What is interesting is that over that time, we're finally making headway in persuading authority that there is a difference between consenting extraordinary sexual activity and harmful such, and that there is a difference between fiction and reality. We still have to be careful not to promote the latter, as it infringes all kinds of human rights, however the definition of "harmful" is also becoming more fluid.
The slightly older IAR site also walks these lines, and continues on from more classic paper-based publications going back over 60 years, indeed in slightly more culturally-differentiated forms almost as long as writing has existed. Whether you talk of The Perfumed Garden or the Kama Sutra, the Japanese Pillow Books or the Decameron, or even The Song of Solomon from the Bible, here are plenty of examples of early erotica: similarly, there are works in ancient Egyptian and Greek which are on the edge of this, indications that Phoenecian works were along the same lines, some Greek works go in very much the same direction (as recognised on the PonyPlay page), and the Romans had many quasi-erotic texts from the liikes of Petronius and Horatius (Horace). Some of these cultures were very gay-tolerant, so perhaps what is happening is we've thrown off a hyperpuritanical period during the 1950s rather than set a new pace.
That fiction is the imaginative interpretation of practice simply expands the question somewhat, and also enlarges on the question posed here. At the same time, we also face commercial interests which have a less benevolent commitment to the lifestyles (which I expand into the plural as Ataraxia - the IAR's counterpart to Gromet - and I share a viewpoint that these tastes are not purely sexual at a physical and psychological level, it extends into the spiritual) and a US President who is a throwback to the worst of that dictatorial, intolerant and frankly bigoted era. It may not perhaps be quite as extreme as the 1650s UK Puritan movement, and is also echoed by the UK's current wave of hyper-feminist witchunting, where it seems that the simple accusation of "pornography" on a PC is sufficient to invoke the last residual critiques of this domain in Law as justification to end a politican's career. I actually pity those women who engage in such claims, as they are perhaps either driven by frustration at a boring plain-Jane missionary sex life or are acting hypocritically - they are also very much at risk of slander and libel claims if they haven't got evidence to support their charges, which is very likely the case as the Law has been widely available to them for almost my entire lifetime, and they are almost all far younger than me. The last time when it was difficult to pursue such a case as they claim was in the 1960s, I recall someone at my University was able to bring such charges in the mid 1970s. It was rather unusual, admittedly, however it could be done and was, and that's 40 years ago now, suggesting that anyone under the age of 50 has little justification for a complaint now - they should have acted at the time to present the evidence to prove their claims, acting now simply on the basis of say-so infringes the legal presumption of innocence and may well also infringe doctrines of time prescription, where the right to claim has a time limit to avoid posing the impossible quandry to the accused of being able to prove what he was doing at a particular time many years after the event. Could you? Where does the line lie between getting crammed together in a crowded rush-hour train and sexual assault? Many women complain that one and the other are indistinguishable, or is it their norms which are at odds with reality? Why should they claim privilege? I'm diverging from my point, though, that even here there seems to be a distinct D/s dynamic at work.
What is fast becoming even more unacceptable is that many such charges are not actually illegal, and so are untenable in Law. THe UK's Deputy PM faces such charges later today, as I write, which are not charges at all, rather the latest echo of a major political dispute of early ten years standing between the said senior Minister and the Police, who have a far from unblemished record of arbitrary definitions of illegality (I speak from personal experience). This started with a police search of his offices in flagrant contempt of the long-established principle that such locations are exempt from such searches, as he must of necessity hold compromising data in his legal duty representing his constituents, under the doctrines forbidding self-incrimination which date back over 800 years to Magna Carta. It is the personal act of the original Policeman who has left no evidence to support his charges after he retired, leaving him without any grounds for them.
So your work is not yet complete. The ultimate answer is that each must walk their own path in caring for others, and that care has some width. For example, I was nearly entrapped by an event in my life where I was morally constrained to allow the euthanasia of one of my family, which remains illegal in the UK jurisdiction. The case occurred under a different jurisdiction, however, where it was legal, and in any case a natural death happened before the legally-sanctioned euthanasia was enacted. The further complication was that the Coroner's Officer, the policeman charged with executing the Law, was a family member, which removed all possibility of ellision or partiality with the truth: I would have been forced to incriminate myself in utter breach of my Human Rights. This shows that even some extreme real-life situations can be ambiguous: my decision was rooted in a very old legal definition, Misericordia, that the time comes when the most caring thing you can do is ease their inevitable passing, when the alternative is unenduranle agony and perhaps death through starvation, something which would be illegal if someone did it to a dog. The said copper was at the funeral and very welcome, as my actions improved our relationship as a matter of utter probity.
The essential element here is terminal illness, not psychological desperation or other similar parapsychological dynamics. However, it does establish that there are differences in legality at an International level, which is played by politicians to less than neutral ends. That is exactly what our moderators have to be careful of in their decisions, and I write this to remind them that they sometimes tread the very edge of that line to a degree which might endanger the site. I won't cite specific examples, although in one recent series I feel they crossed the line allowing a drowning peril to pass as a matter of extreme torture. I would simply suggest they talk to someone who's been waterboarded as to whether there is any way to pass that off as a matter of care. To my mind there is not: the narrative was one of utter abuse.
So in some ways, my congratulations for having survived 20 years are modulated with the thought that what matters is less where we have come from than where we're going. Let us by all means appreciate the influence our writers and their peers have caused, for example where 50 Shades is acceptable mainstream reading, far pushing the previous boundaries of the likes of DH Lawrence, where choice is a matter of individual taste and safe words a norm to define those boundaries on a case by case, instance by instance basis, however please remember that where we have come from we can all too easily return to, for example if we were to permit Crowley's Satanic maxim of "do as you will" to become the norm. What I'm arguing is that love in its many facets (and CS Lewis' Four Loves is not a poor guide to the different forms of that) should be our theme, not obsessive selfishness as a primary motivation. Yes, it is part of the real world, however it is not something anyone should promote as a norm, as it fundametally weakens social cohesion.
So, in conclusion, yes, well done: however, please also keep an eye on where you take it from here.
