Focusing on Sexual Ethics: The High Stakes of Intercourse

People really like having sex: It brings them closer together (literally and otherwise), it feels good, and, heck, it’s just darn good exercise. When so many benefits come together, who wouldn’t see it as something desirable? On one level, if you concentrate on these three benefits, the ethics of sex don’t seem that much different from the ethics of taking a good hike in the woods with friends.

However, having sex and taking a hike in the woods do have some important differences. With hiking, you can’t catch life-changing diseases from your friend. Furthermore, most people feel they have a right to keep sex relatively private, and with that right to privacy comes ethical concerns not present with hiking. Finally, at least for sex, not hiking, is the first step to making babies. With baby-making comes pregnancy and a lot of (ethical and moral) responsibility. So it makes sense that people take sex a little more seriously than other kinds of leisure activities. In this section, we look at a couple of these general concerns with sexual activity.

Explaining the Standard View of Sexual Morality

People who are obsessed with common-sense notions of morality love to talk about sex. The general view seems to be that while sex is morally permissible inside committed relationships (particularly married, monogamous, heterosexual relationships), it shows a lack of moral fiber to engage in sexual activity outside these relationships. Call this the standard view of sexual morality. Indeed, if someone describes you as having “loose morals,” they’re more than likely commenting on your sex life.

The view that most sexual activity is confined to married, heterosexual relationships is almost certainly false. Just turn on your television. But you have to remember that the standard view isn’t a view of the way things actually are. It’s an ethical view; ethical views are views about the way the world should be rather than the way it currently is.

Some people think that advocates of the standard view of sexual morality are just out to keep people from having a good time. Although some may be acting as fun police, this criticism ignores the important parts of their view that you really ought to consider. By and large, the worries about sex stem from the fact that people are strongly driven to follow their sexual urges, and the consequences of following these urges can actually be pretty dramatic. After all, how many other highly pleasurable things result in the creation of other human beings that need to be taken care of for many years in the future? People who subscribe to the standard view primarily worry about the following three risks.

The Three Main Risks in Sexual Ethics

Getting Knocked Up

The primary consequence of sex that the standard view centers on is pregnancy. Sex sometimes leads to pregnancy, which usually leads to babies. And babies are a lot of work. If sex resulted in being awarded a new car, you could just leave the car in the garage until someone you knew needed one. But babies require much more. They must be gestated for nine months, during which time it becomes more difficult (occasionally much more difficult) for a woman to go about her daily life. You also must consider the painful and frequently costly act of childbirth. Finally, after all that, life becomes even harder when you consider the tiny, fragile being that must be fed, clothed, and sheltered for many years.

Babies bring a great deal of joy to people’s lives as well, but the point of drawing this out is to show that sex can lead to a lot of work after the fun. When the couple isn’t in a committed relationship, the work threatens to fall on only one person — generally one woman. The standard view of sexual morality exists to some degree because in the heat of the moment, no one is likely to think about these powerful moral responsibilities down the road.

Of course, some ways are available to stop sex from leading to these responsibilities. Contraception, condoms, and abortion all put up barriers between sex and babies. Those alternatives aren’t all 100 percent effective, and they aren’t without their ethical detractors (particularly abortion). But the standard view attempts to do an end run around those alternatives and prevent people from having to deal with them in the first place.

Contracting an STD

Another consequence that motivates the standard view of sexual morality is the possibility of catching sexually transmitted diseases (STDs). Some of these diseases can be cured with a quick dose of antibiotics, but others, like HIV/AIDS, have no known cure and can lead to death. Sexual urges can distract people from thinking about these diseases in the heat of the moment, so passing on STDs can be a particularly poignant example of something very pleasurable hiding a painful consequence.

Of course, one can take precautions to avoid catching diseases from sex. Condoms in particular dramatically reduce the chances of getting most diseases, but they don’t eliminate the chances. A committed monogamous relationship is an even more effective way to avoid STDs (assuming partners actually are committed, monogamous, and disease free), and the standard view makes good use of that fact.

Dealing with Hurt Feelings

Another not-so-minor consequence that motivates the standard view of sexual morality is the chance of hurting another person’s feelings. Unless you’re some kind of robot sex machine, you’ve probably realized that sex comes along with some pretty big emotional consequences. Sex involves not only physical closeness, but it creates feelings of emotional intimacy as well. Many people only want to have sex with someone they feel emotionally close to, and afterward it’s common to bask in this closeness partly through making oneself emotionally vulnerable to the other.

Although some people can separate sex from these powerful emotions, doing so may not be desirable. When one partner desires an emotional connection that the other doesn’t, it can lead to pain and regret. A roll in the hay can be a lot of fun, but to make your entire sex life only about the fun of the act leaves some people with empty feelings. Certainly it can be a big mess if one partner wants the entire encounter to just be about fun, while the other wants love, warmth, and future emotional encounters. Sometimes sexual partners even play on these recognized wants, promising emotional connections that they aren’t prepared to offer in exchange for sex. This implies insensitivity, deception, and even manipulation.

It’s not always possible to sort these things out when you’re seeing paradise by the dashboard lights, but it would be disrespectful to assume that the person you’re about to jump in the backseat can handle whatever you want to happen the next morning. Even though committed relationships are no guarantee of emotional stability, the standard view’s insistence on them encourages emotional expectations to be settled beforehand.