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In this episode Trent shares a clip of him asking college students the question “What is sex for?” and then discusses how we can better share the Church’s teachings on sexual ethics.
Narrator:
Welcome to the Council of Trent Podcast, a production of Catholic Answers.
Trent Horn:
Hey everyone, welcome to the Council of Trent Podcast. I’m your host Catholic Answers Apologist and speaker, Trent Horn.
I remember a female friend of mine was once asked to give a chastity talk at a local high school. And she was having a little bit of trouble coming up with the talk. So she goes to a priest that she knew, this kind of older, quirky priest. And asks him, “Father, how should I start off this talk? I’m really not sure what I should do.”
And he says to her, “Look, here’s what you need to do. It’s simple when you talk to teens about this. You stand up in front of them and you shout, “Sex! I got your attention now? Good. Here’s what I have to say.” So that was his advice. She chose to not run with that, for better or for worse. But that is what I am here to talk to you all about today. Sex!
Or, sexual ethics. I think these are some of the teachings of the faith that are the hardest for us to share in our culture today, the teachings related to sexuality. Especially a very basic question, what is sex even for? So I want to talk about that, and just some insights that I’ve had. Including ones that came from a video I did where I went and asked that very question to a group of college students in San Diego.
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So I want to focus, on this episode … I don’t want to give a really comprehensive apologetic. That’s not what I want to do here. Rather, I want to talk about the difficulties that seem to be involved in talking about sexual ethics with the broader culture, and how we need to approach it in a certain way to get people to rethink this. Because it’s difficult. I read this in an article once, and it made a lot of sense to me.
That the author was saying, when Christians speak to larger culture about pro-life issues, he compared that to fighting in World War II. When you tell people abortion is wrong and you show them pictures of aborted, unborn children, even people who are in favor of legal abortion get very ambivalent, very uncomfortable. Because there, with the wrongness of abortion, it’s easy to identify what’s bad. Just like in World War II you ask, why are we fighting? Well look at what the Nazis were doing.
Obviously this is, it’s very clear to see the wrongness in what was going on in World War II. Just like it’s very easy to see the wrongness of what is happening in the issue of abortion. Now, just to be clear, I’m not saying those who have abortions are Nazis. That is not what I am saying. I’m making an analogy that, when we talk about the issue of abortion, even people who disagree with us or on the fence, it’s easy for them to wrap their heads around what is wrong in the situation of abortion, and why someone would be against abortion. Just like it’s easy to wrap your head around why somebody would have fought along with the allies in World War II.
But the same author said when you transition to homosexuality for example, and let’s say same sex marriage, the campaign to keep marriage, the legal definition of the union of a man and a woman, he compared that to the Vietnam War.
When you ask, why are you fighting in the Vietnam War? And people were very dejected, the Domino Theory, it was hard to explain exactly why someone would be there. And people were very cynical about being involved in a conflict that seems like you shouldn’t even be fighting in the first place.
And I think for a lot of Christians, they can feel that way about sexual ethics. They might think, well, how do I get people to see that sexual activity outside of marriage is wrong, when it’s not as clearly visible as showing a picture of an aborted unborn child, for example.
So I think, and once again, I don’t have a silver bullet about how to do this either. Because sexuality is such a deep part of a person’s being, and something that what they’re naturally gravitated towards are very strong feelings, it can be difficult for them to rationally assess what’s good or bad in this area. And it’s really easy to come up with all kinds of justifications for your own sexual behavior.
And also, there’s a lot of woundedness. People who have been wounded by people when it comes to sexuality, even within the church, as we’ve seen. So how to care for those who’ve been wounded, and how to help people see that our modern culture’s view of sexuality ultimately is not good for them. That what God created as part of, he wrote into our very being what is best for us in terms of our sexuality, and to help people to see that. That’s what I want to talk about today.
And I think, I just want to present here in this episode, kind of a starting point. And then maybe further on, maybe I’ll develop this into more of a full apologetic. I’d love … People have asked me, can you write a book like Persuasive Pro-Life, but it’s on persuasive sexual ethics or something like that? That’s something I’m going to take very, very seriously.
I cover that a bit with Layla Miller and my book Made This Way on how to explain issues of sexuality to children. Though I think a book treatment for adults and explaining the church’s teachings might be helpful here. So, how would we do that?
