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A "NEW MORALITY" FOR THE FUTURE
The modern challenge to religious tradition is deeply disturbing to many people who feel that it signals the end of our civilization. They do not want any change and, especially with regard to sexual ethics, they do not believe in progress. Instead, they believe that any loosening of the old strictures will lead to sexual chaos, and that sexual standards are worthless unless they are absolute. Still, in the meantime even some deeply religious men and women have become aware of the immoral effects of the old dogmatism, and they have searched for a new, more humane morality. Forgetting their ancient fears, they have embraced the modern ideals of individualism and self-determination, and they welcome the strict separation of church and state. Thus, they no longer want religious beliefs to influence our criminal law, for example. Even in the sexual sphere, they now accept the principle which John Stuart Mill had proclaimed in his famous essay On Liberty (1859): "The only purpose for which power can be rightfully exercised over any member of the community, against his will, is to prevent harm to others. His own good, either physical or moral, is not sufficient warrant. Each person is the proper guardian of his own health, whether bodily, or mental and spiritual."
We must understand, however, that this principle breaks with a moral tradition of thousands of years. Throughout most of human history, people have not been their own "proper guardians", but have left all decisions about their spiritual health in the hands of religious and political authorities. Only these "higher" authorities could determine what was good or bad in everyone's conduct, and they possessed the right to silence any dissent. It was not until rather recently that some democratic societies dared to subject their moral assumptions to rational scrutiny and public debate.
This development was brought about mainly by two factors: The growing struggle for individual rights and the realization that even the most altruistic motive is no justification for moral despotism. Indeed, as the great Christian writer C.S. Lewis once put it: "Of all tyrannies a tyranny exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive." Selfish, greedy, and lecherous tyrants may sometimes grow weary, but a man who persecutes other people for their own good does so with a clear conscience, never relents, makes no exceptions, and shows no regard for the consequences. A democratic society therefore defends its very foundations when it respects the autonomy of its members and protects them from being tormented by "omnipotent moral busybodies".
Unfortunately, even where democratic values have been accepted in theory, they are not yet always upheld in practice. For example, although the United States Constitution proclaims individual freedom, there is still a great deal of oppression in the sexual sphere. Indeed, every now and then the old puritanical tyranny reappears and tries to put everyone in the same sexual straitjacket. Thus, in the late 19th century, American lawmakers passed the Comstock Act against mailing "obscene" material. In the early 20th century, they criminalized adultery where it had been legal before and closed the traditional brothels. After the First World War, a new drive against "vice" resuited in the general prohibition of alcohol. In the 19 30s and ´40s hysteria about "perversion" led to the widespread adoption of laws against "sexual psychopaths". In the 1950s, fantasies about a communist "queer" conspiracy prompted a wave of repressive federal legislation against homosexuals. In the 1970s, still another massive effort was made to stamp out pornography and to end prostitution by arresting the customers. Now in the 1980s a self-proclaimed "Moral Majority" wants to impose its own version of biblical morality by law on every citizen.
However, experience shows that these and similar moral crusades rarely have the intended result and may actually make matters worse, Comstock´s fanaticism denied generations of women adequate sexual and contraceptive knowledge and thus was directly responsible for much of the misery which Margaret Sanger and others tried to alleviate. The criminal statutes against extra-rnarital sex resulted in the monumental hypocrisy of the courts granting thousands of divorces on grounds of adultery and never prosecuting the guilty parties. The closing of brothels forced many prostitutes into the streets where they needed the "protection" of pimps. The prohibition of alcohol gave a tremendous boost to organized crime, the "sexual psychopath laws" and the legal discrimination against homosexuals created new oppressed social groups while producing no practical benefits for the general public. The "war on pornography" is again wasting huge amounts of tax money in questionable legal attempts to harass publishers whose products are eagerly bought by millions of readers. At the same time, these readers are being victimized by ever-increasing violent crimes.
