Sexuality and the Right to Power

The relationship between individual and state is the only one that matters

Vernor Muñoz, former UN Special Rapporteur on the Right to Education

To do all, Power must be lord of all.

-Bertrand de Jouvenel, On Power [1945]

Anyone seeking to understand the underlying rationale of modern governance could do a lot worse than reading what Bertrand de Jouvenel (1903-1987) had to say. For de Jouvenel, the state was ‘the great phenomenon of modern times’. To summarise in grotesquely oversimplified terms, what he meant by this was that modernity itself was chiefly a playing-out of the consequences of unleashing the ambitions of government (what he called ‘Power’) from theological constraints. The result, as he saw it, was a war perpetrated by Power against all other sources of loyalty - the nobility, the church, once-independent institutions like universities, and ultimately even the family - and this was indeed the very story of modernity itself.

Why was this? The reason was simply that, in order to perpetuate itself, Power would - in the manner of a shark - be driven at all times to expand. It would need to be able to ‘do all’. This was because, without the habits of traditional morality and notions of ‘good conduct’ which derived from religion, there would be simply no reason why in any given circumstance Power would be incentivised to refrain from acting. A people which has lost a traditional mode of conduct is one comprised of self-interested individuals. And, to a self-interested individual, there is no principled critique against the notion that the state should do X, Y and Z for oneself and on the behalf of one’s own priorities in any given circumstance.

It is only natural then that in a secular society the levers of Power should come to be held by people whose instinct is always to act, and who are motivated to act in such a way as to satisfy the self-interest of at least a plurality of the population. That, after all, in a secular society is the only justification why anybody should occupy a position of authority. Power, in other words, would inevitably become the tool of a group of individuals who see problems everywhere and, holding a particular kind of hammer, conceive of all of those problems to be nails. And such people would inexorably be driven to squeeze out from public life any sphere of conduct - religious institutions and the family being the most obvious and fundamental - which might be equipped to resist them and to offer different modes of living other than the self-interested.

To summarise, then, the logic of modernity is for Power to foster self-interest, because serving self-interested individuals is how it justifies its existence. And this means that Power is absolutely implacably opposed to institutions which themselves work against self-interest - the family being the most basic of all - and seeks to break them down or subvert them to its will.

If one were looking for an illustration of this, one would be harder pressed to find a better one than the recent history of what UN human rights experts have had to say about sex.

Take, for example, the following remarks made by Vernor Muñoz, then-UN Special Rapporteur on the Right to Education, in 2010 (the full report is available in English here):

Patriarchalism is…a system which causes and perpetuates serious and systematic human rights violations, such as violence and discrimination against women. Education is the main fundamental tool for combating patriarchalism and generating the cultural shift so necessary for equality among individuals. When it is not properly organized, the education system has the opposite result, perpetuating injustice and discrimination.

One of the main methods used by the patriarchal system and its agents to maintain their sway is to deprive people of the possibility of receiving a human rights education with a gender and diversity perspective….

[We must] be able to look after our health, deal positively, responsibly and respectfully with our sexuality and must therefore be aware of our needs and rights. This is possible only if we receive comprehensive sexual education from the outset of our schooling and throughout the educational process…[D]eciding not to offer sexual education at teaching centres is opting for an omissive form of sexual education, that leaves girls, boys and adolescents on their own as regards the type of knowledge and messages, generally negative, that they receive on sexuality.

The rationale here is as clear as day. To summarise, the point of state education is to generate the cultural shift necessary for equality among individuals. And this is necessary in order for people to be healthy, responsible, and respectful about matters of sex - and not to receive ‘negative’ messages. Poised against this are the forces of ‘patriarchalism’ (the traditional family and the church, mosque, synagogue, or temple), which seek to perpetuate injustice and discrimination. Those forces must be everywhere undermined. They must lose their ‘sway’. All, the implication runs, must be under the sway of Power instead.

