David Matthews 2 is a freelance writer in Alpharetta, Georgia. He is also the host of a weekly audio rant which you can hear at the main page.

Target: Moralism
Part 9 – The Marriage Monopoly and the War On Sexuality
– by David Matthews 2

If you wanted to control other people, how would you go about doing it?

Well the obvious way would be through force. Get a bunch of people on your side with weapons and force the rest of the people to do your bidding.

That way would work… for a little while. But then you would get resentment and resistance. The people would revolt at the first opportunity. They would hate you and hate everything that you represent. That’s not good for any tyrant. Tyrants never look at short-term goals. They want their control to be eternal.

The other way to control people is to find something that everyone wants or needs and then monopolize it. As the old saying goes, he who has the gold makes the rules, and he who has monopoly power over any object the people want or need can set the conditions to get that object.

If I run the only general store in the area, I have free reign to determine who gets food, and how much they have to pay to get that food. I could give it away if I so choose, or I could charge incredible amounts of money. And the people would have to pay whatever price I set for it, or else they wold have to travel incredible distances to try to find another store.

Of course the real problem comes when someone else decides to set up their own little store, or the people decide that they don’t need to go to my store to get what they need. Hey, just about anyone can become a farmer, even if it’s just a little home garden. Then I’m in trouble, because if there’s any other way for people to get food and supplies, they’ll take it.

So what will I do in this hypothetical situation in order to keep my store going, and thus maintain both the profit and the power that I’ve amassed in the area?

Simple: I have to get government to make my business a monopoly.

Oh it wouldn’t be as blatant as you think! I wouldn’t get the local government to pass a law saying flat-out that I’m the only person that can have a store in the area. That kind of idea wouldn’t work. There’d be instant opposition to the idea of me being the ONLY person who could have a store. I’d have to be subtle about it.

For starters, I’d convince the local government to set up a retail licensing system. All commerce, even between neighbors, would have to be licensed and regulated. I could always claim that this system is needed to protect the community from scams and bad business practices. Anyone wanting to engage in commerce would have to meet certain standards or else they wouldn’t be allowed to do business in the area. Who would set the standards? Well since I would be the only one running a store in the area, then I guess I would have to be the "expert" in this matter. Yes, I’d be the one setting the standard… and of course I’d set those standards up so that only I could meet them. I’d also set up private exclusive contracts with my suppliers so that they wouldn’t be able to sell goods to any other store in the area.

Well that would take care of competition, but what about the people who decide to grow their own food? Well then I’ve have to get a different set of laws set up. This time it would be through zoning laws. I’d have to prevent people from putting in gardens or starting their own farms. If there needs to be a reason to justify this, I could always claim that this is for any number of heath or safety reasons. After all, accidents do happen. People could end up poisoning themselves. We don’t want that to happen, do we?

How about people travelling long distances for their supplies? Toll roads work wonders in cutting down on that idea. And they provide the police with the perfect reason to see if someone is violating the local retail laws. Licensing isn’t free, and the local government lives on the tax money being paid to regulate and enforce these things.

Next thing you know, I’ve got the only shop in town and I’m sitting on top of the world! Nice, huh?

Now imagine what it would be like a few hundred years in the future if those standards were to stay in place. Nobody would really know WHY those laws were in place or why my descendants would be the only ones to own and run a store in town. But they would be pretty wealthy and powerful. And they would fight tooth-and-nail to keep those rules in place in the name of "tradition" and "community values".

Sound familiar? Sure it does.

Well let’s go way back during the start of civilization with a certain group of people trying to keep control over their peers. The old way of provoking fear through things like lightning strikes just doesn’t have the same effect as it used to, so they would have to try something else to keep the people in control. They’re not really great hunters and gatherers, so they can’t control the food. They’re somewhat weak and spineless, so they can’t be warlords. But they have brains, so they have to use their intelligence to their advantage.

Let’s suppose that this group of people came up with a way to monopolize on other people’s sexual impulses. To control when and how people have sex. Mating obviously had been going on for quite some time, but usually it was an individual activity and individual choice. There really was no control over who did what with whom, and no doubt there were plenty of fights over who had the "honor" of having sex with whom.

So the first order of business is to set up a way to regulate who could have sex. They come up with a form of personal bonding called "marriage". To explain this to the dominant males, they say that marriage is a form of ownership. When you are "married" to this woman, you "own" her. She lives with you, she sleeps with you by the fire, she shares your food, she does what you tell her to do, and she bears your children. It also means that she can only have sex with you. It gives them a "monopoly" over the woman.

