The arguments for postmodernist morality keep getting curiouser and curiouser. Take, for example, ex-Anglican priest David Bryant’s stance in a column extoling the virtues of free love:
Life hurls at us a constantly changing network of ethical dilemmas. For the Victorians, it was chimney sweeps, slaves and poverty. In the 21st century, it is genetic engineering, cloning, drug addiction and a host of others. Throw in the ethical material that has sprung from the cross-culturalisation of our society, and you have a heady, often intractable, mix.
We have to confront this mishmash by constantly reinventing our personal morality, trying to take quality-weighted decisions and making tentative value-judgments. No one else can do it for us, least of all a code of rules laid down three millennia ago. It is a lonely path, but offers immense rewards. We need to put an upbeat spin into our thinking about sexual morality, starting from the point of original blessing rather than original sin (an observation that got its promulgator, the Catholic priest Matthew Fox, defrocked).
Sexuality is not something to be sniggered at or argued over. It should not be entombed in archaic laws, nor forbidden or reluctantly tolerated as a pandering to human weakness. Nor should it be hijacked and turned into a gender argument about who should sleep with whom. It is a unique blessing, a source of deep fulfilment, a profound joy, there to be enjoyed, reciprocated and appreciated.
Sexuality is indeed not something to be sniggered at, but I would surely be sniggering at Bryant’s argument were it not so common among postmodernists of every flavor.
The sad thing is that arguments like ex-father Bryant’s are self-defeating and their proponents don’t even realize it. Upon what, pray tell, does he base this need for constant reinvention of sexual mores? What if I decided suddenly that his process for moral revision needed to be revised?
In fact, I have decided most certainly that it should. Modern sexual morality should not be tied down to the sweeping cultural changes that are taking place. That way of looking at things has run long since run its course. Rather, biblical Christianity should inform one’s morality on sexual issues.
Three you go Mr. Bryant—problem solved, eh? (snigger, snigger)