From: pi101@cus.cam.ac.uk (P.M. Inman)
Subject: Re: On Forbidden Lusts
Organization: U of Cambridge, England
Date: Mon, 25 Jan 1993 16:35:55 GMT

In article <1993Jan25.032657.5414@fuug.fi>,
an6579@anon.penet.fi (Michael Servetus) writes:

|> 
|> "On Forbidden Lusts"
|> ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
   [earlier verses omitted]
|> 
|> For Nature guides us, us, Her maids.
|> Her latest Truth, reveal'd, is AIDS.
|> And we, the Wise, we know Her trade:
|> "To be commanded, first obeyed."
|> 
|

Nature's moral purpose is rather more inscrutable.  AIDS is undoubtedly
horrible for those involved but it receives disproportionate attention from
being sexually transmitted.  A virulent disease which was spread through
dietary habits or contact with animals would raise issues mainly of public
hygiene.

I daresay that the Bubonic Plague was greeted at the time as evidence of the
wrath of God, but the disease was tackled as much by working on the mechanism
of infection as by trying to reform human nature.  Of course, the medical
account of the Plague explained HOW it was spread and thus HOW it could be
prevented.  It would take a theologian to explain WHY the Plague was visited
on humankind.

The irony of AIDS, as with syphilis before it, is that the cure of the
mechanism of the disease can coincide with the cure of the alleged moral cause
of the disease.
 
Imagine a society where people remain virgins until they are married, marry
other virgins, remain faithful to death to their partners and, if widowed,
re-marry, if at all, to others from a pool of virgins/widows/widowers.
Finally, transgressors and innocent victims alike (those unknowingly infected
by venereal disease and victims of seduction, rape, adultery, bigamy)
are treated as social pariahs and, if not actually ostricised, are clearly
labelled, the better to be avoided by the virtuous.

The above reads like a grim scenario to a generation reared on fun, rights and
litigation, but such a society would be taking sensible practical steps, in
the absence of a medical solution, to a sexually-spread epidemic.  Note that
this society could safely admit homosexuality, on the same terms of fidelity
as heterosexual relationships.

I may be wrong, but the society described may well have existed among the
European bourgeoisie in the 19th Century.  Don't tell me what other crimes
were committed in the cause of sexual hygiene or the extent to which people
failed to live up to public standards of morality.  They needn't even have had
sexual hygiene in mind;  all the stuff about fidelity, virginity etc., could
just have been a cover for male domination of women.  But if the effect was
benefical, the morality producing the behaviour pattern would have survived.

So what's the lesson for the 21st Century?  Would society revert to 19th
Century "morality" to tackle AIDS?  Would such a morality enable women to
shake off the yoke of male domination and arbitrary justice? Would behavour
likely to alleviate one exacerbate the other?

 
-- 
Philip Inman.............................e-mail: pi101@cus.cam.ac.uk
Open Systems Development Programme........JANET: pi101@uk.ac.cam.cus
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Newsgroups: alt.politics.correct