There is a crime wave sweeping through Sumter County, Florida. In June, a 69-year-old woman and her 49-year-old boyfriend were sentenced for having sex in a town square. And last month, Charm Gilbert, 40, and James Adams, 47, were caught having sex in full view of the residents of a retirement community.
The deputy reported that when he approached the couple around 8:40 AM, Gilbert was “lying on an electrical box with her legs spread open.” Her breasts were exposed and she “also had her shorts and underwear fully off exposing her vagina,” the cop added. As for Adams, he was “fully naked exposing his penis.”
For the crimes of indecent exposure and disorderly conduct, the couples were each sentenced to six months in jail and over $1000 in fines and court fees. It is appropriate that having sex in public is a crime, and a sentence of six months in jail plus fines is just. I fully support the law and the punishment. What I cannot quite figure out is why.
Other forms of obscenity make sense to me. When people in the Middle East are sentenced to death for blasphemy, the punishment is admittedly extreme, but I at least understand the motive behind it. A lot of people need their religious beliefs to cope with the suffering of life and the finality of death, and anything that threatens these bulwarks against reality must be disturbing indeed. As for scatological obscenity, that makes sense too. Excrement is noxious for various reasons, and we have evolved with instincts to avoid our own filth as well as that of others.
But that sex, being so essential to reproduction, should also be disturbing to the point that we need laws to protect us from it is paradoxical. Now, the objectionable nature of some forms of sex is easily understood for moral reasons. Rape and child molestation are crimes going beyond mere indecency and obscenity, and thus deserve harsh punishment. The universal taboo against incest is readily explained by reference to birth defects and congenital diseases arising from inbreeding. And while no longer a crime, adultery is universally condemned. In general, these are forms of sexual activity that are immoral, and what I am concerned with is our aesthetic objections to sex, for even when we have moved safely away from sex that is immoral, its offensive nature remains.
Sex feels better than it looks. I have seen couples on dance floors who were basically just kissing, oblivious to all around them in their sweet sensuality, while people sitting at the tables were screaming, “Get a room!” I would never suggest that we have laws against public osculation, but I think the kind of kissing found in old movies, where only the lips were involved, was much more romantic than the French kissing that started showing up in movies after the sexual revolution. And when Al Gore gave Tipper that big sloppy kiss the night he received the nomination for president, he just about lost my vote right there. The multi-billion dollar industry of pornography makes the issue even more perplexing. Many of those same people who were grossed out just watching others kiss on a dance floor have probably spent plenty of time viewing pornography, even paying to see the most outrageous forms of obscenity of all. Clearly, the desire to watch something that will induce erotic passion is the reason for pornography, but it has to overcome a countervailing feeling of revulsion, and it is this revulsion that I find perplexing.
Our aesthetic objections to sex must also be distinguished from situations in which sex meets with disapproval for reasons other than the moral ones mentioned above. In societies in which a father can demand a bride price for his daughter, the thought of her having sex before he can sell her might anger him, but he would probably be equally angered by any loss of property, and so that falls under a different category. More generally, it is not unusual for parents to interfere with the mating prospects of their children, even when no money changes hands. In Vanity Fair, George Osborne tells his father that, against his father’s wishes, he is going to marry Amelia. When he leaves, his father takes down the family Bible, turns to the genealogical section, picks up a pen, and strikes out his son’s name. But the disturbing nature of sex that I am talking about has nothing to do with money or vanity.
As noted above, we are quite comfortable with our own sexuality, at least while it is happening, though shame or regret may come later. It is only the sex act of others that bothers us. And this makes sense to a degree. When we have sex, we stand a good chance of reproducing, but when others have sex, that has nothing to do with our own reproductive success. Actually, that is not quite true. As sociobiologists have pointed out, we share a lot of our genes with our close kin, and thus their reproductive success is a partial reproductive success for our own genes. Given that, you would think that the thought of some close family member having sex would gladden our hearts. (“Hey, guess what! Mom’s got herself a boyfriend she can have sex with, so we might just get ourselves another brother or sister. Isn’t that wonderful?”) Instead, we are often quite disturbed by the thought of a close family member having sex.
Once again, money may be an issue. Children may fear that a parent may squander all the money they were planning on inheriting, and have already come to think of as theirs. As Machiavelli said, “A man will sooner get over the death of his father than the loss of his patrimony.” In fact, one of the best uses of a prenuptial agreement is to reassure your children that they will not lose out financially when you get married again. Beyond that, there is the loss of affection. Maternal jealousy may arise from a mother’s fear that her son will be less attentive to her now that he has fallen in love. Conversely, a child typically believes he should be the center of his mother’s life, that she lives solely for him, and this possessive illusion can be shattered by the sight of her affection being directed elsewhere. Even going beyond the family, when a young guy gets himself a girl, his friend may be bewildered by the way he is suddenly abandoned. In addition, we may not like the new love interest of a friend or family member, and we dread having to socialize with him or her. In other words, sex can be disruptive, causing trouble for friends and family alike.
But again, these disruptions must be distinguished from the disturbing aspect of sex per se. In White Hunter Black Heart (1990), Clint Eastwood plays a movie director who wants to hunt elephants. One night, when objecting to some subject being brought up that he does not wish to have discussed, he says, “That is like my mother’s sex life. You’re not even supposed to think about it.” Of course, in saying that, he immediately forced everyone at the table to envision his mother going at it hot and heavy. But that aside, the point is that quite apart from all the other considerations we have discussed, the thought of one’s mother having sex is intrinsically disturbing, so much so that we try not to think about it, and we do not want our friends to think about it either. And God forbid we should accidentally witness her making the beast with two backs.
Family considerations are complicated, so let us return to the couples having sex outdoors in Sumter County. One might argue that the reason we have laws against that sort of thing is to protect our children from seeing such, and that is a very good reason indeed. But there are two problems with this answer as an explanation for why public sex is disturbing. First, young animals see older animals having sex without any ill effects, and I have even read that apes need learn about sex by watching adults doing it. So, we have to wonder why it is only when we get to human beings that witnessing sex becomes harmful to children. Second, it is not that we find public sex offensive because we are worried that children might see it. Rather, it is because we as adults find public sex offensive in the first place that we then worry about its effect on those of a tender age. If we ourselves were not disgusted by seeing two people having sex, it might never occur to us that it needed to be hidden from the kids.
Well, it beats me. After setting aside all the other reasons for wanting to restrict the sexual activity of others, reasons having to do with morality, money, vanity, loss of affection, and social disruption, there still remains that immediate, visceral, feeling of revulsion in seeing others having sex, or, in some cases, just thinking about it. And thus it is that the couples in Sumter County had to be locked up, in part to keep them from continuing with their crime spree, and in part to deter other exhibitionist couples from doing the same. We just do not want to be grossed out by such things, even if we do not fully understand why.