between

٤٤

consenting adults

-DIDGEON

In a recent issue of ONE Magazine a reader raised the perfectly fair question: is it not illogical that "homosexuality should be accepted but child molestation condemned, despite the fact that the urge in each case is imperative and its denial wreaks physical, mental and moral havoc and also that the love an older person feels for a child, even though sexual in nature, can be as beautiful as that which two homosexuals feel for each other?"

The question is worth raising, although it is perhaps unfortunate that homosexuality was brought into the picture: such activity can be homosexual or heterosexual. The reader implies either opposition to the sexual liberties platform of most individuals and organizations interested in the question (which can best be stated: "Liberty of sexual behavior between consenting adults"), or else a failure to understand the reasoning which underlies that platform. A platform, however, if it is to be valid, must be justifiable as well as justified. This essay will attempt to give a few answers. Not all of them are good answers, but most are worthy of some thought.

The original sexual libertarians of modern times, D.A.F. de Sade, Restif

one

de la Bretonne, Choderlos de Laclos, and the others, generally limited themselves to a call for "liberty of sexual behavior." The factors of age and consent interested them not at all. Quite the contrary: Sade, the most extreme of the group (and the father of the argument that denial of an urge wreaks havoc and is therefor wrong), went so far as to give active encouragement to the exercise of sexual activity despite the strong opposition of the object thereof: each must think only of his own pleasure, Sade insisted, and should never take the desires of his partner into consideration.

This argument, which pushes the defense of liberty to its ultimate point, is the logical conclusion of the question raised. The answer to it, unfortunately, must come from the domain of morals rather than from that of logic. This, however, is fair enough, since it was from morals that Sade derived his own major premise, which was that the exercise of complete and unrestricted liberty is essential.

Such a premise is open to question. Its acceptance leads to pure hedonism, the selfish pursuit of personal pleasures. Its denial implies a sense of responsibility to one's fellows. The

12