Ethics, religion, and sexuality - a summary of chapter 19 of Understanding human sexuality by Hyde and DeLamater

Sexology
Chapter 19
Ethics, religion, and sexuality

Basic concepts

Ethics: a system of moral principles; a ways of determining right and wrong.

Religion is a source of values, attitudes, and ethics.
For believers, religion sets forth an ethical code and provides sanctions that motivate them to obey the rules.
When a particular religion is practices by many people in a society, it helps create a culture, which then influences even those who do not accept the religion.

Hedonism: a moral system based on maximizing pleasure and avoiding pain.
Asceticism: an approach to life emphasizing discipline and impulse control.

Legalism: ethics based on the assumption that there are rules for human conduct and that morality consists of knowing the rules and obeying them.
Situationism: ethics based on the assumption that there are no absolute rules, or at least very few, and that each situation must be judged individually.

Sexuality in great ethical traditions

Classical Greek philosophy

While nothing in Greek culture rejected sex as evil, the great philosophers did develop a kind of asceticism.
They thought that virtue resulted from wisdom.
To achieve wisdom and cultivate virtue, violent passions must be avoided, and these might well include sex.

Plate believed that love led toward immortality and was therefore a good thing.
But this kind of love was mainly intellectual and more like friendship than sexuality.

Pederasty: sex between an older man and a younger man, or a boy.
Approved especially among the warrior class.
The older man was to serve as the younger one’s teacher and model of courage and virtue.

Ataraxia: a tranquil state between pleasure and pain in which the mind is unaffected by emotion.
Sex was not necessarily seen as evil, but as less important than wisdom and virtue.

Judaism

The basis for Judaism are the old testament of the bible.

The view of sexuality in the Hebrew scriptures is fundamentally positive.
Human sexual differentiation is an integral part of creation, which God calls ‘good’.
Judaism sees sexuality as a gift to be used responsibly and in obedience to God’s will, never as something evil in itself.

The command to marry and to procreate within marriage is clear.

Three themes of sexuality

• Sex is a deep and intimate part of a relationship between two people
• In the Hebrew scriptures, sexuality could never be separated from its social consequences.
• Hebrew scriptures see sexual behaviour as an aspect of national and religious loyalty

Fertility cult:a form of nature religion in which the fertility of the soil is encouraged through various forms of ritual magic, often including ritual sexual intercourse.

Christianity

Christianity is distinctive among the major world religions in insisting on monogamy.

The new testament

Because Jesus said almost noting on the subject of sex, it is difficult to derive a sexual ethic from the Gospels alone.

Sex negativity is not rooted in the bible, but in in the philosophies, especially Stoicism and Neo-Platonism, that shaped early Christianity.

The early Christian church

Celibacy: the practice of remaining celibate. Sometimes used to refer to abstaining from sexual intercourse, the correct term for which is chastity. A celibate is a person who remains unmarried, usually fro religious reasons.
The fathers of the Church, almost all of whom were celibates, allowed that marriage was good and honorable but thought virginity to be a much superior state.

The middle ages

Thomas of Aquinas
Whatever was natural was good.
Anything that was not natural was sinful.
Sex was obviously intended for procreating and, therefore, all non-procreative sex was sinful.

This theology was communicated to the ordinary Christian through the Church’s canon law.
This communicated to the ordinary person that the Church regarded sex as basically evil, for procreation only, and probably not something one should enjoy.

The protestants

In the matters of sexual ethics there were few changes.

• Clerical celibacy was abandoned

Current trends

Across Western history there has been a fairly stable consensus on the fundamentals of sexual ethics.
Sex has been understood as a good part of the divine creation but also as a source of temptation that needs to be controlled.
The only approved purpose for sex has been procreation.

Religious groups today face serious debate.

Humanism

Humanism: a philosophical system that holds that ethical judgments must be made on the basis of human experience and human reason.

