WHAT SEXUAL ETHICS ARE ALL ABOUT

'...a "crisis" in sexual ethics is never simply that; it is a crisis in our understanding of what it means to be a person. Are we beings characterized most of all by will and choice, beings who confer meaning and value on our acts by our choices? Or are we beings who discover meaning and value in the embodied life God has created? Because the latter is the truth, the church can offer to the world something more hopeful than the idea that what is good depends largely on our own choosing.'

Gilbert Meilaender, Thy Will Be Done: The Ten Commandments and the Christian Life, p.21.

THE INTIMACY OF BEING TRULY SEEN

'To be seen in truth is an intimate experience. Sight can in fact be more intimate than touch. As any pastor knows, people often go out in search of sexual adventure because they do not feel seen, suffer from this fact and crave a substitute. The risk is that pleasure serves, then, to exacerbate sadness and make loneliness worse. Intimacy does not have to be sexual. Sex can stand in intimacy's way.'

Erik Varden, Chastity, p.158.

FREEDOM FOR, NOT FREEDOM FROM

'Ordinarily we think of freedom as scope to do what we feel like. We think in terms of freedom from, not of freedom unto. In Christian terms, freedom is about enabling commitment. The Biblical view of human nature, evidenced in Christ, regards the human being as essentially relational, oblative and covenantal. On this account, unhindered pursuit of momentary inclinations is not freedom. It it is enslavement to whim, which, empirically speaking, rarely produces last happiness. Sensational thrills can come of it, true, but they are not much of a foundation on which to construct a life.'

Erik Varden, Chastity, p.113.

REAL HAPPINESS

'The happiness which God designs for His higher creatures is the happiness of being freely, voluntarily united to Him and to each other in an ecstasy of love and delight compared with which the most rapturous love between a man and a woman on this earth is mere milk and water. And for that they must be free.'

CS Lewis, Mere Christianity, p.48.

THE LIMITS TO CONSENT

'I don't believe that we can ever leave power behind in sex, that we can enter a zone blissfully free of inequality. I don't believe that consent miraculously displaces the imbalances of power that operate on our every interaction. 'Tomorrow sex will be good again,' says Foucault, wryly, playfully; that's the ideal, and that's the delusion. The negotiation of imbalances in power between men and women, between all of us, occurs minute by minute, second by second. And there is no realm, whether sexual or otherwise, in which that act of negotiation is no longer necessary. Whatever we do, in sex and elsewhere, we calibrate our desires with those of the the other, and try to understand what it is that we want. But we don't simply work out what we want and then act on that knowledge. Working out what we want is a life's work, and it has to be done over and over and over. The joy may lie in it never being done.'

Katherine Angel, Tomorrow Sex Will Be Good Again: Women and desire in the age of consent, p.114.

THE CASE AGAINST THE SEXUAL REVOLUTION

'We need to re-erect the social guard rails that have been torn down. And in order to do that, we have to start by stating the obvious. Sex must be taken seriously. Men and women are different. Consent is not enough. Violence is not love. Loveless sex is not empowering. People are not products. Marriage is good.'

Louise Perry, The Case Against the Sexual Revolution, p.189.

THE NEW SEXUAL TECHNOLOGY WE NEED

'The task for practically minded feminists, then, is to deter men from the cad mode. Our current sexual culture does not do that, but it could. In order to change the incentive structure, we would need a technology that discourages short-termism in male sexual behavior, protects the economic interests of mothers, and creates a stable environment for the raising of children. And we do already have such a technology, even if it is old, clunky and prone to periodic failure. It's called monogamous marriage.'

Louise Perry, The Case Against the Sexual Revolution, p.181.

OUR SEXUAL MORALITY NEEDS MORE THAN THE PRINCIPLE OF CONSENT

'When we strip bask all sexual morality to the bare bones, leaving only the principle of consent, we leave the way clear for some particularly predatory pikes. As the example of pedophilia advocacy shows, the consent framework is nowhere near robust enough to protect the vulnerable from harm. Given the profound importance and complexity of sexual relationships, a much more sophisticated moral system is required...'

Louise Perry, The Case Against the Sexual Revolution, p.64.

SEX NEEDS UNIQUENESS

'What concerns me most in the present prevalent freedom - no, not freedom, license, which is a very different thing - about the act of sex, is blunting the particular. If bedding becomes a series of one night stands, it becomes a general thing-in-itself, instead of a very particular act between two particular, unique, irreproducible, irreplaceable persons. When it becomes a thing-in-itself, it is reduced to the de-personalising realm of the general..'

Madeleine L'Engle, A Circle of Quiet, p.169.

