An Open Letter to John C. Wright

Dear John C. Wright,

We, the Elders of Sodom, read with interest your recent diatribe on the moral decay of society, as manifest in the SyFy Channel's (most welcome) response to our criticism with regards to representing gay characters. We clearly differ from you in our response, in our celebration (as opposed to condemnation) of Mark Swift's expression of disappointment that we marked SyFy with an F for Frowny Face, his assurance that the company was trying and would try harder to represent homosexuality in a way that better reflects our presence in society. We must admit to feeling somewhat saddened that you react to his statement with such antipathy and with terms such as "homosex." This is hardly, we think, the stuff of civilised discourse.

So we are writing this open letter to yourself, in the hope that you will appreciate, if nothing else, the time and effort taken in the purchase and provision of an evidential indication -- which is to say, in buying you a fucking clue. We hold out little hope of persuading you that we are not intent on the destruction of all that is good and decent, or of salve your concerns with the New World Order and the evils of the Homosexual Agenda, but we do think it wise to address some of your arguments, such that they are, if only because such rhetoric should not, we think, be met with silence. To that end, we will go into more detail presently as to why we find you alternately objectionable and risible, but for the moment we can boil the basics of this correspondance down to a very simple message:

Cut the crap.

I say this not in the "shut the fuck up" sense, but rather in the "discard the tosh and balderdash" sense. What do I mean by "crap" here then? What tosh and balderdash am I referring to?

Well, let's start with the assumptions that will likely lead many to not respond with anything remotely resembling the rational answers you claim you want. If you want your questions to be taken seriously then you would do well to start by asking them without the arrant nonsense of paranoid fantasies in which the SyFy Channel has "recoiled in craven fear and trembling" before the intimidatory might of GLAAD's "homosex activists" (aka the Elders of Sodom, Media Division.) You would do well to start with the premise that the head of the SyFy Channel's public commitment to not simply presenting more homosexuality but to presenting it as a non-issue might actually be born of a genuine belief that this is an ethical thing to do.

We're sure you're aware that other people can and do have different opinions. You may reject the validity of those opinions, but it would hardly seem rational to reject their existence. Actually, come to think of it, you don't actually seem that rational, so maybe our conviction is unwarranted. Let us assure you then: we, the Elders of Sodom do have those opinions, trust me, and many within our ranks hold such opinions not because they are themselves homosexual, (we are open to all and sundry, welcoming even to the Brethren of Breeders,) but simply because they have a trait we refer to as "empathy." The ethics we hold to among the Elders of Sodom is, generally speaking, based primarily on this "empathy," and therefore rejects homophobia for the same reasons it rejects racism, misogyny, and all other forms of prejudice.

This is how it actually is, Mr Wright. People do actually disagree with you. Not just the actual sodomites like myself, but the Sapphic Sisterhood, the Hamite Alliance, the League of Heathens and Infidels, Atheists Anonymous, a whole panoply of progressive thinkers, aligned and unaligned, to whom your rant reads as the ethically repugnant ravings of a sociopath, given that it has so little concern for aforesaid "empathy". Let me repeat that, Mr Wright. People do actually disagree with you. Not because they're faggots who like the homosex. Not because they've been cowed into submission by the faggots who like the homosex. But because they see the faggots who like the homosex as human beings deserving of empathy, see the abjection of them as profoundly unethical -- stupid and cruel to the point of socially dysfunctional. You do get this, right? Surely you understand that Mark Stern might well be one of us.

Or perhaps not. To be fair, you do not have to assume that Stern is sincere; that's not what I'm saying. It's simply that you do not know that he is not -- you not being a mind-reader and all -- so rather than portraying the SyFy Channel's statement as capitulation to the dread forces of political correctness, you might equally well assume that SyFy is offering up its alliegance to the Elders of Sodom of its own free will. Given that Stern's statement carries no tone of grudging and embittered surrender, no sense of one who feels himself under siege from the terrible wrath of the Elders of Sodom -- a threat clearly considered insignificant enough by CBS, NBC, A&E and TBS that they feel no need to comment let alone surrender -- you would do well to consider if perhaps (horror of horrors!) he is one of The Enemy. Not homosexual, I mean. Just someone who holds to an ethics based primarily on empathy.

