Conception begins at ejaculation
SB2319 (As Introduced) - 2025 Regular Session
If you cannot stop the zanies, dish it yourself.
Bill introduced in Mississippi State Legislature to levy fines for ejaculation without intent for reproduction.
(2) It shall be unlawful for a person to discharge genetic material without the intent to fertilize an embryo.
Then Judah said to Onan, “Sleep with your brother’s wife and fulfill your duty to her as a brother-in-law to raise up offspring for your brother.” But Onan knew that the child would not be his; so whenever he slept with his brother’s wife, he spilled his semen on the ground to keep from providing offspring for his brother. What he did was wicked in the Lord’s sight; so the Lord put him to death also.
Not only was God pissed off with Onan, but now the State of Mississippi was weighing in.
My favorite part is that if you actually read this story it's not even about masturbation, it's about how shitty it is to try and rules-lawyer your way out of doing the right thing.
Onan's brother died and left a childless widow. In Jewish culture at that time, as a widow, she would've needed a son to collect the inheritance / be taken care of, etc. The workaround (in lieu of not being misogynists given that these were ye olden times) was that your brother in law would knock you up and that kid would legally count as your dead husband's for the purposes of inheritance.
But Onan thinks he's reeeaaaal clever and figures if she just magically can't get pregnant, he could just keep all that land, tents, horses, and whatever else. So he just keeps pulling out, she never gets pregnant and figures he's home free and puts his brother's widow out on the street to become a prostitute. There's some specific symbolic way that he gets his divine comeuppance for all this but I can never remember that part.
This was just the example my childhood pastor used to like using when he explained the problems with just letting someone else tell you what the Bible means instead of reading it for yourself. The man was very educated and gave a lot of sermons on the historical cultural context of a lot of the texts. In fact I'm pretty sure all of my childhood pastors had Master's degrees.
This is also the same guy that founded the interfaith community in my city to promote cultural exchange and coordinated charity efforts. Basically Fred Rogers' spiritual twin was my childhood pastor; if they weren't alive at the same time it would have me believing in reincarnation (they even looked similar and were even both Presbyterian).
The man had a congregation in the hundreds and he knew the name of every person in every family, what their jobs were, what their kids were studying in college, and if they had any sick relatives, and would stand by the gate at the end of every service shaking every single persons hand and chatting about that stuff for a minute or two each. When my brother died he was on our doorstep within an hour of the cops notifying us. Regardless of how my personal spiritual beliefs have waxed or waned at various points it took me a looong time to understand how someone in that position could hurt people through either malice or incompetence.
The message I took away from that story was "do what an actual fucking deity standing in front of you says to do"
discharge genetic material
Could you not argue that a woman is doing this every time she has her period?
Also spitting, crying (tears), blowing your nose, pissing and taking a dump, losing hairs and dead skin cells,...
Oh shit you're right. It just says genetic material. I was interpreting that as "reproductive material". Which was giving them too much credit, because that's not the same thing.
Since it was meant as satire, this might have been intentional
Since it was meant as satire
If it was satire, why is it in !nottheonion@lemmy.world?
It's a real bill, but it's not a serious bill.
Don't forget a haircut! Or clipping finger nails! What about a shave?
These are all MINI-GENOCIDES.
Don't forget about sweating and farting...
I mean, if it was written well, it might say something like discharge reproductively viable genetic material. It looks like an unfertilised egg disintegrates before leaving the body, so isn't viable.
'Discharging genetic material' on its own includes a nosebleed.
BTW, masturbation is called Onanieren in German... a bit imprecise, biblically.
It's also called that in Japanese. I guess they got it from German/Dutch.
"onanism" is a word in English too. just not as popular.
keep in mind, that Onan, levirate marriages weren't about love or anything like that.
Like most (all?) cultures at the time, women were property, and couldn't own property.
Technically, Er's firstborn son would have inherited everything and then "taken care of" everyone else. Or rather, Tamar, would, on the son's behalf. but Er got smote by god for being a particular kind of dick before he had a first born son.
So in typical religious fruitcake fashion, instead of fixing the original problem- that Tamar had no way of inheriting anything or supporting her self- they decided the obvious solution was for the brother-in-law to get the widow pregnant.
of course Tamar was the same age as the third brother; who needed to grow up a bit before she could marry him... (ew, right?) so instead she gets sent back to her own family and- eventually- becomes a camp follower of Judah's.... and, ah. yeah.
I mean, these were people barely out of the caves trying to populate a nation. Mainstream religion has always been political propaganda, and kind of intentionally missing the point.