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)