Xarker Manifesto: Sex

Sex, sex, sex, sex, sex...

1. The sex lives of other grown people are none of your business.
2. It's none of the government's business, either.
3. If you choose to believe in a religion that says differently, that's your business. But that doesn't give you the right to apply it to the rest of us.
4. Most of the established, monotheistic religions on the planet are still struggling to deal with deep-seated, bronze-age Middle Eastern sexual anxieties that tend to perpetuate the very pathologies they oppose.   
   
5. Gay people deserve all the civic rights of straight people, and that includes marital and family rights. If a particular church wishes to exclude them from its sacraments, fine. But a gay couple that wants to go down to the courthouse, or the local notary for that matter, should have the same civil rights as a heterosexual couple.
6. There is no practical separation of church and state when it comes to family law. Our statutes on marriage, divorce, child rearing and custody are derived from the Judeo-Christian tradition and are, consequently, a mess.
7. In America today, a person who violates the marriage vow against adultery forfeits his or her right to property, parental equality and control of future income. On the other hand, a spouse may violate all the other standard vows -- to love, honor, cherish, etc. -- without fear of penalty. This should tell us something important.
   
8. Disastrous divorces are a self-fulfilling prophecy, brought about by legal and cultural institutions that seek to protect "the family" by making divorce punitive.
9. Wanna cut down on the divorce rate? Make it as hard to get into a marriage as it is to get out of one.
   
10. Cultural conservatives fear that without the shame-based dominion of moral stricture, human sexual behavior will become more promiscuous, deviant and destructive. Xarkers look at the promiscuous, deviant and destructive sexual behaviors that have always been a part of the human experience and then go find better things to worry about.
11. You want to go wild on spring break? That's your business. Just don't come crying to us when it doesn't turn out so well. We suggest you learn from the experience.
12. In sex as in everything else, karma is a bitch.
13. Men and women are not the same.
14. Men and women are equal.
15. Laws that attempt to enforce sameness are absurd.
16. Laws that do not recognize equality are immoral.
17. In matters of sex, the governing doctrine is consensuality. This implies a right to a reasonable expectation of protection from non-consensual exposure to sexual behavior . In other words, it's OK to put limits on public expressions of sexuality. This includes covering Janet Jackson's breast, protections for children and municipal zoning bans on sexually oriented businesses near churches, etc. It does not include prohibitions on  protected free speech or restrictions on what people may do or view in private.

Editor's Note: The original Xarker Manifesto was published on this site on June 29, 2005. Subsequent changes and additions appear with a date attached.

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