The comments on Can't Anyone Here Play This Game? lead me to hope that a more extended discussion specifically on sexual ethics might be productive.
For the first of these postings, I'm going to set aside scriptural proof texts, along with issues of church discipline, divorce, and abortion, and lay out instead where I stand on some more basic issues, and ask any who want to participate to do likewise. Here is why:
- It is very easy to mine scripture for proof texts that support a priori beliefs, and I believe this constitutes a misuse of scripture. When we turn to scripture, we should be listening to its voice(s), and not trying to impose ours upon it. This is a lot easier if we grant ourselves the license to speak for ourselves first.
- When we do look to scripture, it will be important to distinguish between Paul's culture (e.g.), and our own. This adds a complication to the discussion, and it's better to get our a priori commitments out first.
- If we involve church discipline, we have to discuss forgiveness. This is important, but represents a kind of “exception handling” that greatly complicates analysis. Let's the common cases first, and then worry about exceptions. The same consideration applies to issues like divorce and abortion.
My commitments:
I am big into faithfulness. We should keep the vows we make, and we should expect society to support us in keeping those vows. If our vow is a vow of sexual fidelity to a partner, we need to honor that vow. If our vow is a vow of celibacy, we need to honor that vow. Of course, the usual caveats regarding contracts apply—contracts are valid only if the parties to them are sufficiently mature to understand what they're agreeing to, and if they were free from coercion in making them.
I believe that life presents us with a succession of choices, and we should make each choice based on love for God's creation, ourselves included. Many of the most important choices we make impose great limits on our future behavior, but we can gladly accept those limits because of the benefits we believe will follow from the choice we make. It is important to take the long view. A choice to form a partnership, or to forego forming partnerships at all, is one of the most important life choices we will make.
I believe that if we reserve sexuality for committed partnerships, we enrich them. To indulge in casual intercourse today, at the cost of cheapening a future committed partnership, is a life-damaging decision.
So...
I oppose promiscuity, which cheapens sexuality, and reduces its effectiveness in maintaining a lifelong partnership. That said, it is not a wedding ceremony per se that creates a lifelong partnership, it is the couple themselves. I believe that the conventional tendency to view the wedding as if it was the starting gun for coitus can damage a partnership: the distinction between καιρός and χρόνος applies to couple formation, and a wedding is a χρόνος event. The purpose of a wedding is to obtain public ratification and protection for a pre-existing private contract, which might or might not have already been sexually ratified, and might not be so ratified until long after the ceremony. When this occurs is none of anyone else's business, and sexual activity that might occurs before marriage as a natural part of the formation of a lifelong partnership should not be carelessly confused with promiscuity, nor should a mutual decision to wait be viewed as unnatural.
Nothing in the foregoing is specific to heterosexual partnerships. I believe that people have their sexual orientation hard-wired in, and most folks are AC, a few are DC, and there are fewer still who could “go either way.” As for the later, I believe that a commitment to a partner comes with a decision to set aside the possibility of exploring the “other side” of their sexuality. The choice to “cleave only to one” is the choice to cleave to no other, irrespective of gender. I believe that folks who invoke “natural law” to condemn homosexuality (or heterosexuality, and yes, I've heard this too, and not just in La Cage Aux Folles) as “unnatural” are making the mistake of believing that everyone is just like they are (or, at least, everyone should be just as they are), and that this is an all too common and uninteresting kind of petty hubris.
Heterosexual partnerships come with the additional complication that their sexual activity may produce children, which can be either a great blessing or a great curse. Heterosexual couples have a responsibility to manage the reproductive consequences of their sexuality, and the joys and challenges that come if they do have children.
I also believe that partnerships should support the health of both partners. This results in all but inevitable sexual tension within partnerships, since it is a rare partnership indeed in which the sexual desires of both partners remain in sync at all times. In a healthy partnership, this discrepancy gets negotiated out (not necessarily verbally), so that each partner feels reasonably satisfied, and neither partner feels abused. Similar tensions exist over money, space, time, etc. I don't believe that it is possible in a healthy marriage for one partner to be rich, and the other partner to be poor. There must be balance, and a deep sense of a shared life, with shared joys, and shared challenges: we're in this together, come sunshine or storms.
Peace
14 comments:
But again you get in to the specific preclusion (which of course you elucidated for us earlier) against buggery.
So we have to ask why such a preclusion exists. What its purpose is. The structure of your argument has a bit of a priori in it, of course, but I admire your willingness to dig at the purpose behind the instruction
I fear to say "truth" as that word is so prominently amigu-ified in the Gospels
or at any rate to figure out what and why God was saying such things to us (or inspiring them to be written or whathaveyou).
M
But again you get in to the specific preclusion (which of course you elucidated for us earlier) against buggery.
I think Paul was writing about something a bit more limited. I hope to get into that this afternoon/evening in the next part.
The structure of your argument has a bit of a priori in it, of course, ...
Of course. Who's doesn't? What I'm trying to do is to be reasonably explicit about those a priori aspects. I believe it's better to be explicit now, because once we start dragging scripture into this, you'll know what my filters are, and maybe (if you want to argue differently) what you should be looking for yourself.
