Reniaa, if the Governing Body and "annointed" are imperfect, then no one should have to obey them.
The December 15, 1969, Watchtower (pp. 765, 766) discussed sexual practices that went beyond simple genital copulation. Apparently, in the early 1970's, a California couple confessed to such practices and the matter was relayed to Brooklyn. According to the account by Ray Franz,
Until the correspondence was read to us that morning, none of us aside from the president had had any opportunity to think about the subject. Yet within a couple of hours the decision was reached that the couple was subject to disfellowshiping. This was thereafter set out as a formal published policy, applicable to any persons engaging willfully in similar practices. (See the Watchtower, December 1, 1972, pp. 734-736; also November 15, 1972, pp. 703, 704.)
... The Governing Body's decision in 1972 resulted in a sizeable number of "judicial hearings" as elders followed up on reports or confessions of the sexual practices involved. Women experienced painful embarrassment in such hearings as they responded to the elders's questions about the intimacies of their marital relations.
Franz relates that an "unprecedented volume of mail came in over a period of five years, most of it questioning the Scriptural basis for the Governing Body members inserting themselves into the private lives of others in such a way." For the most part Witnesses put an extraordinary amount of trust in these men to correctly interpret the Bible for them. Many wanted clarification about what was acceptable and what was not.
When finally, after some five years, the matter came up again on the agenda, the disfellowshiping policy was reversed and the Governing Body in effect withdrew itself from that intimate area of others' lives. (See the Watchtower, February 15, 1978, pp. 30, 32.)
The "liberal" period occurred between 1978 and 1983.
Looking over the letters at hand, some of which have been presented, whatever satisfaction it brought to write that corrective material seems rather hollow. For I know that no matter what was said, it could never in any way compensate for or repair all the damage in embarrassment, mental confusion, emotional distress, guilt pangs, and broken marriages that resulted from the earlier decision-- a decision made in a few hours by men almost all of whom were approaching the matter cold, with no previous knowledge, thought , meditation, specific prayer on the matter or searching of Scriptures, but whose decision was nonetheless put in force globally for five years and affected many people for a lifetime. None of it needed ever to have occurred.
From the footnote: A few years after my resignation from the Governing Body, the organization in effect reinstated basic elements of its earlier policy on "unnatural sex practices." The March 15, 1983, Watchtower (pages 30, 31), while stating that it was not up to elders to "police" the private marital matters of congregation members, nonetheless ruled that the advocacy or the practice of what was classed as "unnatural sex relations" among married persons not only would disqualify a man for eldership or other Society-appointed position but "could even lead to expulsion from the congregation." ... Whatever the case, this 1983 material did not produce the great surge of judicial hearings that accompanied the initial announcement of that poilcy in 1972, perhaps because that earlier experience had produced sufficient bad fruitage to restrain the zeal for inquiry on the part of elders. (From the book Crisis of Conscience by Ray Franz)
Suffice to say it is pretty common knowledge among most Witnesses I have known that oral and anal sexual practices are not permitted among married couples. There is no indication that the policy has been reversed since 1983. With regards to these matters being discussed in a Public Talk, I agree that it is beyond inappropriate and highly distasteful (no pun intended).
Dave
