This is part one of a four-part series this summer on Christianity and sex. Part Two will look more closely at issues of sexuality and global justice, part Three will look at how to reconcile contemporary sexual ethics with Scripture and tradition, and part Four will provide a whole bunch of good readin’ for further study.
Christian sexual ethics are much on my mind, on the minds of many of my students and youth group kids, and this summer, very much on the public’s radar as well. Next week, we’ll mark the 40th anniversary of Pope Paul VI’s famous Humanae Vitae, the encyclical that declared virtually all forms of contraception to be incompatible with Catholic teaching. In many ways, Humanae Vitae was the first blow struck in the reaction against the liberation movements of the 1960s, and it was the seed for much contemporary conservative thought about the meaning and purpose of our bodies and our lives. From a progressive standpoint, its fortieth anniversary is not cause for celebration. (But in all fairness, if you want to read a fine — but very, very wrong-headed — encomium to Humanae Vitae, visit First Things for this Mary Eberstadt piece.)
And of course, the Anglican Communion is on the verge of major schism this summer over, above all else, the issue of sexuality. A church that survived numerous revisions to the prayer book, a church that bravely embraced contraception way back in the 1930s, a church that largely held together when women began to be ordained in the 1970s, is now at last falling apart over the issue of homosexuality. Tied up in the near-certain schism is the basic disagreement among Christians about what constitutes “ethical sex” in the eyes of God. There seems little chance of a resolution that will both keep the church together and, at the same time, be congruent with how two very different groups of Anglicans see the role of sexuality in our lives.
In any case, I’ve been thinking about (and studying about, and writing about) Christian sexual ethics for many years, since I first took a course on Patristic Theology at Berkeley in 1987. I became a Roman Catholic the following year, and then had a tortuous series of peregrinations that led me to — and through — the Assemblies of God, the Mennonites, and the Episcopalians. (I’m just your average, run of the mill “charismatic Anabaptist Roman Anglican”.) Though I continue to worship at a variety of Christian churches today, I am now involved in the work of the Kabbalah Centre. And of course, I have a Ph.D. in Christian history, though that doctorate focused more on the ethics of war than on the ethics of sex.
I also come to the discussion as a heterosexual man in his forties, four times married, thrice divorced. I come as a college gender studies professor who works closely with Christian and non-Christian students alike, many of whom, I am happy to say, have chosen to see me as their mentor. I come to the discussion as a former Episcopal youth leader, who spent seven years teaching workshops on “Sex, All Saints Style” to high schoolers at the largest Anglican parish west of the Mississippi. So I bring a lot of experience, passion, and yes, baggage, to this subject.
From a theological perspective, though I’ve never been a Methodist, I come to the discussion with a healthy reverence for what’s often known as the “Wesleyan Quadrilateral”: Reason, Experience, Scripture, Tradition. The “Quad” suggests that any understanding of God’s call on our lives needs to rest on those four things. Many Christians from across the theological spectrum have embraced the Quad as a sound method for discerning right thought, right speech, and right action.
So after all that build-up, what am I ready to say about Christianity and sex?
If there’s one core principle I derive from using the “Quad”, it’s this: in the end, God cares more about the content of our sexuality than he does about its form. Traditional Christian sexual ethics are often discussed in the context of what Christians can and can’t do. Modern conservatives will often say things like “the only form of genital contact sanctioned by God is that which happens in a marriage between one husband and one wife.” The implication is clear: if you get the “form” (heterosexual marriage) right, then the sex that follows is licit. If you haven’t got the form right, then sorry, Mabel, sorry, Ernest, you’ve “fallen short of the mark.”
But “form-based” sexual ethics clearly have their problems. For example, it ignores entirely the great likelihood that coercion, disrespect, and force can take place within marriage. The Catholic church did not start condemning marital rape — or even acknowledging that such a concept was possible — until the second half of the twentieth century. Is a situation in which a husband demands sex from his wife against her will somehow more congruent with the spirit of Christ than a situation in which two unmarried people make love with mutual enthusiasm? If you’re a stickler for “form-based ethics”, you bet. For the most traditional of theologians, marital rape is less of a serious sin than homosexuality or pre-marital sex, because form matters more than content. (And when was the last time you heard Focus on the Family put out a series of messages against intra-marital coercion?)
At its heart, form-based sexual ethics are concerned with the Law. Like the Pharisees legalists of old, those who are concerned with form focus heavily on what is or isn’t licit according to tradition and Scripture. At its most extreme, a focus on the form of the Law regulates sex during menstruation, regulates sexual positions, forbids artificial contraception and regulates countless other aspects of time, place, and manner, all the while making it abundantly clear that sex outside of heterosexual marriage offends God. This focus on form is a guarantee of guilt and shame for anyone who experiences sexual feelings prior to heterosexual marriage. And it also guarantees that what is illicit before marriage will quickly become mandatory after. Form-based sexual ethics are centered on duty, after all: you have a duty to God to abstain before marriage, and you have a duty after marriage to be fruitful, to multiply, and (this message often goes straight to women) to please your husband. Sounds like a splendid recipe for shame and joylessness all ’round.