I fear to say "truth" as that word is so prominently amigu-ified in the Gospels
amigu-ified? I don't understand.
shite. forgot a b. ambigu-ified. that is made ambiguous.
i think my b key is dying.
Augustine argues somewhere that the only authroized enouncter between a man and a woman is for procreatinoal purposes only, which would in effect outlaw GM's rhythm method, and much else on the agenda here.
Sorry about the typos, I wrote that while a child was eavesdropping and was keeping an eye on his eyes, rather than reading my typing, and the result was all those typos. I didn't want him to see what I was writing about.
Kirby—
Augustine's youth was spent in dissipation. I don't doubt that his later life was in large part lived as a repudiation of the values of his youthful self.
Viewed in this light, his argument amounts to this: “I screwed all those bimbos, so you wouldn't have to.”
Kirby -- Augustine's not Paul and he's certainly not Jesus.
If he was wrong about war he can be wrong about sex.
We can't ignore good old Solomon on such matters. . .
Stu, that view of Augustine is pretty extreme.
I read another account more recently by Gary Wills. He says that Augustine was not the repentent lecher he's portrayed to be, but I don't have the book in the house, it's over in my office, so I can't quote it.
Stu, that view of Augustine is pretty extreme.
Flippant, I'll admit to.
But I consider Augustine to be wrong here. And not merely wrong in theory, but wrong in the practical sense that any couples that chose to follow this advice will be damaged by it.
all augustine was really getting at is that no matter how we try the little demon of concupiscence is always there
i think couples work things out in their own ways
and women have the power to force the issue of respect in men
but they've basically let it go down the tube
i'm still rushing between things
the RC magisterium had precious little to say in matters of the bedroom of marriage for centuries
until the scientists started managing the sex act
they're phuqqing with cause and effect them dan scientists because for them there is no god no natural law only scientific management of human behaviour
it has become sceincefiction
all of it
of course jesus forgives all but i think there needs be a recognition of a failing...i know there needs be...if both man and woman see themselves in the light of gods mercy and act accordingly all will be fine...sll the sophistry in the world cannot help..it's all dr ruth and nothing more
until quite recently the vast majority of married couples understood explicitly that having sense meant having children
maybe they didn't talk about it
i'm not so sure that's such a bad idea
now we talk about it and everybody tends to have the lingo down
but very few people put in the time for deep understanding
the church has gotten into the business of sexual morality particularly because the humanist agenda decided to play the political card with it
PAUL VI had the great insight and dedication and courage to enunciate the ills that would come about with chemical contraception
it's all come to the fore
the degradations have set in
and what are you doing
just trying to make it all look so socially acceptable
everyone should recognise that only women have to know what is going on with sex the men can just do the deed and go fishing...they'll learn to be loving eventually
but it takes the courage and wisdom of the women
which is out the door
women have become hopelessly blind on this matter
they need elisabeth anscombe
we've been force fed sex to the point of mass social idiocy
it's all been shoved in our face by hollywood
and we're the worse for the wear
pouring honey on dogshit
j
jh—
It's an unexpected treat to have your input.
all augustine was really getting at is that no matter how we try the little demon of concupiscence is always there
That I agree with. But as such, trying to push sex into a "reproduction only box" isn't an effective cure. Proposing damaging tactics to try to gain an inachievable goal isn't helping.
the RC magisterium had precious little to say in matters of the bedroom of marriage for centuries
until the scientists started managing the sex act
But it had a lot to say about the basic structure of the relationship, some of which was (and perhaps still is—I'm not up on the latest RC developements) unhealthy. Here specifically I have in mind the notion that the woman should be subservient to the man in all things.
they're phuqqing with cause and effect them dan scientists because for them there is no god no natural law only scientific management of human behaviour
Here I think we have a real disagreement, as well as some confusion regarding nominclature.
You seem to be using "natural law" as a synonym for a set of culturally defined beliefs about appropriate sexual conduct, where your culture of choice is a reconstruction of that of ancient Israel. It's not a bad choice as a model culture, especially given the alternatives, but identifying it with "natural law" seems to be a philosophical error to me. One finds natural laws in nature, not in books of history or theology.
What scientists who are engaged in research on sexual behavior are doing is trying to figure out that "natural law" by observing the actual behavior of people, "acting in nature." The problem here is that their observations necessarily occur within a culture that conditions (but does not completely determine) the behavior of their subjects. This is why there is some effort to work across cultures, to find universal as opposed to local laws.
I believe that the scientists may prove to be your allies here. Propose to them the hypothesis that I've put forward—that people who are not promiscuous tend to enjoy marriages that are longer lasting, and more mutually satisfying. This is testable, and therefore fits within the scientific paradigm. And an affirmative answer, supported by science, would have an appeal outside of the Church (where God's word does not), as well as inside.
