Traditional Sexual Ethics

Hello, My name's Ian Law.

I'm a senior lecturer in philosophy at the University of Birmingham,

where I teach a second year, of course, called Sex Ethics and Philosophy.

Um, it normally takes 20 hours of content about sexual ethics.

Um,

today I'm going to do a series of lectures

amounting to a lot less than that and covering

the A level syllabus and perhaps a little bit more.

I'll let you know when I'm going beyond what the level syllabus covers

in this first video.

I'm going to talk about what I call traditionalist sexual ethics.

This is often associated with religious views about the ethics of sex,

but it doesn't have to be.

There are some people who have a traditionalist sexual ethic,

even though they are not religious believers.

The main features of the traditionalist sexual ethic are a connection

between the permissibility of sexual conduct and marriage and procreation.

So the core of the view is that sex has a function.

Sex has a natural function, perhaps a god given function,

and that function is procreation,

bringing into being the next generation of Children

and also then bringing them up, raising them to adulthood.

It's not just bringing about conception and you're done.

The view typically is that in order to successfully procreate,

any species doesn't have to be human beings has to not just

mate but have a strategy for getting their Children to adulthood.

And the argument that might be given for this is that biologically,

the function of sex is procreation.

After all, for millions of years there was no such thing as sexual reproduction.

Why did it evolve?

Well,

it evolved as a way of giving certain

advantages to the way in which reproduction happens.

But of course,

that kind of argument was unavailable to many of the religious

figures that kicked off this kind of approach to sexual ethics.

Another thing we should be aware of is that although

this approach is quite out of fashion these days,

it was the dominant sexual ethic for centuries.

For hundreds, if not thousands of years,

the view that sex was permissible only within marriage was

so dominant as to be unquestioningly accepted by almost everybody,

at least in Western society.

So if we want to take a kind of democratic view,

and if we allow the dead as well as the living

to vote on what we think sexual ethics should be like.

We, with our modern liberal thinking about sexual ethics,

would definitely lose that vote.

Um,

so that gives us some reason to think

we shouldn't be too dismissive of this approach.

Even if we are very confident that our modern day

more liberal approach to sexual ethics based on consent,

which I'll talk about in later videos, is correct.

The traditionalist view that marriage and

procreation are very important to sexual ethics

at least deserves a hearing.

So what is the content of this view?

The basic idea is that sex is permissible only within marriage.

So if you are unmarried, you can't have sex.

If you are not married to the person that you're having sex with, that's not OK,

either.

So you might both be married to other people,

and the fact that you are married doesn't make it okay, So premarital sex,

extramarital sex they are forbidden by this sexual ethic.

But in addition to that, it matters what kind of sex you're having,

because even if you're having sex within marriage, if you're having sex of a kind,

which is not suitable for procreation,

which couldn't bring a break about conception.

That's not OK, either, according to this ethic,

so the natural function of sex is reproduction,

and if you are having non reproductive sex,

then that's not okay.

There are various different levels of strength of this kind of view.

Saint Augustine had a really restrictive view.

He thought that if you give in to lust,

you are rebelling against God's requirement that you use your God given reason.

So when you put your other faculties to work,

when you use your hands to make something, reason can still be in control.

But when you put your sexual faculties to work, he says, reason goes out the window.

Uh, lust takes over,

and this is a kind of sinful rebellion against God.

So you almost think almost any, um, sexual activity would therefore be sinful,

according to ST Augustine.

But the Bible says that we should go forth and multiply,

and we can't do that if we never have sex.

So having sex is okay only if it's for the purpose of multiplying having Children.

So for Saint Augustine,

each sexual act is permissible only if it is intended to bring about conception.

So if you are hoping that you are not going to conceive,

even if you're having unpredicted, unprotected Penis in vagina sex, that's not OK,

according to ST Augustine.

According to ST Thomas Aquinas, however, that would be okay,

because what ST Thomas says is

the act must be of the right kind.

And what he means by that is

the kind of sexual activity you have must be the kind of sexual activity which could,

in principle,

lead to conception.

So anal sex is out because you can't have Children by having anal sex.

Um, oral sex is out.

What's important for Saint Thomas is where what

he calls the emission of semen takes place.

The emission of semen must take place with the man's Penis

inside the woman's vagina.

Of course,

ST Thomas's view that sex is happening only if there

is an emission of semen strikes us as odd.

We will probably be quite happy to think that you don't need

a Penis at all in order for sex to be happening,

and semen doesn't have to be emitted or indeed involved.

But this just illustrates how the traditionalist approach

thinks of sex is something that happens between a man and a woman

that may only permissible happened between that man and

that woman if they are married to one another.

And they are, at the very least

open to the possibility that their sexual act might bring about Children.

And in some versions, ST Augustine's version

only permissible if they are actually hoping and

intending that their acts will bring about Children.

So that's the content of the traditionalist view.

In the next video, I'll talk about arguments for it.