This page contains A*/A grade level summary revision notes for the Sexual ethics topic.

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Religious vs secular approaches to sexual ethics

Christian teachings (Bible & Augustine) on homosexuality, pre-marital sex & extra-marital sex
The Bible is against all three.
‘Thou shalt not commit adultery’ – adultery is sex outside marriage, whether pre or extra. Homosexuals can’t get married, so all homosexual sex is adultery and thus not allowed.

Homosexually

“Man shall not lie with man as he does with woman, that is an abomination, they shall both surely be put to death, their blood is upon them.” – Leviticus 20:13

St Augustine on sexual desire and original sin

Augustine thinks that our sexual desire is one of the key features of original sin.
In Genesis, after disobeying God, Adam and Eve became aware of their nakedness and covered up out of shame.
Augustine claims it is ‘just’ that we feel shame about our naked bodies, since it is just that we feel shame over having lust because our inability to control it is the result of our fallen state.
Augustine argues this is universal – people of all cultures cover up their genitals, and sex is done in private, which Augustine suggests is due to the shame associated with it.
This all shows the connection between sex, sex organs and the shame of original sin which caused Adam and Eve to feel shame and wear clothes.
Augustine concludes that sex must be confined to marriage for the purpose of having children – as the bible commands reproduction and Jesus recommends marriage (between man and woman).
This means that homosexual sex is not allowed.
Anything else is just giving in to original sin in a depraved and disordered way.

Secular views on sexual ethics as counter to general religious views

Freud’s rejection of Christian approaches to sex as overly repressive.
Freud himself was quite conservative regarding sex in many ways, but nonetheless he was very influential on secular liberal views on sex.
He thought that traditional Christian attitudes towards sex resulted in a feeling of shame about sexual desire which led to unhealthy repression and mental illness.
The liberal secular attitude towards sex is influenced by Freud.
It claims that sex is a natural biological desire which shouldn’t be a source of shame but of well-being.
Augustine’s insistence that there is something shameful about lust is absurd and pointless once you understand it is the result of evolution, not original sin.
Conservative religious attitudes towards sex are therefore unnecessarily repressive and puritanical. They become an unhealthy and pointless obsession with self-control borne from insecurity over a mythical fall from grace.
However today, arguably humans have developed to the point where they can be trusted with more freedom. This suggests that our nature is not cursed with original sin such that we need draconian sexual norms and legislation.
Sexual behaviour between consenting adults is no business of anyone else, especially not of the state/law.
Traditionalists always fought against the sexual liberalisation of society, concerned it would harm social order, and yet society seems fine if not better.

Evaluation – oversexualization

Secular society seems oversexualised to a concerning degree.
Sexual imagery is used as advertising everywhere.
People have an unhealthy superficial fixation on their appearance.
Bishop Barron agrees with this point – arguing that the superficial secular attitude towards sex has turned it into a meaningless act, which can be psychologically damaging for people.
God designed sex to be within a loving marriage.
Having sex outside marriage, engaging in what is meant to be a meaningful and personal act in such a superficial way is actually psychologically harmful.

Optional further evaluation:

Barron has a point about the danger of oversexualisation and superficiality regarding sex and relationships of modern culture.
However, this doesn’t justify a return to the Christian medieval approach to sex and relationships.
It suggests liberal secular culture needs to improve its cultural attitudes around sex and relationships. Secular people could agree with his point about the way it’s gone wrong, but still disagree about his Christian standards.
The hippies had the extreme attitude of thinking we could completely throw off all the traditional norms and restrictions on sexual behaviour. Arguably these days, secular culture is realising that went too far in some ways. Things like the metoo movement in some ways represent secular culture realising that actually restrictions and rules and norms are necessary – total absolute licentiousness/freedom actually encourages selfishness and disregard for the feelings or even consent of other people.

Natural law (religious) on sexual ethics

Application to homosexuality, pre-marital sex & extra-marital sex

The telos of sex is children.
Children are best raised within marriage.
Education can only be fulfilled so long as children are born in wedlock
Children born outside of marriage tend to be less educated
So, sex must be confined to marriage to fulfil the primary precept of education.
So, all sex outside marriage is wrong – whether pre, extra or homosexual.
Furthermore, homosexual sex cannot lead to children.

Counter

Natural law is outdated – it was created in a mediaeval socio-economic time and its rules reflect that. In Aquinas’ time, having sex outside marriage was often a death sentence because sex led to children, and single mothers struggled to survive. There was a great need for reproduction, because so many children died – which was part of why it was against homosexuality, because of the intense need for reproduction. Homosexuality was also seen as against the nuclear family dynamic, which was also needed for reproduction and education.
Today, these socio-economic conditions are no longer present. We now have effective contraception and support for single parents. We have overpopulation, and it’s no longer the case that children outside marriage are doomed to lack education. The reasoning behind Aquinas’ views on sexual ethics no longer apply. It is outdated. In Aquinas’ time, his reasoning made sense – but that was because of the dire situation society was in.