But why should this matter? Why shouldn't you assume the worst case (i.e. most paranoid) scenario, that the Elders of Sodom are slowly crushing all resistance to their libertine manifesto, that now even the network executives quake in fear at the faggot's fierce roar? Well, partly it matters because the scenario you paint sounds frankly bizarre to many -- that the Elders of Sodom wield such awesome power as to bring Mark Stern grovelling to his knees in front of us, so in terror of our stark fist of political correctitude that he would go out of his way to feign support, he alone among his peers, while the rest see no need to even acknowledge our criticisms at all. This makes you sound rather extreme, you understand? Words like "homosex" and "abomination," the rhetoric of gaybashing high school jocks and murderous religious fundamentalists, do not help you present yourself as someone worthwhile opening a dialogue with.

You claim to want a rational answer, but your alarmist hysteria no more invites a rational response than some medieval anti-semite's froth-mouthed demand to know how good Christians can suffer the "Christ-killers" plotting in their midst, working wickedly in the shadows to exert their evil influence. You complain that you won't get a rational answer but you sound like one whose antipathy clouds all judgement, one whose revulsion is so extreme, their disgust so bound to fear and hate, that it manifests in outright delusion, in conspiracy theories of covert and overt ideological Powers-That-Be, Evil Forces aligned against all that is good and decent. Paranoid fantasies born of prejudice do not invite a rational response. How can society have come to this, you cry, this depth of depravity, this sink of iniquity, that the head of the SyFy Channel cowers before the Elders of Sodom? How can others not see the headlong plunge into filth that will result from this the headfirst dive into acceptance of incest, paedophilia, bestiality, necrophilia, fornication, wantonness, sin, sin, SIN?!

You seem incapable of conceiving that Stern could hold to a sincere ethical judgement that "homosex" is acceptable and that the absenting of it from television is a product of prejudice to be countered. You seem incapable of imagining that anyone could hold to this notion for any other reason than that they are a) wicked, b) gullible, or c) afraid to stand their ground. Those of us who hold exactly that opinion are more inclined, to be honest, to the fourth option: that you are d) nutso. This is not an accusation that you are nutso, mind, merely an explanation of how you come across, offered as basic advice in how to perform the amazing feat of understanding how other people think differently than you do. If you genuinely want to understand how society has come to this, how we can all hold to ethical opinions you consider utterly invalid, then you need to start by accepting that we do indeed hold to those ethical opinions. Honestly, you really want to try and understand why the following is just crazy talk to most of us:

By what logic is the sole and single standard of virtue in your world view an absolute devotion to vice?

Empathy is a devotion to vice? Really? Because that's what the Elders of Sodom base our principles on, my dear chap. It's written into our Protocols: the notion that other people are human beings and that their suffering is something to be minimised as best we can, just as we would seek to minimise our own suffering, not because we are forced to but because we care to; the notion that all particular principles and rule-of-thumb are open to interrogation as to how best we can achieve the optimum situation, because uncritical obedience is for children, not for rational adults; the notion that with maturity comes the responsibility to exercise our own faculties of reason as regards to ethics; the notion that this extends even to those core standards which seek to describe what that optimum situation actually is. This is the Grand Project that the Elders of Sodom are sworn to, have been sworn to throughout history.

The result of this historical project is actually a myriad of standards which may well seem confusing to someone looking for simplistic absolutes, but there's plenty of logic, even a coherent theme, in "the greatest good for the greatest number," or "from each according to ability, to each according to need," or "a healthy mind in a healthy body," or in many other axioms produced over the eons by those who have thrown themselves into the exercise of ethical faculties. There's plenty of logic to be argued over in all the resultant philosophy, but still we're all in the same boat as every one of our forefathers, the ultimate responsibility resting on us to navigate a way through all the arguments because we patently can't rely on being led by the ideologues who claim authority. They will only tell us to lynch black men who want to marry white women for their "miscegenation," behead rape victims for their "adultery," stone those who utter a certain string of phonemes for their "blasphemy," burn at the stake men who have sex with other men for their "sodomy". They will tell us to commit heinous atrocities in the name of all that's good and decent, but we must live with ourselves afterward, so we really have little option but to think about whether they really have a fucking clue about what's good and decent.

