Earlier today Valdearg had a diary
...trying to foster a culture that promotes sexual freedom and doesn't stigmatize the many various kinds of perfectly healthy sexual behavior, such as masturbation, pre-marital sex, homosexual sex, and even the less practiced, but just as acceptable (and fun!) behaviors, such as threesomes, group sex, exhibitionism, and voyeurism
And of almost 170 comments, most didn't address his central point, most were side tracks into kids, family structure, and who is/isn't a "liberal". And a lot of comments seemed to endorse the conservative assumption that "liberal" and "libertine" are the same; enough! Somewhere around comment #140, I remembered a suggestion I have made, often to great effect during workshops. Make it about food.
This is, of course, an extension of the BDSM-er's use of the word "vanilla" to describe non-BDSM people. I have never heard, "She's vanilla, or "they're a 'vanilla' couple used in a derogatory way, it's just a descriptive, or an expression of disappointment. (Damn, he's so cute, and so vanilla!") I can't see how vanilla can be considered derogatory, I'd think vanilla was one of the top three ice cream flavors, not to mention it's use in pastries. Vanilla isn't a negative in a person's sexual choices, it just is.
But, as far as I know, there's no swinger's word for non swingers; they're in the "lifestyle" and others aren't. Same for the shoe-people, the corset-people, the ZOMGitsChriss is Muhammed people. I'm not suggesting that there needs to be any more additions to the vocabulary, I'm suggesting that the analogy between food and sex is a good one, except that everyone needs to eat.
It works like this. There are some people who think that sex should always be a comforting, loving expression between two committed people. Try that with food; all food should be "comforting", poached chicken breast, mashed potatoes, squishy peas. Macaroni and cheese. Bologna on white with Miracle Whip.
There are some people who, while not that committed to comfort, don't enjoy any kind of discomfort. Middle-America food, at it's best, pork tenderloin sandwiches in Iowa, Maryland fried chicken, pretty much anything you can get at a booth in a county fair anywhere. (Where do those great roasted ears of corn come from? Wow!) These are the famous "vanilla people". Party boys/girls, swingers, threesomes and more-somes, but if they run ads, they always write in "no pain".
Then there's the sliding scale of people who like BDSM. From the mild, "tie me up, my safe word is 'blue' and I don't like marks" , to the hardcore, "Own me, and any night you tie me up to sleep without a new set of bruises, I'm holding against you, more than 6 nights in a month and we're breaking up." These, obviously, are the people that run the gamut from "Chevey's green sauce" to "barb-wire chili" (hurts going in, hurts coming out).
What I want to say is this. People have opinions about sexual mores. People have opinions about food. Try looking at your opinions about sexual contacts/activity/morality as if it was a conversation about food. Yes, there are vegetarians/vegans who think meat is immoral. Yes, there are any number of people who think that any one of tens of thousands of sexual activities are immoral. The "all porn is degrading to womyn, even gay porn" which I've never figured out. Then there are the grass-fed beefers, the lacto-ovo vegetarians, the "I'm faithful to my wife, except on business trips people" (both boys and girls in that bunch, I know I've boinked 'em!)
But food isn't, unless you're kosher/halal/etc. a religious question. It's what you grew up with, many people grow out of their early food prejudices; make an analogy with food and see if it makes any sense. Logically, analogy isn't reliable as a tool, but we're not talking about logic, from what I saw in today's diary, we were dealing with feelings. Try applying the feelings you have for one important subject to another, then go back and see how you feel about the first.