The Libertine Gospel by Ronald MacLennan

They call freedom a virtue when it conforms to their paper-thin values—when it is neat, bloodless, and contained within the fence of legality. They whisper it proudly in textbooks and speeches, but only so far as it marches to the rhythm of the state, the family, and the church. The moment freedom becomes wild and uncompromising, it ceases to be a virtue and becomes, in their trembling mouths, a vice.

I, with unrepentant lips, declare: yes. It is a vice, and it is divine.

To me, freedom is not a prize to be awarded for good behavior. It is not a virtue to be earned by being agreeable or obedient. It is a vice, voluptuous and brutal, that one must be willing to bleed for. I would rather bathe in my defiance than drink the stagnant wine of respectability. I would rather lose everything than become one of their neutered saints, choking on the incense of conformity.

When I speak of freedom, I do not speak of ballots or borders or the right to choose between one tyrant and another. I speak of the sovereignty of the self—that wild, terrible force that begins in the marrow and rises like smoke into every thought and action. True freedom is the ability to want what you want without shame, to act without begging permission, and to live without apology.

They fear this kind of freedom because it cannot be bought, cannot be governed, and cannot be institutionalized. It is feral. It walks naked into the world and dares to say, “Here I am. I do not ask for your blessing.”

I exalt that freedom. I kneel before it, not in submission but in reverence. I am its priest and its disciple, its philosopher and its w***e. Every time I spit in the face of propriety, I offer a psalm. Every time I choose pleasure over prudence, I light a candle in its name. Every time I speak a forbidden truth, I ring its church bells.

They ask, “But what of morality?”I answer, “Morality is the chastity belt of the mind.”

It is a chain forged by frightened men, passed down like a rusted heirloom, clamped upon each new generation by those too timid to taste life. I do not reject morality because I am cruel—I reject it because it is insufficient. This is because it was never designed for beings like me, who burn too brightly, engage in pleasure too freely, and think too deeply to be constrained by commandments written in dead languages.

No moral code can accommodate the complexity of desire. No doctrine can account for the thrill of contradiction, for the ache of forbidden pleasure, or the joy of transgression. Morality demands that I flatten myself to fit its frail frame. But I will not shrink. I will grow monstrously if I must.

Freedom, the genuine, excruciating form of liberty I advocate, carries inherent risks. It topples thrones and dissolves marriages. It exposes hypocrisies and undresses lies. It dares you to say yes when the world screams no. When you lie awake at night, it whispers the ancient, seductive truth: "You do not belong to them." You never did.”

I did not come to this world to behave. I came to taste, to break, to defile, to create.

I came to live.

So I offer this blasphemy wrapped in black velvet and blood: freedom is not a virtue—it is a sacred vice. And I, in all my shameless devotion, am a worshipper at its altar.

Let them build their statues to restraint. I will dance in ruins with the goddess of liberty herself, nude and laughing, wild with ecstasy, while the pious gnash their teeth behind locked doors.

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