So, the Prime Directive of the Protocols of the Elders of Sodom is something akin to Kant's Categorical Imperative, with maybe a dash of Sartrean good faith: that the standard over-riding all others is that one must, with empathy in mind, use all one's ethical faculties in every situation in a passionate but reasoned attempt to make the best possible evaluation of the most ethical course of action. So, if someone insists that miscegenation is a crime against nature so "abhorrent" that we must join the lynch mob, no matter how many stand with him, no matter if we're the only person standing against him, we should nevertheless be ready, willing and able to challenge this self-righteous nonsense, to say, this is not a vice -- because this would be the more ethical response even if societal morés condemn us for refusing to conform. This is the logic underlying what is not "a sole and single standard of virtue," simply an overriding standard of autonomous thought as an ethical duty, a recognition that prejudice is not a legitimate basis for moral authority, a commitment to challenge such illegitimate "morality" as and when it expresses itself in unethical acts of abjection. We, the Elders of Sodom, find it quite saddening that you and others like you characterise this mode of ethical judgement as a "devotion to vice."

We're not suprised however.

By what logic is the sole and single sin the sin of having standards of virtue, what you call being intolerant?

It's quite easy to explain, actually. You see, where you consider it unconscionable that anyone should treat the "abomination" of homosexuality as "normal and natural and worthy of no comment," you appear to be demonstrating what Kohlberg described as a "law and order" mentality, a sub-stage within the "conventional" stage of moral development. Your understanding of ethics is bound to a framework of social/natural/divine order seen as good in and of itself, something to be defended, propagated. Within this, virtue is equated with normative behaviours while vice is equated with some (but not all) non-normative behaviours, which are viewed as transgressions, breaches of norms institutionalised into moral dicta. Actions which are "bad" are not seen as existentially unethical because they cause harm to individuals but rather as essentially immoral because they "disrupt" the social/natural/divine order. Oh noes.

You have apparently managed to rationalise this to yourself in terms of a pseudo-Stoic teleological sophistry in which every passion has a "final cause" -- an essential purpose -- such that action at odds with these essential purposes represents an immoral "disordering" of the appetites, an unacceptable misdirection from their natural/mandatory objects. You seem to think this is a sophisticated philosophy, but to the Elders of Sodom it appears risibly simplistic -- practically crude and ignorant in its systematisation of potential human behaviour into a set of axioms bearing little relation to reality, and all of these articulated in a one note modality of "must" and "must not," judging this action a virtue to be proud of, that one a vice to be ashamed of. This is a clunking, crunching mode of thought that lacks even the subtlety by which we might deem it mechanistic. It has all the complexity, flexibility and functionality of a broken light switch.

Most damningly, this mode of (un)ethical (un)reasoning is responsible for all manner of inequity and iniquity, since the ascription of "essential" and "perverted" purposes to actions is often pseudo-rational at best. This becomes obvious when that which is "abnormal" invokes a conditioned disgust response, an affect of pre-rational revulsion, the sort of profound and unconsidered (perhaps unconsiderable) abhorrence that leads to the action being vitriolically condemned as an "abomination". The strength of this irrational response reinforces commitment to the social/natural/divine order by opposition to that which deviates from it. Further, acting to "defend" the social/natural/divine order from the demonised (i.e. abjected) transgressor/transgression by, for example, instilling that same loathing in others generates a pride in this (self-)righteous action. Thus you have a feedback loop in which prejudice against those identifiable as deviant is validated by the very disgust that motivates it, and propagating that prejudice is validated by the pride that results. Pick an "abnormal" behaviour such as inter-racial marriage and we end up with a "moral" imperative against the "abomination" of "miscegenation."

Many do think in such terms -- hence the "conventional" label -- but the markers of deviance, the "abnormal" behaviours that become the subject of moral dicta, vary across cultures, geographically and historically. Even with a cursory glance at these variations the limitations of this mode of pseudo-ethical morality become obvious. Some cultures have lacked morés that condemned brother-sister incest or even the sexual abuse of parent-child incest (or for that matter extra-familial paedophilic abuse) while within living memory (or for that matter currently, within neo-fascist subcultures) some have made a "moral" issue of the deviation from societal norms that they refer to as "miscegenation", considering this as an "abomination" of a similar severity to that which you ascribe "homosex." What we have in those cultures that do not condemn the unconscionable abuses we'd class as incest and paedophilia is conventional morality failing to be ethical. What we have with (sub-)cultures that condemn miscegenation is morality being itself unconscionable, the unethical masquerading as the ethical, prejudice wearing a disguise of piety. It seems fairly obvious to most of us within the Elders of Sodom that such a system of thought is in and of itself rendered ethically dubious where it does not simply allow for but in fact is predisposed to result in such failings.

