No Sexual Ethic - Postmodernity's Chickens Come Home to Roost

[Tree of Life]

I'm not a conservative Reformed Christian, so of course I don't have such platonic notions. Ethics must be worked out in this nitty, gritty sinful wold of real people, with all their complexities. All I can offer them as a Christian is a foretaste of the world to come, physically present every sunday at my little church. That koinonia is part of the solution, no doubt.

Do you think that God's Law as expressed in the 10 commandments is platonic? Luther didn't think so.

What are you offering exactly? Another ideology, another big idea. The world has no shortage of those, and found them all wanting.

Do you think that the Bible is found wanting?

I agree with what is said earlier, delve into real history and you will realize today's sexual ethic is much more coherent than any in the past, for the most part. Once you take the romantic blinders off.

So you think that the US is doing fine on the sexual morality front?

 

[Tree of Life]

I'm in the same country as you are, as are most people in this thread, and most of the people I know are not at all confused that sane consent between adults is the basis of sexual ethics.

So is consent the only principle? If consent between adults is present then anything else goes?

 

[Cearbhall]

So is consent the only principle? If consent between adults is present then anything else goes?

At what level? Federal law? Company policy? Church community? Family rules?

 

[Tree of Life]

At what level? Federal law? Company policy? Church community?

Ethics.

 

[FireDragon76]

Do you think that God's Law as expressed in the 10 commandments is platonic? Luther didn't think so.

No. But we disagree on the importance of the third use of the law, of course.

Fruit picking is a dangerous business indeed as it's a thorny matter, there's potentially as much blood on your hands as good fruit you will find. Better to let the wheat and tares alone until the harvest.

So you think that the US is doing fine on the sexual morality front?

Better than in the past but there's always room for improvement.

 

[Tree of Life]

No. But we disagree on the importance of the third use of the law, of course.

Fruit picking is a dangerous business indeed as it's a thorny matter, there's potentially as much blood on your hands as good fruit you will find. Better to let the wheat and tares alone until the harvest.

So you think that Christians ought not to make moral judgements?

Better than in the past but there's always room for improvement.

How do you know, since you cannot use the Law of God as a guide?

 

[FireDragon76]

So you think that Christians ought not to make moral judgements?

As much as possible, no. I actually think the commandments are a good guide to this, as one of them we interpret to say that we should seek to put the best construction possible on our neighbors behavior. I believe that should urge us to curtail our judgments a great deal.

How do you know, since you cannot use the Law of God as a guide?

I use the law of love, the law on which all the others depends, looking for the benefit for my neighbor. And I know the benefit to my neighbor by actually knowing my neighbor. Hence my koinonia reference. That means hanging out with the prostitutes and tax collectors, and all sorts of potentially unsavory types that make us uncomfortable.

 

[FireDragon76]

This is going to sound bizarre but I think you will learn more about sexual ethics from a prostitute than from a celibate priest. The ethics of an activity has to be worked out by people that actually engage in that activity. There is no substitute for experience.

 

[Cearbhall]

This is going to sound bizarre but I think you will learn more about sexual ethics from a prostitute than from a celibate priest. The ethics of an activity has to be worked out by people that actually engage in that activity. There is no substitute for experience.

I was going to say that the BDSM community seems to have the best grasp of it of anyone, but I wasn't sure what topics were safe to mention.

 

[quatona]

"Everyone" is obviously hyperbole. You got me.

Fair enough. I´ll keep in mind that´s one of the devices you use to make a point.

I'm just saying that our culture (at least in my country) lacks a coherent, agreed upon sexual ethic from which to be outraged or to make other determinations about sexually moral behavior.

If that´s all you wanted to say, it might have been a good idea to leave it at that in your OP - whereas actually it sounded a lot like you wanted to make a point about "Biblical ethics".
Interestingly, you are trying to are basing your idea that there is no such coherent agreed upon sexual ethics on the observation that "everyone is up in arms about sexual misconduct" (i.e. that there actually does exist such a broadly agreed upon sexual ethics).
So what´s left of your OP then: The current broadly agreed upon sexual ethics isn´t to your liking. You would like it to be more strict and/or more lenient (in other cases).

We are certainly outraged when it comes to certain allegations and we're making judgments and determinations all the time, but it's unclear what the basis of these judgments is.

The basis has been mentioned several times. However, I understand that for someone who thinks that only the bible can be a valid standard, a non-biblical standard appears to be no standard at all.

 

[RDKirk]

I'm not sure what this means.

It means there is and has always been sexual ethics outside of Christian definition.

Christian ethics are for Christians, not for non-Christians. Romans 6 tells why.

 

[FireDragon76]

Listening to Peter Kreeft's lectures on Plato he notes that justice in law schools (or most of them) isn't taught as an ideal existing on its own, but as what's in the confines of the legal code. Or justice is defined by what the law says it is, not as part of natural law. So, as you noted, by this thinking, something is made morally permissible because it's legal.

