Sorry, but I cannot see why pornography and sex for its own sake can be designated as an adult and gentlemen’s activity.
I can’t see what responsible adulthood and gentlemanly qualities have to do with the sexploitation of human beings through pornography, prostitution, sex shops and offensive art. Is buying and selling sex a mark of adulthood or of irresponsible perversion?
What is so gentlemanly and dignified in exploiting others, especially women, for the sole gratification of one’s sexual urges?
What kind of emancipation and freedom are we talking about when a country permits and promotes the reduction of human persons to commercialised sex objects?
What we are willingly and deliberately destroying as a nation, thanks to extreme liberalist views, is true freedom, healthy families and the dignity of the human person.
The yardstick of freedom has become the selfish, individualistic satisfaction of one’s cravings and addictions. Why stop me from hurting you, if that gives me pleasure?
My morbid need to vilify anything that others might hold sacred and precious overrules any sense of simple courtesy and respect. I have the supreme freedom to offend.
How many more studies need to be made to convince our enlightened authorities that pornography is an addiction that destroys relationships and families?
How will the dignity and equality of women – who already bear the brunt of male sickly compulsions – be served by sex shops?
We pay lip service to the dignity and promotion of women and yet promote sex as a normalised, legitimate, leisure activity. What great damage is caused by “the steady drip-drip-drip assumption of sexism, sexualisation” that sees women’s bodies as pleasure objects to be owned and used at will. It is this attitude that inevitably leads to disrespect, harassment and “the assertion of power that is violence and rape”. (Laura Bates, Everyday Sexism, 2014)
Talk to the women who are legally raped in their own marriage beds by men who are in turn victims of their own sexual distortions. Talk to the innumerable women and young girls who are shamefully and constantly groped and harassed in work places, offices, dark alleys or neon-flooded entertainment venues.
Is buying and selling sex a mark of adulthood or of irresponsible perversion?
Sex shops and liberalised pornography will surely be a welcome relief to these crushed women!
And what will protect our children from the ravages of a sexualised society? Is it boarding up sex shop windows? Is it just denying them a share in the distorted freedom of their parents to indulge in sexual activity for its own sake?
Will this help sexual predators to confine their activities to legalised venues with legalised sex objects?
Can you trust adults who cannot be trusted with their own sexuality to raise their children in a healthy attitude towards sexuality as an expression of dignified, human and beautiful relationships?
Who is going to gain from this genius stroke of championing a freedom that shames Martin Luther King, Nelson Mandela, Mahatma Gandhi and all those who gave their lives for the real human freedom and not just for lust and having fun?
Is it the human spirit or human depravity and profit making from yet another human vulnerability?
How will our artistic and cultural scenario inspire new heights for the human spirit when art needs to resort to offense, blasphemy, vulgarity and distaste to prove its own illusion of being emancipated?
And where does the State come in all this? We have it from the horse’s mouth that it should not be the ‘moral custodian of adults’. Why apply this moral high ground to sexual distortions and not to tax evasion, dangerous driving, fraudulent business practices, and corrupt governance? Should not the State also refuse to be the ‘moral custodian’ of adults and gentlemen in all these matters and many more? Or is it that, in the eyes of the same proverbial horse, ‘morality’ is a term concerning only sexual matters?
Legislation is necessary because adults are not always free enough to act responsibly. It is a realistic acknowledgement that human vulnerability needs guidance and, at times regulation, if people are to live a healthy, happy life together.
And yet, our blindness dares present such destructive, legalised sexual perversion and artistic depravity as a protection of the vulnerable. Who are the vulnerable? Is it just innocent children or the ‘adults’ and the ‘gentlemen’ who are, by this misguided liberalism, delivered to their own vulnerability?
Legalised sex shops and the freedom to vilify what is sacred… finally we’ve discovered a sure way to make ours a nation of adults and gentlemen!
pchetcuti@gmail.com
Fr Paul Chetcuti is a member of the Society of Jesus.