Summaries 10, 11, 12 and 13

Chapter15

Sexual Morality

Copyright © 2019 W. W. Norton &Company

Introduction

Two kinds of moral issues are involved in discussions of sex:

1. those that focus on the morality of specific types of sexual acts and the context of those acts
2. those that concern an individual's free consent to such acts

Background: Sexual Behavior –1

The central question:

What kind of sexual behavior is morally permissible, and under what circumstances?

Background: Sexual Behavior –2

People generally give one of three answers to the central question:

1. Sex is permissible only in a marriage between a man and a woman.
2. Sex is permissible between informed, consenting adults.
3. Sex is permissible between informed, consenting adults who are bound by love or commitment.

Background: Sexual Behavior –3

Conventional view: Sex is morally acceptable only between one man and one woman who are married to each other by legal authority; premarital sex and extramarital sex are wrong.

A religious strain of the conventional view says that some sex acts performed by married partners—acts that are incompatible with procreation—are also prohibited, including masturbation, oral sex, anal sex, and use of contraceptives.

Background: Sexual Behavior –4

Liberal view (nonpolitical): As long as basic moral standards are respected (for example, no one is harmed or coerced), any sexual activity engaged in by informed, consenting adults is permissible.

All kinds of sexual behavior condemned by the conventionalist would be morally acceptable, including premarital sex, extramarital sex, group sex, masturbation, and homosexuality.

Background: Sexual Behavior –5

Moderate view: Sex is permissible, whether in marriage or not, if the consenting partners have a serious emotional connection.

Moral sex does not require marriage, but it does entail more than just the informed, freely given consent of the people involved. For some, this needed connection is love, affection, or mutual caring; for others, it’s a commitment to sustaining the relationship.

Background: Sexual Behavior –6

• By age 20, 77 percent of adults have had sex and 75 percent have had premarital sex.
• By age 44, 94 percent of women and 96 percent of men have had premarital sex.
• Among teenagers and young adults (ages fifteen to twenty-one), 11 percent of women and 4 percent of men have reported a same-sex sexual experience.

Background: Campus Sexual Assault –1

• Sexual assault against college and university women on campus is shockingly common. Research suggests that 1 in 5 female undergraduates will be sexually assaulted while attending college.
• Sexual assault against men on campuses is around 1 in 20.
• Sexual assault can have serious psychological and physical effects.
• Many criticize authorities in schools and government for not taking it seriously enough, saying the responses by both government officials and school administrators have been ill-informed, naïve, and even callous.

Background: Campus Sexual Assault –2

Rape versus sexual assault

Rape: the penetration of the vagina or anus with any body part or object, or the penetration of the mouth by the sex organ of another person, without the consent (verbal or nonverbal) of the victim

Sexual assault: broader term, which includes rape as well as nonpenetrative sexual acts such as attempted rape, forced kissing, and unwanted groping of sexual parts

Background: Campus Sexual Assault –3

Elements of college life that increase the likelihood of sexual assault:

• number of times one is in contact with "in-network strangers"
• partying
• hookup culture

Background: Campus Sexual Assault –4

Perpetrators are:

• mostly male;
• typically someone the victim knows: boyfriends, ex-boyfriends, classmates, acquaintances, coworkers, or friends (which further complicates the decision to report incidents).

Factors that increase the risk of a man becoming an assailant:

• negative attitude toward women
• acceptance of rape myths
• consumption of violent/degrading pornography
• being controlling
• lacking empathy
• perception of a lack of sanctions for abusive behavior

Background: Campus Sexual Assault –5

Title IXconsiders sexual assault in colleges as a form of discrimination and threatens schools with loss of federal funding if they do not work to stop sexual assault, prevent future occurrences, adjudicate the competing claims of supposed victim and assailant, and mete out justice for both.

Title IX gives survivors of sexual assault a legal means to pursue justice if they believe their school has not adequately handled their case.

Background: Campus Sexual Assault –6

The primary moral questions related to sexual assault on campus are:

1. whether and how justice is served after a sexual assault occurs.
2. whether the requirement of consent is met in any kind of sexual encounter.

Background: Campus Sexual Assault –7

1. Whether and how justice is served after a sexual assault occurs:
2. how the college/university handles an allegation of assault and how it treats the person claiming assault as well as the accused
3. How should officials weigh the evidence:
   • Preponderance of evidence?
   • Clear and convincing?