At this point, my indignant conservative friends object. “What’s your alternative, Hugo? Rampant promiscuity? A culture that sexualizes and exploits young girls?” There’s a classic false dichotomy at work here, of course. Defenders of form tend to be fearful of any ethic that questions form-based ethics. They posit a situation in which one either slavishly adheres to a rigid code, or one is lost to a chaotic world where momentary selfish impulse is the only predicate to sexual action. In other words, if you suggest that genital sex outside of heterosexual marriage can ever be holy and good, then you’ve given up any possibility of a coherent ethic that guides and informs people as they make decisions. “Form-based” conservatives suggest you’ve got two options: “God’s way” (sex between a husband and a wife) or hopeless sexual darkness. In creating this false dichotomy, my brothers and sisters on the right badly miss the mark.
“Content” based sexual ethics are concerned with the way in which people, in the process of being sexual, value themselves and their partners. Content-based ethics are deeply concerned with mutuality, with pleasure, and with the willingness of each partner to take responsibility for the physical, spiritual, and emotional consequences of what is done. Form-based ethics teach the Christian to ask the question “Am I allowed to do this?” Content-based ethics teach the Christian to ask “Am I truly loving — in every sense of the word — the person or persons with whom I am doing this, including myself?”
As a married man, I know that sex with my wife is licit according to most church tradition. (My Catholic friends aren’t so sure, and though they are too polite to say it to my face, probably think I make an adulterer of myself and my wife because of my three previous divorces.) But just because my wife and I said “Yes!” to each other on that lovely September evening in 2005, doesn’t mean that I am entitled to access her body any time I feel like it. From a content-ethic Christian standpoint, if our sex is characterized by coercion or pressure or guilt or obligation, it’s unethical sex — even though we’re married. I can’t pull the “It’s your duty, wife!” card out. Ever. Obligation is the enemy of love, and duty the enemy of authentic desire.
Two unmarried people who care about each other, who assume responsibility for each other, and who are acting based on mutual desire can have ethical sex. Two married people who are alienated from each other, and who have sex while each fantasizing about someone else, are having unethical sex. Simply put, the legal status of the relationship is not the chief factor in determining whether or not a sexual encounter is good or right. Marriage is no guarantor that sex will be holy; the absence of the marriage bond is no guarantor that it won’t be. The way in which sex happens is — not the position, of course, but the mutuality and the concern.
So if marriage isn’t the sine qua non of good Christian sex, what is? if there’s one thing that’s central to our work as Christians, it is the centrality of justice. We are called to do justice, over and over again. Justice is not something provided for us by the state or the courts, it is something we have to live out in our private and our public lives. It is a concern that ought to animate our most intimate moments. And that means that the most important focus we should have for our sexual ethics is not whether or not the sex is lawful according to tradition but whether it is just.
Justice is a complex concept better explained by philosophers, but one quick and easy definition of justice is giving other creatures what they genuinely deserve. This sound retributive, as in punishing a murderer by taking his life, but it’s much more than that. Giving others what they deserve means seeing them as inherently worthy, as inherently good, as inherently holy. All creation is, in a sense, made in the image of a perfect and loving God. God-likeness is in all of creation, and it is certainly in each and every human being. Giving to God what is justly God’s is traditionally called worship. God deserves worship. But though other human beings are not God, they each contain His image. To do justice to others, therefore, is to recognize the holiness that is intrinsic within them. Archbishop Desmond Tutu is fond of saying that since we are all made in the image of God, we should genuflect before each other out of reverence for the divine within each of us.
So one excellent question to ask, from a spiritual perspective, about any sexual act is this: is it just? Is it linked to a respect for the dignity of the other person, or am I just seeking my own pleasure without regard for the impact on my partner(s)? Justice is incompatible with coercion, with exploitation, with aysmmetrical power dynamics. (That doesn’t mean BDSM is inherently unjust, but it does mean that say, an employer having sex with his employee almost certainly is.) In the common American sexual vernacular, we talk often about “doing” and “being done”. Old blues songs implore the lover to “Do me right”, and the implication is obviously carnal. But “do me right” has a double meaning: it refers not only to skillful and intentional love-making, but to “doing right” in terms of the relationship. “Doing justice” means “doing” each other justly, with reverence and respect and a concern for mutual enthusiasm.