The guys, of course, like that idea. That gives the men power and security, because then they wouldn’t have to worry about some other man taking "their" woman away. It would also keep her with him.

The women are convinced that this "marriage" thing is good for them as well because it means security. They will have a man to protect them and keep them safe from the other men.

The leaders of the tribe or community also like the idea because it cuts down on the internal violence. Instead of fighting over whom gets to have sex with whom, they now can worry about external threats. They can go about hunting their next meal and gathering firewood and protecting the community from other communities.

But this thing called "marriage" has a few stipulations to it. The biggest one is that this group gets to decide who gets married. They set the rules that everyone else must obey in order to get married.

The first rule that they set up, obviously, is that only "married people" can have sex. If you want to have sex, then you have to MARRY that person. And to make sure that you’re only having sex WHEN you’re married, fathers are expected to make sure that their daughters are virgins until they do get married. (Putting the onus on the parents is a nice trick, because it keeps the pressure off the group in question.) This will also bar any other kind of sexual activity that doesn’t involve marriage.

The second rule is that if you want to get married, you can only do so through this group’s permission. Now if this group is smart, they will make sure that the couples in question who want to be married are in good standing with this group. They’ll want to make sure that these couples show up at whatever little group assembly or meeting that they regularly hold. And when the matter of children comes up (because sex often leads to babies), they would insist that the children be raised according to THEIR ideas and directives as well. The couples in question must agree to those terms in order to get married, and thus to have sex.

You can probably guess who the group in question is that came up with this idea, right? You guessed it, it’s the RELIGIOUS group.

Now obviously the above scenario is purely speculative but it does explain why the three dominant religious groups in the world (Judaism, Christianity, and Islam) have a serious issue with anything sexual in nature. Every crusade to rid the world of anything sexual in nature - whether it is the Judeo-Christian obsession with sexual imagery, or even the extreme measure by certain Muslims to bar even the exposure of women in public - has been carried out for reasons that have not been clearly explained until now.

Let’s get brutally honest here… the moralist crusade by those in religious groups to rid the world of anything sexual in nature has got nothing to do with decency or protecting women or protecting children or even because of a perceived hatred of sexuality. It has to do with protecting and preserving their power over the lives of others.

It goes like this: a long time ago, religious leaders convinced the public that the only way they can have sex is to get married, which was an institution that they had complete monopoly power over. And as long as they maintained power and influence over those in government, they maintained that monopoly power over marriage. Then they used marriage as a wedge issue to exert authority over other more personal aspects of society.

So what happened is that religious leaders lost some of that influence over government. As different groups got together and more diverse trains of thought were incorporated in places like America, religion started losing monopoly power over marriage. Marriage became a matter of the STATE, not the church. Again, that wouldn’t be a bad thing as long as religious groups controlled the state, either directly or indirectly. But once the church started losing its influence over the state, they started to lose monopoly power over marriage.

But rather than accept this gradual change of power, religious groups were determined to keep as many elements of that monopoly together as possible. They have fought tooth-and-nail to make sure that any changes that occur are minimal and can be reversed once they secure power again through government.

Now some of the targets of moralism may appear to be misogynous, but when you put them in perspective of trying to preserve a monopoly, then you will see that they make perfect sense to moralists. In fact, moralists will tell you that they have incredible respect and admiration of women, which is why they do the things they do.

Take, for instance, abortion and birth control. Setting aside the debate about when life begins, you’ll find that moralists oppose abortion and birth control in any form on the grounds that it offers a way to control the production of children, which is the only "established" reason to have sex. It makes sex a matter of pleasure, not just for procreation. Moralists see giving women the power to determine when they will produce children to be a threat to their marriage monopoly.

The same reasons apply to why religious groups strictly prohibit sex outside of marriage, cohabitation, masturbation, and any form of sexual activity that cannot result in human reproduction. If people can have sex - or at least some kind of sexual release - outside of marriage, then they don’t need marriage. That directly affects their monopoly.

Divorce is another big issue for moralists. And moralists are wrapped up in the matter not because they don’t believe in divorce, but because divorce is also a threat to their monopoly. Trust me, some of these folks who preach about being for "family values" have been married and divorced two or three times! But since marriage is the instrument by which religious groups use to bring the public in under their control, it goes to stand that THEY would want to be the only ones to determine whether or not a marriage continues. They don’t want some judge or some clerk of court to make that decision for them. Remember: their monopoly, their rules.

