alan watts-no more armed clergymen

The problem of the homosexual in Judaeo-Christian societies is part of the larger issue of how far the State may go in regulating private morals, especially in a republic such as the United States, where church and state are constitutionally separated. There is, of course, some difficulty in drawing a precise line between public and private morals, or between crimes with victims and crimes without victims. It could be argued that drunkenness, drug-addiction and gambling have victims insofar as the offender neglects or impoverishes his or her dependents, or endangers the public while operating a car or airplane in a state of intoxication. It could, perhaps, be argued that one who promiscuously begets children is in some sense a public offender. But I see no way of arguing that certain types of sexual relationships between consenting adults can be construed as crimes, except by religions ignorant of biology and psychology—and not all religions are thus ignorant.

The basic superstition of such ignorant religions is that semen is equivalent to blood, and that the ejaculation of semen is, as it used to be called, “spending”—that is, losing a certain amount of psychophysical energy. Hence the notion that semen should be “spent” only in the propagation of a child, for, especially in an agricultural society, every child is an additional hand on the farm, and since many children die at or shortly after birth, the child is seen as an economic asset, and not as a liability. But before the day of microscopes no one knew that, in any ejaculation, only one spermatozoon in a million makes it. Nature, from the sexual point of view, is undoubtedly a profligate.

It was, I believe, St. Augustine of Hippo who circulated the rumor that every animal is sad after intercourse, showing how little, if anything, he knew of the experience, and his inability to distinguish between sadness and happy relaxation. In my own opinion, from my own experience, the sexual orgasm is not debilitating but invigorating. It gives an almost mystical sensation of self-transcendence, of the unity of the physical body with the whole of nature, or at least of merging with one’s partner. When it is over, and we have rested awhile, I am especially eager to go back to my work-play. I am convinced that happy, guiltless, and lusty intercourse stimulates the circulation and digestion, gets all the glands going, and is the best physical medicine in the world.

Although some of my best friends are men, and homosexual men at that, my preference is to do this with women. But that is my own taste, and it would never occur to me to impose it on others by sermonizing, much less by requiring policemen to become armed clergymen to enforce my taste on everyone else. Any officer who voluntarily serves on a vice squad is, almost by definition, a creep who identifies sex with filth, and gets his kicks from voyeuristic snooping with intent to harm, and thus commits a crime with a victim.

Furthermore, many (though not all) men who become police or prison guards are “tough guys” who need to prove their manliness because they are secretly and guiltily homosexual, and therefore get their kinky satisfaction by being brutal to other men. I don’t really like to use the word “kinky,” because, when they are mutually enjoyed, all forms of sexual play are delightful. But when they are not mutually enjoyed, someone becomes the victim of a crime, of a violent intrusion upon his or her organism, and it might well be shown that, under our present laws, the police commit more such acts of violence than all gamblers, prostitutes, homosexuals, boozers, and drug addicts put together, except where the latter are forced into armed robbery by the high price of heroin.

Homosexuals may not like to be put in the same class as gamblers, prostitutes, boozers, and drug addicts; but this is where the law of the land has put them. And if for no other reason than promoting an honest and efficient police force, it is urgent that we write all sumptuary laws off the books: those are laws, ecclesiastical in origin, which regulate personal habits offending the moral or religious conscience of the community. The regulation of such habits may be in the province of preachers, physicians, and psychotherapists, who act by persuasion. But it is not in the province of police, who act by force. Activities of the police should be restricted to protecting life and property, directing traffic, and giving aid to people in distress.

Even if, for the sake of argument, we allow that “drink, gambling, and immorality” are physically and/or mentally injurious, it is of the essence of a free country that the community will take the risk of letting anyone go to hell in his own way, provided he does no direct violence to others. Risk is the price of freedom. The alternative is the police state, in which anything not expressly allowed is forbidden: the society of mutual mistrust. Any system in which there is no risk, no possibility of surprise, no element of chance, no serpent about the Tree of Knowledge, no tolerance of variety, is dead, dull, self-strangling. There can be no sensation of “self” without a contrasting sensation of “other,” no sensation of well-being without the contrasting apprehension of something to be avoided. This sensation of contrast is the essence of life, and wise is he who does not try to get rid of it.

Religious communities, Jewish and Christian, should realize that, by their own doctrines, no action or abstention from action is truly moral when done, or not done, for fear of punishment. If I were inclined to some form of sexual enjoyment forbidden by my religion, I would not be virtuous in avoiding it from fear of the consequences, whether they be imprisonment by the state or everlasting damnation at the Court of Heaven. A truly moral act, by these doctrines, is something done or not done for no reason other than the love of God or of other people. Only most exceptionally does intercourse between persons of the same sex or of opposite sex express hatred. The biological and psychophysical possibility of being able to communicate with other people in this particular way is a miracle, for which, whatever it is, that It should be thanked and glorified through all the endless ages of ages.