Sexual preferences are a private matter

There is something very wrong with collectivised morality, especially when it comes to the subject of sex. For starters, it is one such issue that rarely finds comfort in public conversation. Even in private, it sort of has to wait till after a measure of some substance enhancer, insanity or as part of delinquency. Even amongst those who have just had it.

Words referring to sex cannot be uttered without being offensive or socially inappropriate. Even amongst those who do it in the acceptable setup – heterosexual married couples. Unless one borrows the language of external societies for whom sex and sexual expressions are not taboo. So whereas we can say without shame words referring to our sexual organs by name in English, Spanish or French, we couch in shame and contempt when the local vernacular is used. We can freely describe objects or those who look sexually appealing publicly as being ‘sexy’ – with not consequences but for an envious stare – but the same description or word would get you plucked horns should you give it an approximate translation in our own languages.

It has been argued, probably rightly so, that this moral ‘correctness’ about the subject of sex, including subtracting it from acceptability from general discourse, explains why our people, more than any other race or ethnic group, have suffered the most from diseases that are sexually correlated. Our intervention programmes have tended to be too moralised for quite obvious a subject. They are laced with doses of contempt. Never an acceptability that sex is a fundamental necessity for every adult, both for pleasure as for physiological needs.

But even more disturbing and in need for an unambiguous challenge is the whole manner in which society has increasingly poked its head and is now finding comfort in the bedrooms of other adult citizens. Consenting adults are deprived the freedom to choose how and with whom they should have sex. There is always a moral police somewhere ready to pounce on those considered sexual deviants. Even worse when these, men and women, perhaps lacking enough gratification in their own lives and therefore quite finding it vexatious that others can enjoy it variedly, find themselves in positions of authority.

There is no suggestion of names here. But if we look closer into the abuse of religion and the State to brutally blackmail and attack those whose sexual conduct they do not agree with. This is irrespective of two fundamental codes: That those people whose sexual preferences and acts they would condemn are consenting adults, and that their acts, privately engaged in, have no physical effect on the persons who find these acts contemptuous.

The arguments raised to criminalise sexual gratification among consenting adults that is not deemed in synch with dominant views are just as ambiguous. These range from religious ones, concerning how God and nature made things a certain way, to an Afro-ethnic uniqueness of particular forms of how to have sex. These arguments are often presented in a hacking manner – where emotional and physical battery follows any attempts to rebut these so dismissible rationalisations. This explains why gays, lesbians, transgender and the women’s sexuality lobby demands greater support from civil society, and protection by the State.

We might not agree with other people’s sexual preferences. But where these preferences are confined to consenting adults, they really are of no business to any other person. That a woman, or a man for that matter, chooses to charge another to have sex is his or her own matter. Those who do not agree with paying for sex have a ready recourse: Not to seek those who sell it. Same applies with those who do not agree with gays and lesbians: Stick to your preferred sex. You should not conflate your subconscious fears or ultra egos and imposing your preferences on other persons.

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* Tapera Kapuya is a democracy activist from Zimbabwe.
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