Sexuality and other major religions

Islam

Classical Islam values sexuality very positively, and Muhammad saw intercourse in marriage as the highest good of human life.
Islam sanctions both polygyny and concubinage.
Sex outside marriage or concubinage is viewed as a sin.
The prophet opposed celibacy.

A male-dominated faith, Islam has a strong double standard but recognizes a number of rights and prerogatives for women.

There is great variety in ways Islamic laws are applied in societies across the world.

Striving for worldly pleasures is acceptable and sexuality is regarded primarily as a source of pleasure and only secondarily as a means of reproduction.
Contraception is not only permitted but encouraged by Islamic law.

Hinduism

Hinduism: an inclusive term that refers to a highly varied complex of mythology and religious practice founded on the Indian subcontinent.
Here can be found virtually every approach to sexuality that humans have yet invented.

Four possible approaches to life

• Kama
  The pursuit of pleasure
• Artha
  The pursuit of success and material wealth
• Dharma
  The pursuit of moral life
• Moksha
  The pursuit of liberation through the negation of the self in a state of being what is known as nirvana.

Buddism

There is little discussion of sex in the teachings of the Buddha.

• Theravada
  The strict non-indulgence of the desires that bring joy.
• Mahayana
  Directed toward love of others

Contemporary issues in sexual ethics

Human sexuality is heavily value laden.
There is no broad consensus on the norms of sexual behaviour.

Moralism: a religious or philosophical attitude that emphasizes morel behaviour, usually according to strict standards, as the highest goal of human life.
Moralist tend to favour strict regulation of human conduct to help make people good.

Pluralism: a philosophical or political attitude that affirms the value of many competing opinions and believes that the truth is discovered in the clash of diverse perspectives.
Believe maximum human freedom is possible.

Sex outside marriage

The religious tradition underlying Western ethics has almost always seen sexual intercourse as legitimate only in marriage.
This is rooted in an understanding of marriage as God’s will for most men and women, the way in which sin is avoided and children are cared for.

Fornication: the term for sex by unmarried persons and, more generally, all immoral sexual behaviour.

Trends in society has caused many ethicists to reopen the question and to have less strict positions.

• The development of safe and reliable contraception
• Later age of marriage
• Many people suffer the loneliness of divorce and widowhood
• Scientific evidence indicating widespread sexual activity among adolescents

For them, the quality of the relationship is more important ethically than its legal status.

Adultery has always been regarded as a grave matter.

Contraception

Roman Catholicism opposed any ‘artificial’ means of contraception.
Most ethicists would suggested that unmarried persons who are sexually active ought to be using birth control.

Those who oppose birth control for religious reasons see it as being contrary to the will of God, against the natural law, or both.

Abortion

There is no consensus on the relation between abortion and contraception.
A distinction is frequently made between therapeutic abortion and elective abortion.

Homosexuality

Religious communities have been engaged in a vigorous debate on the subject of homosexuality.

Rejectionism

Rejectionist position: it has generally be presumed that the Judeo-Christian tradition absolutely opposes any sexual acts between persons of the same gender.
Regards those committing such acts as dreadful sinners, utterly condemned by God.

Although there are few references in the Bible, all the explicit ones are negative.

A thread of condemnation of homosexuality does run through Christian history.

Love the sinner but hate the sin

A distinction between homosexual orientation and behaviour.
This stance regards a person’s homosexual orientation as morally neutral but rejects behaviours.

This is the official position of the Roman Catholic Church.

Full acceptance

Usually based on a revisionist view of the bible and church tradition.

HIV and AIDS

AIDS has raised a host of complex and difficult ethical issues for individuals, religious communities and society.

Technology and sexual ethics

A major challenge to ethicists today is the rapid development of technologies that raise new moral questions before old ones have been resolved.

Somatic cell nuclear transfer: cloning technique that involves substituting genetic material from an adult’s cell for the nucleus of an egg.

Therapeutic cloning: creating tissues or cells that are genetically identical to those of a patient, to treat a disease.