Chapter 4

The Layman at Home

Sexual ethics

I said in an earlier chapter that we didn't begin our Christian lives as laymen, because the life of a child is not yet his true life; this is his preparation for life. The lay life is essentially the life of an adult. Still, one of the first things that happens when adulthood comes upon us is sexual attraction, which naturally leads to the life of marriage and the family; and so Christian sexuality, Christian marriage, and Christian family life are a good place to begin this sketch of what it means to "practice perfection" in the lay state.

I wrote the original draft of this book some ten years ago or so; and when I got to this chapter, I didn't include anything special on sexual ethics, because Christianity is not an ethic of do's and don't's, but an attitude; and I wanted to stress what the Christian attitude did toward sexuality, marriage, and the family. I still want to.

But at the time of that draft, I felt that I could presuppose, among Catholics anyway, that everyone knew what the morality of sexuality was--if not the reasons, at least the acts that were morally right and wrong. But those days have passed. I was conversing at lunch with a nun in my college a couple of years ago (she has since left the convent), and made some remark about sex and the Pope's statements. "I don't need anyone in Rome telling me about sex," she said. "I can make up my own mind."

"It's funny;" I said, somewhat taken aback. "People are willing to admit limits to any activity you want to name except sex. With sex anything goes."

"That's not true," she said. "I think there are certain things that are wrong in sex."

"Name one."

"Well . . . incest."

"Interesting," I answered. "Incest happens to be the sexual wrong that has the least amount of evidence to prove that it's wrong."

She looked at me indignantly, and that ended the conversation.

The point, I suppose, is that, since the introduction of The Pill, we all "just know" what is natural and what is unnatural in sex now; we don't sit down and investigate any more, because the thing to do in sex is follow your "true reality," which is the way you feel about things.

If someone with a Christian spirit has misgivings about this, then he's on the right track. Your feelings are about as sure a guide as to what is natural in sex as they are as to what you ought to be doing when you sit down in the dentist's chair.

But remember, the Christian looks on things with God's eyes: that is, with absolute, dispassionate realism. And the Christian acts consistently with the way the reality is, whether this happens to be what "feels right" or not; and the Christian is ready to say that many of the things he is going to do do not "feel right," because the cross will never "feel right." And sex involves the cross, if we are to use it in perfect conformity with its nature, because it involves love, which is not self-fulfillment or self-expression, but self-sacrifice. Yes, when sex is an act of love, it is an act of self-denial and self-sacrifice, and any pleasure or fulfillment in it is a gift that is not its purpose.

But this is the Christian use of sex, which I will have to defer, because of all the confusion that has arisen, until I discuss the ethics of sex.

The ethics of sex is basically negative, because it deals with the limits of sexual expression, beyond which the sex act contradicts itself in one way or another. That is, the moral command says, basically, that you must never deliberately act as if things weren't the way you know they really are; you must never act inconsistently with yourself.

I have treated the subject of ethics in general, and made applications to sexuality in particular, in my book Human Conduct. I think the most efficient way to proceed here would be simply to reproduce the section on sexuality from that book.

[You can also see a treatment of this in Modes of the Finite, 5.2.4]

By way of introduction, let me remark that the idea is that you may never fulfill any aspect of yourself in such a way that you contradict any other aspect of yourself. Thus, you may never fulfill yourself financially, for instance, by embezzlement (thus using money that doesn't belong to you). I will begin before the section dealing with sex by mentioning what is now called bulimia (eating and throwing up) and used to be referred to by the name "gluttony."

One other remark. If an act has two independent effects, one of which is wrong (inconsistent), the act may sometimes be chosen if the Principle of the Double Effect applies; it states (a) that the act itself must have nothing wrong about it in itself, (b) that it must have a good effect in addition to the bad one, (c) that the bad one may not be a means to the good one, (d) that the bad effect may not be wanted, and (e) that the bad effect of not performing the act is worse than the bad effect it has. If these rules are fulfilled, then you have avoided choosing the bad effect.

Here, then, is what it says in Human Conduct (p. 118 ff.):

It is morally wrong, however, to suppress one of the functions of a multi-function faculty and exercise the faculty for one of its other functions.

In this case, you are pretending that the faculty doesn't do what it does; and this is different from either exercising or not exercising it. You want to exercise it, but here you want its function to be only part of what its function is, and thus you contradict the nature of the faculty in its very exercise.

Boulimia is a good example of this, insofar as it would be deliberately chosen. What this is is eating and then either throwing up or taking a laxative so that the food will not be digested. Eating has a pleasure-giving function, and it also involves the assimilation of the food into the body.

Now it may be that you are taking in more food than your body needs, and in fact enough food so that you are harming your health (i.e. doing damage to your body). It is obviously good not to do this; and clearly, not eating is a way to prevent it.

But when you try to prevent it by eating and then suppressing digestion, you are exercising the faculty of nutrition in such a way that it only does part of what it does, and this is morally wrong. You are pretending that eating is only for the taste, and that the exercise of the faculty has nothing to do with assimilation of the food--which is a falsification of the faculty's function.

