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WORLD CITIZEN LETTER: 512
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WCL 512 March 2006
Sex among the world citizens
The complex "super-problems" facing peoples of the world include over-population. So now few things could be more advantageous to the race than the widespread adoption of homosexual instead of heterosexual practices. Apart, that is, from the abolition of war and the establishment of world government capable of preventing international violence. We are in danger of being submerged under waves of newborn world citizens, disenfranchised, victims from birth of a world that is racked by violence and oppression. More of them will not help to improve matters and fewer might.
It could be that upbringing and inherited attitudes and prejudices prevent us from considering this question rationally. So many of us are indoctrinated in childhood with thoughts and ideas that we have no occasion to examine that it is not surprising to find unquestioned assumptions and beliefs are almost universal. If something offends us that is not a personal attack we should probably suspect that it has not been properly analysed and put in perspective. The outrageous is more likely to be the unexpected than the really bad; and if it is blasphemous we should try to determine whether God will deal with it rather than try to do it ourselves.
About 10 percent of the human male population may be inclined to homosexuality and some smaller proportion of the female similarly, in view of their greater inner compulsion to seek children, as distinct from sexual satisfaction, in relationships. The proportion of those with little or no interest in sex might be set at about five per cent. Continuing with that very rough allocation of preferences still suggests – not surprisingly, in view of the enormous success of human reproduction - that a large proportion of world citizens have common attitudes and preferences.
Traditionally, that majority has determined social attitudes and translated them, overwhelmingly, into religious injunctions. "Go forth and multiply" was a commandment that chimed in well with the tastes of the majority, suited the religious leaders who saw the number of their followers swell; and led to the human reproductive success that is now leaving us all in deep trouble. It is time to revise our long-held beliefs and offer revised commandments. That can spell relief for those with homosexual drives or tastes who have for very long been persecuted by the differing majority.
Societies ought always to be careful not to pass laws about individual sexual behaviour, except where that impinges on others, as in the case of marriage, which has been almost universally accepted and blessed. Its result in the procreation of children has brought new citizens into society who must, as far as possible, have social protection, since parents die or become incapable or even prove totally unsuitable. But the unscrambling of such relationships often proves so costly and even damaging both to the individuals and to society that it is questionable whether anything short of the crucial need to protect the young should lead society into that tangle of individual sexual relationships.
It may be (and clearly we are in the realm of speculation) that there is an inbuilt advantage to human beings to be bi-sexual. The reproductive drive is clearly essential for the success of humanity in surmounting the challenges of competing with other animals and thereafter controlling Nature – up to a point. That advantage might be illustrated in the contrast between two men of genius – Christopher Marlowe and William Shakespeare – but both have capacities so superior to the average that their differences, intellectually and emotionally, are irrelevant.
So we must beware of whatever about sexual behaviour is said or decreed by religious leaders, some of whom are themselves of the small percentage who have a minimum of usual sex drive; and others who desperately try to control an excess. They are not usually good guides to how to deal with minority tastes and needs, nor indeed to the changing needs of human evolution. And they have sometimes been disastrous guides even for the majority of us.
John Roberts
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