My conservative friends fret that a justice and content-centered ethic is too vague, too malleable, for broken human beings to embrace. If we don’t make a clear statement that genital sex is only licit in heterosexual marriage, the conservatives posit, then sexual anarchy will be unleashed. Human beings are too flawed, too impulsive, and too selfish (particularly, perhaps, when they are still in the throes of adolescence) to make “justice-centered” decisions. But even if the Calvinists are right, and sin extends to every aspect of our nature, there is something stronger than sin. That is grace, not just the grace given to the elect but the common grace bestowed upon all. And one key characteristic of that common grace is the capacity to reason, the capacity to exercise self-restraint, the capacity to act reflectively and justly in every aspect of our lives. The fact that so many choose not to do so is evidence of ignorance of their own capacities, and not evidence of a fundamental flaw in their very natures.
Our sexual desires are indeed powerful. They can easily be misdirected or warped. But they can, by God’s common grace, be used as an instrument for justice. More than that, our bodies can be used to worship the aspects of the divine we find in each other. In the old Anglican marriage ceremony, a husband and wife would pledge their lives to each other, saying “with my body I thee worship.” We are called to worship only that which is of God; blessedly, God is found in each of us. When we have sex that is grounded in justice, grounded in enthusiastic and mutual desire, we are engaged in an act of worship. Not every act of sex in marriage is an act of worship, as most married folks can attest. And sex outside of heterosexual marriage, can be deeply worshipful.
Even atheists often cry out “Oh my God!” at the moment of orgasm. There’s an element of the divine in all good sex. What makes it divine is not just the pleasure it brings, but the worshipful thanksgiving for the God-given capacity to give pleasure to others, and to receive it for ourselves. In the end, I am convinced that good, just, and worshipful sex can happen in marriage. It can happen outside of marriage. The vows themselves are no prophylaxis against abuse, sin, or degradation — and by the same token, the absence of vows do not vitiate the capacity for lovemaking to be ecstatic, righteous, just and pleasing to ourselves and the God who made us.
With all due respect, I think that “form” versus “content” is also a classic false dichotomy. If I understand what you’re saying correctly, then good, ethical sex will be noble in both form and content. I certainly don’t see what you are calling “form-based ethics” and “content-based ethics” as mutually exclusive propositions. The two can complement one another rather nicely.
Perhaps a bigger problem, though, is that the “content-based ethics” seem to be just as much in furtherance of an agenda–and possibly a desire for self-justification via rationalization–as are any “form-based ethics” which you seem to be attributing largely to conservatives. What does this mean in practical terms? Here’s an example.
I am deeply troubled by the following statements:
In the former situation, you call possibly “ethical” the sexual relations between two people who are not married to one another. (Query: Does “unmarried” mean that one or more of the partners might be married to a person outside the couple you’re discussing here?) You might have people cheating on their spouses, causing harm by doing so, and it could qualify as “ethical.” That’s problematic.
In the latter case, you say it is (presumably per se) “unethical” for married persons to have sex when they are experiencing some alienation and fantasies about others. I don’t think it’s so easy. Those married partners may be remaining faithful to their marital vows and trying to resolve the issues. In such a case, I think form can be an important element of sexual ethics, particularly in a Christian setting, given Jesus’ teachings on the subject.
Finally, you could remove the following text from your essay:
“Like the Pharisees of old”
The Pharisees were complex people. We can’t fairly or accurately dismiss them as grim, legalistic types who were concerned primarily with form over substance. Such a criticism is not only historically and dubious and of questionable basis in the Bible, it suggests a conflict between first century Judaism and the followers of Jesus that did not exist and has been sadly exaggerated in the interest of persecuting Jews. Please understand that I am definitely not suggesting that you’re doing anything like that here, but for various reasons, I am particularly sensitive about this issue.
Keep up the good blogging!
Point taken about the Pharisees of old. Read “legalists” for the word.
As for married folks fantasizing about others, I think Jesus in Matthew 5 makes it very clear that that is tantamount to actual adultery. If you’re gonna stick to form, ya gotta see reining in fantasy as a critical part of adherence to form.
And perhaps I was unclear with my use of the term “unmarried”. I meant two single people, not folks who are betraying other commitments.
mark brings up a good point i think about the intersection of form and content, but i think hugo is still correct when he discusses some people on the right who still elevate form to the exclusion of content, which in any case, is in my view, the wrong approach.
anyway, i’m not religious at all but i thoroughly enjoyed this post and look forward to reading the future entries in the series.
Thanks for the clarification about Pharisees.
I agree about the marital fantasies and that lusting after a woman can indeed be adultery. While form is important to me, as is content, I am one of the people who believes that fantasies about other partners than the partner you are currently having sex with can be extremely harmful. I certainly wouldn’t see that as something “harmless,” although many people, some liberal and some conservative, disagree with me.
