By what right does a government, entrusted with the preservation of liberty, see fit to prohibit consensual acts? This question, which was the catalyst of the Sexual Revolution, has led this author to reconsider all manner of social taboos.
While considering the rise of PDAs on campus, I considered how the right to show affection had superseded the expectation of those around them to feel comfortable. This is a positive change, primarily because the taboo against this act is rooted in the belief that people have the right to control the expression of their peers. This value has no place in a free society. From this position, I considered more extreme examples of the same principle. If society has no right to prohibit public signs of love, why should it prohibit its members from the literal act of love? It is this question that led me to my thesis, that it should be legal to have sex in public.
The first objection that will be raised against this is that the other people do not consent to seeing this. This response misrepresents the nature of consent. Many of you have seen a video in which consent is explained using the metaphor of giving someone tea. In this video, consent is understood to be a state in which the two people involved in sex agree to the act. Nowhere in that explanation does the opinion of those around them come into consideration. Because of this, saying that public sex violates the rights of passersby, or that they should just “get a room”, holds no weight.
The second point is that public sex does no harm to those who witness it. As with PDAs, there is no injustice that one can point to in order to justify its prohibition. The most likely grievance one could have is that people having sex on the ground would cause people to move around them. This is certainly an inconvenience, but not one that warrants government intervention. The worst-case scenario is that the coitus occurs in an exit or other narrow location. In this scenario, the appropriate action would be to use applicable fire codes to identify this as a safety violation. They could then be punished accordingly, public sex not being relevant to the matter. In neither case can the public claim harm that comes directly from the act of making love, but from factors that would be relevant whether or not sex was involved.
As I end this, I should address the reader’s assumption that the author is a crazed sex maniac. On the contrary, I am only interested in freedom for its own sake. I have no desire to partake in the act, nor would I gain sexual pleasure from seeing this in my daily life. I am content to know that the government will not interfere with those who chose to do so. Being free does not require that you partake in an act, it only requires that you reserve the right to do so, should the desire come. That is why I write this, so that we may all be a little more free.
People should not have sex in public because–given the fluids involved–it is unsanitary and against the interests of public health. They also should not talk in public for the same reason.
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#one hot take deserves another #nsfw text #discourse cw #unsanitary cw #reply via reblog
Brinens and Things 