I think that instead of defending the church’s position on sexuality per se, the first thing that we need to do is to get those who accept our modern cultures view of sexuality, to defend that view, and to present a coherent vision of it. This is kind of similar to when Catholics dialogue with Protestants. And once again, I’m not saying Protestants are like those who reject sexual ethics. It’s an analogy, that I think the most helpful way to share the Catholic faith with a Protestant isn’t just a bunch of Catholic proof texts. It’s to say, Hey, explain Protestantism to me. Why should I be a Protestant? What does that mean? What does the authority structure?
And as you start to explain it, you see, oh, you can’t really consistently or coherently explain it. It starts to become self-contradictory, or includes assumptions without evidence. And so if you see there’s a real problem with Protestantism, you’re much more likely to be open to an alternative, like Eastern Orthodoxy or Catholicism.
Much the same way, I think people aren’t as open to the pro-life message until they see there’s something inconsistent with pro-choice ideology. And they’re going to be much more open to Catholic sexual ethics if they say, hey, wait a minute, my sexual ethics don’t work.
Now, the problem here is a lot of people think that when it comes to sexual ethics, it’s easy. It’s just consent. If you consent, it’s okay. If you don’t consent, it’s not okay there. You’ve got your sexual ethics, you don’t need anything else.
And so it can seem like all of Catholicism’s rules on sexuality are extraneous or arbitrary when, if you have this consent rule, that’s really all that you need.
And I see why this thought, this line of thought is tempting. It is tempting because consent is a necessary condition for moral sexuality. But it’s not sufficient. If you don’t have consent, then it’s automatically immoral. But just having the consent of the parties involved, those who were able to consent, we’ll get to that here in a second, does not by itself determine whether sex is good or bad. It’s a necessary condition, but it’s not sufficient.
So I think what we need to do is, we need to ask those who defend a modern view of sexuality some very basic questions. One of the most basic for me would be this, what is sex for? What is it for? You can’t know if you’re misusing something unless you know that you’re using it in the proper way.
You can’t know that you’re misusing a certain tool, or a certain body part, unless you know actually it’s for this, it’s not for that. You have to know what it’s for before you can know what it’s not for. And this seems like a very basic question, what is sex for? Because if I asked about any other bodily process, most people would give pretty straightforward answers. What is eating for? What is breathing for? Eating is for getting calories and nutrition, Breathing is for getting oxygen into your body.
Now , it’s not only for those things. Right, because we also eat not just for nutrients, but we eat for taste. We eat to have meals with other people, for a communal reason. But it would be disordered if we ate for all those other reasons and we purposely chose to not, to purge ourselves of the nutrient values of the food we were eating.
And breathing, much the same way. You might breed to smell of a fragrant aroma, but you’re still giving your lungs oxygen. So to act against those principles, I think that would show there’s something disordered here.
So I think that when we ask questions, we can ask what is sex for? And we might also ask a question, instead of saying when is sex wrong? Because most people say, well, rape. Non-consensual, which is correct. I might ask, okay, is there any consensual behavior that is disordered? Can sex ever be disordered, even if it’s consensual? Some people might bite the bullet on that, others won’t.
So, I want to ask these questions of people. So I want to share with you a clip from a DVD I did several years ago called The Case Against Contraception. In this clip, I went out with a video crew to San Diego State University. And asked college students who are willing to talk with us one simple question, what is sex for? Just, what is sex for? And when you hear their answers, you’ll start to see the foundations of their sexual ethics. And I think it can provide some openings to challenge those foundations, to show that their view on sexuality is lacking. So let’s take a look.
Speaker 3:
Some people might be for pleasure, might be for love. But it just depends on the person.
Speaker 4:
Everyone’s different. And I guess to me, sex is just like, I don’t know, it’s a special thing. At least for me. I like to keep it simple, I guess.
Speaker 5:
I believe that sex is, one, for reproduction of course. And also an intimate relationship between two people who are in love. And it’s sharing your body with someone else.
Speaker 6:
Sex is meant for reproduction, I guess, most people say. I don’t think it’s specifically for reproduction for me personally, but I think it’s just a way of showing you love someone, or you care about someone. And it’s very intimate, and it can be important.
Speaker 7:
I don’t think anybody has a right to determine what sex is as a definition, because each person can do it for their own reasons. You can do it to bring yourself closer to a spouse or a partner. You could do it for personal enjoyment, or just literally whatever you want do. That is your life, your decision.
Trent Horn:
All right, so those responses are fascinating, and I want to talk about a few things overall from them before I dive into the details.
