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In Reply to: Re: I have trouble with such (non-)values posted by Skep on April 17, 2006 at 01:29:48:
You're absolutely right too. I understand you were speaking for yourself and what is important to you, and not trying to impose your own morality on others. I agree that people should to be free to do whatever they want and it should not be up to others to judge them, as long as there are no criminal implications for society at large. What is or is not morally detrimental can be debated till we're blue in the face.
Society has laws and norms which do not necessarily match. Over time some of these laws get outdated and are never applied anymore, like the strange ones about "No man is allowed to make love to his wife with the smell of garlic, onions, or sardines on his breath" in Alexandria, Minnesota.
Well, I'm not trying to flog a dead horse, but I do enjoy our chat and hearing your views, so I will share some more thoughts about this with you, if you don't mind.
At this point in my life, I'm having trouble with seeing the prevalent MTV consumer culture in relationships. In the end, like you say, individuals have the right to make asses out of themselves if they wish, at least in the kind of society I want to live in. God knows I do so much that people could and do (mis)judge me for, because they are on the outside looking in. I used to be more like you, not judging people for having sex just for the sake of it. Maybe I even used to think like many others that when you're single you can have multiple sex partners. But something inside me has changed, especially when I realize now how I affected others with that attitude, and how hurt I have been with others who had that kind of moral code.
For me there is now no longer a possibility of "AS LONG AS they are not stepping on somebody else's space" because I found myself in a strange situation, of being hurt retroactively, and I learned the strange karmic truth that no man is an island. I'll try my best to explain.
When you love your partner, you fuse with everything about them, who they are now plus who they were. You find yourself loving their childhood pictures. But if you found out they were sexually abused as a child, even though it happened before you met, it would upset you, and you would be angry at the person who did it to them. Just the same, if you get together with someone and found out they abused themselves and allowed all kinds of abuse and immoral acts to be committed on their person, you would get some kind of unpleasant feeling about it, wouldn't you? Even if just for a few minutes until you get over it? (But where you take it from there is another topic of course.)
Well in my situation, I got together with someone, who believed she was not doing anything to hurt anyone else, that at the most she was hurting herself, but it ended up hurting me. I'm sorry I can't be more specific, but I found myself really being affected by things she had done. By the same token I understand full well that I bring my own garbage and luggage from my past into my present relationship, and that it can be hard for someone to understand I lived in a sex cult which is now known for having institutionalized sex abuse.
Anyway, it's hard to reconcile what should be with what is. I know we can teach children about moral values all we want, but in the end you still have to hand out condoms and birth control to young teenagers, because sex happens.
