A thought experiment: What if we were genetically programmed to be vastly more sexual in every way than our cultures typically allow?  What if that sexuality were the fundamental truth about our species and our greatest source of strength?  Could you accept this?  Could your religion?  This chapter raises these questions.

There is also the possibility that our authors are, in Chapter 4, making too much of the differences between their point of view and that of others–all for the purpose of creating a good read.  In an interview with NOVA, primatologist Frans de Waal appears to be taking a position not so different from that taken by our authors.

Q: In the early 1970s…bonobo neighbors…met and after initial wariness had acted quite peaceably together.  Just how momentous was that discovery?

A: Well…when the Japanese scientists [led by Takayoshi Kano] came along with the story that bonobo groups just mingle—and not only do they mingle, but they have sex together, the kids play with each other, they groom each other afterwards, they travel together sometimes —all this was absolutely shocking and didn’t fit the image that we had of where we came from.

And it was totally ignored. It’s very interesting: When something doesn’t fit your thinking, the best way to deal with it is to shove it out the window and ignore it, and that’s what the scientific community did for about 20 years.

Q: Do you think we’re more bonobo or more chimp?

A: I would say there are people in this world who like hierarchies, they like to keep people in their place, they like law enforcement, and they probably have a lot in common, let’s say, with the chimpanzee.  And then you have other people in this world who root for the underdog, they give to the poor, they feel the need to be good, and they maybe have more of this kinder bonobo side to them.  Our societies are constructed around the interface between those two….

And what of your journey over the lifespan?  Having started as a control freak chimp Sexual Futurist finds himself evolving (in one lifetime) into a bonobo hippie.  Maybe instead of control, human sexuality craves intelligent management.  Come, reason with us.

Consider the recent brouhaha over Lady Gaga’s concert in South Korea and her plans for a concert in Jakarta, Indonesia.  In both places the religious proclaimed that the merest exposure to Lady Gaga would corrupt the minds and souls of those who saw her perform.  In Jakarta,

There has been an outcry against Lady Gaga among Islamists and conservative Muslims, who say her revealing costumes and sensual dance moves are “haram,” meaning “forbidden by Islamic law.”

The chairman of the Islamic Defenders Front, Habib Rizieq, said his group could not guarantee what might happen, as far as security goes, if the concert were held.  “[The concert is] intended to destroy the nation’s morality,” Ridwan (chairman of the Indonesian Council of Ulema) told the Globe.

Gaga also ran afoul of Christian groups in South Korea, prompting the government to ban kids under the age of 18 from attending her show… detractors called it “pornographic” and a promotion of homosexuality.

Reverend Yoon Jung-hoon stated, “Some people can accept this as another culture, but it…debases religions,” Yoon said. “Even adults can’t see her performance, which is too homosexual and pornographic.”

One of the protesters threatened to create “chaos” and mobilize 30,000 people to block the Mother Monster. “We are ready to be thrown into jail and be killed — we will do anything to stop it,” said Islamic Defenders Front chairman Habib Salim Alatas.

Apparently, without violence or the threat of violence, there are no ideas more compelling than those of Lady Gaga.  Even this site, with no porn and no vulgarity is threatening to many; their fear is of sex itself.  But we deserve more from religion than such fragility.  Come, reason with us.

Gay marriage, abortion laws, access to contraception, men’s access to gender-blind consideration in divorce–we are all in this together because none of us want the government or the dominate religion in our area forcing us to do something or be someone that is our business and ours alone.  There is no justification for any religion or government to invade our privacy or our bedrooms.

For example, in the US the abortion controversy is portrayed as a women’s issue.  It is not only a women’s issue.  If you have any women you care about, any concern for government intrusion into the personal decisions of people and the patient/doctor relationship, then a law forcing women to jump through religiously based hoops to get medical care is your issue too.

For some of us in the US who are religious we can get confused by the never-ending battle of pro-life vs pro-choice.  This fight has taken us nowhere and it never will.   For proof, let’s do a thought experiment.  Imagine you are completely and utterly without any reservation on your position that abortion is wrong.  OK, so be it.  Now imagine you know a woman set on getting an abortion.  Are you willing to tie her down and force her to bear children against her will?  For most of us the answer, happily, is “no.”  In our experiment the convictions about the wrongness of abortions do not negate the repugnance against forced birth.  The American habit of passing of laws to force women to have ultrasounds, to force women to seek counseling, to force women to wait–all are incremental and invisible hands holding her to the birthing table. The goal is forced birth.

