SEXUAL ETHICS

Jonathan Rowe 

An ethical dilemma is a situation where, however you react, you seem to be doing the wrong thing. One well-known example of an ethical dilemma is given by Jean-Paul Sartre. Sartre asks us to imagine a young man who lives with his mother; he is her only happiness in life. But the young man lives in occupied France during World War II and feels obliged to fight in the war. What does the young man do? 

Sexual ethics produces many dilemmas, because human sexual behaviour often doesn’t fit into the neat categories created by philosophers, prophets and priests. For example, it would be perhaps desirable if everybody in life waited until they met the love of their life, married that person and lived happily ever after with them and never had sex with anybody else. Unfortunately, some people aren’t lucky enough to meet that special person, or don’t want to, or find themselves abandoned or betrayed by their true love – or their true love is the same sex as them or married to someone else. What’s to be done?

The reason why these are dilemmas is that ethics can end up telling people they have to reject or abandon their deepest emotional and sexual needs. Normally, we would say it’s wrong to expect someone to sacrifice their happiness in this way – particularly because people feel they can’t help having sexual or romantic desires which often seem pretty harmless to themselves.

There are three basic positions that can be taken on sexual behaviour:

1. It’s an animal act that human beings have complicated with all sorts of taboos and rituals
2. It’s a social interaction with particularly significant consequences (emotional involvement, pregnancy, disease) and guided by the norms and values of society
3. It’s a spiritual act with an ontological significance that goes way beyond the feelings or motives of the two people involved.

The Evolutionary View

Evolutionary psychology looks at sexual behaviour as something we share in common with other animals – indeed, evolutionary science demonstrates that we are descended from animals. Certain sexual arrangements have “survival value” because creatures who practise these arrangements will have healthy children and stable societies. Other sexual arrangements are destructive for children and society in general. Over time, the destructive behaviours get “weeded out” because creatures who live that way don’t have many descendants. An example might be incest, which can lead to birth defects in children and also leads to economic stagnation in society because families don’t trade with each other if they don’t intermarry. Over time, tribes which practise incest suffer all sorts of problems, but tribes which drum a strong “incest taboo” into their members go from strength to strength.

Evolutionary psychologists tend to regard our sexual ethics as a set of taboos (irrational prohibitions) that have been imprinted on us from an early age. Although they might make some people frustrated and unhappy, they benefit society at large by helping families form, stay together and raise children. For example, the taboo against homosexuality might date back to a time when it was important for healthy adults to have children and keep the tribe going. According to this view, even though modern society has changed and we are more concerned about OVER-population rather than keeping the tribe going, the sexual taboos we have evolved over thousands of years are still with us. Religions often have a function of maintaining these ancient taboos, so some people welcome living in a secular society giving us the freedom to develop new sexual ethics that will have more survival value for the human race (such as using contraception and abortion to keep the population down).

A Social Anthropological View

Social Anthropology studies different human cultures across the world and throughout history and tends to focus on sexual practices as examples of key differences between cultures. There are several different perspectives within Social Anthropology but all of them would tend to view sexual ethics as being shaped by the wider social situation. For example, some societies allow a man to take several wives rather than just one but others allow a woman to take several husbands (these arrangements are termed polygamy), some encourage young people to experiment sexually whereas others strictly control the sexual behaviour of (in particular) young women.

When you look at sexual ethics from a Social Anthropological perspective, the rights and wrongs of sexual behaviour are based entirely on the structure of the society in which the behaviour takes place. Pre-marital sex was wrong in Medieval Europe, but homosexual sex was right in Ancient Greece. This view is termed Cultural Relativism by philosophers – it is the view that “right” or “wrong” is defined differently for each society or culture and cannot be judged or criticised by outsiders. This is a very useful view for researchers trying to study other cultures in an open-minded way. There are problems with taking this view in everyday life, because it means that you can’t criticise or try to stop cultural practices you find offensive – like stoning to death women who have been raped, as happened recently in Somalia.

