Methodist Policy On Sexuality Given

Press, Volume CX, Issue 32378, 18 August 1970, Page 19

Methodist Policy On Sexuality Given

True sexual morality for the church lay in the area of increasing people’s sense of responsibility to each other in all aspects of life, said the public questions committee of the Methodist Church of New Zealand in a statement on human sexuality in its annual report to synods and conferences.

The statement, which arose after discussions on the committee’s decision not to support a petition to Parliament seeking the ban on the presentation of certain sexual acts and nudity in public entertainment was presented to the North Canterbury Methodist districts’ annual synod in Christchurch. “This essentially positive attitude means abandoning a reliance on prohibition to regulate our sexuality. The law can only provide a freedom from exploitation: it cannot provide a freedom to develop our full human potential for love and sexuality,” said the committee. The committee said that in spite of the widespread publicity given today to the socalled permissive society there was still an astonishingly large amount of ignorance about sexual needs and behaviour.

The myth of the “antisexual” position of the church also persisted, and it was for these two important reasons, if no others, that it seemed important to reiterate basic Christian beliefs on human sexuality.

“The first point to be stressed is that sex is good in itself, not simply as a means to the survival of the race,” it says. The marriage service makes this point—often overlooked by those criticising what they think the church says on this subject—when it puts first the mutual help, society and comfort which each should have of the other. Implications

The acceptance of this view of sex, had, however, profound implications for attitudes to sexual behaviour, said the committee. Unfortunately people who complained about the exploitation of sex in society too often ended up by appearing to protest against sex itself.

: It must be acknowledged - that people’s capacity for hu- - man relationships varied, and t in this particular area some - so-called perversions, for exl ample voyeurism or the read- • ing of pornography, might » well be the only outlet for ■ this powerful drive possible I for some who had been mained by their earlier personality ! development. ! “We may deplore this on 1 grounds of taste, but it is 1 doubtful whether we have the ' Christian right to outlaw • various kinds of sexual beha--1 viour as inherently evil simp- ' ly because they do not ap- ' peal to us,” said the committee. “What we do have a duty , to insist upon is that the key aspect of sex is relationship and therefore the central moral criterion should be one of responsibility. This concern for the effects of our actions on the well-being of others should permeate all our lives; it has particular application to sexual expression.” The committee said that judgment for action in any situation needed to be governed by the question “is this a responsible action?” In this light, some behaviour usually abhorred might take on a degree of moral responsibility that had previously been ignored. An example of this might be found in stable and deeply affectionate relationships existing between homosexuals, even though such permanence might not be very common. Key Idea “Any relationship which is governed by exploitation is immoral in the true sense of that much abused word, and so rape inside or outside marriage is always wrong, as is child molesting, which by its nature-cannot involve responsible decision by both parties. “This key idea also explains more coherently other prohibitions previously handed down by authority as unarguable. For example, premarital sex is almost always immoral because it is rare for it to be free of exploitation and moral blackmail.

“By the same reasoning, though, pre-marital sex may involve a deep caring for each other and a feeling that it is better for a relationship to deepen naturally, at its own pace, rather than for its boundaries to be set by external criteria such as a ceremony at a particular time. “With the improvement in contraceptive techniques, we must think about the implications of this for young people with due honesty, and reject entirely either the prohibition enforced by fear of pregnancy, or else the equally hypocritical notion of the blind eye,” said the committee.

“Young people have an especial sensitivity to hypocrisy, and see older attitudes to sex as debasing and debased when they are founded on this sort of reasoning.”