And thanks for making clear your use of “unmarried” in this case. It seems your clarification agrees with my point that content and form can both be important to happy, healthy sexual relationships, whether between men and women, men and men, or women and women.
(I realize that form creates a whole separate set of issues for homosexual couples, but I want to emphasize that I am not leaving them out. Their experiences are important to the discussion, too.)
mark brings up a good point i think about the intersection of form and content, but i think hugo is still correct when he discusses some people on the right who still elevate form to the exclusion of content, which in any case, is in my view, the wrong approach.
Hi chareth,
I agree with Hugo’s assessment of the attitudes of some people on the political right with respect to form. My point is that I am wary of elevating either form or content to the exclusion of the other.
These are hard questions. Therefore, I think it’s very valuable to consider Christian ethics in the larger context of Jesus’ teachings about love and right conduct. When I look at his two great commandments (love God with all your being, and love your neighbor as yourself) and his statement of the Golden Rule, I see guidance for dealing with questions of sexual conduct that are largely consistent with what Hugo is saying here.
Hi there, Hugo. I’ve been reading your blog for a few weeks now, and I’m impressed. I always find you thoughtful even when I think you’re wrong, and this looks like it’ll be one of those times. I’m looking forward to the rest of this. I do have a few questions, though, just so I can understand you as you add to this series.
One, what do you mean by conservative? It’s a tricky word to use in religious circles, since it also has political connotations. I mean, theologically, I’m pretty orthodox in my tradition (Catholicism), but I’ve would rather eat beef on Fridays than attend a Republican convention. So, are you referring to social conservatives, political conservatives, theological conservatives, or some combination of those?
Two, I haven’t been reading your blog long enough to get a really good sense of your theology, but what is your take on the sacramental status of marriage? Your post seems oddly dismissive and respectful of the institution at the same time, I’m having a hard time figuring out how you view it ontologically.
Three (and this one is a comment and not a question), I understand that you’re basing your ethics on justice, which is good. I tend to lean towards love as being central to conceiving ethical paradigms, but the ambiguity in both those terms would probably lead us down the same paths before we part ways.
But should the content of justice be held at odds with the form? Catholic ethics tend to allow the complexity of human relationships enough that form can be right and content wrong (though, as you point out, it may have taken us a long time to formally recognize that), but content can also be right and form wrong, because the form can distort the meaning it was intended to convey. Like, I’m gay, and I don’t have any shame in having romantic feelings for men; in fact, I find it a blessing to cultivate and express love for others. But I also recognize the destructiveness of expressing that content in manner at odds with natural law. (And I don’t mean to turn this into a discussion about homosexual sexual ethics; it was just the quickest example I could come up with from my own tradition.)
Joshua, I mean conservative in the social sense here, referring to those whose theological orientation leaves them convinced that sexual expression is only proper between a man and a woman who are married to each other.
Here are two posts where I’ve written about marriage: http://hugoschwyzer.net/2007/06/14/a-son-not-a-husband-some-very-long-thoughts-about-marriage-in-a-roundabout-response-to-jill/
http://hugoschwyzer.net/2007/05/04/marriage-miracle-gro-and-mutual-accountability/
I think the church’s stance on contraception is the most misunderstood of them all, and I wouldn’t put it anywhere near the stance on homosexual relations (or the church’s being late to the game on condemning marital rape).
There’s a great difference between telling everyone that a certain item/action (artificial birth control) goes against natural law…and telling one group of people that they can’t participate in an action (or a relationship) that others can.
Thank you for this. At the moment, I am more worried about whether or not I will ultimately regret having sex with someone who I’m not seriously committed to than whether or not it’s sinful. I mull over whether or not having sex like that is inherently selfish. As bad as I may want to do it in the moment, part of me screams NO! because sex changes everything. Or, it has the power to, and I would likely give it that power since I’m so sensitive. Sex with someone I’m semi-dating will likely ruin things in the longterm, though not always. At any rate, I’m still very much enmeshed in the True Love Waits movement as much as I don’t want to be. I think I’ll have to process this post a little more and get back to you.
Hugo,
I think you have parsed out what creeps me out about so man people;s people’s statements about sex. I suspect that the form vs. content language is used in religious settings other than Christian, as well as in non-religious settings. To me, “she didn’t say no” is a form argument - if she doesn’t utter no, then the sex is ‘legal’. Multiple men having sex with a female who is passed out drunk are exercising their power under a form society - certainly there is no justice in an action like that.
Form as a framework for decision making is very comforting - there can be an absolute black and white. A content/justice framework requires more from each participant- more communication, more compromise, more self and other knowledge. It is not as easy or comfortable as form, but to me it is by far the preferred way (even though I struggle with it myself).