The Religious (Ontological) View

In the past, most people saw sexual behaviour in a religious contexts and almost all religions involve themselves in sexual behaviour, by regulating marriages and defining what is acceptable behaviour and what isn’t. Some ancient religions took a dualist view of human nature, believing people have a physical animal nature and a spiritual moral nature. Sex was seen as something that only involved the physical, animal side of human beings and some religions looked down on it for that reason. Other religions believed that the sexual act was of great supernatural sigificance – that it imitated the creative powers of the gods. The Romans believed in a god called Genius who was supposed to supervise the marriage bed and was involved in ensuring children were conceived in the sexual act. Many ancient religions had fertility gods and goddesses and sexual intercourse took place during religious worship.

Christianity has a little of both attitudes. Lust and sexual desire are regarded as a hangover from the Fall of Adam and Eve – something bad that should be resisted. Only a marriage makes the sexual act between a man and a woman acceptable. Many Christian writers believe that during sexual intercourse a powerful spiritual relationship is created between two people. The Book of Genesis uses the term “one flesh” to describe a married couple, but St Paul goes further and suggests that when ANY couple sleep together they become “one flesh”. To form this spiritual relationship when you’re not married, or to form it then later to try to break it, is a crime against God and your own nature. This mixture of strongly negative and strongly idealistic beliefs about sex has led Christianity to put a lot of emphasis on virginity and disapprove of all sexual behaviour outside of heterosexual marriage.

The Philosophical Views

DIVINE COMMAND THEORY (DCT, not part of the new specification, but linked to a view of revelation and revealed theology discussed in the Christian Thought paper) endorses the religious (ontological) view of sex as a spiritual as well as a physical act. DCT suggests that certain sexual behaviours are absolutely forbidden by God, whether or not they actually cause harm. For example, many religious thinkers would say that homosexual sex is an “abomination” that God utterly condemns, both in the Old Testament and in the New Testament. The problem with DCT is the ancient Euthyphro Dilemma: does God condemn homosexuality because it’s wrong (and it’s hard for many modern people to see why it should be) or is it only wrong because God condemns it (in which case God’s commands seem to be arbitrary, empty and even abhorrent). From the Social Anthropological perspective, many of these commands were developed by Bronze Age tribes living in very primitive conditions and there seems to be no reason why people living in a very different sociey today should follow them. Evolutionary psychologists would argue that, whatever survival value anti-homosexuality commands once had, they don’t have it any longer, since over-population is a more pressing issue for the human race.

NATURAL LAW THEORY tries to arrive at the same ethical conclusions as the religious (ontological) view of sex, but from a rational argument rather than divine revelation. Thomas Aquinas suggests that “good” sexual behaviour is behaviour which fulfils its purpose – namely reproduction. This makes sexual intercourse “good” if it’s carried out by a couple who intend to have children together in a marriage. Other sorts of sex, or sex for other reasons, would be bad. There are many problems with this. Aquinas would declare homosexual sex to be “unnatural”, but also masturbation, sex for pleasure rather than reproduction and even sex between older people who can no longer conceive children. Natural Law Theory lies behind the Roman Catholic Church’s opposition to contraception, which leads to a huge controversy about encouraging people in Africa to use condoms in order to fight AIDS.

KANTIAN ETHICS asks two basic questions – is this behaviour in sexual matters univeralisable as a general maxim that everyone should follow?This first formulation of the categorical imperative, the formula of law, encourages us to be consistent and not to rely on our feelings (which in sexual matters can run away with us). Kant argues for duty, not pragmatic relativism (and stands in sharp contrast to Situation Ethics). And secondly, the second formula of ends requires us never to treat people simply as a means to an end (such as our own pleasure) but always also as an end in themselves – with dignity and respect. Here the principle of consent is surely fundamental. We need to place ourselves in the other person’s shoes and ask: how would we like to be treated f we were them?

UTILITARIANISM was originally developed to provide a fresh look at ethical dilemmas and tends to come to very different conclusions from the religious (ontological) perspective. Utilitarianism only asks whether sexual behaviour will cause harm or give pleasure: if, on balance, it produces more pleasure than harm, then it’s good. This isn’t an excuse for wholesale rape and promiscuity; you have to think of your own pleasure, but also your partner’s and everybody else who would be affected. This is known as the HARM PRINCIPLE and it rules out rape, adultery in most cases and other harmful, coercive or deceitful sexual behaviours.

