Atheism And Sexually Transmitted Diseases

According to new statistics from the Swedish Institute for Communicable Disease Control (Smittskyddsinstitutet), there was a 38 percent rise in reported cases of the two diseases among Swedes in general.

Worst hit, however, are young women between 15 and 24, where the number of cases increased by 57 percent.^[8]

The unmasking this week of an animal sex network by the Stockholm newspaper Expressen has again highlighted the issue. Members of parliament are urging a tightening of the laws (bestiality was decriminalized along with homosexuality in 1944) but the government is resisting the pressure.

Sweden has had a pioneering approach towards sex, at least since the 1960's when critically acclaimed films such as I am Curious Yellow depicted the society's free-wheeling attitudes. The country was one of the first to shed the stigma of single motherhood and, while Swedes talk less about sexual matters nowadays than 30 years ago, they are still pushing back the boundaries... Legal limits are set mainly on the commercial exploitation of sex: thus, while prostitution is technically legal, customers are seen as offenders who exploit and abuse women. Cameras have been set up near the entrances of brothels and clients leaving the premises can be fined on the spot.

But bestiality and the whole seedy sub-culture surrounding it is straining Swedish tolerance to bursting point. Religious Swedes say it violates a fundamental taboo: a passage from Leviticus 18 states: “And you shall not lie with any beast and defile yourself with it, neither shall any woman give herself a beast to lie with it: it is a perversion." In the Middle Ages, men were typically burned to death for having sex with animals. Most countries nowadays either outlaw the practice entirely (most states in the US) or prosecute penetrative sex with animals (Britain). Sweden, though, has not taken a religion-based stance. Rather, it seems to accept the idea that sex with animals can be in some way consensual. If it causes injury to the animal it can be prosecuted, although in practice only two out of the 115 cases registered have ever been investigated.^[11]

The research survey of 1535 people, conducted by the Australian National University, revealed that belief in evolution is associated with moral permissiveness. Darwin himself apparently feared that belief in evolution by the common man would lead to social decay. The survey showed that people who believed in evolution were more likely to be in favor of premarital sex than those who rejected Darwin’s theory. Another issue which highlighted the contrast between the effect of evolutionary ideas and that of biblical principles was that Darwinians were reported to be ‘especially tolerant’ of abortion.

In identifying the primary factors determining these differences in community attitudes, the author of the research report, Dr Jonathan Kelley, said: ‘The single most important influence after church attendance is the theory of evolution.’^[13]