Topics Sex

Question In relation to sex, when is it considered permissible to gives oneself to another? If what one is waiting for is love, then why does a piece of paper stating marriage have to stop a person from connecting himself/herself with his/her love physically and spiritually? A piece of paper will not stop a breakup. If this is all true, then why does the dilemma of if to have sex or not plague one's mind?

Accepted:
November 5, 2007

Comments

There are two facts about sex that have made its regulation a matter of importance to human beings: first, that it is an extremely powerful motivator. People typically want to have it a lot -- and I mean both that they want it a lot, and that they want a lot of it. Because sexual desire is so powerful, it can override lots of other desires, as well as lots of considerations that ought to count against giving in to the desire in the first place. The second fact is that the consequences of having sex can be weighty. There is not only the fact that pregnancy can occur, although the conception of another human being is certainly a matter of paramount importance to human society. There is also the fact that sexual behavior can generate or sustain powerful emotional responses. When all goes well, sex can bolster meaningful and sustaining connections between people, but when things go wrong, disasters can result. Unreciprocated love causes terrible unhappiness, and jealousy can lead to violence.

All together, this means that human societies have an interest in gaining some control over the circumstances in which people have sex. At a minimum, societies have usually crafted some kind of institution to recognize, legitimate and support stable sexual pairings, as a way of nudging people into the sort of sexual relationships that are apt to have the best social consequences -- the carrot approach.
At a maximum, societies adopt myths or institute punitive measures to sharply discipline sexual behavior. Foucault thought that social regulation of sexuality was particularly apt to occur with authoritarian regimes, whether political or religious, because the intensity of sexual pleasure and the omnivorous nature of sexual desire generated a sense of freedom that was incompatible with the docility demanded of citizens of such regimes. Attempts at regulating human sexual behavior have never been completely successful, but they often have been successful enough to keep a lot of people from having unauthorized sex, or at least in getting people to keep quiet about it if they were having unauthorized sex.

But now we have birth control, we don't necessarily accept religious doctrines condemning sex outside of marriage, and we believe that people have the right to do what they want, even if they risk their own happiness doing so. So why is sex a problem? Because of the original two facts: it's intense, and it's consequential. Whether or not we accept particular religious teachings about what God wants, and whether or not we think it's any of society's business who we have sex with or when we have it, we must still face the facts about the physical, social, and emotional consequences of engaging in such intimate behavior with another human being. While you're absolutely correct that a marriage license can't prevent a break-up (any more than threats of hell can put an end to extramarital sexual activity), it's also true that people who have decided to commit to a relationship with each other often find that making that commitment public helps them sustain it. So even in an age of "free love" there can be a point to making available some kind of institution like marriage.