Note that there is nothing wrong with eating things that taste good and have no food value (that can't be digested)--supposing no damage is done to the body by eating this kind of thing, as might be the case if you eat so much of it that you are undernourished.

The reason why this is not wrong is that you are not preventing your digestive faculty from doing all that it does; it is just that the things you ate can't be assimilated. Thus, drinking diet pop, which contains nothing nourishing, is not a contradiction of your nutritive faculty. Here you are not asserting the assimilative aspect of eating; but you are not doing anything to contradict it either. In the case of eating and purging, you are preventing the exercise of part of the function while exercising the function.

This is fairly easy to see with regard to nutrition. Its application to sex, however, is what is now called "controversial." I find it fascinating that people who are quite willing to admit restrictions on all of our other activities sometimes act as if sex were special and sacred, and no restrictions upon it are to be even mentioned.

But let us look at sex. Sex is one of these multi-function faculties; it has a pleasure-aspect; it involves another person, and so must respect the personhood and rights of the other person; and it is the faculty of reproduction, though humans are not always fertile.

To exercise the sexual faculty in such a way that one or more of its functions is suppressed is morally wrong.

1. First of all, masturbation is wrong, because it is an exercise of the sexual faculty in such a way that it denies that it has anything to do with another person or with reproduction; it pretends that sex is purely for pleasure, nothing else.

Thus, even if masturbation has a good purpose, such as the relief of tension (or even something like freeing oneself from an irresistible urge to commit adultery), it cannot morally be done, because you would have to choose the contradiction of the faculty in order to achieve the purpose.

2. Secondly, homosexual acts are morally wrong, because the kind of exercise of the sexual faculty which occurs between two people of the same sex, even if they love each other, cannot be construed as having anything to do with reproduction.

There is nothing wrong with being homosexual; i.e. being sexually attracted to someone of the same sex. In general, it would be wrong deliberately to get yourself into this state, since it would tend to lead to homosexual acts; but deliberately becoming homosexual almost never happens. One finds out that he is homosexual; and the discovery is usually rather traumatic.

Nor is there anything wrong with loving another member of the same sex, whether you are homosexual or not; and the only thing wrong with expressing this love by caresses and so on is the danger that these acts may lead to homosexual use of the sex faculties. Insofar as that danger is remote, then the acts of showing affection for another of the same sex are not morally wrong. There is, of course, not only the danger to yourself, but to the other person to consider. You may be under complete control; but he might not be.

A homosexual might object to all this that his nature is homosexual, and therefore, why is it a contradiction of his nature to express it? As I said above, it is not a contradiction of the homosexual nature to express affection for others of the same sex; but to use the sexual faculty in doing so contradicts the faculty as reproductive; the homosexual is denying that the exercise of the faculty has anything to do with reproduction. So it is not his nature as attracted to other persons that is contradicted; it is his nature as reproductive that is contradicted by homosexual exercise of the sexual organs.

Note that even if homosexuality is genetic, this does not mean that one has permission to exercise his faculty according to its genetic tendency. People are born with all sorts of defective organs, such as eyes that cannot see or see in distorted ways, club feet, cleft palates, and so on.

People also have tendencies that could be innate and certainly weren't deliberately sought, such as sadistic urges to torture others. But no one would say that, just because you have such a tendency, it is all right to gratify it. Of course, homosexual acts do no harm to others, in general; the point is that "natural" does not automatically mean "able to be fulfilled." And the fact is that, even if a person is born homosexual, this particular innate disposition cannot fulfill itself without contradicting the faculty it is using while it is using the faculty. Hence, even if it is an innate disposition, it is a defective one ("defective," not "evil" or "perverted," which have moral overtones; but it can't fulfill itself without contradiction); it is not just a "different state" like left-handedness.

3. In the third place, rape is morally wrong, even if it is for the purpose of having a child. Rape is the sexual use of another person against that other person's will. It is either having sex with another when the other doesn't want to, or having sex in such a way that the other person is repelled and unwilling.

This, of course, is wrong because it denies the self-determination of the other person. It deprives the other person of the right to choose whether to have sex, or how to have it. It does not recognize the other person as anything more than a tool to be used for one's own purposes.

Note that this also applies to one's marriage partner. If you enjoy some particular type of sexual activity and your partner doesn't and positively doesn't want to engage in sex in that way, then to force it on your partner is morally wrong. You can't hide behind the fact that marriage gives you the right to sex with that person. It only gives the right to consistent sex with that person, not to every conceivable kind of sexual activity.

I hasten to add that many of the acts that are called "perverted" and are done between homosexuals, for instance, are all right by way of foreplay between marriage partners; as long as they don't constitute the whole act and it can reach its completion in a way that does not deny its reproductive character. It does not save such non-reproductive types of exercise of the sexual faculty such as oral sex that they are done between a man and a woman; what "saves" them is (a) that they are preliminaries leading up to a reproductive use of the faculty (and so don't pretend that it is only part of itself); and (b) both partners are willing to do these acts (and so one is not being used for the gratification of the other).

