sexual morality central question
What kind of sexual behavior is morally permissible, and under what circumstances?
3 answers to the central question
1. Sex is permissible only in a marriage between a man and a woman.
2. Sex is permissible between informed, consenting adults.
3. Sex is permissible between informed, consenting adults who are bound by love or commitment.
Conventional view
Sex is morally acceptable only between one man and one woman who are married to each other by legal authority- premarital sex and extramarital sex are wrong.
(A religious version of the conventional view says that some sex acts performed by married partne
Liberal view (nonpolitical)
As long as basic moral standards are respected (for example, no one is harmed or coerced), any sexual activity engaged in by informed, consenting adults is permissible.
(All kinds of sexual behavior condemned by the conventionalist would be morally accept
Moderate view
Sex is permissible, whether in marriage or not, if the consenting partners have a serious emotional connection.
(Moral sex does not require marriage, but it does entail more than just the informed, freely given consent of the people involved. For some, th
By age 20,
77 percent of adults have had sex and 75 percent have had premarital sex.
By age 44,
94 percent of women and 96 percent of men have had premarital sex.
Among teenagers and young adults (ages 15-21),
11 percent of women and 4 percent of men report a same-sex sexual experience.
moral theories
natural law theory,
Natural law theory
+ Right actions are those directed toward the aims revealed in nature.
- According to the Roman Catholic account of the theory, since procreation is foremost among these aims, actions consistent with it are permissible and actions incompatible with it are
The Vatican:
Experience teaches us that love must find its safeguard in the stability of marriage, if sexual intercourse is truly to respond to the requirements of its own finality and to those of human dignity. These requirements call for a conjugal contract sanctio
A theory derived from Kant's categorical imperative
+ We must always treat people as ends in themselves, never merely as a means to an end.
- Thomas Mappes defines "using another person" as violating the requirement that interactions with that person be based on her voluntary informed consent.
- "Using ano
A Kantian theory
+ Any sexual activity in which one person deceives or coerces another is wrong.
- But when the principle of voluntary informed consent is respected, a broad range of sexual practices is permissible.
Utilitarianism
+ likely to sanction many kinds of sexual activity on the grounds that they produce the greatest overall happiness or good for all concerned.
- Sexual behavior that results in the greatest net good (the greatest utility) is morally right regardless of whe
Alan Goldman:
+ The key difference between the conventional view and the liberal view of sexuality is that the former insists that sexual behavior has a morally significant goal, and the latter assumes that sex has no goal at all.
- Several faulty theories of sexuality
Alan Goldman cont.:
- Sex is not a means to some other goal�sex is just "plain sex."
- Sexual desire is desire for contact with another person's body and for the pleasure which such contact produces.
Igor Primoratz:
We have no reason to believe that there is only one morally acceptable aim or purpose of human sexual experience and behavior, whether prescribed by nature or enjoined by society. . . . Sex has no special moral significance; it is morally neutral.
Conventional sexual morality:
+ "Plain sex" arguments are faulty.
- Sexual encounters have a deeper, more significant meaning than sexual liberals would admit.
- Sexual experiences express and affirm moral values, and the right kind of sex expresses and affirms the right kind of value
Homosexuality
+ Is homosexuality unnatural or abnormal?
- Some argue that if homosexual behavior is not found among animals in nature, then it is unnatural and therefore morally unacceptable.
- But homosexual attachments and behavior occur throughout the animal kingdom
Michael Levin's argument:
1. Homosexuality is a misuse of a bodily part.
2. This misuse leads to unhappiness because it frustrates "an innately rewarding desire."
3. Society has an interest in promoting happiness.
4. Therefore, since homosexuality makes for unhappiness, society ou
A typical rejoinder to Levin:
+ Evolutionary adaptations tell us nothing about how people ought to behave.
- Contrary to natural law theory, knowing how nature is tells us nothing about how we ought to be.