ETHICS

Reprinted from PAGEANT with special permission from the author, the following article posits some principles of sexual behavior which are as pertinent to the homosexual as to the heterosexual.

Dr. Ellis is a noted psychologist who has practiced marriage counseling and psychotherapy in New York City for a number of years. Author of many scientific articles and books, including the best-selling SEX WITHOUT GUILT, Dr. Ellis has taught at Rutgers University and at New York University. He is a Fellow of the American Psychological Association and of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, among other scientific and learned societies.

A New Sex Code for Modern Americans

ALBERT ELLIS, Ph.D.

DOES THE AVERAGE American need a new sex code?

Not if he is content to be personally hypocritical, unhappy, and neurotic. Not if he wants to continue to be socially inconsiderate, exploitative, and hostile. Not if he thrives on legal inconsistencies, idiocies, and injustices. But suppose that one of us doesn't like our incredibly contradictory and irrational sex standards? What would he be wise to do? Something which is so rare as to be almost non-existent in our ultraconformist society: he must think. Yes, T-H-I-N-K. And for himself.

A new and saner standard of any kind of human conduct does not arise, automatically and miraculously, out of the ashes of old hogwash. Such a standard must be painfully thought out. And worked out. And then reworked many times, until finally it "spontaneously" takes hold and becomes a normal part of behavior.

So with rules for a new "sex code." Wishing won't make them so; but thinking can and sometimes does. If we assume that many of our present standards are somewhat less than ideal-as the last century of psychological and sociological research would indicate-nevertheless we'd better think about them carefully, and with all the objectivity we can muster. For

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we must not cavalierly discard present standards and replace them with what may possibly be an even more incoherent and inconsistent mess of mores and laws.

Fortunately, I would say, there is virtually no scientist who has done research into today's sexual standards who does not believe our current ideas and practices need to be changed. The problem narrows down to what we should do and how we should do it.

My own thinking about standards of sexual conduct, since I first started to do active research and clinical counseling in the field some 25 years ago, has been constant and deep; and I am still very far from having even half the wished-for answers.

But in this quarter century of seeing hundreds of people with minor or serious sex problems, and working on several intensive studies of Americans' sex-love attitudes and behavior, I have become convinced that there are feasible codes of personal, social, and legal sex participation that would be distinctly less destructive and more healthand joy-producing than our existing codes.

Let us consider, first, what some of the main elements of a sane code of personal sex conduct might be. By personal sex behavior I mean acts that are largely concerned with one's own feelings, even though they may be partly shared with one another. Sexual fantasies and masturbatory practices are clearly personal rather than social, since they exclusively concern oneself.

Other sex acts, even though they affect another individual, are also largely personal. Some are fully accepted socially and legally. Taking a girl on a date and lightly kissing her good night, for instance, or having intercourse with one's husband are normally considered perfectly "moral" by our civilization.

Yet these same acts are often subconsciously regarded, by the person considering them, as somehow dangerous, shameful, or wrong-as when a boy is afraid to try to kiss a girl goodnight for fear she may reject him, or when a wife is ashamed to ask her husband to have intercourse in a certain position because she thinks such a suggestion would be unfeminine of her.

My counseling experience has taught me, regarding all types of personal sex behavior, that a man (or woman) is most likely to be healthy and happy when he (or she) holds to something along the lines of the following code.

1. Be perfectly shameless or "unguilty." When a sex act does not involve others, or when it quite legally involves a willing partner, the person engaging in it cannot be immoral in the sense of needlessly harming

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