by ProfDave, ©2021
(Aug. 12, 2021) — “Nothing is wrong if it’s between consenting adults!” declares one of my young friends. He probably doesn’t realize this is the Playboy slogan from the 60’s – or before. I’m getting heartily tired of it, but I suppose I should answer the question. Why not? Is it true that “nothing is wrong?”
This rests on the rather adolescent myth of invulnerability. Starry-eyed teenagers believe nothing can happen to them. The sixties were the most adolescent period in our cultural history. While shaming our elders for their failures (they just won World War II and produced the most affluent society in history – but didn’t cure prejudice and urban blight), we grasped for freedom while discarding responsibility and ignored consequences.
Well, hello! There are consequences. Particularly for sexual behavior. Between you and your God. The Creator has left some pretty clear instructions on how we should live. Violating the letter or the spirit of those instructions changes our relationship to that Higher Power, even if nobody else knows. You don’t believe in God? This could be why you choose to call yourself an atheist. We lose or abandon our spiritual connections and often become alienated from our faith community. Even if you don’t believe in Heaven and Hell (again, this could be why you choose not to believe?).
Between you and society. Some sexual behavior is condemned by society as illegal or unethical. Even where approved, there are social consequences. Despite the glamorous stories, the aggregate trend of “happiness” is downward. Marital instability, single parenthood, abortion, child abuse, partner abuse, poverty, crime – the list goes on. Since the 60’s there has been untold suffering, social pathology, and economic damage from the behavior of consenting adults.
Between you and your family. We become alienated from our families, spouses, and children. We hurt the people who love us: dysfunction, shame, abuse, abandonment and more. There are victims of our “victimless crimes.” And hurt people hurt people – to the third and fourth generation. There’s not a condom made that can prevent a broken heart. And it is cumulative.
Let’s look a little closer at the consequences between you and your spouse or partner. There is a way that intimate relationships are supposed to work, based on mutual trust and respect. Intimacy is diluted when you spread it around. Dysfunctional sexual behavior destroys this, leading to loneliness and insecurity, abuse and abandonment. There are physical risks, for example, the whole history of risky behavior of one partner infects the other – in every way.
There are consequences between you and your body. In the 70’s and 80’s we discovered whole new ranges of infection previously unknown. Sex is dangerous off the reservation! Thank sexual freedom for the AIDS epidemic that killed millions and is still without a cure – and scores of others. Abortion is dangerous, too. Making the body do what it is not designed to do is risky business. Not to mention what happens to your brain, drenched in misdirected hormones.
Between you and your mind. Did I mention hormones? The neurochemistry of sex is powerfully addictive. Focused on one spouse it is constructive and productive. Allowed to wander it is crippling. Through a pornified mind persons become sex objects, walking sets of body parts. Productivity slides, relationships become paper-thin, creativity atrophies and narcissism sets in. Don’t go there.
Is there “nothing is wrong if it’s between consenting adults!” How does this ethic work in practice? In promiscuity? In adultery? In co-habitation? In divorce? In abortion? In single parenthood? In pornography? In prostitution and the sex industry? In abuse and abandonment? In same-sex relations? In transgender expression? In sex-changes? Is everyone involved consenting or even adult?
Consenting? Look at any of these situations. Pick a case. You didn’t hold a gun to his head or chain her to the bed? But was consent really free? Informed? Without manipulation or deception? No advantage taken of loneliness, poverty, co-dependency, emotional or situational weakness, power differential of any kind? Alcohol, drugs? No advantage taken? Maybe you were the one manipulated. Either way, how real was that consent? Was it really the free cooperation of equals, respecting each other before and after? Would you do it sober? Did you just lie to me?
Is sexual “freedom” really consensual in practice? Let’s widen our focus. Is there full and free consent in the sex trade? If you bought him/her, can you assume consent? Is the dancing girl free or enslaved? What of the conditions that brought somebody’s sons and daughters to sell their bodies on the streets, in the clubs, or in the pornography studios? Millions, world-wide, are trafficked as slaves for the sex business (they might rather pick cotton), including thousands in North America. Even the images on the net may be far from voluntary.
For that matter, did your co-worker consent to be thought of and treated as a sex object? How about interested third parties, silent stakeholders in your pleasures? Did your children consent to you having an affair and breaking up their home? Did your baby consent to being aborted? It is called a choice, but how many women who have abortions really believe they have a choice? How many others are coerced or intimidated by boyfriends or parents? Did other patrons consent to having a biological male in the ladies room? Consenting adults? Not always.
Adults? Is everyone in the restroom, in the store, or in the classroom an adult? The hottest button on the “straight” side is the impact of “liberated” lifestyles on their watching juveniles. Role models in classroom and media are corrosive – and intentionally so – to efforts to socialize children to traditional morality. The bitterest and most decisive battle is for the hearts and minds of the children – in the kindergarten classroom on up.
The ‘adult’ in ‘consenting adults’ has been compromised from Kinsey on (yes, the famed sex researcher was a pedophile). The assumption of comprehensive sex education is that children are sexual from birth. They are to be trained and expected to be sexually active. With whom? Lowering the age of consent is on the agenda and abortionists are reluctant to report statutory rape. If you can have sex, do you qualify as an adult (and infants can have sex?)? A large segment of pornography, and even more of sex trafficking, involves minors – as young as 6 months! Consenting adults? Hardly!
“Nothing is wrong if it is between consenting adults,” clearly, is not an adequate ethical system or even a realistic code of sexual conduct for three reasons. First, it does not recognize the basic human dignity of adult men and women. We are whole persons, not just genitals. We are minds and hearts connected to our body chemistry. We have bodies, but fundamentally we are not bodies. It isn’t intimacy if it doesn’t involve the whole person. What we do in bed is not just physical, but emotional, social, and spiritual. Reductionism makes us less than ourselves, less than human. And it is fundamentally evil to treat ourselves and each other in that way.
Second, it does not recognize the social context and responsibility of adult humans. We do not exist in isolation. We bring other people to bed with us. Even watching porn at midnight. To be an adult is to be responsible for our behavior, its consequences, and its impact on others. Two people in isolation is an abstraction and a delusion, however willing that delusion might be. Such isolation is pathological. No man (or woman) is an island. And it is fundamentally irresponsible to treat ourselves and each other in that way.
Finally, the “consenting adults” standard is impractical. The social consequences have been destabilizing at best. Effectively, it represents no new moral ideals, but a rationalization of moral compromise and irresponsibility. It abandons traditional and Christian ideals, without putting anything in their place. For children, the effects have been catastrophic. It has also been harmful to women. Despite some feminist gains (arguable), women have been made more vulnerable to male predation, abandonment, poverty and cultural objectification. Even men have lost their sense of place and belonging in families and society. The Playboy ethic is corrosive to society and a trap to those who fall into it. It is a dead end. And it has been fundamentally tragic for Western civilization.
David W. Heughins (“ProfDave”) is Adjunct Professor of History at Nazarene Bible College. He holds a BA from Eastern Nazarene College and a PhD in history from the University of Minnesota. He is the author of Holiness in 12 Steps (2020). He is a Vietnam veteran and is retired, living with his daughter and three grandchildren in Connecticut.