Click here to view a handout on the Harm Principle, argued for by John Stuart Mill in his Essay on Liberty. (PDF format). Mill argues:

‘The sole end for which mankind are warranted, individually or collectively, in interfering with the liberty of action of any of their number, is self-protection. That the only purpose for which power can be rightfully exercised over any member of a civilised community, against his will, is to prevent harm to others. His own good, either physical or moral, is not sufficient warrant.’

We need to understand two important ideas that helped shape the harm principle. The first is that the harm principle comes from  the principle of utility. The principle of utility states that people should only do those things that bring the greatest amount of happiness to the greatest number of people and minimise pain. So, if we are trying to decide between two things, we should choose the option that makes the most people happy and fewest people miserable.

The second idea is that Mill says there is a difference between harm and offence. Harm is something that would injure the rights of someone else or set back important interests that benefit others. An example of harm would be forcing someone to have sex without their consent. An offence, according to Mill, is something which would  ‘hurt our feelings.’ As people’s feelings are different it is difficult to universalise the actions that hurt feelings especially in sexual ethics where different tastes occur in sexual practices. Again we return here to the principle of consent – but tempered by laws for example, for the protection of children.

Modern-day LIBERTARIANS take this position, saying that all sexual relationships are permissible so long as both people freely consent (which rules out sex with children) and no one is deceived. This is a very tolerant view, allowing consenting adults to do as they please, but it might be a bit optimistic. What about people who get manipulated into sex, agree to it while drunk or on drugs or who put up with sex as a necessary way of earning money or getting a job? The Religious Pespective insists there is a certain dignity to sex and dignity is exactly what is lost when it is evaluated purely in terms of the harm principle.

SITUATION ETHICS developed out of the cultural conflicts of the 1960s, particularly the “new morality” which advocated a more permissive approach to sex. In his book Honest To God (1963), John Robinson argues that it is love, and only love, that makes sexual behaviour right, inside or outside of marriage. This is an important observation, because it recognises that even within a marriage there can be loveless, exploitative and demeaning sex, even rape; similarly, sexual relationships outside of marriage can be based on love, loyalty and mutual commitment. This view makes divorce acceptable, if the “emotional and spiritual welfare of both parents and children in a particular family can be served best by divorce”. There are dangers with this view, which can end up endorsing all sorts of behaviour carried out “for love”. One of the problems with sexual ethics is that people in the grip of a sexual infatuation naturally think that what they are experiencing is True Love and feel that anything is justified if they can only possess their beloved. We normally expect ethics to act as a restraint on our romantic obsessions, but Situation Ethics can end up justifying them. Nevertheless, Situation Ethics has been very influential: in a simplistic way it probably reflects ordinary people’s views on sexual ethics (“It’s OK if you really love each other”) and it has divided opinions in the Christian churches; for example, in the Church of England many bishops want to include gay people in the church and in the clergy, but this is opposed by the Evangelical wing of the church and the African churches. 

ADULTERY, MARRIAGE & DIVORCE

In the ancient world, the Greeks and Romans tended to see marriage as little more than a business contract and wives could be divorced quite easily; the Latin phrase for this was “matrimonia debent esse libera” (“marriages ought to be free”). The Jews took marriage a bit more seriously, but still allowed Jewish husbands to divorce their wives for any reason, or no reason at all. Jesus took a particularly tough line on divorce:

“Anyone who divorces his wife and marries another woman commits adultery. And if she divorces her husband and marries another man, she commits adultery.” (Gospel of Mark)

This sounds  strict, although Matthew’s Gospel includes the same speech but adds the phrase “except for marital unfaithfulness”, suggesting that if one partner cheats on the other, this destroys the spiritual relationship between them. This is interesting for two reasons: firstly it shows how different Christian views on marriage/divorce were from their Jewish and Roman neighbours; secondly it shows that, right from the beginning, the churches couldn’t agree on just how hard-line their views on divorce should be. Many of the early churches were against sex and marriage altogether, and St Paul had to write to the Corinthian Christians arguing that, although he was in favour of celibacy, it was in fact OK for Christians to marry. Eventually, Christianity settled on the idea that marriage was a good thing, but the idea that somehow celibacy was even better and that sex was morally suspect lingered on for centuries.