This is, incidentally, why we stress the importance of tolerance, why we are "willing to tolerate sexual perversion but not racism". The latter is patently unethical in its abjection of a group marked out by skin colour. The former -- when we're talking about homosexuality, rather than your bugaboos of incest, etc. -- is a variant behaviour which is used to mark out another group as deviants to be abjected by the unethical who justify their prejudice as morality. It is simply not the case that a "malfunction of love" is higher on our standard than a "malfunction of hate". We find the whole teleological sophistry of "final causes" which paints homosexuality as a "malfunction" ethically retarded, do not evaluate homosexuality or racism by these criteria but rather by their effects considered in light of empathy and reason. The power dynamics involved in the bugaboos of sexual perversion you associate with homosexuality render them a quite different matter when their quite different effects are considered in the same light.

You ask, "Is an irrational lust and longing to mimic the mating act with a sex with which one cannot mate, at its root, any more or less disconnected to reality than an irrational fear and hatred of a Negro?" (And how we would dearly love to hear how you pronounce that last word.) We say simply that sex is, as the bonobos know fine well, a physical communion with entirely rational social-bonding functionalities far beyond procreation, causing no intrinsic harm and consolidating empathic connections with others, (which also answers your question, "Why is this one vice singled out for awe and reverence and glorification?" -- because sex can be rather beautiful with a bit of talent and/or practice.) Meanwhile, irrational fear and hatred on the basis of skin colour severs such connections, blocks them where they might be made, and ultimately justifies some of the worst atrocities ever perpetrated in the history of humanity.

You ask, " Why is it that the lack of self control in sexual matters, where self control is paramount, is held to be immaculate and beyond reproach, whereas the lack of self-control when it comes to something trivial smoking tobacco [sic] is scorned?" The simple answer is, Mr Wright, that you are speaking gibberish here. The issue is not self-control but societal control, moral dicta imposed by ethical retards. Your notion that self-control is paramount in sexual matters is comprehensible to the Elders of Sodom only as the neurosis of a disturbed individual whose sexual desire is bound to an abusive drive to subjugate, to rape men or women, children, animals or corpses. We can think of little reason to place a primary stress on self-control other than where there is some abusive tendency to be curbed. When it comes to sexual matters, the Elders of Sodom, (contrary to certain propaganda texts,) feel no need to control sociopathic urges that we don't feel, and therefore generally consider the pleasuring of one's partner paramount. The lack of self-control is not held to be immaculate and beyond reproach; rather a certain balance of restraint and abandon is, we consider, usually quite important in achieving our primary purpose of an intense physical communion. The comparison to smoking seems quite absurd to us, as sexual addiction is an entirely different matter, occuring regardless of orientation, and something to be treated rather than scorned.

In short, the Elders of Sodom simply do not think as you do, and consider your opinions on this matter if not pathological then at very least irrational in the most fundamental way. Your concern with what is "normal," what is "natural," is, as far as we're concerned barely logical never mind ethical. Let us clarify:

Whatever particular set of principles we adopt or construct for ourselves in the "post-conventional" stage of moral development, to us homosexuality is not "normal" as far as percentages go, but is entirely "normal" for that percentage who identify as homosexual, just as ginger hair is "normal" for those with ginger hair (assuming they don't dye it regularly such that their "normal" colour is, say, mauve.) The Elders of Sodom don't care. Normality is utterly irrelevant in an ethics based largely on empathy and reason rather than conformity to an imagined social/natural/divine order. As far as the Elders of Sodom are concerned whether our sexual behaviour is normal or not is neither here nor there, just as our hair colour is. It is none of your business, Mr Wright.

Aware of the observed facts of homosexual behaviours across the animal kingdom, the Elders of Sodom also know that homosexuality is entirely "natural" in the sense of "occuring within nature". It is simply somewhat less than usual as a behaviour pattern -- which doesn't matter a jot. Some will argue that one is born homosexual, the deviance no more "unnatural" than ginger hair, but some of us see no need to defend homosexuality on that basis. Even if one becomes homosexual through a gradual development of sexual tastes, the deviance is no more "unnatural" than if one develops a taste for bletted medlars and a dislike for apples. It is no more nor less than a variance of preferences. And to repeat myself: this is none of your business, Mr Wright.