Hugo,
I almost stopped reading when I read this:
“But “form-based” sexual ethics clearly have their problems. For example, it ignores entirely the great likelihood that coercion, disrespect, and force can take place within marriage. The Catholic church did not start condemning marital rape — or even acknowledging that such a concept was possible — until the second half of the twentieth century. Is a situation in which a husband demands sex from his wife against her will somehow more congruent with the spirit of Christ than a situation in which two unmarried people make love with mutual enthusiasm? If you’re a stickler for “form-based ethics”, you bet. For the most traditional of theologians, marital rape is less of a serious sin than homosexuality or pre-marital sex, because form matters more than content. (And when was the last time you heard Focus on the Family put out a series of messages against intra-marital coercion?)”
I think this is just a straw man. I’ve been a Catholic for much of my life, and I’ve never heard anyone say that coercion, rape, disrespect and force are fine, or just trivial matters, within a marriage. I don’t doubt that you can find extremists who hold such views, but if you are going to argue for a better Christian ethics, that you ought to consider the best arguments from tradition, not the worst.
I dispute your claim that the external certification of marriage (the “form”) is all that is required to make sex licit. That doesn’t correspond with any theology I’ve ever been exposed to. Marriage is not a choreographed ritual; it is a sacrament that involves a freely chosen and fully understood vow of perpetual, mutual giving for life. It is the vow - not the “form” - that is the essential part of sacrament. So your statement “…because form matters more than content” caused me to shake my head in disbelief. The Catholic theology that I know (and yes, I know I am no theologian) doesn’t say that the purpose of marriage is to make sex licit. No, the purpose of marriage is to allow two people - become one flesh - to experience God’s joy, and to participate together in God’s creation.
” The vows themselves are no prophylaxis against abuse, sin, or degradation — and by the same token, the absence of vows do not vitiate the capacity for lovemaking to be ecstatic, righteous, just and pleasing to ourselves and the God who made us.”
Actually, the vows - properly understood - do offer some protection against this. In this statement, you are considering the form only. Words read from a ritual. “Repeat after me…” That is not a vow. To me the marriage vow is an honest commitment to love and care for your spouse, no matter what. For richer for poorer etc. In fact the promise, properly entered into, means that - if due to some unforeseen circumstances - you have to stop having sex altogether your commitment remains unchanged. To me, if it doesn’t feel like stepping off a cliff, it isn’t a vow. So I think a properly undertaken vow offers some protection, but not, of course perfect protection, from later abuse. The form of marriage, absent the essential vows, offers less protection.
You are also comparing lovemaking for fun and pleasure with marriage, and playing to the crowd’s conventional view that married sex is boring at best and abusive at worst. If the purpose of this new ethics is to help people obtain the greatest possible joy from sex in their lives, then I don’t understand how it is Christian. Having sex purely for another’s pleasure sounds masochistic. Having sex purely for your own pleasure sounds selfish. Having just and enthusiastic sex with another for pleasure, joy and ecstasy? - cocaine, X, Viagra and sex toys are far more useful in that regard than Christian theology.
So answer me this - who is more likely to “do you” justly? Someone who is willing to take a binding vow of perpetual fidelity, love and care, and mean it? Or someone who won’t do that, in the hope that they’ll find someone else who can do them even better than you can?
I think Sweating through Fog gave an excellent response. I’ve been Catholic my entire life, and I’ve never heard any theologian say that “marital rape is less of a serious sin than homosexuality or pre-marital sex.” I would like to know where you heard this. This is indeed a straw man. On the contrary, I’ve heard a lot about how sex (and indeed, all of marriage) is about mutual self-giving and self-control, especially in the natural family planning classes we took. Couples who use NFP have to abstain during the woman’s fertile period if they want to avoid pregnancy. If one spouse has an accident or health problem that leaves them unable to have sex, the couple may have to abstain from sex for the rest of their married lives. It is a sin to demand sex from your spouse unreasonably, such as when they are ill. On the other hand, it is also a sin to deny your spouse sex for trivial reasons.
I’m wondering what specifically you thought was off-base about the Mary Eberstadt article. Every single prediction that Humane Vitae made about what would happen if contraception was widespread has come true.
Sweating Through Fog - You make some excellent points, particularly this one:
who is more likely to “do you” justly? Someone who is willing to take a binding vow of perpetual fidelity, love and care, and mean it? Or someone who won’t do that, in the hope that they’ll find someone else who can do them even better than you can?