Note that one's partner need not particularly enjoy having sex at a given time or in a given way; it is that the partner must not be positively unwilling to do it. You do not have to assert any particular function of an act; you must simply not deny any of its aspects when exercising the faculty.

Thus, it is perfectly all right to have sex because it is tuesday and you both agreed (for some reason) that tuesdays are a day you have sex on; neither of you especially wants sex on this particular tuesday, but both are willing. Sex does not have to be thrilling; it is perfectly all right if it is routine. It is even permissible not to especially like it. Do not be deluded by our culture of sex; it does not have to be the be-all and end-all of a relationship of love between two people. The way some sex manuals talk, it is almost as if you not rising three feet off the bed every night makes you immoral. This is nonsense.

4. In the fourth place--here it comes--contraception is morally wrong, however it is done. But let us be clear what this is: it is taking a reproductive act when it is reproductive and doing something to suppress its reproductiveness with the intention of exercising the faculty as if it weren't reproductive when it is.

That's a long definition. The point is that the woman is not always fertile, and therefore sex, in itself, is not always reproductive, even though it is always a reproductive kind of activity. That is, sex (and only sex) is the kind of activity which can reproduce; and so it is always a reproductive kind of activity. It is this, actually, which is denied by masturbation or homosexual sex.

But not every act of this type is in fact reproductive. Thus, one need not intend that there be children every time one exercises the sexual faculty.

It is a calumny to assert that those who hold that contraception is wrong say that "The" purpose of sex is to have children. That would make sex after menopause morally wrong (since the woman can't have children then), and there are precious few ethicians who have ever held this.

But

It is simple dishonesty to take the act of sex when it is reproductive and prevent it from doing part of what it does. And that is what contraception does. No one would use a contraceptive during times when it was known that the woman was infertile, and that no child could result from the act. Why would one? No, the only reason that the "pill" is taken during infertile times of the month is that if it isn't, then it won't make the person infertile during the times when she is by nature fertile; and the person wants to be infertile during the times when she is fertile.

Is this a contradiction or is it a contradiction?

Note that it is not morally wrong, using the Double Effect, to have sex only during infertile times; and even to take steps to discover when these infertile times are.

Remember, the problem with contraception is not "not having children"; it is the contradiction in performing a reproductive act which is not reproductive. It can be, as I said earlier, good and even morally necessary not to have any more children, if they can't be brought up decently.

So the question is not a question of the purpose; it is one of the nature of the act as an exercise of a faculty. And since the faculty is not always reproductive, then it may be exercised when it is not reproductive, if the five rules of the Double Effect are met:

1) The act of having sex at a time when the woman is not fertile is consistent with the nature of sex; 2) the act has a good effect: one avoids children who cannot be decently brought up; but it also has a bad effect, because to exercise the act only during these times makes the whole series of acts not reproductive, and thus the sexual activity of the couple as a whole not reproductive--more or less analogously to homosexual sex.

The act is still the kind of act that is a reproductive kind of activity; but the deliberate exercise of it only when not reproductive, has the effect of denying that one's sexual activity as such has anything to do with reproduction.

But since this is the effect of a whole series of acts, and is not in any one of them, this bad effect may be an unchosen side-effect of the acts of sex.

To continue with the rules: 3) the non-reproductiveness of all of one's sexual activity must not be the means toward the good effect. And it is not, in general; what is desired is that this act not result in a child one cannot support, not that, should conditions change, one never have a child. 4) The non-reproductiveness of the whole of one's sexuality cannot be what is wanted; it is just unfortunate that now one cannot afford a child. And 5) the bad effect of possible non-reproductiveness of sexual activity as a whole must not be worse than what would happen if one refrained from sex altogether.

Thus, the "rhythm" or "sympto-thermal" method of family planning cannot be engaged in lightly, because there is a bad effect of this kind of thing. It must be a method of family planning, not of family avoidance altogether. Sex in general is reproductive; and so results in "family."

5. Finally, artificial insemination, even by the husband's sperm, is morally wrong.

Why is this? This is a use of the woman's sexual organs purely for reproduction. It must have nothing to do with sexual arousal or with love of the person using the organs, because this person is generally a physician. Consider what is happening. The man who impregnates the woman is not her husband, and he is not impregnating her with his sperm, but someone else's. He must not arouse her when he uses her sexual organs, because he doesn't want her to love him; this is just a business deal with him, or a favor to the couple. She must try not to feel pleasure at what he is doing, or she might be aroused toward him. The husband just stands aside, even if it is his sperm that the woman is being impregnated with; and of course if it isn't, then her doing this "out of love for him" so that "they" can have a child is a farce; he has nothing whatever to do with the whole procedure.

You can see what a mockery this makes out of sex.