I did some talking about matters sexual in my Tuesday column, and I would like to elaborate. I am not really a mainstream person where my views are concerned, but I do believe that the “one man, one wife” thing is ideal for business success, if you can handle it. It’s a tough proposition in Belize, because temptation is all around you. But, the Christian ideal is ideal. And remember now, I am not a practicing Christian.
It’s been explained to me that polygamy was introduced into some Asian societies as a reaction to the loss of males during wars. We are seeing dramatic loss of our young males in Belize to gun violence, jail, drug addiction, and so on. My sources say there’s been a visible increase in lesbian activity amongst our young ladies. Cause and effect, I would tend to think
When we males discuss homosexuality in Belize, we pay little attention to lesbians. In fact, I have a younger brother who sounds very tolerant of lesbians. The negative focus is on men having sex with other men. This is a major turnoff for most straights.
I have this very macho friend who was doing some work on a house one day, and, through a window, saw two lesbians going at it. My very macho friend was intimidated by the tireless nature of their activity. No matter how macho a man is, once he experiences orgasm he almost always requires time to recover. Not so in the lesbian world. The business is mechanical.
I have a beef with the British system where jail regulations are concerned. Belizeans know that Mexican prisons are tough, tough places, but, in Mexican jails conjugal visits are allowed, in private quarters, if you have the money to pay for it. Now, isn’t that more civilized than the British/Belizean jails where men are confined 24/7 with other men?
You will say to me, we send men to jail to punish them. Listen, the loss of freedom of movement is punishment enough. All you’re doing with denial of conjugal visits is increasing male rape and homosexuality behind prison bars. In addition, you make the prison warders’ jobs more difficult, because men without sex are always “on cock.” Such men are volatile and dangerous people.
In traditional Maya society, they allow young girls to marry legally from as early as 12 years of age. This is illegal under British/Belizean law. If this was working so well for the Maya for so many centuries, millennia even, and it was, then you can see where a free thinker like myself will say, hey, the Maya must know something about themselves that we do not.
Some people think the custom in some parts of Africa and Asia for parents to choose spouses for their children, what they call “arranged marriages,” is a denial of freedom and individual rights. People who study these things say that the arranged marriages have a higher success rate than the “fall in love and marry” business in the West. How you figure?
Everyone agrees that the family is the most important unit in society where child rearing is concerned. All our focus, therefore, should be on how best to encourage and preserve family structures, the reason being that our children are the most precious gifts with which we have been blessed.
The British Honduras/Belize in which I grew up was not, in practice, a rigid system where obeying strict Christian prescriptions for marriage was concerned. How could it have been, when our working men so often had to travel and spend years and years abroad? Our men went to Britain for World War II; they went to Panama to work in the Canal Zone; they had gone to Honduras to work the Standard and United Fruit banana plantations; they would flock to the United States to seek a better life for their families. Women would be left alone for unbearably long periods of time. Economics undermined morality. Later, women attempted abortions in order to rebuild their homes. Some of these women died rather than reveal who had tried to “help” them. This is real. When you’re poor, everything is more stressful.
In those days of colonialism, our community was held together by “extended families.” Any adult was your father; any adult was your mother. Maybe there was always child molestation, and it was just that we didn’t know. Today, we know it is very dangerous out there for our children. It’s scary.
We can’t be nervous or shame-faced about sex any more. It’s in our living rooms on cable television day and night. Our children are being bombarded. The churches say, abstain. The television says, revel and enjoy yourself. Television is every day. The church service is once a week. Who’s winning?