible (2015)

  You will cease to be f forever.’ ” ’ ” Ezekiel 28 Tyre’s King Overthrown 1 T HE WORD of the LORD came again to me, saying, 2 “Son of man, say to the prince of Tyre, ‘Thus says the Lord GOD , “Because your heart is lifted up And you have said and thought, ‘I am a god, I sit in the seat of the gods In the heart of the seas’; Yet you are [only] a man [weak, feeble, made of earth] and not God, Though you [imagine yourself to be more than mortal and] think your mind is as [wise as] the mind of God— 3 Behold, you are [imagining yourself] wiser than Daniel; There is no secret [you think] that is hidden from you; 4 With your [own] wisdom and with your [own] understanding You have acquired your riches and power And have brought gold and silver into your treasuries; 5 By your great wisdom and by your trade You have increased your riches and power, And your heart is proud and arrogant because of your wealth; 6 Therefore thus says the Lord GOD , ‘Because you have imagined your mind [to be] Like the mind of God [having thoughts and plans like God Himself], [Obad 3 ] 7 Therefore, behold, I will bring strangers (Babylonians) upon you, The most ruthless and violent of the nations. And they will draw their swords Against the beauty of your wisdom [O Tyre] And defile your splendor. 8 ‘They will bring you down to the pit [of destruction], And you will die the death of all those who die In the heart of the seas. 9 ‘Will you still say, “I am a god,” In the presence of him who kills you? But you are [only] a man [made of earth] and not God, In the hands of those who wound and profane you. 10 ‘You will die the death of the uncircumcised [barbarian] By the hand of strangers, For I have spoken!’ says the Lord GOD .” ’ ” 11 Again the word of the LORD came to me, saying, 12 “Son of man, take up a dirge (funeral poem to be sung) for the king of Tyre and say to him, ‘Thus says the Lord GOD , “You had the full measure of perfection and the finishing touch [of completeness], Full of wisdom and perfect in beauty. 13 “You were in a Eden, the garden of God; Every precious stone was your covering: The ruby, the topaz, and the diamond; The beryl, the onyx, and the jasper; The lapis lazuli, the turquoise, and the emerald; And the gold, the workmanship of your b settings and your sockets, Was in you. They were prepared On the day that you were created. [Gen 3:14 , 15 ; Is 14:12–15 ; Matt 16:23 ] 14 “You were the anointed cherub who covers and protects, And I placed you there.

• From Beyond Respectability: The Intellectual Thought of Race Women (2017)

  of pride used to protect the soft underbelly and wobbly legs of a creature learning slowly to navigate in a cruelly segregated world.” 78 Here, Murray uses this corporeal image of her childhood self to enact the textual praxis of embodied discourse by writing her body, in its formative stages, into the text as a vulnerable subject caught between racial fixity and malleability. That young Pauli proudly identifies with her white ancestor is meant to signal, not an internalization of racial self-hatred, but rather a disidentification with the binary racial logic of segregation and white supremacy. Many of her relatives changed their racial status in census counts at will, identifying one way in one decade, and differently the next. The fact that her “people traveled back and forth through this corridor of mixed bloods as they chose,” 79 gave Murray a clear sense of how identity could operate in fluid terms. Whereas the law became a place that fixed gender identities through the recognition of the category “woman,” Murray’s ancestors’ refusal of static racial identification across time, particularly on the census, defied legal attempts to impose fixity upon their racial identities. Her celebration of her family’s refusal of official, externally imposed racial boundaries reinforced her lifelong resistance to institutional definitions of race, gender, and sexuality. Though she relied on the law’s official recognition of Black people and women in order to advocate for civil rights, her approach was more pragmatic than ideological. She firmly believed that the attempt to force human beings into “rigid” categories of racial and gender identification was dehumanizing, not to mention an inaccurate way to characterize the range of human experiences. Yet, she also understood that “being caught ‘betwixt and between’ the races” was a space of “doing battle.” 80 This contested space, which the Fitzgeralds, Murray’s mulatto relatives, occupied, was a “no man’s land between the whites and Blacks, belonging wholly to neither yet irrevocably tied to both.” 81 Adding her own racial theorizing to the broad tradition of Black feminist thought, Murray concluded that racial malleability and fluidity are the logical telos to America’s peculiar racial history. Even so, racial malleability was not a foregone conclusion. For although knowledge of her noble white ancestry provided a “shell” of protection for Murray, it also “more than anything else, kept me,” she writes, “from an acceptance of my lot. I would always be trying to break out of the rigid mold into which I was being forced. I would always be in rebellion against the crushing walls until people no longer needed legends about their ancestors to give them distinctiveness and self-respect.” 82 Her return to the image of the “rigid molds into which [she] was being forced,” invoked her discussion a decade earlier about the mis-education of the sexes. This similarity in language is not accidental; rather it points us to sublimated and subversive sexual desires that remained dangerous for a race woman to articulate in public.