Point taken on that one. However, I don’t think Hugo is suggesting that married sex is boring at best and abusive at worst. What he is suggesting is that being married is no guarantee that married sex will be selfless and that having sex outside of marriage is usually selfish. Many years ago, I heard my mother lament about needing to do her “wifely duties” as a “good Catholic wife,” in addition to hearing that same line amongst other Catholic-Christian women. The Catholic Church doesn’t address the sinfulness of coercing your partner into having sex after marriage. Rather, most of the teaching I got from Confirmation class on the topic of sex was to wait until marriage — and if I did — I would be thankful and blissful about that for the rest of my life. The Church also refuses to accept birth control, deeming it selfish as well, even though many Catholic couples want to wait for having kids until they are more financially ready to provide for them. Sounds like the opposite of selfish to me.
Mermande,
I think what Hugo is doing is comparing the worst of the now archaic “forms-based” ethics with the best possible “content-based” alternative as it might be realized. Not a fair or useful comparison.
I have no intention of being an apologist for Catholic doctrine - there are plenty of those, far more knowledgeable and persuasive than I am. What I will say is this. If I took what the nuns and priest taught me as a child as the sum of Catholic teaching - just the rules to be memorized - I would have missed out on some things that have proved deeply significant in my own life. The Church promotes the model - the ideal - of marriage as a faithful commitment to total mutual giving, and it would take the heroic virtue of two saints to fully and completely live that ideal. I don’t see the ideal as valueless because I’m unable to live it in practice. That is the context within which I see your mother’s lament, and my own laments.
In contrast Hugo sees the ideal that is being promoted as just an empty shell that has for its sole purpose the legitimization and direction of sexual behavior - even abusive behavior. He is careful to point out examples where people use marriage to justify domination. Absent are any examples of marriage at its best, where people make extraordinary sacrifices through most of their lifetime to care for their beloved, when such care involves a far deeper, and more challenging vocation than “doing them” in a thoroughly sexual and thoroughly just manner.
Re: marital rape. My point was that the church did not condemn marital rape until the late 20th century, not that it denies that marital rape can exist.
I think marriage is splendid, STF. I personally think marriage is a very fine thing; my four trips down the aisle attest both to my own monumental imperfections and my idealism about that institution. Marriage is one particular vehicle among many for promoting justice, happiness, and human well-being. It has also, alas, often proved a prison as well.
When we set up an ideal, however, we end up condemning anything short of that ideal as inadequate at best and sinful at worst. As you yourself point out, STF, most people will fall short of the mark — and thus we “set up” most people for shame and for guilt.
I love being married. But the lovemaking my wife and I do now is not intrinsically more elevated and more magical than the love we made before we were wed. It is different, of course, because we are different as we age and grow closer. But the sex we had when we were dating did not prove an obstacle to post-wedding intimacy. Nothing was “spoiled”, nothing was “tainted”. Young people, especially those raised in traditional cultures, need to hear the vital message that their bodies and their souls will not be dirtied by pleasure — but they can be dirtied by shame and coercion.
More in my future posts.
I really like this post, Hugo. I grew up with the James Dobson model of sexual morality,and this - “most of the teaching I got from Confirmation class on the topic of sex was to wait until marriage — and if I did — I would be thankful and blissful about that for the rest of my life.” - pretty much sums up everything I ever heard from the church about sex - with the added twist that women needed to make sure they weren’t “causing men to stumble” and dire predictions of what happens when girls lose their virginity.
My experience of this is that it is very destructive, leaving people raised that way with lots of shame and guilt - and frequently lousy marriages. (I’m not saying that all marriages of Christians who waited until marriage to have sex are lousy - just most of the ones I know about.) Maybe in some idealistic realm, all this talk of the sacredness or sacrament of marriage is helpful, but it sure doesn’t seem to work very well in the lives of anyone I know.
Anyway,I’ve spent a lot of time trying to figure out my own sexual ethics,with what seems like little guidance, and this helps put words around a lot of my nebulous thinking, so thanks for that.
Hugo,
“When we set up an ideal, however, we end up condemning anything short of that ideal as inadequate at bsst and sinful at worst. As you yourself point out, STF, most people will fall short of the mark — and thus we “set up” most people for shame and for guilt.”
Who is this “we” you speak of here? Are you saying that ideals cannot be celebrated, because to do so would somehow force shame and guilt upon the rest of us? So we abstain from praise of Martin Luther King, because it might trigger shame about our own moral cowardice? Do we avoid academic study of Shakespeare for fear of shaming student writers who are unlikely to have nearly enough talent to attain that summit?
I believe that most shame today is promulgated not by churches, but by a materialistic, competitive media culture that offers unattainable examples of success, fun, fame, and desirability as the measure of a notable, and hence worthy, existence. That is the source of shame in the modern world today - it surely doesn’t come from theologians. People feel shame because of what their peers think and say about them, not because of some words from a pulpit.
So when you look to a new Christian ethics as a means of liberating people from the old, “form-based” ethics, you are designing your ethics to offset an ethical system that was driven from the mainstream decades ago. The vast majority of people will ignore any new Christian ethics as easily as they ignore the old. You are addressing the wrong danger, beating a strawman that was beaten and left for dead long ago.
