Sexual Morality
From Encyclopedia of Sex and Sexuality
Sexual conflict frequently arises from differences among people about what behavior is right, moral, or permissible. There are many opportunities for individuals to confront moral issues that require them to make choices about how they will proceed. Sometimes choices relate to sexual intercourse, as when a person wonders whether it is right to have extramarital sex when a spouse is an invalid incapable of sexual activity. Sometimes choices are the consequence of having had sex: for example, can or should an unmarried, young, pregnant woman have an abortion? There are also less momentous issues, as when a mother finds her seven-year-old daughter naked with a six-year-old boy, the pair examining each other’s genitals. She may react with a great feeling of anxiety and think that her daughter is behaving immorally and should be punished. Whether this is truly a moral issue is less important then parental beliefs that this childish behavior is “sin.” Most commonly, young people who have strong feelings for someone and want to express them physically may wonder: “How could something that feels so good and is done by so many peers be so wrong?” If a teenager whose family has just purchased a hot tub invites several friends of both sexes over for a party and they would like her to go skinny-dipping with them in the tub, what should she do—particularly when she, like most people, was brought up to believe that nudity in front of strangers is not only immodest but immoral?
How do people know what is the right choice to make in situations such as these? What is right and what is wrong? What is moral and immoral? These are not always easy decisions to make and, unfortunately, the “wrong” choice may sometimes have long-lasting and tragic repercussions. Many people suffer great emotional pain and social difficulty because of wrong choices they made about sexual behavior. Much of the judgmental criticism directed at people who have made “mistakes” is based on the assumption that they “knew better” and nevertheless chose to do the wrong thing. But studies of teenage pregnancy, for example, do not indicate that many individuals rationally choose to engage in sexual behavior that will cause them harm, but rather that they act spontaneously and in a state of passion.
It is true that people are different when it comes to various aspects of moral decision making, but they are alike in the sense that all humans need guidelines, particularly in the years during which they develop what they believe to be their own personal value systems. However, without personal values that are consistent with accepted moral beliefs, their choices may be confused and their responsibility for the consequences may be unclear to them.
Why can’t everyone do things the way their parents did? Because no society in history has provided a milieu in which people grow up with as many alternatives for social behavior as we find in today’s Western societies, and in the United States in particular. Why is this so? Freedom of choice and variations in social behavior depend upon awareness and available alternatives. Why are there so many alternative behaviors from which to choose? For one thing, Americans are among the best educated peoples in the world. Young persons are not only aware of the behaviors of their own ethnic and religious groups but also of the ways and beliefs of others.
Although some groups choose not to expose their children to the values, belief systems, and lifestyles of people who are different, most Americans seem to feel that it is good and valuable for young people to see and learn how different groups vary, with their different foods, languages, customs, and religious expressions. Parents have learned that it is difficult to prevent their children from learning about these differences. Consequently, most children grow up knowing that other people—good and well-intentioned individuals—may have sexual values and attitudes, for example, that are quite different from those of one’s own ethnic group.
In America there are more television sets per capita than in any other nation in the world. Television has an immense impact on learning and conveys an awareness of a vast range of human behavior to its viewers. This appears to have a liberalizing and educational impact rivaling that of the printed page. In addition, people travel a lot, not only on this continent but to Europe, Asia, the Middle East, and elsewhere. This too has a liberalizing effect and increases awareness of different values and moral attitudes about sexual behavior.
Finally, during the past century, migrations to the cities have resulted in social environments that are less controlling and less supervised, with a consequent weakening of ties to parental value systems. This is very different from the worlds of our parents, grandparents, and great-grandparents, who usually lived in smaller communities in which it was easier to reinforce the values shared by everyone in the community and easier to pass these values on to their children.
What is meant by morals, ethics, and values? Where do they come from and how are they changing in contemporary society? In a world of ever-increasing and ever-changing choices, what role do they play in shaping attitudes and guiding behaviors?
By morals we mean a set of principles, usually given form through the ages by great religious leaders and philosophers, that have withstood the test of time. These are guidelines that serve as the bases for determining right or wrong conduct in situations that are not always clear to us. Sociologists call these moral norms, that is, rules for moral behavior that have been with us for a long time and often have their roots in religion. Some moral norms are embodied in secular laws, such as in the criminal codes of each state. Also, some moral norms that at one time reflected only religious views have been modified by civil laws because they conflict with civil rights embodied in American and other Western civil codes and constitutions. Abortion and adultery laws are just two examples.
Ethics are the practical ways of making decisions so that we can determine if a particular behavior we are uncertain about is right or wrong according to a moral code. Ethical considerations are necessary because the morality of a specific social behavior often cannot be judged as an isolated act; we must also consider the social context in which it occurs. Ethics help us evaluate the morality of social behaviors by taking other information into consideration. For example, the Bible includes a commandment not to kill. If one person takes the life of another, it may be difficult to judge the morality or immorality of the act unless we know the ethical and situational context within which it is done. If a man cold-bloodedly takes the life of a shopkeeper during a robbery because he does not want the shopkeeper to identify him later, we can easily determine that this is murder and therefore an immoral act. On the other hand, consider a police officer confronting a robber who has just killed two innocent people. The robber refuses to surrender his gun and even shoots at the officer. Almost everyone would agree that it is ethical for this police officer to then draw his own gun and shoot the robber in order to protect innocent bystanders and himself, even if he kills the robber. In this case, he might even be considered a hero because he endangered his own life in the line of duty.
Values are another essential element in the determination of sexually moral conduct. Values are related to, but not the same as morals or ethics. By values is meant the desirability, worth, emphasis, or “value” placed by society or the individual on a particular behavior, symbol, or material thing relative to other things. Thus, we may know that having sex with someone we are attracted to is immoral according to our religious beliefs, but we may place a greater value on expressing love for this person physically and choose to engage in sex, even thought it violates what we were raised to believe is right.
Values influence nearly every aspect of our social behavior—from the very mundane to the most far-reaching. The career we choose, the kind of car we drive, the people with whom we associate, the kinds of food we eat, and certainly our sexual behaviors—all are reflections of our values. In studying social behavior, social scientists tell us that values are often more influential than morals or ethics in shaping of day-to-day behavior. This is true even when we are aware that our values may be in conflict with the moral standards to which we are supposed to subscribe by virtue of our religious upbringing. The images that we project to others (reflections of our values)—idealistic, materialistic, aesthetic, intellectual, sexy, and others—are often the bases for how we want them to think of us. In this way values are very active in our daily lives, while moral codes may remain dormant in the absence of continuous social reinforcement by the people around us—our peers and significant others. Thus values, which are often very changeable, can have more of a day-to-day influence over us than our moral and ethical beliefs.
While there is no simple or single answer to what is moral and ethical, it is clear that since sexual behaviors have consequences for one’s self and others, principles and guidelines cannot be lightly derived to conveniently suit one’s needs and desires. Everyone needs to consider the moral and ethical considerations implicit in sexual activity, as in all other areas of life. Perhaps an examination of the historical and traditional perspectives may provide a beginning, if not the complete answer.