• From The Decameron (1353)

  Bernabo, some little nettled, replied that not the emperor, but God, who could somewhat more than the emperor, had vouchsafed him the favour in question. Whereupon quoth Ambrogiuolo, 'Bernabo, I doubt not a whit but that thou thinkest to say sooth; but meseemeth thou hast paid little regard to the nature of things; for that, hadst thou taken heed thereunto, I deem thee not so dull of wit but thou wouldst have noted therein certain matters which had made thee speak more circumspectly on this subject. And that thou mayst not think that we, who have spoken much at large of our wives, believe that we have wives other or otherwise made than thine, but mayst see that we spoke thus, moved by natural perception, I will e'en reason with thee a little on this matter. I have always understood man to be the noblest animal created of God among mortals, and after him, woman; but man, as is commonly believed and as is seen by works, is the more perfect and having more perfection, must without fail have more of firmness and constancy, for that women universally are more changeable; the reason whereof might be shown by many natural arguments, which for the present I purpose to leave be. If then man be of more stability and yet cannot keep himself, let alone from complying with a woman who soliciteth him, but even from desiring one who pleaseth him, nay more, from doing what he can, so he may avail to be with her,--and if this betide him not once a month, but a thousand times a day,--what canst thou expect a woman, naturally unstable, to avail against the prayers, the blandishments, the gifts and a thousand other means which an adroit man, who loveth her, will use? Thinkest thou she can hold out? Certes, how much soever thou mayst affirm it, I believe not that thou believest it; and thou thyself sayst that thy wife is a woman and that she is of flesh and blood, as are other women.

• From The Beautiful Room Is Empty (1988)

  My only enemy was Simon, a recent Russian immigrant in his sixties. He’d entered therapy to convince his wife that he was making an effort to curb his rages, but he still beat her regularly. He’d even knocked out a tooth. As a Russian, Simon wasn’t used to the American way of coddling people. He hated our welfare system, detested out-of-work blacks and thought they should all be sent back to Africa. He thought sexual perversion should be punished by castration or lobotomy, but he was convinced by the other group members that I was making an honest effort to go straight. In his mind the cure was simple. I should go out with girls, buy them candy, strike them, no doubt, finally marry them. Whenever I started spinning my analytic gossamer, he’d say, “But wot about de goils? I wanna hear about de goils.” I embraced Dale’s system with passion and rigor. I thought about the games people play not only during my sessions but also at work. In my own modest way, I even set up shop as a therapist for a few of my fellow employees. We were all so idle—and so frustrated from the company’s duplication (or negation) of our efforts—that we had the time and spleen conducive to auto-analysis. In therapy I became so expert in spotting covert games that Dale herself would sometimes ask me for my opinion. Once in a great while someone would notice that I had said nothing about myself for ages, but I was too valuable an ally to alienate. In my mind I was earning chips I’d be able to cash in one wonderful day when I would need everyone’s attention and sympathy. One night over supper with Maria I yawned and said, “Of course Maeve was just playing Yes, But.” “What do you mean?” Maria asked. “That’s one of the games people play,” and I went on to explain it with majestic confidence. Maria put her knife and fork down and grew silent. Without raising her eyes she said, “When I met you, you had one of the sharpest, most open, most skeptical minds I’d ever encountered. Now you’ve become the dullest sort of bigot. You see absolutely every last thing through those ridiculous therapeutic glasses. You’re as smug as a Catholic convert or an American Marxist without enjoying the intellectual range and depth of either system.” “Why do you find my therapy so threatening, Maria?” I asked, already trying to label the game she was playing. “You’re my best friend, Dumpling, but I don’t think I can continue this friendship if you don’t change. I can’t bear to see the wreck you’ve made of your mind. It’s all because you can’t accept being gay, which isn’t such a big deal. You’re still white, a man, handsome, charming, from a well-to-do family, intelligent—everything’s been handed to you, but you—” Keep collecting injustices, I thought, naming one of the games members sometimes played.

• From The Confessions of Saint Augustine (354)

  But that orator was of that sort whom I loved, as wishing to be myself such; and I erred through a swelling pride, and was tossed about with every wind, but yet was steered by Thee, though very secretly. And whence do I know, and whence do I confidently confess unto Thee, that I had loved him more for the love of his commenders, than for the very things for which he was commended? Because, had he been unpraised, and these self-same men had dispraised him, and with dispraise and contempt told the very same things of him, I had never been so kindled and excited to love him. And yet the things had not been other, nor he himself other; but only the feelings of the relators. See where the impotent soul lies along, that is not yet stayed up by the solidity of truth! Just as the gales of tongues blow from the breast of the opinionative, so is it carried this way and that, driven forward and backward, and the light is overclouded to it, and the truth unseen. And to, it is before us. And it was to me a great matter, that my discourse and labours should be known to that man: which should he approve, I were the more kindled; but if he disapproved, my empty heart, void of Thy solidity, had been wounded. And yet the “fair and fit,” whereon I wrote to him, I dwelt on with pleasure, and surveyed it, and admired it, though none joined therein.