This religious attitude affected the divorce laws in all Christian countries. Famously, King Henry VIII had to form his own church just so he could get a divorce from Catherine of Aragon and marry Anne Boleyn. In 1857 the law allowed wealthy people to divorce, but they had to go to court to do it and the process was expensive and required someone to be proved guilty of adultery (for wives) or cruelty and/or adultery (for husbands). The biggest change happened at the end of the Sixties: the number of divorces had doubled between 1960 and 1969, ending with the Divorce Reform Act (1969), which suddenly allowed anyone to seek a divorce on the basis of “irretrievable breakdown”, without having to prove your husband or wife guilty of anything. The number of divorces in the England & Wales more than doubled once more after the Act took effect in 1971, peaking in 1993 (with 180,000 divorces) and dropping slightly since then (roughly 145,000 in 2007).

Christian churches have taken different sides on the cultural and legal shift. The Roman Catholic Church insists that Christians marry for life and cannot divorce (although the marriage can be annulled as if it never happened under certain special circumstances). Other churches regard divorce as a sad event but are prepared to allow it and even to re-marry people who have already been divorced (though that usually is up to the individual priest and some don’t perform “second marriages”). Some people argue that divorce is now too easy and there ought to be more pressure on couples to stay together and resolve their problems. The problem with this is that it might trap adults and children in relationships that are abusive or psychologically damaging.

The ethics of divorce depend, then, on the philosophical view you take of marriage. If marriage is seen as a contract between two people that promotes happiness and social order, then divorce is only judged to be wrong if it brings harm (Utilitarianism) or violates the Law of Love (Situation Ethics). If you see marriage as a spiritual state that transcends the mere feelings of the people involved or the interests of society, then divorce will almost always be wrong, because it contravenes God’s commands (Divine Command Theory) or goes against the spiritual nature or purpose of human beings (Natural Law).

HOMOSEXUALITY

The Jewish and Christian scriptures have always spoken out strongly against homosexuality (or “sodomy” in Biblical language – a term that has strongly negative connotations today).

“If a man lies with a man as one lies with a woman, both of them have done what is detestable. They must be put to death.” (Book of Leviticus, 20:13)
“God gave them over to shameful lusts. Even their women exchanged natural relations for unnatural ones. In the same way the men also abandoned natural relations with women and were inflamed with lust for one another.” (St Paul’s Epistle to the Romans, 1:26)

This view derives from the creation of man and woman described in the Book of Genesis:

“So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them. God blessed them and said to them, “Be fruitful and increase in number”” (Genesis 1:27)

In other words, Christianity and Judaism see males and females as being created by God specifically for one another, with the purpose of reproduction. This clearly comes from the Religious (Ontological) perspective, because heterosexual relationships are seen as something established by God and fulfilling God’s purposes for the human race and therefore NOT something human beings are free to change in line with their own preferences or cultural expectations. This is also the basis for Natural Law’s view that heterosexuality is natural and the only sort of sexual behaviour that fulfils the purpose of human life. 

The ancient world, by contrast, was quite accepting of homosexuality. However, their view of sexuality was different in other ways. The Greeks and Romans didn’t tend to distinguish people by sexual orientation and almost everybody agreed that the most sexually attractive form was that of an adolescent boy. Intense same-sex friendships were actively promoted in ways that would probably seem homosexual to most people today. Instead, the ancient peoples made distinctions based on the sexual ROLE people played – whether you were the superior, dominant penetrator or the submissive inferior who is penetrated. Women ALWAYS played the submissive role and were seen as the inferior sex in ancient society. In male homosexual relations, one of the partners would almost always be a boy or adolescent (the Greeks called this pederasty) because for a grown adult to adopt the submissive role would be socially unacceptable and shameful. This means that ancient homosexuality was based on power, was often exploitative (although in Greek pederasty the older man often took the part of a teacher and guardian) and would usually be identified as paedophilia by modern people.