A third option is that homosexuality is actually a combination of birth and choice, predisposition and conscious affirmation. In this case the deviance is no more "unnatural" than if one is born into an ethnically Jewish but non-practicing family, if one grows up with enough exposure to the beliefs and traditions of Judaism to incite a religious interest, if one decides to become a Rabbi and refuses point-blank to convert when the Christians come knocking at one's door, swords drawn, insisting that the denial of Jesus Christ is a heinous sin in the eyes of God and that one will be damned for all eternity if one does not abjure one's wicked ways. Whatever the Rabbi's reasons for being a Rabbi, he is quite entitled to tell the Christians where to stick those swords. On behalf of the Elders of Sodom, I say again: this is none of your business, Mr Wright.

But the above is not offered as a defense of homosexuality. We Elders of Sodom feel no need to justify our existence in the face of a moral dictum we consider as absurd and illegitimate as a racial-purist's self-righteous condemnation of "miscegenation" or an anti-semite's pious fervour in the glorious necessity of a pogrom. Thankfully, you are a marginal voice, so we consider you a nuisance at most, an irrelevant reactionary clinging to an obsolete moral paradigm even as society moves on, as the general populace sloughs itself of the prejudices of previous generations. We have no desire to waste our time trying to lead you out of the ethical backwater of your moralistic nonsense. This letter is aimed simply at explaining to you exactly how and why you find yourselves so at odds with the rest of society, in line with your explicit request:

I'd like someone, anyone, to explain to me how my culture reached a position where a public entertainment company can be criticized for failing to contribute to the moral decay of the land, and that the criticism would be taken seriously, and the company would cringe and promise to do better.

Let's break this down.

1. "how my culture" -- The culture is not yours. It belongs to none, is shaped by all, reshaped constantly in the harmonies and conflicts of differing ethics. Historically, by a process of abjection, various groups identifed by markers of deviance have been rendered scapegoat figures, disenfranchised. The Elders of Sodom (like many other such groups) are now in the process of reclaiming our place within it, our role as equals, as something other than symbolic whipping boys, as something other than the abject figures of abhorrence you would have us be. As human beings. In many respects, we have already reclaimed this humanity. In many respects, Mark Swift's statement is an acknowledgement of that fact, an acknowledgement that it is our culture every bit as much as it is yours. You resent this, are horrified by it. We consider this an ethical deficiency on your part.

2. "reached a position" -- Where reactionaries like yourself see the social/natural/divine order as an essential truth to be defended, a law inscribed in stone tablets that must never be questioned, never challenged, where you imagine it a virtue to instill a zealous belief in the social/natural/divine order in its own right, the Elders of Sodom recognise that the moral dicta that construct it are all too often rooted in base prejudice, that at the heart of "miscegenation" and various other such "crimes against nature" there is little more rationale than disgust, fear and hate perpetuated by the self-righteous pride of any ideologue who succeeds in propagating the moral orthodoxy. We recognise that many moral dicta -- such as that which classes "miscegenation" an unpardonable transgression of How Things Are Meant To Be -- must be overthrown as unreasonable and cruel to the point of unethical. So we pressure for change. And because we offer rational ethics based on empathy, in place of infantile moralistic nonsense, we can and do achieve that change. Other people are generally less ethically deficient than you.

3. "a public entertainment company can be criticized for failing" -- The change is slow but steady, with institutions often lagging behind the public, clinging on to dicta of the old moral orthodoxy even when the majority have ceased to believe that there's anything remotely "wrong" about, for example, inter-racial marriage. If they tend to "craven fear and trembling" in any regard, it is in the worry that by daring to, say, present a character like Gaeta as openly homosexual on mainstream television, they will potentially alienate a conservative audience who still abjects gays and desires them absented from the media (and ultimately reality). As younger generations slough their prejudices, join the Elders of Sodom and become more open about their rejection of unjust morés, attention moves to the institutions that are palpably lagging behind the time, sacrificing ethics in order to pander to a prejudice-ridden minority of infantile moralists. Even these institutions are less ethically deficient than you, it would appear; even the ones that don't respond favourably to such criticism have the good grace not to mouth off with terms like "homosex" and "abomination."

