Sex Please! We're british
There is a famous, if apocryphal story of a young couple who once had sex on a crowded British Rail train. Their fellow passengers are alleged to have said nothing and looked away politely until the couple lit up a post-coital cigarette. Then, and only then, did someone complain.
The tale is ridiculous enough to be credible. Thankfully, the age in which the British were embarrassed to the point of paralysis by all things sexual has long gone and now, less thankfully, sex garnishes virtually every cinema, TV screen, magazine and billboard in the country.
Last month, the Church of England published Being Human: a Christian understanding of personhood, a report which sought to celebrate 'the goodness and joy of sex' while being realistic about 'the ways it can go wrong'.
It seems that the British need no encouragement about the former. Statistics recently published by the ONS show how the average number of lifetime sexual partners is now six for men and four for women, up from four and two respectively a decade ago.
At the same time, incidence of gonorrhoea and chlamydia increased by nine per cent and 14 per cent respectively in 2001-02, and the rate of abortions, having risen steadily since 1967, reached 17 per 1,000 women in 2000-01.
Such clear evidence of the way in which the joys of sex have become divorced from its responsibilities leave many people understandably angry. Enjoying rights without responsibilities, a hallmark of our age, is distasteful at the best of times, but when applied to something as precious and important as sex it becomes thoroughly dehumanising.
Yet, soapbox denunciations are not the answer. While it is naive to assume that society can do away with sticks and live on carrots alone - our post-1960s all-carrot diet has left us looking none-too-well - those of us who sweep a dozen 'negligible' sins under the carpet before breakfast have little right to go about casting stones. The one man who did have such a right chose not to exercise it.
The way forward must be his way, the way of example, the way of showing that just as there is more to the body than clothes, there is more to being human than sex.
Nick Spencer
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