Background: Campus Sexual Assault –8

1. Whether the requirement of consent is met in any kind of sexual encounter:
2. In sexual activity, consent must be clear and freely granted by individuals capable of giving consent.
3. From "no means no" to "yes means yes":
   • Affirmative consent, a clearly signified "yes," is better than requiring a clearly stated "no."

Moral Theories –1

Natural law theory: Right actions are those directed toward the aims revealed in nature.

• According to the Roman Catholic account of the theory, since procreation is foremost among these aims, actions consistent with it are permissible and actions incompatible with it are forbidden.

Moral Theories –2

The Vatican:

“Experience teaches us that love must find its safeguard in the stability of marriage, if sexual intercourse is truly to respond to the requirements of its own finality and to those of human dignity. These requirements call for a conjugal contract sanctioned and guaranteed by society.”

Moral Theories –3

Kant’s categorical imperative: We must always treat people as ends in themselves, never merely as a means to an end.

• Some thinkers have derived a liberal view of sexual ethics from Kant’s theory.
• Thomas Mappesdefines “using another person”as violating the requirement that interactions with that person be based on voluntaryinformed consent.
• “Using another person” happens through (1) coercionor (2) deception.

Moral Theories –4

A Kantian theory:

• Any sexual activity in which one person deceivesor coercesanother is wrong.
• But when the principle of voluntary informedconsentis respected, a broad range of sexual practices is permissible.

Moral Theories –5

Utilitarianism:

• Utilitarianism is likely to sanction many kinds of sexual activity on the grounds that they produce the greatest overall happiness or good for all concerned.
• Sexual behavior that results in the greatest net good (the greatest utility) is morally right regardless of whether it is unconventional, “unnatural,” deviant, marital, extramarital, procreative, or recreational.

Moral Arguments –1

Alan Goldman:

• The key difference between the conventional view and the liberal view of sexuality is that the former insists that sexual behavior has a morallysignificant goal, and the latter assumes that sex has no goal at all.
• Several faulty theories of sexuality are based on the idea that sex’s rightful goal is procreation, communication, or the expression of love,and that “sex which does not … fulfill one of these functions is in some way deviant or incomplete.”

Moral Arguments –2

Alan Goldman:

• Sex is not a means to some other goal—sex is just “plain sex.”
• Sexual desireis “desire for contact with another person’s body and for the pleasure which such contact produces.”
• Sexual pleasure, according to Goldman, is what is most valuable about sex.

Moral Arguments –3

Igor Primoratz:

• “We have no reason to believe that there is only one morally acceptable aim or purpose of human sexual experience and behavior, whether prescribed by nature or enjoined by society. . . . Sex has no special moral significance; it is morally neutral.”

Moral Arguments –4

Conventional sexual morality:

• Rejects “plain sex” arguments
• Sexual encounters have a deeper, more significant meaning than sexual liberals would admit.
• Sexual experiences express and affirm moral values, and the right kind of sex expresses and affirms the right kind of values.

Moral Arguments –5

Homosexuality

• Many arguments center around the charge that homosexuality is unnatural or abnormal.
• Some argue that if homosexual behavior is not found among animals in nature, then it is unnatural and, therefore, morally unacceptable.
• But biologists and others have found that homosexual attachments and behavior occur throughout the animal kingdom.

Moral Arguments –6

Homosexuality

• Many who denounce homosexuality use “unnatural” to mean “out of the norm,” and this unnaturalness means it is immoral.
• But does it follow from an action’s statistical abnormality that it is immoral?

Moral Arguments –7

Homosexuality

Michael Levin’s argument:

• Homosexuality is a misuse of a bodily part.
• This misuse leads to unhappiness because it frustrates “an innately rewarding desire.”
• Society has an interest in promoting happiness.
• Therefore, since homosexuality makes for unhappiness, society ought to discourage it by not legalizing it.

Moral Arguments –8

Homosexuality

A typical rejoinder to Levin:

• Evolutionary adaptations tell us nothing about how people ought to behave.
• Contrary to natural law theory, knowing how nature is tells us nothing about how we oughtto be.

Credits

This concludes the PowerPoint slide set for Chapter 15

Doing Ethics: Moral Reasoning and Contemporary Issues

Fifth Edition (2019) by Lewis Vaughn.