This type of thinking is, indeed, sufficient justification for UN human rights activists to transform themselves into experts in the fields of theology and comparative religion. Vernor Muñoz, in the same document, for example, presents himself as having the authority to declare that ‘reducing sexual education to [education about STIs] may create an erroneous association between sexuality and disease, which is as harmful as associating it with sin.’ Earlier this year, the UN’s Independent Expert on protection against violence and discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity considered himself qualified enough in theological matters to opine that ‘the apparent monolithic religious censure of LGBT persons is a recent phenomenon, informed in part by “homocolonialism”.’ The UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights has even come up with a ‘#Faith4rights toolkit’ which aims to educate ‘faith leaders’ in the principle that ‘“Faith” can…stand up for “Rights” so that both enhance each other.’ What did Anselm of Canterbury or Al-Ghazali have on these people? It is, it seems, for Power to determine the meaning and scope of religion, and Power alone.

Much more saliently, however, are the legal ramifications of all of this. In the eye of Power, certain rights - freedom of conscience, freedom of expression, freedom of association - pose particular problems, because on the face of it they exist to carve out precisely the kinds of exemptions from interference which Power must necessarily abhor. Hence, unsurprisingly, UN human rights experts are becoming increasingly suspicious that these rights have any practical usefulness. Muñoz, again, for example, calls ‘the need to respect the community’s cultural and religious values’ a ‘concern’, given the ‘challenge’ of ensuring that ‘the concerns of different groups can be expressed without imposing personal moral values on the general public since this compromises the individual’s freedom to choose a lifestyle’. This means that ‘undue influence’ from ecclesiastical authorities and the ‘false dichotomy between family and state’ must be broken down - with the clear consequence being the erosion of the freedom of conscience in particular.

Lest there be any doubt about this, we are told quite clearly, for example, by the Committee on the Rights of the Child that ‘States should ensure that adolescents are not deprived of any sexual and reproductive health information or services due to providers’ conscientious objections’; by the Special Rapporteur on the right to freedom of expression that freedom of speech does not protect ‘the narrative of “protection of the family”’ in Africa or calls in Eastern Europe for ‘protecting the “natural” family’s rights’; and by the former Special Rapporteur on the right to religious freedom that ‘the autonomy of religious institutions falls within the forum externum dimension of freedom of religion or belief, which, if the need arises, can be restricted’. Where these rights might suggest, in other words, that a barrier between Power and other sources of loyalty should remain, they must be reinterpreted in such a way that they indicate the opposite. Freedom of conscience, expression and association may be manifested only in such a way that they accord with the strictures imposed by the state, and which always - by definition - lead to the maximalisation of self-interest and the atomisation of all individuals from any ties of loyalty beyond that which they owe to Power itself.

The end result of this, of course, is the genuinely chilling conclusion that the relationship that trumps all others is that between the individual and government. And at times we see this conclusion stated almost explicitly. Here, for a final time, is Victor Muñoz, from the document linked to at the start of this post:

Although fathers and mothers are free to choose the type of education that their sons and daughters will have, this authority may never run counter to the rights of children and adolescents, in accordance with the primacy of the principle of the best interests of the child.

He does not say so in so many words, but the implication is clear enough: mothers and fathers are important, yes, but what really matters are the rights of the child, and it is the state that is best placed to realise them. The dots almost join themselves. Ultimately it is the state which has the child’s best interests at heart, and which knows and understands those interests best of all. Parental love is nothing when set against this benevolent and all-consuming presence. As de Jouvenel himself put it:

We are the witnesses of a fundamental transformation of society, of a crowning expansion of Power…A beneficent authority will watch over every man from the cradle to the grave [emphasis added], repairing the disasters which befall him, even when they are of his own making, controlling his personal development and orientating him towards the most appropriate use of his faculties.

The operative phrase is emphasised: ‘from the cradle to the grave’. This, we now see, is to be literally understood, and its implication for the family is obvious.

In closing, then, we are compelled to confront what - to a secular society and (undoubtedly) a largely secular readership - is the deeply unpalatable conclusion that secularism has certain inevitable consequences, and one of these is the totalising tendency which the state now exhibits. Even if it was desirable to reverse this trend (and it hardly seems that many in modern society would be inclined to conclude that it is), it is not realistically possible to do so - at least until those consequences play out as they must. To point out that those consequences exist and that they have their negative implications is by no means to advocate a return to medieval modes of governance or to reverse the basic principles of non-discrimination - and my remarks here should in no sense be interpreted to suggest that I would advocate those things. It is merely to attempt to be clear-eyed about our predicament, and where it is likely to lead us: Power’s conclusion, in which it, to remind you, ‘does all’ - right down to governing our sex lives and our attitudes towards sexuality ‘throughout the educational process’.