Finally, once you get from observation and theory formation to actual manipulation on societal scales, you're no longer doing science, you're doing engineering. It seems to me that most attempts at social engineering these days are being done by politicians, who are seldom schooled in the science, and who do not have the engineers' culture of learning from failure. Therefore, the levers get pulled at random (i.e., without any observationally based theory to predict the likely results of pulling them), and without systematic observations that can feed back into future policies.
jh—
It occurred to me that there is another way to address this. The magisterium made its peace with Galileo, and no longer claims that "natural law" requires a fixed earth. I believe it will make its peace with Kinsey too, although I don't expect that anyone now living will still be alive when this happens.
And while I'm taking it this way...
We often think that human evolution has come to an end, simply because we don't see it acting strongly on the (extraordinarily brief, by evolutionary standards) time scales of human history. I don't buy it. Differential success in reproduction is a reality in our world, and therefore evolution (i.e., changes in the frequency of various alleles) is a consequence.
I suspect that promiscuity has genetic as well as cultural and contingent components. Human evolution on large timescales seems to indicate movement from a more promiscuous past to a more pair-binding future. The principal evidence here is reduction in sexual dimorphism: in promiscuous species, there is a tendency for males to be much larger than females; in pair-binding species, there is a tendency for males and females to be of the same size. In the case of modern humans, we have a relatively moderate dimorphism, which suggests that we'll pair-bond, and struggle with it. So it is.
So consider abortion (or contraception, for that matter), not as merely as moral matters in the present, but as forces that shapes human evolution. To the extent that abortions/contraception are more likely to occur in promiscuous unions than pair-bound unions, policies that permit abortion/contraception tend to shape human evolution in directions that encourage greater faithfulness in the future, whereas policies that discourage abortion/contraception tend to shape human evolution in directions that encourage future promiscuity.
What about timescales? We can compute :-). Let's assume an environment in which promiscuity-favoring genes are reduced by 2% per generation (which I'll take to mean 25 years), which seems to me to be fairly plausible. A mere 860 years will halve the proportion of promiscuity favoring genes in the population. Likewise, a 2% advantage in the other direction would halve the proportion of faithfulness favoring genes on the same time scale. This is a time scale relevant to the church, which has existed now for almost 2000 years, and therefore it ought to be prepared to think and act on such scales.
there are no promiscuity genes
only intrinsically disordered souls making excuses and trying to sanctify what cannot be sanctified
there is no evolution
infinite change is the predilection of god
i think galileo was wrong
isn't it true that we have no actual perceived knowledge that everything revolves around the sun
i mean sure the model makes sense
but what if everything is actually revolving around the earth...even the sun...we need to explore that possibility...maybe it's not a done deal...i mean why stop with galileo...maybe the math is wrong...i mean we haven't perfected all the scope stuff yet have we
let's be open minded about this
his father was a great lute player/composer i used to play some of those tunes
nah as long as pleasure is known to man as long as sex is the sublimest pleasure there will be people who want it a bit too much
the same sex folks are really cowards...it is pathetic to hear anyone try to rationalize and even support them
that's the genetic material i'd like to X out...of course i don't believe we know anything about genetic material
i don't believe any of the genome crap
it's all science fiction
it is one thing to observe human behaviour
another to condone it
jesus set the bar high for a reason
and he believed we could get there
let's not compromise
if people can't be good boys and girls
they should dedicate their lives completely to god
and not try to make society conform to perversity
of course the whole american project is pretty perverse
from and indian point of view
the lakota had a notion which roughly trnslates as
double woman
a man who acted like a woman
was actually two women in one
i think they got it right
these folks could be shamans
they generally lived outside the teepee ring...sometimes they had mates
life is an odd proposition
no matter how we look at it
and the odd just get odder all the time
j
there is no evolution
infinite change is the predilection of god
I think that the second couplet is, in fact, evidence for evolution.
i think galileo was wrong
isn't it true that we have no actual perceived knowledge that everything revolves around the sun
i mean sure the model makes sense
but what if everything is actually revolving around the earth...even the sun...we need to explore that possibility...maybe it's not a done deal...i mean why stop with galileo...maybe the math is wrong...i mean we haven't perfected all the scope stuff yet have we
let's be open minded about this
Our telescopes are good enough to detect not only the movements of the planets, but also the parallax for stars in our stellar neighborhood (that is what the Hipparcos satellite was all about—literal astronomy).
From a scientific point of view, Copernicus shows that Heliocentric models were mathematically simpler, but Newton's discovery of the laws of gravitation ended debate, because a very simply law (f = ma) enables a successful prediction of (almost) all terrestrial, planetary, and indeed cosmic motion.
At a deeper level, it seems to me that you simply deny the possibility that the scientific enterprise can expand human knowledge. The impedimenta of modern human existence—cars, computers, television, and even the strings on your dobro— argue against you.
the same sex folks are really cowards...it is pathetic to hear anyone try to rationalize and even support them
Actually, I think it requires unusual bravery to admit a sexual orientation that is so despised by many.
the lakota had a notion which roughly trnslates as
double woman
a man who acted like a woman
was actually two women in one
i think they got it right
these folks could be shamans
they generally lived outside the teepee ring...sometimes they had mates
At some level, isn't this evidence of the universality of homosexuality within the human community, and the reality of the notion that sexual orientations are innate?
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