From a Social Anthropological perspective, it’s impossible (and pointless) to criticise ancient homosexuality: it’s how their society worked and homosexual behaviour just meant something different in Ancient Greece from today. After all, when they reached their 30s, Greek men were expected to marry a woman (usually in her early teens as well) and develop a non-sexual friendship with the young men who had once been their lovers. It’s also difficult to tell just what aspect of homosexuality the Jewish Prophets or St Paul were condemning. Did they object to the homosexual act itself? or the fact that it typically involved child abuse? or that it involved a powerful man dominating a weaker youth (and Jewish and Christian writers believed God took the side of the weak and powerless)? If references to “sodomy” in the Bible are directed at ancient homosexuality, then perhaps they can’t really apply to modern homosexuality, where an adult same-sex couple live together as equals.

From an Evolutionary perspective, homosexuality is simply a variation in sexual behaviour, created by a mixture of environment and genetics. Homosexual behaviour is quite widespread in the animal kingdom – for example, Roy and Silo at New York’s Central Park Zoo [see right]. If homosexuality increases in response to population pressure (and there is some evidence to suggest it does), then homosexuality might be a survival mechanism that stops a species from overpopulating and exhausting its resources. If this is true, then it becomes very hard for Natural Law theory to argue that homosexuality is unnatural or goes against the purpose of human life.

Utilitarianism will not ask whether homosexuality is unnatural, but only whether or not it causes harm. It is reasonable to argue that, so long as homosexuals practise safe sex, they are harming no one. In fact, more harm might be done by hiding or repressing homosexual inclinations, although different views could fairly be taken on this.

Christianity today is sharply divided over homosexuality (be careful to differentiate, however, between homosexual orientation and homosexual behaviours). The traditional Christian view is that homosexuals are loved by God and are welcome in the Church – so long as they do not engage in homosexual behaviour. It is the behaviour that is sinful, not the person. In effect, Christianity calls homosexuals to live a celibate life. To be fair, Christianity calls lots of people to live a celibate life (Catholic priests, monks and nuns, unmarried people) although it might be argued that people can stop being a priest, monk, nun or unmarried, whereas homosexuals are being denied any chance of sexual fulfilment. Nonetheless, this is the view taken by many evangelical Christians and by most churches in Africa where Christianity is growing very rapidly. In America, some evangelical churches offer spiritual “healing” for homosexuals, as if homosexuality were an illness that could be cured, and some happily married Christians claim to be “recovering homosexuals”, rather like being a recovering alcoholic. Critics complain that these cures in fact lead to self-hatred and depression.

The liberal Christian view is strongly influenced by Situation Ethics. Situation Ethics will not follow a general rule (homosexuality = bad!) but judge each case on its merits. This is applies the working principle of pragmatism (there are four working principles, argues Fletcher). If a homosexual couple have genuine love for each other and propose to form a loyal and supportive relationship, then the Law of Love condones what they are doing and terrifying threats from the Bible need to be ignored. In other words, homosexual relationships need to live up to the same standard that Christianity expects of heterosexual relationships – and of course there are many heterosexual marriages containing cruelty, neglect or exploitation. Liberal Christians sometimes point out that the Bible contains many passages supporting slavery, racism or the inferior treatment of women, which modern Christians are prepared to ignore, and the Biblical condemnations of homosexuality should be discarded too.

This debate has become very heated in recent years, particularly over the issue of homosexual priests in the Anglican Church.

1. In 2003, Canon Jeffrey John had to step down as Bishop of Reading because of an outcry from evangelical Christians that he was a (celibate) homosexual.
2. In 2003, an American Anglican church appointed Gene Robinson as a bishop, even though he was openly (non-celibate) gay. This produced a furious reaction from the churches in Nigeria, a country where homosexuality is illegal.
3. In 2009, Mary Glasspool was elected to be a bishop in Los Angeles, although she is an open lesbian and has been living with her partner for 8 years.