Liberal Vision

The happiness of a man in this life does not consist in the absence but in the mastery of his passions. – Alfred Lord Tennyson

As a strong libertarian I wanted to post a libertarian counter to Julians post on liberal revolution which was referred to in this site. I believe that we need to be very careful as libertarians how we deal with issues such as prosititution, lap dancing, and pornography, and also how we deal with the wider issues of sexuality where it appears that we as libertarians spend most of our efforts looking at the needs of individuals rather the couples.

http://liberalrevolution.wordpress.com/2009/04/10/can-we-just-get-off-mens-backs/

Last Saturday I was talking to a woman in a club. She was educated and articulate and worked in a situation where she was in a position of power. This was necessary for her to pay her mortgage. She needed release from that in the form of physical punishment from her partner. She wished this to be in public and not in token. Since the Spanner case

http://www.spannertrust.org/documents/spannerhistory.asp

this is now illegal. [The Spanner case was where sexual acts were given equivalence with bare knuckling fighting and long prison sentances were issued] What is the partner of this woman who loves her deeply to do in this situation. Is he to deny her and risk losing her or risk jail ? I argued with Ziggy saying that I would not go to jail for an ID card but what about fulfilling the sexual needs of someone that you love ? The importance of id cards surely pales in importance to this.

The high levels of risk that have been introduced by government legislation have led to an increased requirement for commitment between couples who need this kind of power exchange. You don’t need to be a psychologist to realised that the amount of pain recieved in a sexual act is utterly irrelevant for many couples if it leads to the happiness of the partner. The feeling of commitment which is felt by couples knowingly breaking the law for the sexual pleasure of one or both parties only warms up the heated ocean which creates this hurricane in the first place.

We need to be careful to focus on the freedom of human sexual relations which are necessary to individuals within relationships. Personally I think that its a pity that men feel the need to visit prostitutes. From the men I know who do this, which are obviously legion like all men reading this I guess, I believe that the money would be better spent on flowers for their partner (80% of them had partners) or drinks in a nightclub.

We must not allow other groups to seize the ‘high ground’ on issues of sexuality and we must target our energy on those areas which enhance relationships between couples and not on those that serve the selfish needs of the individual. We must focus our efforts on the needs of loving couples such as those jailed by Spanner and not bogged down in issues of commercialised sex while the freedom of couples to express their human need is denied. This is why I believe that Spanner related legislation is a better target for libertarians than prostitution.

Ed Joyce