Michael Jackson

Mahatma Gandhi shows us just how eccentric a truly eccentric person's behavior can be, even in terms of its sexual expression, even in the direction of innocence. And King David provides us with a striking parallel...

Along somewhat similar lines, Charles Williams, friend of Tolkien and CS Lewis and theologian of romantic love, tells us of the agapetae of early Christianity:

Paul's comment from I Corinithians is commonly read today as referring either to arranged marriage or to engaged couples -- the former a strained reading, the latter an unfortunate attempt to impose later cultural assumptions on an ancient text. That there were members of the early church who made experiments in chastity is confirmed by the letter of St Cyprian to Pomponius:

We have read, dearest brother, your letter which you sent by Paconius our brother, asking and desiring us to write again to you, and say what we thought of those virgins who, after having once determined to continue in their condition, and firmly to maintain their continency, have afterwards been found to have remained in the same bed side by side with men; of whom you say that one is a deacon; and yet that the same virgins who have confessed that they have slept with men declare that they are chaste.

Cyprian, Epistle LXI

And so we come to the matter of Michael Jackson, and the common enough assumption, expressed here by a music journalist:

Macaulay Culkin's testimony gives me hope: perhaps, after all, there is still room in the mind of the world for a highly eccentric and religious individual to be in such matters an innocent...