by the Rev Dr Alan Clifford
THE TRIALS OF THE TOPLESS DUCHESS
Dr Alan C. Clifford
What a sickening fiasco. French, Irish and now the Italians are cashing in on the hapless Duchess.
But are the British entirely without blame because we refuse to publish the pictures? No. Because this whole incident is but a symptom of our Europe-wide immoral, immodest culture, a culture where promiscuity, pornography and perversion flow unchecked. Indeed, our entire entertainment industry thrives on adulterous sex in particular and a mocking disregard for the Ten Commandments in general.
Of course the money-making motive is behind all this. ‘Filthy lucre’ is the apt expression. Not that there is anything filthy about feminine beauty. But the beauty of a man’s wife should be for his eyes alone. The kind of decadence that ignores such privacy merely fuels public male lust and should be disallowed and even criminalized. Rightly did the Apostle Peter sum up the vice of our visual age. We are a society with ‘eyes full of adultery, and that cannot cease from sin’ (2 Pet. 2: 14).
Is the refusal of the British press to publish (so far) evidence of a residual Puritanism? I certainly hope so. One would like to ask these hypocritical editors and their equally-hypocritical male readers this question: would they like topless pictures of their wives, sisters, mothers, etc available for all the world to see? And have they spared a thought for Prince William’s feelings in all this shameless publicity?
For those who see a relevant connection, I am not making any concessions to Islamic culture at this point; behind the seemingly-modest burkha barrier is a variety of sexual irregularities. No, I am appealing to the kind of Judeo-Christian values which once prevailed in great measure throughout Western society, values which preserved and protected the purity and beauty of married life, at the same time creating a context of innocence and modesty in which to raise happy and virtuous children. Such are the desperate needs of our sex-obsessed society.
Unless we return to our roots, the lusts of the jungle will be our ruin!
Dr Alan C. Clifford
For those who see a relevant connection, I am not making any concessions to Islamic culture at this point; behind the seemingly-modest burkha barrier is a variety of sexual irregularities.
Oh my, but you are, you so very much are. Puritanism in Christianity is the articulation of the same Levantine values.
I’m really starting to get quite a bee in my bonnet with this whole ideology that the definition of a good European is that they follow these ancient, foreign value systems. Judeao-Christian this, Graeco-Roman that. Enough with all these towel-heads and dress-wearers and bacon sandwich haters, and their antiquated tribal nonsenses, i say! So let’s get this straight; “Judeao-Christian” and “islamic” values come from the same source, that ghastly scrubby patch of limestone crags everyone is still fighting over for no good reason 2000 years later.
European girls get their tits out for the lads; yea even thy wiives and thy mothers and thy sisters. If you don’t like that, get an Easyjet to Saudi, where you can live the Levantine tribal value system in all its glory.
Also Padre, you might want to spend your time tuning in to love (in the largest sense of the word) and doing your best to study and gain insight into the the source of that love, the great Creator-of-all, instead of peddling poisonious old maid bromides about some womans tits. Woman have tits as part of the cosmic plan and men desire to see them as part of that plan also. If you want to complain, complain about the trivial stupidity of being obsessed with two lumps of fat with big pimples on the end. The Media has one obsession and the prim n’ proper have another but it is all equally silly. There are far more important matters to attend to.
Had the good Dr not mentioned his vocation, then I feel his thoughts would not have been condemned quite so harshly in the two previous comments. Personally speaking, I suppose the good Dr is simply doing his job in just the same way that the press photographers are doing theirs. Filthy lucre is the motivator that stands in line behind the prime one… which is of course sex. Men with money get all the sex they need but just like the song says, ‘Love makes the world go Around’.
What amazes me is that the entire affair should worry anyone. The so-called Royal Family obviously desire fame and fortune otherwise they’d have ducked out of the increasing culture of media sensationalism which came about shortly after the birth of photography; well over a century ago. The same goes with our modern ‘celebrity culture’ which desires the publicity the photograph offers but wants the lens pointing the other way when it suits them. After the massively expensive Olympic Ego-fest in London recently, I’m surprised that anyone, anywhere, wants to look at the anatomy of yet another braggart; no matter which bit or bits.