4. "to contribute to the moral decay of the land" -- This is not moral decay, but ethical growth. Our association of the term "infantile" with morés is not a crude insult, but a quite sincere criticism of the "law and order" mentality as an immature mode of ethical judgement. The reactionary conservatism that founds itself on a notion of social/natural/divine order is resistant, in its essentialism and absolutism, not just to any attempt to redefine it, but to any attempt to critique it. (Since the social/natural/divine order is seen as good in and of itself, any challenge to its injustices is seen as bad.) It cannot and will not contemplate the possibility that it is wrong and so will act to shut down all debate, internal as well as external. Where this moralistic mindset acts on the internal debate of one's rational faculties it is quite literally an ethical retardation. The horror you feel at "moral decay" is, to the Elders of Sodom, quite self-evidentally an affective defense mechanism, designed to function as a barrier to anything that might "corrode" your convictions. Compare "retard" as used in the term "flame-retardant". This moralistic mindset, Mr Wright, is "ethics-retardant". This is why you are at odds with the rest of us, the source of your ethical deficiency.

5. "and that the criticism would be taken seriously" -- The ethical inadequacies of such a mode of thinking become quite evident in such an attitude, when you shrug off any reason to consider the ramifications of not taking such a criticism seriously. Which is to say, where any wide-spread moral dictum is called into question, one may not agree with the criticism, may even consider the problem it is asserting non-existent; it is, however, only the most rudimentary of ethical judgements to consider that one may be wrong about the reality and severity of the problem and that one should therefore seek to establish the reality and severity of the problem. This sort of dismissal is, as far as the Elders of Sodom are concerned, an abrogation of ethical judgement at the most basic level. Your deficiency does not just result in bad ethics, Mr Wright. It is unethical in and of itself.

6. "and the company would cringe and promise to do better" -- or rather, as we have suggested above and as they themselves profess, the company would accept that they have failed to live up to the standards which they recognise as ethical imperatives, be disappointed at the criticism because they do in fact respect the homosexuals you abject and abhor, and offer a commitment to improve their performance, one that they will hopefully follow through on precisely because they are, at heart, fully paid-up members of the Elders of Sodom. Because they are ethical human beings, Mr Wright. Unlike some.

This is how it happens. This is how society dismantles prejudice even where it is institutionalised in deeply conventional moral dicta. People interrogate those dicta, applying empathy and reason, and if they do it loud enough and long enough, well, another person might join in. Of course, to paraphrase Arlo Guthrie, then people may just call them faggots and not take them seriously. But if three people do it -- can you imagine, three people walking in and saying, this dictum is a pile of horseshit, singing it in harmony -- why, then we got ourselves a movement!

Is this making sense yet? Do you now understand the nature of the "crap" we are politely requesting you to cut, the particular tosh and balderdash we think you really ought to discard if you have any honest concern whatsoever with rational arguments? We very much doubt it. But still, let us make one last attempt to answer your questions as regards how such a terrible state affairs can come to pass as the head of a television network agreeing with an abjected minority that their under-representation is a problem worth tackling.

Someone explain to me by what series of events persons with serious sexual-psychological malfunctions would somehow be awarded the status of moral arbiters, something like priests and confessors and sages -- except that the passkey to being a guardian of public conscience in our age is the absence of moral value, not the presence.

Event 1: You term homosexuality a "sexual-psychological malfunction" that is "serious", assuming the authority of a moral arbiter, but exhibiting all the nous and compassion of Fred Phelps. You reach for the passkey, desiring to be a guardian of public conscience in our age, spouting your rhetoric of moral value and demonstrating the complete absence of any truly ethical value. All you have is an illegitimate dictum against homosexuality, spewed in vitriol indistinguishable from that of a Westboro Baptist.

Event 2: We say homosexuality is a variant sexuality which does no intrinsic harm to the consenting adults that practice it or anyone else outwith their relationship, rejecting in no uncertain terms your arrant presumption that you have the privilege to impose your morés on us -- or anyone else, for that matter -- and criticising your judgementalism as ethically retarded. We reject all your "passkey" piffle, point to the bankruptcy of your "moral value," and contend that the presence of even the most basic skills of ethical evaluation is vastly preferable to your line of crap.

Event 3, 4, 5...N: People agree with us.

We do hope this explanation has been of some use to you, but we rather doubt it to be honest. Such is life.

Yours sincerely,

The Elders of Sodom

Scribed by THE.... Sodomite Hal Duncan!!