” Nothing was “spoiled”, nothing was “tainted”. Young people, especially those raised in traditional cultures, need to hear the vital message that their bodies and their souls will not be dirtied by pleasure — but they can be dirtied by shame and coercion.”
They don’t need any new Christian ethics for that message - they are already getting that message downloaded directly into their visual cortex. Alex Rodriguez and Madonna will show them all they need to know about the irrelevance of their traditions in the modern world, and the immensely gratifying pleasures of a shame-free, coercion-free existence. So if you think you are liberating some retrograde, red-state serfs from the Elmer Gantry types, that liberation is well underway. Those who are newly liberated each day will pass you by on the way to the rave party, with nary a look back.
Interesting post Hugo. By way of full disclosure, I’m coming at this as something of an outsider. I was raised Catholic, don’t do much with that anymore other than go to Mass and Christmas and Easter, fell far off of their sexual morality bandwagon a long time ago, and am married to a nonreligious Jew.
I do tend to look at things from a standpoint of efficacy, and I wonder, perhaps echoing the conservative critics you cite who “fret that a justice and content-centered ethic is too vague, too malleable, for broken human beings to embrace”, appealing as the focus of your content-based criteria sounds, how well it can work in practice. I’m far from an advocate of the form-based ethics touted as an alternative. But I wonder if they were adopted in the past, and are perhaps still adopted and touted by many, as a “least-worst” solution. Many of us, perhaps most of us, are broken in some way, and even the best of us fall and fail every day. Sexuality is extraordinarily powerful, like a drug. As wonderful and affirming as it can be in with a positive content, negative sexuality can also be as base, degrading and defiling of a person’s life and character as heroin or meth. I’ve known people intimately, including in my own family, who have for a long time been about as broken and degraded, including sexually, as I can imagine anyone to be (doing PnP with people they meet on craiglist or the street, for example). I very nearly despair at them ever finding grace.
And even beyond those extreme examples, we’re all going to screw something up sooner or later in this regard (no pun intended there). For some of us, “doing” and getting “done right”, finding what is good and affirming content for us in our sex and giving that to our partners, is often no easy feat, for whatever reason. I wonder if the simple form-based norm has its appeal because it gives approval while avoiding some of the challenge that finessing the search for good content requires.
I think I’m going to have to argue toward the direction of Sweating Through Fog on this one. Hugo, your comparisons are somewhat imbalanced. You condemn the so-called “form-based” ethics based on the ways that they have been abused. By comparison, we wouldn’t condemn tylenol simply because it is very easy to use it to kill oneself by swallowing a whole bottle. You haven’t come close to proving that an ethic that sees sex as primarily/exclusively licit in marriage is by definition bad or problematic, but your amassing of bad examples implies such a proof, and that’s just a bad form of argument.
This is probably at its worst in this sentence: “This focus on form is a guarantee of guilt and shame for anyone who experiences sexual feelings prior to heterosexual marriage.” Ummm, exactly why/how does a conservative sexual ethic *guarantee* guilt and shame merely for the experience of *feelings*. I’ve heard people say this before, but in my experience of conservative social circles, this is actually far from the dominant position; however, you make this attitude seem to be an inevitable byproduct of a conservative sexual ethic.
Now, it is true that many are ungracious to those who are perceived to be less pure of heart than themselves, and I’d be the first to argue that this arrogance is usually worse than the sexual sins they may (or may not, if we see such sexual activity as not sinful) be condemning. But just as I can certainly be gracious and forgive a person who just punched me while still considering that violent action as sinful, I think that those with “conservative” sexual ethics can avoid giving a stigma to sexual sin without giving up their particular sexual ethic.
I think it is also clear that you are underselling (in my view) any conception outside of pleasure for what sex is for, what the purpose of sex is from a theological standpoint. While I am firmly in the Protestant camp, I find myself agreeing with Catholics here who argue that sex and marriage ought to properly be seen first as sacramental/covenantal, something which only makes any kind of sense as a reflection of the intra-divine relationships among the Trinity and representing the relationship between Christ and the church. Such conceptions of sex and marriage, I would argue, have qualifications for both “form” and “content” (an opposition I use only begrudgingly, because I think the form and the content actually should and do mutually constitute each other, if they are properly understood); sex is reserved for particular covenantal relationships, and sex should always be practiced with mutual love and self-giving as its ideal. I simply don’t see why you think that your two categories have to be mutually exclusive descriptions of sexual ethics. I also think that you are selling a more conservative sexual ethic short if you assume that it only means “keep it in your pants until you’re married” without any consideration of its deeper theological meaning.
