Let’s sex it up because we must. National Council’s debate yesterday was most immature to say the least. It was dramatic bathos to extent it could go.

Bhutan’s penal code says that a person is guilty of the offence of unnatural sex if an individual engages in sodomy or any other sexual conduct that is against the order of nature.

The whole debate was about how to put this clause in the modern perspective. But the MPs got it wrong entirely.

Yes, the definition of what manner of sex is natural or not is important. Some of the MPs brought into the debate bestiality and necrophilia even. They are not alone, however. What about kinkism where couples experiment sexual innovations of the kinds to satisfy their own carnal needs? These are private matters. Where is the role of law here?

Most important, however, we are missing the real purpose of the debate. There ought not to have been this debate in the first place. That a person is guilty of the offence of unnatural sex if the individual engages in sodomy or any other sexual conduct that is against the order of nature is broadly enough. The law is clear.

Activists and flibbertigibbets can be stentorian but we must get to where reasonableness is.

By their demands, even touching oneself in occasional sexual moods can be a crime. Why and how not? Who is going to take account of it all then? And, ergo, why should it be a national issue unnecessarily?

There are also those who argue the point based on the availability of capacity—economic and human resource availability of the country. This is inane at best. Such myopic views are better kept aside.

We have come to a stage of development, we believe, where we are perfectly capable of deciding the growth of our own society. And that doesn’t have to be by taking wholesome in some irrelevant ideas from abroad. Our main problem is that we often fail to look in.

The bathos we could sink in is that when latex-gloved doctors insert his or her fingers up our behind and we will have to accept it on the grounds of medical intervention-that is the image of reality. Is that unnatural sex or medical intervention? Where is the space for debate then—what really is against the order of nature?

Our lawmakers have more issues of national interest to deliberate on, the economy on which the national image rests and that means taking employment into consideration.

We could do well as a nation to debate on issues that affect us seriously today than the problems like  agreeing on definitions about sexual conduct.  How the parliamentarians see is a different thing altogether. The voters see it very differently. There is now a gap that is widening visibly.

There are development needs more urgent than the definitions of sexual deviance. Invest more time in the nation’s urgent national development programmes. That’s what our parliament’s role should reflect.

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