爱华网系列专题：《点亮生活的智慧：人生之钥》
Love, on the other hand, is never a threat. It is deliberate, fashioned by choices, generous to a fault; happy to put the other person’s interests ahead of its own. If sex is the ultimate in self-expression, love is the opposite: an on-going challenge to vanquish the self. A formidable task, much against the grain of human nature. Our ability to love is constantly tested, as we are faced with hurdles that call for mutual negotiation. If we succeed in clearing them, the result will be a deeper attachment, greater affection, a closer bond. Conversely, no relationship, however passionate, will survive if love is lacking. Without love we fall at the first fence. Proponents of the 1960s sexual revolution had a noble aim in mind: to liberate us all from the age-old tyranny of insipid morality, religious condemnation, secrecy and shame, repression, guilt and inhibition.
Love was the new currency, intimacy a birthright, to be enjoyed along with carnal pleasures and made freely available as a healthy, natural means of expression. Loneliness would be a thing of the past, every type of relationship respected; physical and emotional fulfilment available to all, with no fear of disapproval or exclusion. Little did these humanitarians anticipate that, before long, their idealistic concept would be hi-jacked by commercial interests and used for crass material ends with no regard for any values other than financial. Today, sex is a prime marketing tool exceeding all others. From all directions it is forced on to an unsuspecting public, sparing no one, not even little children, from the delusion that nothing but your sexuality gives you a place in the world. How can anybody be expected to withstand this onslaught, brain-washed as we are to accept as the real thing casual couplings or mindless drunken encounters; and to live with the consequences of increased violence against women,more sexually transmitted diseases, children who should never have been born, abuse, confusion and deviation, not to mention emotions laid waste?