Evaluation:

outdated doesn’t mean wrong – it just means popular opinion has shifted.
If Hitler had won WW2, democracy would have come to be seen as ‘outdated’.

(Optional) further evaluation:

However – the Critique is not just that Aquinas is outdated in that popular opinion has changed – the best version of the ‘outdated’ critique is to argue that Aquinas’ theory was actually a reaction to his socio-economic context and since that has changed, Natural law is no longer relevant.
Aquinas thought that he discovered the primary precepts through human reason, as God designed. However, arguably it’s a simpler explanation that Aquinas was simply figuring out what would have been good for people in his socio-economic condition. That the resulting principles actually came from God was only in his imagination.

Natural law ethics & Cross-cultural moral variation

Fletcher argues a weakness of Aquinas’ approach is cross-cultural moral differences.
Aquinas claimed that conscience involves the ability of reason to know the primary precepts, to guide us towards our good end (telos). But if that was true, it should be universally true of all humans regardless of their culture. We would expect to find more moral agreement.
Different cultures have different moral views – e.g.
Some cultures accept pre-marital & extra-marital sex & homosexuality, while others reject it.
Not only is there disagreement, it tends to fall along cultural boundaries. Culture and social conditioning is therefore the better explanation of what determines our moral compass, not telos. This was the view of psychologists like Freud and Skinner. Their scientific approach looks stronger than Aquinas’.

Counter

Aquinas would disagree – he would say that even though there’s disagreement there is still a core set of moral views all cultures share which is very similar to the primary precepts..
Everyone agrees that killing for no reason is wrong, everyone agrees an orderly society is good, reproduction is good, education is good.
Moral disagreement could just be the result of sinful and corrupt cultures and original sin.

Evaluation

However, we have other, better, more scientific explanations of the core moral views found in all cultures.
Richard Dawkins argued our moral sense partly came from evolution – which programmed us with empathy to care about other people, reproduce, educate, etc, all of which is evolutionarily advantageous for a herd species like us.
Furthermore, there is just a practical requirement for a society to exist. Imagine a culture started allowing killing and stealing – it would fall apart and end. So no special explanation of cross-cultural moral codes is needed.
Conscience isn’t God’s design directing us towards our telos then. It’s from evolution, social conditioning and social practicality.
Aquinas’ supernatural explanation of explain cross-cultural moral agreement is an unnecessary hypothesis.
Aquinas’ whole theory of natural law is better explained by scientific analysis of the nature and nurture that goes into human moral decision making.
Freud’s scientific approach is a simpler and better explanation of our moral compass than Aquinas’ theological approach.
So, we do not need the idea of natural law built into us by a God as our telos. That is an unnecessary hypothesis.

Situation ethics (religious) on sexual ethics

Application to homosexuality, pre-marital sex & extra-marital sex

As long as homosexuality or pre/extra-marital sex has a loving outcome, Fletcher thinks it is good.
Homosexuality: if someone is in a very homophobic society which could threaten their life if discovered, Fletcher might be in favour of not acting on homosexual impulses in that situation – for their own protection.
However, if someone would not face violent homophobia, then it seems more loving to allow them to live like they want to.
Pre-marital sex: Fletcher would be against it if someone was pressured into it, either by others or by society in general.
However, if all people involved are happy and it’s a genuine choice, then Fletcher would say it had a loving outcome and there’s no ethical issue with it.
Extra-marital sex: Fletcher would be against it in most cases, because cheating on someone is not exercising agape love.
However, in rare cases, Fletcher would accept it. He gave the example of a wife in a prison who had sex with a guard to become pregnant so she could be released and go back to her family. That adultery had a loving outcome.

Counter:

Fletcher ignores most of the commands in the Bible

The Bible is clearly against homosexuality and pre/extra-marital sex, so Fletcher’s theory is not being true to Christian ethics.
Mouw’s critique. Mouw pointed out that Jesus made other commands. It makes no sense for Jesus to have only wanted us to follow the command of agape – then why would Jesus make other commands..?
Pope Pius XII criticised situation ethics on similar grounds. Christ himself frequently spoke of the importance of following all the commandments. (Matthew 19:17 & John 14:15). Fletcher is therefore unwittingly attacking Christ.

Evaluation:

However, Fletcher successfully defends himself with his liberal approach to the bible.
Fletcher doesn’t think we can follow the Bible literally, but if we interpret it then we can’t tell whose interpretation is right.
He concludes that the only valid approach to the Bible is to follow its general themes.
The most consistent theme of the Bible is love – agape.
So, Fletcher thinks he is following the Bible actually.
Further evidence in support of Fletcher is that Jesus did say that loving your neighbour as yourself was the ‘greatest commandment’ – the fact that it’s the ‘greatest’ supports Fletcher’s approach of thinking it takes precedence over all others.