This is actually more biblical, BTW. The Jews never thought of justice as something that existed abstractly, divorced form any particular action, it was more of a verb. Doing justice in this world involves more than sitting above things and judging the objective rightness or wrongness of something: it involves doing. And we find ourselves right from the start, in the midst of things with our own particular perspective on what the good is.

Again, if we want to do justice there is no substitute for koinonia , which will involve encountering other people and their perspectives on the Good.

 

[RDKirk]

Sexual assault and sexual harassment are crimes not just some made up changing ethics.
Assault and harassment have been crimes under common law for hundreds of years, especially assault. There have been many reasons that the sexual forms of these crimes have not been adequately addressed in the past and maybe now they will be.

The definition of assault varies by jurisdiction, but generally falls into one of these categories:

1. Intentionally putting another person in reasonable apprehension of an imminent harmful or offensive contact. Intent to cause physical injury is not required, and physical injury does not need to result. So defined in tort law and the criminal statutes of some states.

2. With the intent to cause physical injury, making another person reasonably apprehend an imminent harmful or offensive contact. Essentially, an attempted battery. So defined in the criminal statutes of some states.

3. With the intent to cause physical injury, actually causing such injury to another person. Essentially, the same as a battery. So defined in the criminal statutes of some states, and so understood in popular usage.

Harassment
(1) The use or threat of use of violence or other criminal means to harm the physical person, reputation, or property of any person.
(2) The use of obscene or profane language or language the natural consequence of which is to abuse the hearer or reader.

15 U.S. Code § 1692d - Harassment or abuse

Well, it's gotten pretty loose in the last couple of years, starting, apparently, with accusations against Bill Cosby.

Most lately, Garrison Keillor, whose ties with NPR were severed when he was accused of sexual harassment of a coworker.

“I meant to pat her back after she told me about her unhappiness and her shirt was open and my hand went up it about six inches. She recoiled. I apologized. I sent her an email of apology later and she replied that she had forgiven me and not to think about it. We were friends. We continued to be friendly right up until her lawyer called.”

 

[HereIStand]

This is actually more biblical, BTW. The Jews never thought of justice as something that existed abstractly, divorced form any particular action, it was more of a verb. Doing justice in this world involves more than sitting above things and judging the objective rightness or wrongness of something: it involves doing. And we find ourselves right from the start, in the midst of things with our own particular perspective on what the good is.

Again, if we want to do justice there is no substitute for koinonia , which will involve encountering other people and their perspectives on the Good.

Justice is found in God's law, and knowledge of it exist in our hearts, whether it is in written form or not. In Plato, he appealed to the Good, but didn't necessarily mean God. The key difference is noted in Gilson's God and Philosophy as "He who is" (Christianity) versus "that which is" (Greek philosophy).

The problem (I think) Kreeft is critiquing in modern law is that justice only exist when someone interacts with it. Outside of that, there is no standard of justice, Platonic or Christian.

 

[SolomonVII]

The ethic is that everything is cool, I'm okay, you're okay..... until you are not, or I am not.
What behavior is permitted is purely subjective, consent itself is fickle, and the tide of public opinion changes with the phases of the moon. Yesterday's hero is todays cad. In the Middle Ages they dug corpses out of the crime to convict them in courts post-mortem.
Soon enough, the rotting corpse of Ted Kennedy will be put on such a trial too. Winds of change are already giving us a whiff.

That is the post-modernist teaching on sexuality. The court of public opinion is judge, jury and executioner, and whoever tells the latest narrative controls the court.

 

[KCfromNC]

I'm just saying that our culture (at least in my country) lacks a coherent, agreed upon sexual ethic from which to be outraged or to make other determinations about sexually moral behavior.

A good step forward would be for you to unquestioningly accept my views on morality. That will at least get rid of one disagreement. Seems like it would be a good first step if you're really interested in a coherent, agreed upon ethic.

 

[KCfromNC]

Why are children in homosexual "marriages" denied their fundamental human
rights [enshrined in the 1959 UN Declaration On The Rights Of The Child] to
know and be with both their natural biological parents?
Why are the rights of children to be with mothers and fathers denied to suit
the latest politically correct family craze?

If this is really your reasoning it seems that you'd get a lot more bang for the buck by fighting to outlaw divorce. And yet for some reason you don't - you focus on gay couples instead.

 

[bhsmte]

Tree of life,

Still waiting for an answer to post 36.

 

[Desk trauma]

I was going to say that the BDSM community seems to have the best grasp of it of anyone, but I wasn't sure what topics were safe to mention.

As someone involved in that community I find the way that consent is spoken of by some vanilla folks horrifying. The incident that always comes to mind is Dr Ruth saying that once sex starts it’s too late to withdraw consent and unreasonable to do so. Us dirty perverts have worked out how to withdraw and maintain consent is much more intense situations that heavy petting yet its unreasonable for vanillas to accept that no means no at any point in the act?

 

[Desk trauma]

If this is really your reasoning it seems that you'd get a lot more bang for the buck by fighting to outlaw divorce.

And IVF, sperm donation, adoption...