First, what’s interesting is that everybody seems to agree sex has something to do with love, at least people who are willing to say sex is for something. If you ask a lot of people, what is sex for? They’ll talk about it being, it’s about love, specialness, a connection with someone else. They’ll associate it with love in some way.
The other thing that many people will answer, and it’s funny, you’ll see in this, people will give the answer, reproduction. But then they’ll start to think about it, and they’ll backtrack a little bit. Like, well, it’s reproduction, but it is not, it’s not just only reproduction. Because there’s a lot of sexual acts if you’re contracepting, or engaging in same-sex behavior, then this sexual behavior is not open to life in any new shape or form. Then in some cases with contraceptives, it’s purposely acting against life. You don’t want to reproduce, and you’ve taken an action to make sure that that’s the case, to sterilize the sexual act, to take away that reproductive element.
So love and reproduction. What’s funny is, when you talk about things like theology of the body, a lot of Catholics will summarize this by saying, sex is for babies and bonding. And sex becomes disordered so that we call that the procreative and the unitive aspects of sexuality, babies and bonding. If you take that away, now that doesn’t mean, for example, babies, you can only have sex in order to have a baby, right?
Because a married couple can have sex when the wife is pregnant. And 99.9, I think there’s a really rare case where a wife was pregnant and she got pregnant again as one of those really rare, black swan events.
But in general, the church has never prohibited sexual relations between spouses after menopause, or sexual relations during pregnancy when you can’t get pregnant. But you can’t do anything to directly sterilize the act. So when you purposely act against either the babies or the bonding, it’s disordered. You act against the babies if you contracept, for example. You act against the bonding. So you can’t have babies without bonding. Oh, sorry, you can’t have bonding without possibility of babies. That’s why contraception is wrong.
And you can’t have the babies without the bonding, that’s where IVF becomes disordered. Obviously those are two big issues, I could spiral off in to talk more about them. But I’m just summarizing what people, they see in their heads. What is sex for? The most basic thing they seem to agree on is that something to do with love. Which is interesting. And then babies and reproduction show up.
But our job, I think, is to help people see that they’re a lot more intimately connected. The last girl who answered, I think she gave really the most honest answer for people nowadays. And this video was filmed several years ago, so I think a lot more people might side with her. And when she said, well, it’s not for anything, and nobody can tell anyone else what it is and isn’t for.
So what I want to do now is, I want to go through these different answers that people give to the question, what is sex for? And I think we need to ask people, answer the question, what is sex for? What is its purpose? And then challenge them to show that their answers aren’t satisfactory. They leave something out, or they’re contradictory. So trying with the first one, sex doesn’t have any meaning at all. It’s not for anything. So there’s nothing really, if someone says there’s just nothing special about sex at all.
Well, one counter-example I might give to that is, if there’s nothing special about sex compared to any other bodily function, then why in our law do we have a special category called sex crimes? We have Law and Order SVU, Special Victims Unit, dealing with sex crimes. They have the voiceover for that. That if sex is really not special in any way, shape, or form, it’s just another bodily function. We don’t have crimes specifically related to breathing, we don’t have crimes specifically related to digestion. But we do have crimes related specifically to sex.
And that’s because everyone seems to agree, no, sex is important. At least most people in the secular world you talk to will at least agree, do you think sex is important? It’s a thing that we should value, It’s something we should care about and treat seriously. I think almost everybody’s going to agree with that.
Also, if you say that sex has no meaning, there’s an interesting challenge here. I would ask this person, what is sex? Because it’s funny, people intuitively have an understanding of it. You can can also answer the question, what is sex for by asking the previous question, what is sex? Now most people will say vaginal intercourse between a man and a woman. But then you have same-sex couples, you have other sex acts, things related to sodomy, all different things that people engage in.
So if you ask people in the modern world, what is sex? They might actually have a really hard time giving you a definition. Because then I would say, All right, here’s a bunch of other activities that seem clearly to not be sex. How about giving someone a high five? It seems like sex has something to do with genitals and orifices. It seems like it has something to do with stimulation of genitals.
If you ask people in the modern culture, what is sex? Because they have a lot of different sexual acts they might be thinking of. Because I would say sex is vaginal intercourse, that’s the sexual act. Or we call it the marital act that should take place between a husband and wife. But between a man and woman, that’s the sexual act. Everything else is not the sexual act, it’s just sexual behavior.