• From Another Country (1962)

  I doubt if even you know how great a career is within your grasp.” “I’ve got an awfully long way to go Mr. Ellis, I’ve got such an awful lot to learn.” “If you ever stop feeling that way, I will personally take a hairbrush to you.” He looked up at Vivaldo. “You have not called me and I take that very unkindly.” Vivaldo suppressed whatever rude retort was on his tongue. He said, mildly, “I just don’t think I’ve got much of a future in TV.” “ Oh , what an abysmal lack of imagination!” He shook Ida playfully by the shoulder. “Can’t you do anything with this man of yours? Why does he insist on hiding his light under a bushel?” “The truth is,” said Ida, “that the last time anybody made up Vivaldo’s mind for him was the last time they changed his diapers. And that was quite a long time ago. Anyway,” and she rubbed her cheek against Vivaldo’s shoulder, “I wouldn’t dream of trying to change him. I like him the way he is. ” There was something very ugly in the air. She clung to Vivaldo, but Eric felt that there was something in it which was meant for Ellis. And Vivaldo seemed to feel this, too. He moved slightly away from Ida and picked up her handbag from the table—to give his hands something to do?—and said, “You haven’t met our friend, he just came in from Paris. This is Eric Jones; this is Steve Ellis.” They shook hands. “I know your name,” said Ellis. “Why?” “He’s an actor,” said Ida, “and he’s opening on Broadway in the fall.” Vivaldo, meanwhile, was paying the check. Eric took out his wallet, but Vivaldo waved it away. “I have heard of you. I’ve heard quite a lot about you,” and he looked Eric appraisingly up and down. “Branson’s signed you for Happy Hunting Ground . Is that right?” “That’s right,” said Eric. He could not tell whether he liked Ellis or not. “It’s kind of an interesting play,” Ellis said, cautiously, “and, from what I’ve heard of you, it ought to do very good things for you.” He turned back to Ida and Vivaldo. “Could I persuade you to have one drink with me in some secluded, air-conditioned bar? I really don’t think,” he said to Ida, “that you ought to make a habit of working in such infernos. You’ll end up dying of tuberculosis, like Spanish bullfighters, who are always either too hot or too cold.” “Oh, I guess we have time for one drink,” said Ida, looking doubtfully at Vivaldo, “what do you think, sweetie?” “It’s your night,” said Vivaldo. They started toward the door. “I’d like to mix maybe just a little bit of business in with this drink,” said Ellis. “I figured that,” said Vivaldo. “What an eager beaver you are.” “The secret,” said Ellis, “of my not inconsiderable success.”

• From Every Woman's Battle: Discovering God's Plan for Sexual and Emotional Fulfillment (2003)

  • A recent divorcée, Deborah has reentered the dating scene. She finds that when a man responds to her advances for emotional connection, she eventually loses interest. However, if he plays hard to get, she can’t get him out of her mind. She thrives on the challenge of conquering a man’s resolve. (Deborah isn’t as interested in a genuine, intimate relationship as she is boosting her own ego by turning a man’s head and luring him in with her seductive power.) • Every Sunday morning Jennifer dresses her best and scans the crowd throughout the church service to see who is stealing a glance at her. (In Jennifer’s heart, going to church is more about getting the worship she longs to receive herself rather than offering worship to God.) A MOVEMENT THAT HAS MOVED TOO FAR “Men’s Top 10 Sex Wants”4 “The Secret Sex Move He’s Got to Feel to Believe”5 “The #1 Thing He Craves in Bed”6 These are just three of many similar magazine headlines at the grocery store checkout counter. The numerous articles on topics like these indicate that many women today want sexual prowess, power, and creative ways to manipulate men into doing what they want. The headlines of local newspapers point to a sex-saturated culture, as do safe-sex programs in public schools, pro-choice rallies promoting legalized abortion, and gay and lesbian rights activists marching for their cause. What started over a hundred years ago as a women’s movement for equal rights, equal pay, and equal opportunity has evolved into something it was never intended to be. We are living in an age where many women are actually more promiscuous than men. Now women are trying to exert power over others, insisting on their rights to make “choices” while (1) disregarding respect for men’s rights to avoid sexual temptations and (2) disregarding God’s design for sex to create life and to bring intimacy between a husband and a wife. Diane Passno explains in her book Feminism: Mystique or Mistake? that what actually started out as a Christian effort to rid society of the negative effects of alcoholism (the temperance movement) and to gain equal rights for women has evolved into a movement that has moved too far away from its roots.