THE TEXT OF THE MOTION ON SEXUAL FREEDOM PRESENTED AT THE FOURTH NATIONAL CONGRESS OF THE RADIAL PARTY (FLORENCE, NOVEMBER 1967) BY MAURO MELLINI, MARIA RICCIARDI RUOCCO, GABRIELLA PARCA, CLAUDIO MOFFA AND OTHERS. APPROVED WITH THREE VOTES AGAINST AND THREE ABSTENTIONS

ABSTRACT: After having ascertained that the Radical Party, thanks to its anti-ideological conception of politics, differs from the other leftist forces in its capacity of making a central commitment to personal freedom as a premise for the emancipation of society, the motion indicates the concrete objectives and specific initiatives with which the PR can contribute to overcoming those obstacles which keep the citizen from affirming his sexual freedom.

(Agenzia Radicale, No. 145, January 1, 1968)

Considering that:

a) A modern political vision of society cannot neglect careful consideration of man's sexual life, that it profoundly influences social organisation even while being in turn conditioned by it.

b) A veritable sexual policy is indubitably exerted in a conservative and repressive way by clerical power, which draws from said policy and the tools used to pursue it, other nourishment to reinforce itself in other sectors of political and social life. Neither has the appearance in certain Catholic circles of a new kind of language in contrast to the traditional one ever resulted in concrete differences with respect to that policy.

c) The sexual politics of the lay and leftist forces, on the other hand, is absolutely inadequate, and its refusal to consider such an aspect of human life is, in practice, the passive acceptance of the clerical monopoly on the politics in this sector and the formation of public opinion about it.

It having been ascertained that:

1) In the range of leftist political forces, the Radical Party [P.R., ed.] with its anti-ideological conception of politics is involved in the defence of civil rights, considering them a tool for the realisation of concrete liberation for the citizen, and that furthermore the P.R. differs from the other Italian leftist forces especially for its lay and libertarian matrix.

2) Sexual freedom - understood not only in a negative sense as freedom from retrograde legislation, which not accidentally was on the whole worsened by the Fascist dictatorship, but also in its positive function as a not exclusive but certainly indispensable tool for the pursuit of individual happiness - is a fundamental right of human personality, inasmuch as everyone must be able to dispose freely of his own sexuality according to his own moral principles which may not coincide with those of official "morality" and of the majority.

3) Even without basing one's position on a "closed" pansexual ideology, one must recognise that, as historical and sociological experience teach, in the greater number of cases authoritarianism, in its various manifestations at all levels (patriarchal family, authoritarian schools, police state) has and does follow a sexually repressive education so that, on the whole, there exists an evident correlation between all forms of social oppression and sexual repression.

4) That, finally, on a more concrete and current level, in Italy traditional legislation, based on the concept of "honour", of the "indissoluble" family, etc., the absence of a demographic policy (with the imminent danger that the introduction of this material for study in the schools, very soon to occur, will be not a factor for emancipation but rather a new instrument for clerical power), the active, daily poisoning of children's natural development, the persecution of love relationships that have not received the sanction of authority, the recurring "scandals" in Italian life (from the "Mosquito " affair to the twenty-year-long sabotaging of all forms of divorce, to the various episodes of censorship) are all phenomena that also reveal the not merely individual but social nature of the sex problem.

The congress invites the party in each of its instances to create the premises for the development of concrete actions to overcome those de facto obstacles to the citizen in the affirmation of his sexual freedom.

These undertakings must be directed at:

a) spreading lay and libertarian sexual knowledge for the overcoming of taboos and inhibitions of which in its millenary historical tradition the Church has been the main promoter;

b) identify and combat the centres of sexual repression that the dominant political forces exploit for election purposes (such as the great Catholic mass organisations - in particular the youth and feminine ones - or the clerical-canonical monopoly on marriage or the family, or some large publishing networks of the women's press);

c) to promote and sustain reforms of legislation currently in force which in large part conflict with contemporary realities. (In this regard, see the articles concerning the so-called "crime of honour", "rectifying marriages" for crimes of rape, the "corruption" of minors even when the age of the "victim" is unknown, the notion of "obscene" acts by which the obscene is anything that offends a not better specified "sense of shame" and the interpretation of what is a "public place"; see articles concerning abortion and birth control considered as "crimes against the integrity and health of the race", the punishment of adultery, and even the refusal of one of the couples to copulate and the "abuse" of methods of "correction", etc.).