Further evaluation of situation ethics

Fletcher invented situational ethics to be a modern, liberalised, updated form of religious ethics that was meant to be relevant to modern times and replace the outdated systems like natural law.
Fletcher & Robinson argue that mankind has ‘come of age’, meaning becoming more civilised and educated and capable of making autonomous ethical choices.
This means we can trust the average person to think through whether to bend or even break traditional norms and laws about ethics.
This allowed Fletcher to adopt a liberal approach to sexual ethics – accepting homosexuality and pre/extra marital sex in situations where accepting them has a loving outcome.

Counter

Barclay: situation ethics grants people a dangerous amount of freedom
Mankind has not yet come of age and still needs the protection of strict laws.
People are not perfectly loving so if given the power to judge what is good or bad, people will do selfish or even cruel things. People’s loving nature can be corrupted by power. E.g. a homophobic parent might genuinely think it loving to kick their gay kid out the house.
This argument suggests that power corrupts.

Evaluation

Barclay’s argument is successful because there is much evidence in human culture about the corrupting influence of power.
People are more civilised, but only because of the careful system of law built around them to make being civilised their best interest.
When we take away laws, people behave terribly. This can be seen during failed states when governments collapse, or when police go on strike as seen in Canada in 1969.
Zimbardo’s stanford prison experiment also shows how corrupt people can become by power.
‘The lord of the flies’ is literature which powerfully represents the decline in civilised behaviour once laws are taken away.
So, without external supervision of legalistic morality, humans become corrupt.
Fletcher’s theory would lead to antinomianism if implemented because it is too individualistic and subjective.

Utilitarianism (secular) on sexual ethics

Application to homosexuality, pre-marital sex & extra-marital sex

Act:

Homosexuality: generally good, except if in a homophobic society
Pre-marital sex: good if people are ready for it and not pressured, bad if otherwise
Extra-marital sex: good if it helps people leave abusive/unhappy relationships, bad otherwise

Rule:

As a Rule Utilitarian, Mill has a more blanket view – rather than saying things are something right and sometimes wrong, he would think following a social rule which maximises happiness is correct.
Mill’s favourite rule was the ‘harm principle’ – that people should be free to do what they want so long as they are not harming others.
Homosexuality: should be accepted – consenting adults should be free in their private life to do whatever they want. If society is homophobic, it should try to change so that everyone can be happy – this will maximise happiness long-term.
Pre-marital sex: consenting adults should be free to do what they want
Extra-marital sec: consenting adults should be free to do what they want

Counter

The issue of calculation: it’s hard to predict the future, to measure subjective mental states, to calculate these things in time-sensitive situations.
For example, we can’t predict the future regarding allowing homosexuality or pre/extra-marital sex.
Mill’s Rule utilitarianism does not have this issue – people simply need to know the social rules that our society has calculated to maximise happiness.

Evaluation

However, William barclay argues that changing our views on sexual ethics and on the nature of the family and human relationships could be dangerous for our society. Traditionalists, following Aquinas, argue the nuclear family is the foundation of social order and flourishing and they oppose any change to that. Even if it doesn’t cause direct harm, loosening the laws on sexual ethics could indirectly harm society.
We can’t really tell whether the traditionalists are right – this highlights the difficulty of calculating the long-term effects of utilitarian rules like Mill’s harm principle.
E.g. our society has embraced Mill’s principle – but the result seems to be more superficial relationships, less marriages and less birthrates. That doesn’t seem good for flourishing. It looks like there was some genuine wisdom in the traditional way of life.

Response:

However, lowering marriage and birth rates is only bad on the traditional view. Under Mill’s principle of freedom, less people are choosing those paths. Perhaps in the past they would have been pressured into them. However surely that would have been to the detriment of their happiness.
Mill thinks that if given freedom – people will do what’s good for them – he says no one is better positioned to discover what will make your unique personality flourish than you.

Further evaluation of Utilitarianism

The issue of liberty and rights.

Act utilitarianism seems to justify bad actions.
So long as a majority gain happiness, it seems to justify infliction of harm on a minority.
E.g., if most people found homosexuality disgusting, Utilitarianism seems to judge it right for homosexuals to be repressed – to stay in the closet – to avoid lessening happiness by offending and upsetting the majority of people.
Same goes for pre and extra marital sex – if most people find these behaviours so offensive and disgusting that they would be made unhappy by their presence in society.
Act seems to have to go along with whatever are the prejudices of the majority of people. People genuinely do seem to get that worked up by homosexuality and pre/extra marital sex.

