Part of and arguably parent to the dominant cuture of anal penetration, and a form of moral relativism, pansexualism is an ideology which endorses all forms of consensual, adult, "erotic" expression, without making moral judgements as to the validity or value of any given "sex" act.
Thus the pansexualist phrases, "honor diversity," "all sex is good," and "it's all good."
According to pansexualism, almost anything which someone chooses to define as sex is good, and cannot be subject to moral or value judgements, including acts like oral-anal sex, fisting, and of course anal penetration.
Nor should society seek to deter people from being involved in any sex act, even if there's a high risk of disease.
Rather, in the pansexualist view, it's the responsibility of society to provide both education and the means which will enable individuals to do almost anything they please sexually with reduced risk of disease transmission.
Which is the reason that condom campaigns are such a prominent feature of pansexualist public policy.
Rather than suggest to those involved that anal penetration is dangerous, and that other activities might be more pleasurable, truly sexual, and of far lower risk, pansexualists argue that they cannot make such judgements, and may only recommend condoms.
The Man2Man Alliance disagrees with pansexualism in every particular.
First of all, there's no reason to believe that making accurate assessments of pleasure and risk, or that making moral judgements, runs counter to human interests.
Human beings make such assessments and judgements daily in all areas of their lives.
For example, they choose which foods to eat based on their nutritive value, taste, and also the probability that such food will not poison them or otherwise make them ill.
And they may also choose food on the basis of how it was grown -- for example, organically or with chemicals -- or how, if it's animal, it was raised, captured, and / or slaughtered.
Similarly, human beings choose not to kill or steal, not only because of fear of the legal consequences, but because they understand those acts are immoral.
Further, such statements as "all sex is good" are demonstrably false, and in some instances pansexualists have only been able to maintain their beliefs by changing the definition of sex.
For example, most criminologists know that rape is sex -- that is, that most rapists, when asked, say they rape to obtain sex with attractive young women who would not otherwise be available to them.
For most rapists, the violence they use to obtain sex is a means to an end, not the end itself.
However, in the 1970s pansexualists and their feminist allies changed the definition of rape from an act of sex to one of power and control.
In reality, while both elements are present, rape remains a sexual act.
Similarly, from our everyday experience of sex, we know that some sex is great, some good, and some awful.
For example, I had a friend who had one nipple partially bitten off during consensual "rough sex."
My friend, who was a devoted pansexualist and very upset, said of his partner, "He didn't respect my limits."
Clearly, however, although this was by definition of the participants "sex," it wasn't "good."
It was painful and left one participant scarred for life.
The same we argue can be said of anal penetration, which in our view is not sex, and which moreover is painful and can lead to a number of diseases, some of them fatal.
For further discussion of the dominant culture of anal penetration and the Alliance's alternative, see our policy paper Multipartnered Pansexualism or Heroic Love?