Rant: Sex and the single slave

This article about ancient Rome (and the onset of Christianity) mentions how those nice orgies might not have been so nice:

So do we blame the Christians for bringing down the curtain on those merry scenes? Yes, but against a background that comes as a chill reminder of the lasting strangeness of the ancient world. If one asks if women in these scenes were free persons (and even how many of the men were free, for some might be slave gigolos), the unexpected answer would be: far fewer than we would wish to think. Many of the women were slaves. The jolly free-for-all, which we like to imagine as forming a timeless human bond between us and the ancients, was based upon the existence of a vast and cruel “zone of free access” provided by the enslaved bodies of boys and girls. Slavery, “an inherently degrading institution,” was “absolutely fundamental to the social and moral order of Roman life.”

Such exploitation still exists, and is widespread in the third world: because in poor countries employees dare not say no for fear of losing their job. And students will obey their teachers, young people will obey their pastor, their older relatives, or the powerful neighbor who abuses them.

So when Obama and the US State Dept push the sexual freedom agenda, maybe they should ask what laws are being destroyed; those that stop freedom or those who protect those who are being exploited.

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Update:: Rev Sensing has some links.