Wizard-Muggle marriage, & further commentary on Kevin

[ftah3]

No: HPFGUIDX 33673

Tabouli:
> For that matter, how on earth do they (wizards & muggles who marry) 
meet?  IIRC, the only adult we've seen so far who has much daily 
contact with Muggles is Arthur, and despite his love for them he 
doesn't seem to know many personally (though we don't know how well 
he got along with the Grangers!).  Then perhaps there's Fudge, who 
negotiates with the Muggle PM (Fudge/Thatcher, anyone?).  Apart from 
them, jobs like Auror, Knight Bus driver, Hogwarts teacher, Ministry 
officials, magic shopkeeper, Evil Overlord and the like hardly 
provide much opportunity for meaningful interactions with Muggles.  
What avenues are there?  I suppose there's my fledgeling theory that 
Mrs Figg the positive Squib role model is a Muggle-Wizard liaison 
officer... maybe there are a few of these around and they make Muggle 
friends and invite them to their parties or something!

Well, then again, you've not listed very many wizard-associated jobs, 
and quite frankly I have a hard time believing that every wizard is 
able to acquire/wants/is qualified for a wizard-world job.  If it was 
a *completely* isolated society, I'd believe it; but somehow I 
suspect that there are plenty of squibs, disinterested and/or only 
marginally talented wizards who take jobs in the muggle world to pay 
the bills.  And just because a person is a wizard who is to say that 
person doesn't harbor a life's dream of becoming, say, a world-famous 
chef?  Especially what with the availability of uncommon ingredients 
s/he could add to her/his popular 'secret sauce'....

I guess I assumed that wizards who married muggles met them either in 
the course of muggle-world careers, met them while out, I dunno, 
shopping in muggle shops or having coffee in muggle cafes, or 
possibly through wizard friends who had very accepting muggle 
relatives...any number of ways, really.  The major wizard 
institutions we've seen (private schools & MoM) are encapsulated 
institutions with specifically wizarding interests; however, my 
opinion is that the wizarding population at large is not necessarily 
so specialized.

> catherine:
> > In Lord of the Rings, with few exceptions those that were evil 
are so 
> because they were created that way.   That makes it so easy and 
> safe.  That person is an Orc, they are evil.  It's comforting to 
> think that those who are evil are so because they were preordained 
to 
> be so.  Makes your choice obvious doesn't it: `should I side 
> with `ugly orc' or the fair Galadrieal?'<

Tabouli: 
> And as for Tolkien, obviously a clear sign that someone fits into 
the Evil category of humanity is ugliness!  A fine Judeo-Christian 
education for the children.  Nothing like that unambiguous 
distinction between Good (where all people are fair and wise) and 
Evil (where all people are ugly and foolish and come to a bad end on 
Legolas' arrows), eh?  Moral stuff.

You know, of the whole, rather pedantic post, kimball's dogmatic 
insistence on the supremity of rule-following and order based somehow 
on Christianity (presumably the Biblical version, unless his ideas 
sprouted whole-cloth out of his head) amused me the most.  

I'm not particularly well-read in terms of the Bible, but I know a 
little bit.  Kimberly (moongirlk) responded very well to this 
straight out of Gospel (i.e. the disciples doing work on the sabbath, 
which is against the letter of God's law but not, as Jesus points 
out, against the spirit of the law; etc).  

Similarly, as far as things being promoted in the Bible as clear-cut 
~ hardly.  Jesus had to berate the crowds for their reaction to John 
the Baptist.  In early Hebrew prophecies, it was said that a 
messenger would be sent ahead of the Messiah to prepare the masses 
for him...and then who appears, but John the Baptist, a mangy, ill-
clothed, ill-kempt guy who wandered the wilds and was in fact in 
prison when Christ started public ministry.  Doh.

Christ himself was an enormous rule-breaker.  One of the biggest 
reasons that people refused to believe that he was the Messiah sent 
from God was because (drum roll) he ate dinner with anybody who would 
sit down with him.  That doesn't sound particularly bad these days, 
but back then the meal was considered by Jews to be a sort of 
recreation of the covenant between God and his people, and only the 
clean, and the believers, were allowed to share a table with God's 
chosen people.  And yet Christ *invited* Gentiles, criminals, the 
poor, the sick, and the hated to eat meals with him.  And why did he 
break that very important rule?  To help people; to right wrongs and 
undo injustices; to demonstrate that in real life, in God's world, 
people have to look beyond the easy, black and white choices, and do 
what is *right* rather than what is easy and superficial.

At any rate, I also agree with whomever it was that pointed out that 
not everyone believes in nor cares to interpret life, morality, and 
Harry Potter based on Judeo-Christian tenets.  Hi, agnostics? 
Muslims, Buddhists, Wiccans, and everyone else in the world?  I truly 
dislike the idea that just because a child raised in a Christian 
household *might* (and this that is *highly* debatable, and insulting 
to the intellectual capabilities of the young) be morally confused by 
events in Harry Potter, that must mean that every child in every 
environment and experiencing all manner of differing world views will 
also.  Pfah.  Balderdash.

> catherine:
> > I noticed that as of this writing, you (Kevin) haven't responded 
to 
> > any of his essay's response.  

Tabouli: 
> Alas, I doubt that he ever will; alack, I even doubt whether he is 
reading our carefully thought out arguments!  As I mentioned in my 
last post, my feeling after reading his essay was that he had spent 
some time preparing what he felt was a watertight moral argument 
against HP, which he intended to post out to the ignorant and 
misguided fan lists (hmm... has his essay turned up on any other 
lists we know of?) in an attempt to prise the blindfolds from our 
eyes and point out the perils of our fandom. then withdraw self-
righteously, his moral revelation achieved.  My impression was that 
he sincerely meant what he said, but, with the limited vision that 
people with those sorts of views tend to have (due to limiting their 
social contact to people like themselves for fear of corruption), 
never imagined that the list would in fact be full of intelligent, 
educated, literature-savvy people (of whom some are Christian) who 
are very familiar with all three of the series he mentions and are 
more than capable of understanding, rebutting and rejecting his 
arguments.

Absolutely.  And I doubt he even cares if anyone debates it.  No 
doubt he's certain that hedonists, pagans, and the wicked will tear 
apart his well-wrought piece in their blind wantonness, but simply 
hopes that at least one lost soul will be led to the light regardless.

Sorry, did that sound disparagingly wry?  I would never.

Tabouli:
>All the same, he's provided us with a nice axe to grind.  The ol' 
grain of sand in the oyster... an irritant, but one that has produced 
some very interesting posts.  

Very true!  I've really enjoyed the commentary.

Mahoney