HOW THE "SEXUAL REVOLUTION" HAS FAILED WOMEN

'Women are learning to have sex like men. But peel back the layers, and it becomes obvious that this transition is not a reflection of their power but of their subjugation to men's interests. If women were more in charge of how their relationships transpired - more in charge of the "pricing" negotiations around sex - we would be seeing, on average, more impressive wooing efforts by men, fewer hookups, fewer pre-marital sexual partners, shorter cohabitations, and more marrying going on (and perhaps even at a slightly earlier age too). In other words the "price" of sex would be higher: it would cost men more to access it. Instead, none of these things are occurring.'

Mark Regnerus, Cheap Sex, p.214.

THE INDUSTRIALSATION OF SEX

'The triumph of the industrial economy is the fall of community. But the fall of community revels how precious and how necessary community is. For when community falls, so must fall all the things that only community life can engender and protect: the care of the old, the care and education of children, family life, neighborly work, the handing down of memory, the care of the earth, respect for nature and the lives of wild creatures. All of these things have been damaged by the rule of industrialism, but of all the damaged things probably the most precious and the most damaged is sexual love. For sexual love is the heart of community life. Sexual love is the force that in our bodily life connects us most intimately to the Creation, to the fertility of the world, to farming and the care of animals. It brings us into the dance that holds the community together and joins it to its place.'

Wendell Berry, Sex, Economy, Freedom, and Community, p.133.

THE POLICING OF SEXUALITY

'...not long ago conservatives policed discourse concerning human sexuality, today liberal voices have replaced them. The only thing that has remained constant is the presence of policing.'

Mark Regnerus, Cheap Sex: the transformation of men, marriage, and monogamy, p.19.

THE PUZZLING POWER OF SEXUALITY

'It seems to me we walk around all the time feeling these absurdly strong impulses and desires, strong enough to make us want to ruin our lives and sabotage our marriage and careers, but nobody is really trying to explain what the desires are, or where they come from. Our ways of thinking and speaking about sexuality seem so limited, compared to the exhausting and debilitating power of sexuality itself as we experience it in our real lives.'

Sally Rooney, Beautiful World, Where Are You, p.92.

SEXUALITY IS ABOUT MORE THAN SEX

'I wish there was a good theory of sexuality out for me to read. All the existing theories seem to be mostly about gender - but what about sex itself? I mean, what even is it? To me it's normal to meet people and think of them in a sexual way without actually having sex with them - or, more to the point, without even imagining sex with them, without even thinking about imagining it. This suggests that sexuality has some "other" content, which is not about the act of sex. And maybe even a majority of our sexual experiences are mostly this "other". So what is the other?'

Sally Rooney, Beautiful World, Where Are You, p.91.

THE GREAT MARRIAGE

'There will come the time, when Christ will sweetly invite his spouse to enter with him into the palace of his glory, which he had been preparing for her from the foundation of the world, and he shall as it were take her by the hand, and lead her in with him: and this glorious bridegroom and bride shall with all their shining ornaments, ascend up together into the heaven of heaven; the whole multitude of glorious angels waiting upon them: and this Son and daughter of God shall, in their united glory and joy, present themselves together before the Father; when Christ shall say "Here I am, and the children, which thou hast given me": and they both shall in that relation and union, together receive the Father's blessing; and shall thenceforward rejoice together, in consummate, uninterrupted, immutable, and everlasting glory, in the love and embraces of each other, and joint enjoyment of the love of the Father.' 

Jonathan Edwards in Dane C Ortlund, Edwards on the Christian Life, p.87.

THE LIMITS TO THE JOY OF SEX

'Human love knows no definitive consummation, no absolute fulfillment. Loving relationships are never complete. They are always ongoing, always reaching out for more. Regardless of the quality or frequency of lovemaking, there is always a measure of yearning present.' 

Dianne Bergant in Julian Hardyman, Jesus, Lover of My Soul, p.151.

UNION WITH CHRIST DRIVES SEXUAL ETHICS

'...the problem with sexual immorality is precisely that it is incompatible with the holiness associated with the believer in union with Christ. It actively defiles the sacred.'
Grant Macaskill, Living in Union with Christ, p.89.

IRRATIONAL SEXUALITY

'...sexual interactions do not constitute the most rational area of most individuals' lives.'

Veronique Mottier, Sexuality: A Very Short Introduction, p.84.

WHY SEX IS SUCH A TEMPTING IDOL

'It is very tempting to make an idol out of sex, especially as sex can at its best, bring us the nearest many of us get to heaven in this lifetime.'

Jo Ind, Memories of Bliss: God, Sex, and Us, p.142. 

WE WANT TO BE KNOWN

'Behind all the desires for connection is the desire to be "fully known"'

Jessica Martin, Holiness and Desire, p.78.