Copyright
2001, Michael Ra Bouchard, Ph.D. All rights reserved.
Aloha Marital Health & Happiness
Celebrating Life,
July 4, 2001
Dear Friends,
Today, on
this 225th anniversary of the founding of our great country, let us be sure
to take a moment and give thanks to the Founding Fathers for their courage
and wisdom in declaring our nation independent. Their proclamation came at
great personal cost for many of them, and for some, even death. Blessedly,
this “Noble Experiment” has indeed endured the test of time, and as
imperfect as democracy may be, it remains inarguably the best governing
system as yet devised.
Let us
remember today to honor and extend gratitude to all our fellow country men
and women who’ve contributed to the creation of this magnificent country
since its founding. Let us especially remember and thank the brave military
men and women of our armed forces who have served and protected our country
seamlessly for over two centuries. Whenever you meet a person in uniform
make an effort to acknowledge and thank them for their service and
sacrifice. And let us salute and pay respects to those who made the ultimate
sacrifice for the values, morals, and principles for which our nation
stands. Take a few minutes while enjoying your 4th of July holiday and
silently thank these patriots. It's not much to ask for the price they paid.
Our
predecessors established and built this mighty nation with their vision,
sacrifices, hard work, defense of and dedication to the ideals, values and
way of life that we as Americans have held dear since its inception. Each
generation has continued to make the American Dream possible for millions
more, creating opportunity and hope for a better life for themselves and
their families, through a dedicated commitment to hard work, self
determination, and democratic principles.
Perhaps chief
amongst these priceless principles is freedom of speech—which includes the
right to freedom of sexual speech—a right which only just recently was
reaffirmed through the Supreme Court’s refusal to regulate sexual content
over the Internet. Even still, this important right must never be taken for
granted. On the contrary, it and all our basic rights must be vigilantly
safeguarded if we are to continue to have freedom of thought, expression,
and self-determination, sexual or otherwise.
As insidious
as external sexual repression is, with equally determined vigor we must also
confront internal sexual
oppression which strikes stealthily from within. It’s not always easy to
recognize and identify as such, since it attacks through internalized sexual
self-judgment, self-repression, guilt, and self-punishment. These are just a
few of the “Trojan horse programs” running in many of us that need to be
quarantined and deleted whenever they’re found. To dump these sexual
self-tyrannies and reboot our sexuality demands of us to first recognize,
confront, and then ruthlessly rout them out.
Towards such worthy ends as these and more, below is the “Sexual Bill of
Rights” as created by the Institute for Advanced Study of Human Sexuality in
Sexual Bill of Rights
1. The
freedom of any sexual thought, fantasy or desire.
2. The right
to sexual entertainment, freely available in the market place, including
sexually explicit materials dealing with the full range of sexual behavior.
3. The right
not to be exposed to sexual material or behavior.
4. The right
to sexual self-determination.
5. The right
to seek out and engage in consensual sexual activity.
6. The right
to engage in sexual acts or activities of any kind whatsoever, providing
they do not involve nonconsensual acts, violence, constraint, coercion or
fraud.
7. The right
to be free of persecution, condemnation, discrimination, or societal
intervention in private sexual behavior.
8. The
recognition by society that every person, partnered or unpartnered, has the
right to the pursuit of a satisfying consensual socio-sexual life free from
political, legal or religious interference and that there need to be
mechanisms in society where the opportunities of socio-sexual activities are
available to the following: disabled persons; chronically ill persons; those
incarcerated in prisons, hospitals or institutions; those disadvantaged
because of age, lack of physical attractiveness, or lack of social skills;
the poor and the lonely.
9. The basic
right of all persons who are sexually dysfunctional to have available
nonjudgmental sexual health care.
10. The right
to control conception.
"Sexual rights are human rights"
I encourage you to respect and uphold these Basic
Sexual Rights in how you personally live your life, and urge that you not
moralize, criticize or judge yourself or others. It’s vitally important you
remember that sexual abuse, violence, and non-consensual actions are
always
incompatible with the values of sexual self-determination, and therefore are
unacceptable under any and every circumstance.
Beginning
today and henceforth, choose to affirm your sexual independence and freedom
of speech by continuing to exercise your right to access and share
sexuality-affirming, easily procurable, informed and accurate sex
information with consenting others. Do so online and in your community, and
wherever else it can make a difference. You must understand—only choice that
is individually made from informed and accurate information, and which
respects our personal beliefs and value system, is ever truly choice derived
through the expression of free will.
This 4th of July holiday, celebrate your freedom by responsibly asserting
your sexual independence, beginning by making a personal commitment to do
whatever it takes to break free from the ties and “tyrannies of the shoulds”
that continue to hold you bound. Once you do you’ll ignite a cavalcade of
fireworks in honor of your personal sexual emancipation and happiness. The
Founding Fathers were unequivocally emphatic about the self-evident truths
they boldly proclaimed in the Declaration of
“…are
endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these
are Life,
Take
notice that, in their great wisdom, the Founding Fathers included the right
to the pursuit of happiness in the Declaration of Independence—they didn’t
include the right to happiness itself—just its
pursuit.
They knew full well the
thing is we each have to catch up with it ourselves!
Godspeed to you in your pursuit, and God bless America,
Dr. Michael
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Aloha and A Hui Hou! |
Aloha
Sexual Health & Happiness
PO Box 9,
Pahoa, HI 96778
DrMichael@lovekindly.com
phone:
808.965.8800
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