UPDATE: Philosopher Piers Turner (Ohio State) writes: "In light of your post on Bentham on sexual liberty, I thought you might be interested in this often-missed entry from a diary J.S. Mill kept for a few months in 1854 (when he thought he might die soon and wanted to see 'what effect is produced on the mind by the obligation of having at least one thought per day which is worth writing down') :
March 26
As I probably shall have no opportunity of writing out at length my ideas on this and other matters, I am anxious to leave on record at least in this place my deliberate opinion that any great improvement in human life is not to be looked for so long as the animal instinct of sex occupies the absurdly disproportionate place it does therein; and that to correct this evil two things are required, both of them for other reasons, viz., firstly, that women should cease to be set apart for this function, and should be admitted to all other duties and occupations on a par with men; secondly, that what any persons may freely do with respect to sexual relations should be deemed to be an unimportant and purely private matter, which concerns no one but themselves. If children are the result, then indeed commences a set of important duties towards the children, which society should enforce upon the parents much more strictly than it now does. But to have held any human being responsible to other people and to the world for the fact itself, apart from this consequence, will one day be thought one of the superstitions and barbarisms of the infancy of the human race." [Collected Works, XXVII, 664]
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