Lawrence Siskind

I used to live in a cult which had very unconventional rituals involving sexual and intimate relationships. Among many strongly held views about the "corrupt" nature of mainstream society, meaning all society outside our particular community, was the belief that it was impossible that a healthy relationship--intimate or even merely sexual--could exist "out there." Since we did believe that sexuality was one of the essential human pleasures of life and that procreation was an important part of creating a new society, a set of rituals had been evolved to facilitate the whole mating process in a saner manner than we thought was commonly practiced in the larger culture.

Honesty, or transparency, was the key element in the social system. Ideally, everybody knew who was attracted to whom. Casually, working together, we would talk about our sexual attractions; and more formally, everybody in the community had mentors with whom we were in almost daily communication about any aspect of our whole lives, including our sexuality. And there were required meetings practically each evening, separated by gender, where we talked a lot about sex and relationships. The women's meeting had an important biological as well as social function, because birth control was performed by visual examination of the woman's cervix with a gynecological speculum by a trained participant, and each woman kept her reproductive cycle charted. This way people could have sex without the corporate interference of latex or drugs.