Sexual Ethics

Overview

Recall questions on Christian diversity and sacred texts, sex before marriage, promiscuity and adultery, same-sex relationships, contraception, secular approaches, Vardy and Dominian, and whether religious teaching and ethical theory still help.

What you need to know

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Questions from this subtopic

Each one with the model answer underneath.

1. 1

   How diverse are Christian approaches to sexual ethics?

   Model answer

   Very. Roman Catholic teaching, worked out through natural law, holds that each sexual act should be both unitive and open to procreation, so sex belongs only within marriage and artificial contraception is excluded. Anglicans permitted contraception at the 1930 Lambeth Conference and remain publicly divided over same-sex relationships. Quakers, the United Reformed Church and liberal Protestants affirm faithful same-sex partnerships, while conservative evangelicals maintain that sex belongs only within the marriage of a man and a woman.

2. 2

   What sacred texts do Christians appeal to here, and why do they disagree about them?

   Model answer

   The creation accounts, Jesus' teaching on marriage and divorce, and the Pauline letters on sexual conduct are the usual sources. Disagreement follows from method rather than from ignorance of the texts: traditionalists read the prohibitions as permanently binding, while revisionists argue those passages address exploitative or cultic practices in their own setting and that the governing principles are covenant faithfulness and love. Both sides claim the same scriptures.

3. 3

   Summarise the approach of one non-Christian tradition.

   Model answer

   In Islam, marriage is highly valued and is described in the hadith tradition as completing half of a Muslim's faith; sex outside marriage, zina, is forbidden, and modesty governs relations between the sexes. Many Sunni and Shi'a scholars permit contraception within marriage where the couple agree and the method is not permanent, chiefly by analogy with the practice of withdrawal reported in the hadith. Muslims differ over childlessness and assisted conception, with most authorities permitting treatment using the couple's own gametes but not donation.

4. 4

   What arguments are made about sex before marriage?

   Model answer

   Traditional religious teaching restricts sex to marriage on the grounds that it is a total self-gift that presupposes lifelong commitment and openness to children, and that separating it from commitment damages people. Those who disagree argue that where there is consent, honesty and care, no one is harmed, that the modern gap between puberty and marriage makes the rule unrealistic, and that commitment can exist without a ceremony. Some religious writers occupy a middle position, judging by the quality of the relationship rather than by legal status.

5. 5

   How is promiscuity argued about, as distinct from sex before marriage?

   Model answer

   Religious teaching generally treats frequent casual sex as a distinct wrong, on the grounds that it habituates a person to treating others as interchangeable and empties an act meant to signify total commitment. Kantian argument reaches a similar conclusion by asking whether the partners are being used merely as means, and virtue ethicists ask what dispositions such a pattern forms. Those who disagree argue that where partners are honest, consenting and careful about health there is no victim, that the term is applied far more readily to women than to men, and that a settled dislike of a lifestyle is not by itself a moral argument.

6. 6

   Why is adultery treated more severely than other sexual acts across traditions?

   Model answer

   Because it involves a broken promise as well as a sexual act. Jewish, Christian, Muslim, Hindu and Sikh teaching all condemn it, and secular ethics that are otherwise permissive still object: it is deceptive, it uses the injured partner, it damages children, and it breaks a freely made undertaking. That makes it the clearest case where religious and secular reasoning converge.

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