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By Larbi Arbaoui
Morocco World News
Taroudant, Morocco, June 27, 2012
The proposal to repeal the Penal Code Article 490, which prohibits sexual relations outside of marriage does not please everyone, and rather made so many gorges rise.
This proposal doesn’t provide a solution, but creates more problems and paves the way to endless social and ethical issues. Sexual freedom endorsed by few activists should not be understood as a mere political card aiming to kindle the rough of Islamist-led government. For human right activists, this provision of law is an obstacle to sexual freedom, which – they believe – is one of the freedoms that every individual has to be endowed with. But can we just stop at that level?
Sexual freedom advocated by the so-called human right activists is to be understood as an explicit sexual liberation movement aiming to increase the acceptance of sex outside social institutions, implicitly including heterosexual, lesbianism and homosexuality. These proposals, which are in stark contrast with Moroccan religion and culture, may lead other people to claim public nudity as unalienable personal rights, the normalization of homosexuality as an alternative form of legal sexuality and more likely abortion will be legalized. Before you come down on the side of a certain party, I would like to invite you to consider these facts, which are the result of sexual intercourse outside marriage.
Every year in Morocco, according to figures of the Moroccan Association of the National Institution for Solidarity with Women in Distress (Insaf), quoted by AFP, more than 80,000 children are born out of wedlock. Such alarming figures of homeless and abandoned children call into question the responsibility of everyone and the role of family.
What future is there for babies who are the result of a fleeting ephemeral pleasure? Who is to blame for children who have no chance to have a social status or to be recognized by their fathers? It is up to you to guess under what circumstances these children will be raised and educated so that they can function properly in their society.
Sexual freedom under the pretext of securing individual rights is in collision with the requirements of international human rights, which emphasize the respect of the specificities of a certain nation. These claims are very dangerous to the natural balance and stability of the society. Family is not only a social pretext, under which sexual rapport is practiced legally, but a social institution that affords protection and care for the babies and also a cultural unit which teaches human values and beliefs to the next generations.
Susan L. Brown from Bowling Green State University found that children born to married couples, on average, “experience better education, social, cognitive and behavioral outcomes.” Any violation of family as a social and cultural unit is a knockdown to the history and human values.
People who have no respect for the family, social values and cultural considerations that characterize a certain people are likely to be driven by their uncontrolled sexual desires. I do believe, that sexual desires if not suppressed and controlled outside a social pretext, that will protect both partners, will naturally lead the whole population to chaos and will bring the society to a moral decadence. At the absence of regulations and explicit penal codes, such people, who advocate sexual freedom, will be immersed in an extreme indulgence in sensual pleasures that may be the cause of so many health complications and social disorder.
The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Morocco World News’ editorial policy.
