Morality

To many people, the sum total of morality is how people conduct their sex lives. For most people, being a moral person is synonymous with limiting oneself to a single sexual partner at a time in a committed relationship. To the most conservative people to be a moral, ethical person, one is either celibate if not legally married or confines sex to a strictly monogamous lifelong legal marriage. When one speaks of an "immoral person", the first thing that comes to mind for many people is not someone who embezzles money from the bank where they work, someone who beats his wife, or even a murderer. No, the first thing they think of is someone who strays from the sexual straight and narrow.

The same mindset is at work when it comes to movie ratings. Often, the same parents who nearly have heart failure at the idea of their children seeing a movie with anything more sexual than a quick peck on the cheek don't bat an eye at them seeing all sorts of gratuitous violence on the screen. As a recent example, I know many people who took their five and six year olds to see Mel Gibson's "Passion of the Christ", which was full of nightmarish gory violence. These people looked at me as if I'd lost my mind when I suggested that this movie might be too much for such young children to handle.

Eh, but what do I know? I'm just an immoral libertine, after all.