Discussion w/ a Theist RE: Premarital Sex

[StealthySkeptic]

The original post is in quotes, and my reply is below each quote.

When I think of any issue of morality, I think of it in a relational way. For example, last year I had a roommate who argued sex with multiple partners is completely healthy according to scientific findings. After two years with your married partner, sex just goes downhill. It's perfectly fine, he said. The idea that premarital sex is wrong, according to him, is outdated. If he were a painter painting his view of morality here, he would have painted himself and his partners--with no other context or background. Better to consider the whole, I think.

He's not wrong to think that there is a benefit to sexual experience, as sexual inexperience due to our society's sex-negativity and refusal to properly educate teens on safe sex often leads to a dissolution of marriages due to lack of chemistry. I'm not sure if he meant that it's OK to cheat on your married spouse (wrong because you made a promise to be with that person forever and now you're breaking it) or OK to cheat on your girlfriend (less wrong, but still wrong). I would hope he meant serial monogamy but I could be wrong.

So the problem for me is that most people flaunt their ability to attract the opposite sex--especially when they are younger. Consider Facebook as an example. Young teenage girls and boys boast about their sexual exploits on their newsfeed. Well, at least I have seen it a lot. Don't just consider the two people in the relationship: What about others reading the newsfeed? They cause a lot of sadness for those not able to attract physically attractive people of the opposite sex. Consider the anger in young teenage boys about not being able to attract the girls they desire, and then seeing some other guy describe his time with her. People sharing my former roommates view often don't think about the psychological harm they cause others outside of their relationship. A second issue is that, when you have multiple partners, you're more likely to think of them as tools for your own pleasure, and they are dispensable as soon as you perceive they stop pleasing you.

If you want to ban premarital sex for your members based on the belief that that is commanded by your God, that's fine. I can't and don't want to challenge that. But if you want to claim it's somehow indicative of a "permissive society" (as I've heard from many other people) with claims like the above, you need to provide proof. About 90% of Americans have had premarital sex at least once in their lifetimes. If treating someone like a tool for pleasure was a consistent outcome of premarital sex then this would be a widely-reported and well-studied problem. But it is not AS MUCH of a problem as people think, as this article makes clear in regards to popular perception of "hookup culture" (by the way, every generation thinks the future generations are "going downhill" if you will):

Is hookup culture overblown? - Salon.com

I maybe heard people boast of their sexual exploits once or twice in my entire career in middle or high school. I think that the problem isn't people having sex when they're teens. It's people having unsafe and uninformed sex with their only education coming from media and pornographic stereotypes catering to an extremely sexually repressed (not liberated by any stretch of the imagination otherwise people wouldn't turn to pornography or AshleyMadison so much). Besides, I (and most reasonable teens- contrary to popular belief not all teens are ruled by their hormones) never really hung out with the few people who would use women as sexual conquests, because I knew that if I was to have a girlfriend, it would be by being myself and not a jerk.

In reflection, I don't think allowing premarital sex and sex with multiple partners is the answer; it's the complete opposite of the other extreme in which no sex is preferable. Baha'u'llah's law causes the least psychological harm for the whole. Not only does it consider the whole, it also considers your own spiritual development by challenging people to not see one another as mere tools. Instead, in human relationships we should sharpen one another's development in virtues. See Aristotle's view on friendship, because this is how he defines true friendship. The same holds true for marriage.

That might be the ideal for marriage. But a homosexual or heterosexual couple may have that in a sexual relationship or marriage. Marriage isn't a magic spell that somehow makes all instances sex perfectly OK or not selfish in any way. All marriage really is (in the eyes of the law anyway) is a formalized legal commitment as love is not necessarily involved. The idea that it is a seal of approval from God leads to people in religiously conservative areas marrying just to have legitimated sex before their hormones make them explode.