Aldous Huxley Quotes
We objected to the morality because it interfered with our sexual freedom.
Huxley, Aldous. Ends and Means. Chatto & Windus, 1937, p. 273.
Both the United States and Canada had laws regulating the sexual behavior of citizens in the privacy of their own homes. It was not just homosexuality that the state attempted to control. Even the specific positions and methods of heterosexual intercourse were controlled by some states. Oral sex, certain positions of intercourse and other “details” could put a person in jail. Canada, a parliamentary nation, changed this by legislation. In the United States, it was the Supreme Court decisions protecting privacy that invalidated these old sexual role restrictions and prescriptions. For example, just 4 years before this quotation was made, 1963, the state of Connecticut was ordered (Griswald v. Connecticut) to release a pharmacist for the “crime” of filling a doctor’s prescription for condoms for a married couple where the wife would likely die if she became pregnant and carried the baby to term.
In America we do not have an official church that can morally speak for the society as a whole. As a result, we often use the law to make a moral statement even if the law is rarely enforced like prostitution. Sometimes we hear the expression, “There ought to be a law” as that is the only way we can express a societal moral value.
Aldous Leonard Huxley was an English writer and philosopher. He wrote nearly 50 books—both novels and non-fiction works—as well as wide-ranging essays, narratives, and poems.
