Chowing the cows…

I’m sure you all saw the picture of the cow on Wednesday. It was a shameful photograph. That poor, abused cow should have had its face covered in the paper—I mean, first you are abused and then, as a rape victim, your face is splashed across the front page of the national newspaper…
But seriously, did the man propose love to the cow first, something like, ‘Eh, sisi, ngitsandza tibunu takho’?
Sometimes—many times these days—it is embarrassing to be a man. It is embarrassing to be classified along with cow-copulators and donkey-doers and, from what I heard recently, chicken-chowers. Yes, I was told of a man who chows chickens in this way. Presumably he enjoys the portability. And no doubt he eats his ‘lady’ afterwards.
What have we now become?
That story ignited justifiable outrage and nation-wide disgust. One man reminded me of a ruling in the Old Testament that a man who does it with an animal must be stoned to death because it is an abomination, a stench in the nostrils of God. Quite so. Another man remarked that since the act took place on Friday the freak hailstorm that thundered upon us on Sunday was obviously God’s judgement on us all for allowing such a thing to happen in the world of men. It’s an interesting theory. Years and years ago, when Cyclone Domoina engulfed us with its deluge there were many who claimed that the cyclone was God’s judgement on the sins of the nation.
That is, in fact, a common biblical theme. In the well-know story of Sodom and Gomorrah, the two cities are completely destroyed by God because local homosexuals wanted to ‘sodomise’ (yes, that’s where the word comes from) two angels who had dropped down to Lot’s house for a visit. And there’s an even older story about beings from the spirit world who interbred with human women. That was considered unnatural and therefore also an abomination.
The classic New Testament comment on such things is the latter part of Romans 1, where Paul remarks that our focus on creatures rather than the creator (i.e., God) invariably brings distorted thinking and twisted humans, as a natural consequence.
Just how twisted have we humans become?
The young cow-copulator who was caught and arrested can’t even claim that he had a sudden desire for the animal, since he had removed all his clothes and organised a cement block to stand on. This shows careful planning and forethought. (Really worrying is that we are told the man didn’t use a condom and that the cow is pregnant.)
No-one alive today who watches TV and films, reads the papers and magazines, and who listens to the radio will be surprised if I say we are living in a sex-obsessed age. If you watch Channel O, you have to wonder if it is the music or the sex that sells the CDs. The soapies are full of affairs, liaisons, and adulteries. The movies try to leave nothing to the imagination. And the newspapers carry reports about the rape of children, grannies, donkeys, and cows. The current homosexual debate is part of this worldwide obsession; and so, of course are HIV and AIDS. You never know, maybe the virus was caught from cows rather than monkeys.