Actually, the problem goes even deeper than that. The old puritanical tyranny oppresses not only a few sexual sinners and heretics, but also a great number of righteous, "average" citizens. Sex researchers and therapists have found that rigid moral beliefs can literally make people sick and cause a variety of sexual and social dysfunctions. Furthermore, such beliefs often needlessly deprive men and women of much potential pleasure, breeding frustration, envy, and even violence. The biological facts, at least, cannot be disputed: In modern times the age of the onset of puberty has been lowering steadily, while the average life expectancy has been rising. As a result for people in general there has been a significant increase in the number of sexually responsive, but non-reproductive years.
Under the circumstances, the reproductive bias of our traditional sexual ethics has become even less defensible than before. Nothing worthwhile is accomplished by making people feel guilty about desires that could well be a source of happiness, health, and mutual appreciation. Instead it would seem more "decent" to develop a more humane, more flexible code ot ethics. Today, we need to encourage not only procreational, but also recriational sex.
Of course, once we accept recreation as a legitimate purpose of sex, many of our traditional moral standards, criminal laws, and psychiatric assumptions no longer make sense. There is no longer a valid reason, for instance, to restrict sexual intercourse to marriage, and thus the condemnation and criminalization of sex between unmarried partners can only seem arbitrary and unjust. By the same token, the old sexual heresies, abominations, or non-procreative "perversions" have to be judged by their objective social effects, and in some cases these effects may well prove desirable. Moreover, if sex is to be enjoyed for its own sake, contraception will have to be made available to everyone from the age of puberty, and the old taboos against advertising contraceptives on radio, television, or billboards will have to fall. Indeed, in the meantime the "population explosion" has already forced many countries to run large-scale, permanent contraception campaigns, using all public media. Some also distribute free contraceptives to anyone who wants them, including unmarried adolescents.
There is no need here to spell out all possible implications of a future "recreative" sexual morality. In the present context it is enough if we realize that some drastic changes are likely and that, even in the sexual sphere, we may eventually have to "think the unthinkable". For example, a few hard-pressed governments have now begun to fight the increase in population with "disincentives" (i.e. penalties) for large families and are debating the possibility of compulsory sterilizations. Other governments are preaching premarital sexual abstinence while simultaneously raising the age at which people can get married and denouncing all forms of sensuality or "indulgence" within marriage Itself. If strictly enforced, such policies can lower the birth rate, but, needless to say, they also promote political totalitarianism. Democratic governments, therefore, may rather decide to pursue the opposite course. Perhaps only total sexual freedom can really succeed in stabilizing the population.
These few hints may suffice to show that the "sexual revolution" is far from over, and that not all sexual and marital experiments of our time are frivolous aberrations. As we may also gather from these hints, by no means all of the experiments will prove to be successful in the end. Some may even turn out to have very destructive results, forcing us to abandon them and to begin our search anew. However, in any case it seems safe to predict that both failure and success will increasingly be judged in practical terms. The final arbiter will be experience, not some unquestioned religious dogma. In short, to a much greater extent than before, our sexual morality will have to stand up to reason.
This is not meant to imply that moral standards can be entirely rational. Certainly, science alone cannot tell us what we should do as sexual beings. At best, it can make us alert and critical, but it cannot by itself establish a code of sexual ethics. Value judgments are essentially unscientific. There is no objective way of making ethical choices. In questions of good and evil, we will always depend on feelings, beliefs, and moral traditions.
Therefore, the great religions, including our own, still have an important role to play in shaping our sexual attitudes. As long as we live our faith humbly and prudently, it will comfort us and teach us how best to serve our fellow human beings. It may no longer be able to offer us instant solutions for every moral dilemma, but at least it can give us some general guidelines. Even the fact that, in the past, religion has often been used as a pretext for cruelty and sexual oppression can today help our moral enlightenment. Understanding the suffering caused by religious zealots can keep us properly modest in our moral claims.
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