Reponse:

Mill gets around this issue – the harm principle has a more long-term view of maximising happiness.
In Mill’s time, most people genuinely found homosexuality and pre/extra marital sex to be disgusting to the point of causing unhappiness if it was happening in society. However, Mill thought this meant we needed to change society and culture – to encourage people to accept that what others do in their private life is no business of theirs.
That way, in the long term there will be a chance for everyone to be happy, which would better maximise happiness.
So, Mill would not allow repression of a minority merely for the happiness of a prejudiced majority.

Optional:

counter to rule Utilitarianism that it either collapses back into Act (weak Rule Util) or ceases being Utilitarianism (Strong Rule Util).

Kantian ethics on sexual ethics

Application to homosexuality, pre-marital sex & extra-marital sex
Homosexuality is not universalizable, since if everyone were gay there would be no more children and then no one could be gay since no one would exist.
Furthermore, the 2nd formulation claims that we must treat people as an end, never merely as a means.
Kant thinks that only sex inside marriage for the purpose of having children allows for the treatment of people as ends.
In all other cases, having sex for pleasure etc, involves both people using each other as mere means, which is therefore wrong for Kant.
Marriage involves a kind of contractual arrangement, where both people have the goal of having children.
In that context, it’s possible to have sex while respecting the other person’s end (of having children).

Counter:

The issue of Kant ignoring consequences.
Kant was against homosexuality and pre/extra marital sex.
However, history shows that repression of people’s sexual freedom causes unnecessary unhappiness and prevents potential happiness.
Kant seems wrong to ignore the moral relevance of the consequences.

Evaluation

Kant defends himself: he claims consequences are unpredictable and beyond our control.
However, this defence fails. We may not be able to predict/control consequences completely. However, we can to some degree and therefore we should consider them in ethics to that degree.
So, the disastrous consequences seen throughout history of banning homosexuality and pre/extra-marital sex are good reasons to think we should allow them.

Kant & the issue of ignoring the value of emotions

A criticism of Kant is that he ignores the importance and value of emotions in ethics.
E.g. Stocker’s example: if a friend visited you in hospital and said they were there because it was their ‘duty’, you would not feel good about that.
Kant’s reduction of ethical motivation to acting purely on duty seems to leave out a lot of what people find important and valuable in ethics – such as being motivated by love, empathy, compassion etc.
Allowing homosexuality and pre/extra-marital sex seems to follow from being motivated by love and compassion.
Kant thought that all sex involves each person using the other – however this could be because of his inaccurate understanding of emotions. They can be reliable and guide people towards moral behaviour. So, people could have sex due to emotions like love or romance, not to have children, and this still be good. Kant seems wrong to think that sex outside marriage inevitably involves people using each other. It can, but not necessarily.
Emotions, especially romantic ones, are not merely self-interested.

Counter

Kant would defend himself by saying that emotions are unreliable and fickle.
Being motivated by reason is more reliable and thus superior.
Furthermore, if we only do an action because we feel like it, we aren’t doing it because it is morally right.

Evaluation

Virtue ethicists – like Stocker, following Aristotle, argue that Kant is wrong to think emotions are unreliable.
They can be, but it’s also possible to train yourself and cultivate a virtuous emotional response.
E.g. a parent’s love for their child isn’t always reliable, but in virtuous parents it is reliable.
So, acting on emotion isn’t the unreliable thing Kant thought it was.
This allows us to find a valid place for emotions in ethics, which allows us to have the more tolerant and loving approach to homosexuality and pre/extra-marital sex.

Question preparation

Key paragraphs:

Religious vs Secular
Natural law on sexual ethics (vs outdated critique)
Fletcher’s cross-cultural variation critique of natural law
Situation ethics (vs sola scriptura critique)
Barclay’s critique of situation ethics
Utilitarianism (vs calculation issue)
Util vs liberty & rights
Kantian ethics (vs ignoring consequences)
Kant vs issue of emotion

Question types:

Questions can focus on:

The religious approach to sexual ethics (traditional religious teachings, natural law & situation ethics).
The secular approach to sexual ethics (the secular approach & Utilitarianism).
Religious vs secular approaches.

Weirdly worded questions:

Should choices in the area of sexual behaviour be entirely private and personal, or subject to societal norms and legislation [40]

This is asking: Is sexual behaviour (homosexuality & pre/extra marital sex) a private matter – no business of morality or law, OR is it actually a matter of public morality and law.
Utilitarianism (esp. Mill) & secularism: it is a private matter – what people do in their private lives so long as they don’t hurt any one else is their business – we shouldn’t have morals or laws against that.
Natural law (Human law must derive from the natural law – so if the natural law says homosexuality is wrong, then our human law should also say that)
Traditional religious ethics would also argue it’s a public matter because the Bible says it is wrong.