Humanist values suggest we should: Understand others, Be Kind, Foster Human Rights and Dignity, Encourage Lives to Flourish and Seek Justice.
Applied to sexualities this means
Positively: The better side of sexual life seeks out
1. Empathic and dialogic sexualities – understand others: appreciate and dialogue with your sexual partners and their worlds.
2. Caring and loving sexualities- be kind and look after others: care for the sexual other as well as your self.
3. Respectful and dignified sexualities- cultivate sexual and gender rights and dignity: respect others, their dignity and their rights being aware of their fragility and vulnerability.
4. Sexual well being- encourage lives to flourish: enabling sex and relationships to work well.
5. Sexual and gender justice (just sexualities): create free, fair and equal sexual relations.
Negatively: The dark, damaged side of sexual life is revealed in
1. Intolerant sexualities: the lack of appreciation of sexual differences and the closure of dialogues about sexualities
2. Unkind sexualities, sexual violence and cruel sexualities: sexualities become embroiled in being unkind to the others: often cruelty, violence, and hatred.
3. Dehumanized sexualities: treating sexual others with no dignity or respect and lacking any rights to their own sexualities.
4. Wasted sexualities: unfulfilled sexualities lacking in any kind of ‘quality’
5. Unfair and unequal sexualities: sexual lives damaged through poverty, competition, greed and the stark inequalities of intersecting class, gender, race, age and nation.
see pages 37-8