The question is not are you pro-life or pro-choice.  The question on abortion is are you pro-forced birth or anti-forced birth.  All of our sexual rights involve all of us.  Come reason with us.

“President Obama has betrayed the Bible and the black church with his endorsement of same-sex marriage.”–Pastor Dwight McKissic

The prevailing black American reaction to President Obama’s embrace of marriage equality for gay Americans is relevant to sexual futurists around the world.  Why?  Because whether Muslim, Christian, Hindu or Jew, all religions have hard-liners who try to speak on behalf of those who really believe, who are really true to the faith–those who haven’t compromised with the West, with immorality, with assimilation–or any of the other influences that they say dilute the purity of their belief system.

These true believers (and they are everywhere) find change…frightening.  They consider their current thoughts about faith to be exactly the same as God’s thoughts about faith.  It never occurs to them that their understanding of faith might, how can we put this gently, need to evolve or that their understanding might be…mmm…limited.   They believe in and celebrate some moment in the past as a perfect expression of what God really wanted and we need to get back there.  He couldn’t want all this inclusion, acceptance and love for our fellow humans–what are we, Girl Scouts?  So they quote the Book.  It doesn’t really matter what book, just something so holy that it is of more value than human beings.

Apostasy.  Betrayal.  Unbelief.  These incendiary words are designed to maximize the perception of threat and at the same time minimize thinking.  Look at a typical website for “Bible verses forbidding gay marriage.”  You’ll find Bible quotes galore.  Now try “Bible verses forbidding interracial marriage” and you’ll find a lot of sites decrying this concept which was once the law of the land across the US.  The “best” one continues to promote an idea that was once defended by almost every church as “God’s will.” Other countries still struggle with this: In 2008, Pakistani senators defended the practice of burying young women alive who were judged guilty by tribal elders of having engaged in a relationship with men not of their tribe.  Thankfully, most of us have moved the H-E-double toothpicks on.

The debate about gay marriage rights is a repeat of these old arguments.  But religion should illuminate truth and help guide us.  Religion is supposed to be our original “killer app” that helps us live together adaptively.  If your religion is not helping you in this way maybe it’s time to evolve.  Come, reason with us.

What the right would prefer is a conversation about the economy.  But President Obama’s recent personal comments on his support for marriage equality have thrown an entirely new sexual futurist spin on the 2012 campaign.  The election now is not so much about the economy; it’s about human sexual rights.  People are wondering why any government wants to control individual sexual choice.  The right gets into sex, making classic conservatives like Barry Goldwater roll over in their graves, because they’ve made deals to win elections.  Goldwater, a supporter of a woman’s right to choose, is the one who famously said,

“I think every good Christian ought to kick [fundamentalist preacher] Falwell right in the ass.”

Which is exactly what the Hulk and the president are doing.  In the face of a President who’s willing to quote the Bible more intelligently than they do, the Righteous Wing of the Republican Party are left looking like religious nut jobs.  Not to fear, the good guys win in the end with the Prez played by the Hulk and the religious repressives played by Loki who tries to hide behind religion,

 ”ENOUGH! I AM A GOD you dull creature. And I will not be bullied by a-”

Which is where the scene at left takes place followed by the Hulk walking away muttering,

    “Puny god.”

The world watches and cares because this battle is a prototype of battles to come with fundamentalists of all flavors around the world.  Surely we humans can expect our faiths’ understanding of human sexuality to evolve.  Come, reason with us.

Cardinal Timothy Dolan, president of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, called Obama’s remarks “deeply saddening.”  “We cannot be silent in the face of words or actions that would undermine the institution of marriage, the very cornerstone of our society.  The people of this country, especially our children, deserve better.”

The Family Research Council, which says it champions marriage and family as the foundation of civilization, called Obama’s position “disappointing but not surprising.  Today’s announcement almost ensures that marriage will again be a major issue in the presidential election,” council President Tony Perkins said in a statement. “Romney … may have been handed the key to social conservative support by President Obama.”

Like they were ever going to support Obama anyway.  Just years ago the same people were calling Mormons a cult; now candidate Romney looks like the second coming to them.  They’ve tried to get the whole world scared of gay people and any attempt to normalize life for the gay community by an extensive use of phony love (“Love the sinner, hate the sin!”) and fear mongering.  The result has been a remarkable paralysis in the bodies politic of the world as we’ve ignored problems like war, the economy and the environment.  From the great wiki we learn about the Henny Penny App, also known as the Chicken Little syndrome,

Fear mongering-whether justified or not – can sometimes elicit a societal response called Chicken Little syndrome, described as “inferring catastrophic conclusions possibly resulting in paralysis”.  It has also been defined as “a sense of despair or passivity which blocks the audience from actions”. 