I certainly don’t think that form and content are inherently mutually exclusive. In a good marriage, one could have right “form” and right “content”, and indeed, I’m quite confident that that’s what my wife and I have. Anecdotally, I understand that other married heterosexual couples enjoy the same.
On the other hand, all of what is potentially good in marital sex — the care for the other person, the mutuality, the concern for just relations, the pleasure, and yes, the sense that the act of making love empowers each person for greater service to the world — can be frequently found in sex outside the bounds of heterosexual marriage. The lives of many unmarried persons, particularly but not exclusively gay and lesbian couples in enduring relationships, bear witness to this truth.
What feels good, emotionally and physically and spiritually, about marital sex is good “content”. Being congruent with “right form” may make a couple feel more reassured about the metaphysical meaning of their sex, and they are entitled to their feelings. But other couples achieve that same transcendent level without the explicit sanction of church or registry office.
I certainly don’t mean to imply that marriage is invariably an obstacle to just love-making, but on both theological and psychological grounds, I deny the assertion that marriage is a necessary prerequisite for it.
Do you feel a more critical, intelligent, Justice-based interpretation of the form might possibly be as effective as a content-centered ethic? If so, how might one go about taking a more critical look at this form?
I would rather see gay marriage defended by deconstructing *gender* from a Christian standpoint, rather than deconstructing marriage. My (purely anecdotal) experience, from my own life and that of my female friends, is that it’s pretty easy to keep deceiving one’s self about the “content” of a sexual relationship — i.e. whether that love, trust, commitment, exclusivity, etc. are truly mutual. Vows taken in the presence of the couple’s relevant community, whether or not approved by the state, make those expectations explicit not only between the couple themselves but to the outer world. Marriage tells your community that they need to support your relationship, defend it against “poaching” by outsiders, and help you stick to your promises. Sacredness, in the Bible, is often related to boundaries: the holy mountain that the Israelites could not touch, or the restrictions on who could enter the innermost rooms of the Temple. The holy is that which is set apart. It seems like it would be a lot harder for a couple to create a safe emotional space for sacred sex when the world views their relationship as fair game for trespassing. To put it another way, Hugo, if your two hypothetical single adults have no other relationships impeding their marriage, why *wouldn’t* they get married, unless at least one partner still wanted to keep the escape hatch open?
Jendi, I certainly am a a fan of marriage. That said, I’m troubled by the implication in your last sentence; you seem to imply that those who are legally able to marry but choose not to do so are keeping an “escape hatch” open. I think there’s more to it than that; we all know heterosexual couples who have been together for years and choose not to marry. Some choose not to marry out of solidarity with gay and lesbian folks who cannot marry. Some choose not to marry out of a visceral sense that the state has no business regulating or sanctioning private behavior. And some, knowing the unhappy history of marriage for women, choose not to wed for reasons rooted in feminism.
And trust me, in a world of no-fault divorce, marriage doesn’t mean you’ve closed the escape hatch for good. Having been divorced thrice, I know this well!
As a Christian, I think God calls many of us to marriage. Obviously, not all are called; Paul makes that clear in 1 Corinthians 7. It seems that for reasons of mutual comfort and mutual challenge, as well as (sometimes) for the procreation of children, marriage is an excellent idea. But it’s a long jump from “God calls some of us to marriage” to “God wants all of us to abstain from genital pleasure outside of the confines of heterosexual marriage.”
Slow Talker, I think what you’re getting at is “What does a truly egalitarian, justice-centred marriage in which form and content congrue look like?” It’s a great question.
Approval by the state may be optional, but recognition by the community is more essential, I would argue, to keeping a monogamous partnership strong. Marriage isn’t a purely private act. The couple’s relationship is embedded in a whole web of other relationships. It’s a common scenario for a network of friends or extended family to be ripped apart when a couple breaks up. The siblings, parents, nieces and nephews of that couple lose a whole section of their extended family. Obviously, this can happen whether the couple is married or unmarried, but a public commitment ceremony makes visible that the stakes are high, and hopefully gives Mr. X’s extended family/friends more confidence that the relationship is serious enough for them to start bonding with Mrs. X. And Mr. X’s kid can trust that “my stepmom” is going to stick around longer than if she were merely “Dad’s girlfriend”. With this bonding also comes their responsibility to help keep the Xs’ marriage strong, since he has brought her into his family - she is not something private he does on the side. (Reverse the genders in this example if you like.)
Oh,I agree that recognition by the community brings many benefits. I only quibble with the implication that those who choose not to seek that sanction are somehow giving evidence of a reduced devotion to each other.
And an argument for the benefits of marriage is not, of course, the same as an argument against pre-marital sex. The unique benefits of marriage do not in any way hinge on its position as the unique locus for licit nookie.