So, the so-called Duchess has got breasts – so what? (Cover’em up dear if you don’t want people to see’em. If they truly are for Willy’s eyes only isn’t that what you should be doing?)
Meanwhile, we have hundreds of young men being pointlessly murdered in some remote, hell-hole land which they’ve been despatched to by our elected celebrity politicians. Now, what do you feel about that situation Dr Clifford? Is the morality of their thinking in this regard of concern to you? Would you say that it is of more importance to the nation’s well-being than a woman’s exposed breast?
Rather judgmental responses. The good Dr. was pointing out a valid observation, and the opinion that a man and woman have a right to expect privacy in a secluded, private setting. He wasn’t standing up for the monarchy, which if must be said – should be dismembered and dismantled once and for all. He was standing up for good manners – honorable people don’t use telephoto lenses to snap nudie shots of unsuspecting women.
But what the heck, maybe you’d like a camera in your bathroom, catching you choke your monkey when you think you’re all alone. We’ll plaster that on the tabloids and YouTube, and see how many chuckles you offer.
Strangle the Goose sounds better… monkeys can be emotionally damaged too.
Okay, couple of points.
The main point of my comment was regarding Dr. Cliffords in my view rather less than credible argument that there is some qualitative difference between Judaeo-Christian-puritanism, and Islamo-puritanism. it really does seem to me to be much simpler and much more credible to recognise that although they may differ in some details of implementation, and in degree, and in emphasis, they are rooted in the same ideas. This is hardly the first time I’ve strongly argued that puritanism, in whatever form, is neither desirable, nor practicable (without some enormous imposed control structure), nor the first time I’ve argued that puritanism is fundamentally un-Western (or un-European, or what have you) and is instead a manifestation of alien, Orientalist, values. Whether or not I am right is another matter. But I am simply being consistent. I believe that this matters a great deal for liberty, since currently the socio-political pendulum is swinging strongly back towards a variety of puritist positions which many of us at one time thought had died, never to return, around 1970 or so, and these are fuelling great extensions of State power. Even if that were not the case, the general idea beloved of “Judaeo-Christian-Islamic” believers that sexuality will destroy civilisation is, to me personally, repugnant, and worth arguing against as strenuously as possible anyway. A vicar muttering about “lust” may seem rather English and quaint and harmless compared to the mutaween hitting people with sticks, but it is fundamentally the same ideology.
So that was the point of my comment.
There is however another interesting issue for libertarians as regards “privacy”. Is there a “right” to privacy?
The comedian Dave Allen onces joked (can’t remember exactly, I’m paraphrasing); “if a woman sunbathes nude and I look at her, I’m a peeping Tom. If I sunbathe nude and she looks at me, I’m a flasher!” So here we see a contradiction, related to the issue of one’s own visibility. My garden backs onto a park. Imagine that I decide to remove my swimwear in the garden, and some children see me through a gap in the hedge. If I am aware of the gap in the hedge, I am legally exposing myself. If the children complained to the police, I may end up in a very awkward position trying to prove I did not know I was visible; in other words the obligation is upon me to screen my taboo parts from the outside world. But as shown above, it would largely depend upon who I am, and who was looking at me. It is certainly one situation in which the law does not treat everyone equally regardless of gender, age etc.
So we already have one problem with privacy (of this type). One set of laws claim that my “space” is being violated if somebody looks at me; but another set of laws claim that their space is being violated if photons bounce off me and into their eyes!
It seems hard to me to justify a “right” to privacy in a Libertarian context. You certainly have a right to try to be private. You can erect fences and hedges and draw the curtains and shut the bathroom door if you’re having a poo. But that does not mean there is a further right that the State can or should prevent somebody looking at you if your precautions are inadequate; if you failed to check there were no holes in the fence, of forgot to entirely draw the curtains, or it turns out that frosted bathroom windown doesn’t obscure you as much as you thought it did. The photographer did not, so far as I can tell, do anything other than capture reflected light from the Duchess which she had failed to limit with an opaque barrier. Indeed, back with the earlier argument, one can argue that she took inadequate precautions to prevent the terrible ruin that may occur if somebody had inadvtently seen her “flashing” her breasts! Where’s the dividing line? How small does your image on somebody else’s retina need to be before you are notionally “in private” and we cross the line from peeping to flashing? None of it makes a great deal of sense, does it?