Tomorrow Obama will be in my town.  Marriages and love are going to have a good day after all.  Now, more than ever, we’re all in this together.  Come reason with us.

The authors of Sex At Dawn trumpet two themes in this chapter:

(1) “…[we're] a species with a secret it just can’t keep.  Homo sapiens evolved to be shamelessly, undeniably, inescapably sexual.” 

and (2) We’re not bad, that is, we [as a species] are not “deceitful cads” and “lying, two-timing gold-diggers.” 

For Sexual Futurist there’s a lot to like about this chapter and some ideas that don’t quite seem to work.  First of all, the fact that we’re sexual beings seems to have escaped the vast majority of our fellow Earthlings.  Our sexuality is a secret that being kept very well.  How else can we explain the utter ignorance of a species that spends virtually no time educating our young on how to intelligently manage our sexuality and has developed exhaustive techniques to repress any reasonable efforts to do so?  For all other dimensions of the human experience (spiritual, emotional, physical, social and so on) we have systematically cataloged and educated ourselves about “minimum daily requirements” and “recommended daily amounts.”  We know how much we should sleep, how much math to teach, how many fat calories to consume–even how much light we need to stay healthy!  But nowhere do we see any sort of recommendation for healthy living when it comes to human sexuality.  That’s why this site exists…to challenge our species’ penchant for repression and instead have a conversation based on reason and knowledge.  For sexual futurists looking to build a different future, our sexuality’s existence is a big truth that deserves more time and more thought.

SF’s beef with the rest of this truly interesting work (Chapter 3) is that the authors seem to be overstating the the evolutionary psychologists’ (EP) case.  Specifically, the evolving thinking of the EPs is not so much that your mother is a whore and your father a cad as much as it is that they are pleasure-driven, that is, that they engage in pleasure seeking behaviors.  They are not, as the authors imply, automatons walking around thinking, “Must propagate species.”  More likely, Dad was thinking, “Nice legs,” which led your birthday the following year.  Come, reason with us.

P.S., Doesn’t the notion of “the flaccid female libido” strike you, dear reader, as a sexist projection on women by both sides of the argument?

The French (Ah, the French!) have a saying for this: “Tout comprendre c’est tout pardonner.”  “To understand…is to forgive.”  We may still disagree with someone but once we understand we find it hard to be hardhearted anymore.  We no longer need to condemn those we understand, because they are no longer such a scarey, well, unknown.  Understanding helps us realize that, but for an accident of birth or perhaps timing, the person we hate the most could be us.  The differences between Sexual Futurist (an older, white, hetero, Lutheran Christian) and another hetero may be far greater than those between me and the gay man below whose feelings of love are so like my own.  Whether you’re in love right now or not doesn’t matter.  You will understand the feelings of this human being who has so much sincere devotion to the object of his desire.  Caution: watching the video below will be hazardous to your hating self.  It’s a video in which a guy has pulled out all the stops to make a proposal of marriage to his true love.  It’s fun, exciting, and ultimately understandable.  You watch at your own risk.  Share it with someone you love and respect.  Indeed, “What are we waiting for.”  Come, reason with us.

All of the Abrahamic religions (Judaism, Christianity, and Islam) have problems with this.  The most recent example comes from the US where Baptist Pastor Sean Harris rants on gays, lesbians, transgender people, little boys who he thinks act effeminately and little girls who should be forced to “dress pretty and act like a girl.”  Jews have so-called Orthodox who believe it’s important to call out eight-year-old girls on their way to school as “whores” and the women soldiers who defend them as “prostitutes” for daring to ride the same bus as men.  Islam has issues with killing gays and adulterers.  The stoning of Muslim women adulterers is to restore “the honor” of the men.  Hindus have parity with the nuclear bomb and with sexual hate: targeting gays, women and even young adults who just want to marry someone of their choice.

Some religious may see these words as an attack upon religion itself; they are not.  The sexual futurist community includes many who believe and many who do not.  But we agree that God, by definition, does not need us.  Our human religions are not here for God.  They are here for us.  Human religions must serve humans.  One example, mostly ignored, is where Jesus asks,

“Was mankind made for the Sabbath or was the Sabbath made for mankind? 

The answer is obvious: the Sabbath, both the concept and the observance, was set in place to serve people.   When religion stops serving people it has lost its way.  All religions get lost from time to time.  But our religions have an obligation to speak intelligently about human sexuality and to disavow and disown the haters of creation or…we shall simply move on without them.  Come, reason with us.