Sexuality itself is a threat to the marriage monopoly. Not sex, mind you - which is important for the production of babies and the only "established" justification for marriage to the moralists - but sexuality. Sexuality elicits feelings of pleasure, which is a no-no for moralists. Sex is not supposed to be about pleasure according to the marriage monopolists. It’s supposed to be about making babies. It’s supposed to be a chore, a burden, a curse, and a marital obligation. So anything that gives the idea that sex is pleasurable is branded as wrong by the moralists.

Look at the extent religious leaders pushed this notion. In Victorian England, Protestant leaders demanded that the wooded legs of tables and pianos be covered up for fear that "exposed legs" might lead to thoughts of sexuality. In Islamic circles, you have a variety of standards that require women to cover up some part of their body, or even covered completely, where not even the eyes could be visible. Inhumane? Absolutely. Misogynous? No. This is their way to sustain the marriage monopoly and harp in the message that sex is for making babies, not for pleasure.

And now we have the matter of drugs designed to increase sexual activity, and here you can see a distinct difference in how these drugs are treated in government.

When drugs like Viagra came out to enhance male sexual performance, they were approved quickly and with much fanfare. Playful commercials came out, although moralists quickly complained of the reasons hinted in them. For instance, one commercial for Viagra that drew the ire of moralists involved a guy having wayward thoughts about his wife and having the triangle-shaped edges of the drug appear like the horns of a devil.

Side effects? Sure, there are some effects with these drugs. After all, the drug basically increases blood flow. You have plenty of danger involved with playing with a person’s blood flow.

But a drug designed to enhance female sexual performance doesn’t get quick and easy approval like the male counterpart did. Instead, it has to be carefully studied and considered. The side effects also have to be carefully explored and painstakingly weighed. Scientists and the government stress heavily that they have to be extremely cautious with this kind of drug for women.

It’s strange in that they really didn’t care too much about the side effects for men, but all of a sudden are hypersensitive about what such drugs to do women. That doesn’t sound misogynous at all, does it? Yet if you put it in the context of moralists protecting their marriage monopoly, then it makes perfect sense.

A drug that helps enhance male sexuality is seen as a necessary evil for moralists because male sexuality is ESSENTIAL for reproduction. If a man can’t be aroused, then he can’t take part in the baby making. A woman, however, does not have to be sexually aroused to take part in human reproduction. She just has to physically be there, by choice or otherwise. Female arousal is seen only as an unessential fringe benefit to reproduction in the eyes of the moralists, and anything more than that would be seen as a "threat" to their monopoly. They would treat this stuff as they would treat sex toys and bare midriffs.

Make no mistake, the debate over whether a drug to enhance female sexuality should be made available to the public will be an extremely hard sell. Politicians will not want to approve it for fear that it will piss off the moralists. Moralists will not want it approved because female sexuality is a direct threat to their monopoly power, although they will never admit to it. And most people will never figure out the real reason WHY it’s such a big deal when these same politicians readily approved similar drugs for men. They just do not recognize how this plays into the big picture.

Remember that moralists consider sex to be only about making babies. That’s the only reason why people are supposed to get married, and that’s the only way that moralists can continue their power-hold over others. It’s all about that hold over others.

Strangely enough, it’s precisely this monopoly over marriage that has aggravated other social problems related to marriage. The continual push for people to GET married and to produce children (and thus force a new association with the church) has resulted in many unhappy marriages that end up in divorce. The continual puritanical crusade against sexuality has caused more curiosity about sex and encouraged risky behavior as people try to figure these things out on their own in secret. And the more the religious institutions use government to redouble their efforts, the more problems they create for themselves and for others.

The best way to save marriage as a social institution, then, is to completely destroy the monopoly. Strip away the stranglehold of power from the religious groups and decide once and for all if marriage is a matter of the church or of the state. If it’s a matter of the church, then the state has no business deciding what kind of marriage to recognize. If it’s a matter of the state, then the church has no authority setting the rules for marriage. It’s got to be one or the other, because right now you can’t have it both ways and expect anything good to become of it.

But then again, that has always been the problem with moralists. Much like the rest of the society, they also quite often cannot see the big picture. Their concern is always about two things: how much power they can amass, and how long they can keep that power and use it to their advantage. They don’t care about the repercussions of that power, and quite frankly, they relish in being able to use the complications to their advantage.

Remember that moralism is always about being able to control others, and to do so in a way that doesn’t get them in trouble because of it.