A Beautiful Thing: Sex and Sexual Ethics

Two weeks ago, I woke up early in the morning, put on a suit, and walked to a wedding ceremony. When I got there, I waited for it to begin, solemn, calm, and neutral. However, when the music started playing and the best men starting walking up the aisle, I began to realize that this event was qualitatively different from others. When the bride began to walk, I started to cry. I understood that they wouldn’t be the same after the wedding. From then on they would be man and woman, “one flesh.”

In my last article, “The Good Life,” I proposed that we have biological and spiritual ends and that the good life consists of fulfilling those ends morally by ordering our relationships. This model fundamentally challenges us to ground our ideas of sex, gender, and marriage in the reality of sexual difference, making it accord with the idea of human persons as unities of body and mind, not minds attached to bodies. Ultimately, this view concludes that sex is biologically determined, gender is how one expresses one’s sex, and that marriage is a comprehensive union of two persons.

The fundamental truth about being human is the reality of sexual difference imposed by nature. To be human is to be one of two. One is born either male or female, with one sex opposite to, but inseparable from, the other. There has never been a universal, sexually neutral person.

Gender, then, is how we communicate this fundamental truth of ourselves to others. This communication begins from the first days of birth and the very first clothes a person wears. In this sense, gender is social in that particular gestures expressing gender depend on the particular culture. However, these particular sets of gestures correspond to the two sexes; gender flows from sex.

The relationship between gender and sex is like a tree and its roots. Just as a tree has roots that the larger superstructure of the trunk, branches, and leaves depend on, sex provides the source that is our humanity and the superstructure of gender. Just as it is the natural end of the root is to grow the rest of the tree, it’s the natural end of sex to result in gender.

However, this view is disputed by those who believe that gender does not flow from one’s sex but is rather entirely social and psychological. A transgender person’s sex, for instance, may be biologically male, but their gender as female. Moreover, some also propose that a person’s gender is truly who he or she is and thus a transgender person should be treated just like any person of the gender with which they associate.

What is ultimately wrong with this view is that it assumes that persons are simply minds or consciousnesses and that the body is sub personal. However, we are not a mind inhabiting a body, but rather a unity of the two. Therefore, adopting the dualism of sex and gender espoused by proponents of transgenderism degrades human personality because it stops the fulfillment of borne biological ends through the use of medicine and surgery.

Indeed, the effects of such degradation are evident from the high rate of suicide among the population. A study looked at a group of 324 sex-reassigned persons in Sweden from 1973-2003 in comparison to a control group. The study found that sex-reassigned persons had substantially higher rates of death from cardiovascular disease and suicide, and higher rates of attempted suicide compared to the random control group. In short, a misunderstanding of the importance of sexual difference and a duality of mind and body is not only philosophically faulty but has practical, harmful effects.

How should we then deal with transgenders? I suggest that instead of using medicine to stop the progression of sexual development and artificially gender a person to his or her preference, we should aim to align the mental and emotional state of the person with his or her sex. In some cases, this just requires letting puberty take its course and letting the child develop. In other situations, this involves therapy, social rehabilitation, and medicine.

Now that we have an understanding of sex and gender as they relate to one individual, it is fitting that we consider the sexes in regards to marriage and sexual acts. I posit that a balanced understanding of sex and marriage requires these ideas to be put into the context of relationships and love.

First, marriage is understood as a union of persons. When a person is romantically in love with someone, he longs to be with his beloved at all levels of being. Therefore, it should be the case that all marriages should preferably be couples who actually long to be each at all levels of their personhood. Marriage should therefore not be thought an instrument or stepping stone but rather as something that is good for its own sake.

Moreover, since personhood is a duality of body and mind, a marriage consists of not only emotional and mental union but also biological union, in the act of coitus, in which man and woman become one biological unit.

This biological union makes marriage qualitatively different from other relationships. Particularly, marriage can only be between a man and woman because only a man and woman can become a biological unit. Claiming that a same-sex couple can be considered married is to once again prize consciousness, or emotion and mind, over the body. In this way the idea of same-sex marriage commits the same mistake as the notion of transgenderism, it considers biological reality negligible or even fungible. One could say that this view makes humans out to be gods who use their minds and sheer will to overcome nature. Juxtaposed to this conception, the view of marriage proposed here makes sexual union the bedrock of marriage, and from it, the larger superstructure of emotional, mental, and spiritual oneness emerges.

The raising of children comes naturally to the spiritual and biological oneness of marriage. This does not mean the purpose of marriage is to have children, since that would reduce marriage as a means to an end. Rather, because of the loving, comprehensive relationship present in marriage, spouses are able to fully realize the life producing acts of sex.

We can now apply our understanding of loving relationships and marriage to the broader realm of sexual activity.

First, like marriage, sex should be treated as something good in and of itself, not as a means to an end. As such, sex for the purpose of pleasure is immoral as it reduces sex to merely a pleasuring act. Surprisingly, sex for the sole purpose of having children is also immoral for the same reason. This is again not to say that we should not feel pleasure during sex or desire children but rather sexual acts should not reduce sex to that end.

Now we could say that sex is a sign or symbol of affection, which would not reduce sex. However this modern view is guilty of the same flaw of transgenderism and same sex marriage: it disconnects emotional and biological reality. Sex is a symbol of affection, but only because it is an act in which persons become biologically united and function as a unit. To disregard sex’s life-producing role, or to use technology to hinder it, is to fight our natural ends.

It is only marriage that realizes the biological and mental aspects of sex. Marriage treats sex not as a means to pleasure but as the foundation for a comprehensive union. Moreover, it is within marriage that sex’s natural life-producing effect can be properly realized, as marriages are apt for childrearing. Sexual acts are only moral in the context of marriage.

These conclusions have drastic consequences for our personal lives. The strict ethic required sounds draconian to our modern ears. Many of us wish to be autonomous and for sex to only require consent. Many of us wish for homosexuals and transgenders to be able to express who they are. These desires come out of a sense of freedom and compassion for others. However, our good intentions do not change the facts. The fact is that these views are immoral. As such, we should not even encourage neutrality towards these views as we cannot be neutral towards immorality. As I elaborated in, “Renewing America Pt2”, adopting these liberal social views harm the poorest in our society by absolving them of any moral direction, . Therefore, taking a stand for the views espoused here is not only taking a stand for morality but also for the poorest.

Ultimately, when we commit to a view of humanity as both mind and body we not only get a view of gender, marriage, and sex that takes into account human biology, but also allow that biology to blossom into a beautiful structure of intimacy. Yes, this structure placed a great deal of restrictions on what we can and cannot be, but these restriction arise not from mere opinion but from a comprehensive understanding of human dignity and purpose. It is only from this understanding that I can indeed say that the couple I watched two weeks ago become one.