On Sat, 18 Jan 2003, Harmon Seaver wrote: > Ah, now I see. Before, I was thinking that he was talking about the passage > where Onan pulls out and spills his seed on the ground, which, somehow, became a > prescription against masturbation, although reading it, especially in context, > is clearly just about pulling out. Or possibly against birth-control. > "Thou shalt not pull out.", thus saith the Lord, "or in any other way deprive > thy partner of the power of thy final orgasmic thrusting." > > 8-) > > Weird, isn't it, that this became so associated with masturbation > that a very successful company -- "Onan" -- even would choose their > name for generators, i.e., "self power" or "do it alone", etc., from > that passage. Even weirder that it doesn't have the slightest thing to > do with jacking off, but with someone not willing to accept their (at > the time) societal duty to support his dead brother's wife and father > her children.
The irony, of course, is what the Catholic Church would have to say if the brother-in-laws of modern widows resumed this practice. -MW-
