ANOTHER VIEW OF SEXUALITY
Essay
1974

I don't think that wife-swapping is wrong. Nor homosexuality, nor bisexuality, nor any of those things. I do think that pursuit of pleasure for its own sake, as a major motive for action, is shallow and unfulfilling and if the freer sexuality of our time is pursued for pleasure's sake, then it is shallow and unfulfilling, but not wrong. "Wrong" I take to mean "immoral", unallowable in the eyes of God, but anything at all that is possible is obviously allowed by God; if it were not allowed it would be impossible. What this means is that morality is really only a human way of looking at things, and not a divine.

We believe that killing is wrong or immoral because we hold that each individual's life is as precious as any other's life. We believe that exploitation of people is wrong because it deprives that person of their opportunity to live a full life. Do we think that God cares? If he does, why do so many hundreds of thousands of people suffer and die? Morality arises because we care, not because God cares and because we think that we can bring about a better life for everyone by gently coercing others into certain paths of behavior (morality, taboos shoulds and oughts are only forms of coercion).

Since morality is a human viewpoint we must be careful in saying that any human activity is immoral, especially where people are not being injured or exploited. We need to ask what are the needs of the people involved? We can say that certain activities are hurtful under certain conditions, to all or some persons involved, and we need to look for those ways and ameliorate them. What seems to me to be the criterion for "morality" is whether the needs of the persons are being met or are being ignored or countered, as far as sexual activities are concerned. I can't see that freer sexual experiences categorically mean that the needs of the individuals are not being met, but I can see that many people suffer and cause suffering to others by their taboos and self-taboos on various sexual experiences. I would wish that we not take a rigid dogmatic view of what types of sexual relationships and experiences are right for everybody, but be open (and Godlike) in our willingness to look at human activities to examine whether human needs are being met or not.

(originally published under the name of John Fitz)