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"God came to earth and saw people sticking it wherever and doing it with whatever, and he just cleared it all out. He was, like, 'Enough.'"

Said Prince, as told by Claire Hoffman in The New Yorker:

Prince padded into the kitchen, a small fifty-year-old man in yoga pants and a big sweater, wearing platform flip-flops over white socks, like a geisha....

Limping slightly, Prince set off on a walk around his new bachelor pad. Glass doors opened onto acres of back yard, and a hot tub bubbled in the sunlight. ?I have a lot of parties,? he explained....

Seven years ago, he became a Jehovah?s Witness. He said that he had moved to L.A. so that he could understand the hearts and minds of the music moguls. ?I wanted to be around people, connected to people, for work,? he said. ?You know, it?s all about religion. That?s what unites people here. They all have the same religion, so I wanted to sit down with them, to understand the way they see things, how they read Scripture.?

Prince had his change of faith, he said, after a two-year-long debate with a musician friend, Larry Graham. ?I don?t see it really as a conversion,? he said. ?More, you know, it?s a realization. It?s like Morpheus and Neo in ?The Matrix.? ? He attends meetings at a local Kingdom Hall, and, like his fellow-witnesses, he leaves his gated community from time to time to knock on doors and proselytize. ?Sometimes people act surprised, but mostly they?re really cool about it,? he said....

When asked about his perspective on social issues?gay marriage, abortion?Prince tapped his Bible and said, ?God came to earth and saw people sticking it wherever and doing it with whatever, and he just cleared it all out. He was, like, ?Enough.? ?

Back when Prince was much more popular, his music powerfully enticed us into what he now considers sin. If God is keeping score, Prince should be worried. I think he'd need to go door to door for millions of years to undo all that damage (if damage it is).

Via Gawker, which notes:

If Prince wants to get attention for his views, airing them amid nationwide demonstrations against the passage of a California anti-gay-marriage initiative will probably do the trick. What that does for the "celibate" musician's sales and popularity is another matter.

Celibate, eh?

Tonight, that mood of isolation permeates Prince's luxurious 30,000-square-foot Tuscan-style villa, perched high in a gated Beverly Hills enclave. The royal one, clad in a filmy white sweater over a black shirt and slacks with (shocker!) flip-flops, lives solo in the nine-bedroom home, where a cook is upstairs preparing food for a post-midnight gathering with friends and bandmates.

"I'm single, celibate and sexy," he says with a laugh. "I feel free."

No one promoted sex more than Prince, and now he's celibate. That's rich.

There's lots to talk about here, but don't overlook the assertion that the music moguls of L.A. "all have the same religion." I hope that means that commerce is a religion for business folk.

UPDATE: Prince retracts!

Full post as published by Althouse on November 17, 2008 (boomark / email).