But I think those people in the modern culture would say, well, it has something to do with genital stimulation. Then I would ask, well, why? There’s other parts of the body, you might feel pleasure from. Eating a good meal, for example. But that’s not sexual pleasure. Why are the genitals, why is that what sex is? And it seems like it’s all dealing with the organs that are related towards the act of reproduction.
It’s like when people try to take away say, oh … I remember I was debating a philosophy professor once about abortion. And I said, “Well, these organs of the body, they seem naturally ordered towards reproduction.”
And he said, “No, those aren’t reproductive organs. They’re sex organs.”
I said, “Well, what’s the difference, right?” What is sex? It seems like it’s that activity that is ordered towards reproduction. We see that in other animals when we talk about their sex or sexual behavior, we recognize that it’s about the reproduction that they have between the male and female and the species. So the idea that sex doesn’t have any meaning, I just, very few people will openly say that. And I also think it doesn’t work. Let me give a few other examples.
Some people say, well, sex is for pleasure, right? It’s just for pleasure. It’s for feeling good. There’s nothing special about it. We need all these moral rules for if you consent and it’s pleasurable, then that’s just what sex is for. Why is this so confusing? But I think deep down, most people agree sex is not just about pleasure, it just can’t be.
And I will give a counter example. It’s very hard, sometimes, to find counter examples in the modern world. Because people, more and more sexual practices that were once considered deviant or perverted are considered normal. So it’s hard to find counterexamples. But here’s one, infidelity. There is just like a why. Now, I know there are ethical, non-monogamous polygamous type people, polyamorous who are trying to push the polyamorous lifestyle. Most people are not willing to buy into that.
Most people see sex as not just for pleasure. Because if it were just for pleasure, having a friend has pleasure to it, right? It’s fun to hang out with your friends if you get along with them. So if it’s fun to have one friend, why not have two friends? Why not have three friends? Having more friends, no one would say it’s wrong to have more than one friend if you enjoy having friends.
But many people will, if you tried to tell someone you’re dating or married to, well, I really enjoy having a girlfriend or a wife. Why not have another one of those? Or, I like having a lover. Why not another lover? Most people will see infidelity as wrong because sex is just about pleasure.
I remember reading an atheist blogger once, who said he came out as polyamorous. Because he was having an affair, basically. And he said that the requirement in marriage to be monogamous was as unreasonable as requiring in marriage to be vegans. That’s an unreasonable requirement to predicate marriage on. And I would agree. Because what you eat does not have any intrinsic connection to the promises of marriage.
The whole point of the promises of marriage are, basically, you promise to remain in a relationship with this person and not to sleep with anybody else. That’s the core things that you’re promising. We say you promise be true to you. That’s what that means.
So I think that people who say that it’s just for pleasure, they can’t explain why infidelity is wrong. Why even asking if you can be unfaithful is something you just should not do. Why we have this general expectation. For example, if you had a spouse that told you, you could not have any other friends whatsoever, that spouse would be controlling. That’s toxic, possibly abusive behavior. But yeah, a spouse that said you can’t have sex with anybody else, that’s completely normal for them. That’s what our culture recognizes they have a right to say to you.
But why is that? If sex is just for pleasure, why do they have a right to say you can’t have that particular pleasure with other people? And I think what makes most sense to say is that sex is not just for pleasure, it’s for something else.
Another counter example of the idea that sex is just for pleasure is that our society does not hold up masturbation and pornography as things to celebrate. There are things that are acknowledged that are widespread, but it’s not something that people celebrate. If anything, deep down, people will see that masturbation and pornography are very lonely and sad things. But why is that? I don’t need the presence of other people to enjoy good food. Or nobody says it’s weird if a person who is single goes and travels the world by themselves. They can still enjoy all of these things.
But sexuality is different. Sex is really ordered towards another person. It’s not, another reason it’s not just for pleasure is that when people engage in masturbation and engage in sexual stimulation, usually they’re fantasizing about other people. But we don’t do that for other bodily pleasures. So you can eat a porterhouse steak, and you don’t have to think about somebody else to enjoy that porterhouse steak. But when people engage in acts like masturbation, they usually often think about engaging in sexual union with other people.
So there really is a connection there. It’s not just pleasure to a particular set of muscles in the body to derive anatomical pleasure. And another reason for this is that I think about somebody like Jeffrey Toobin, who is the former CNN legal commenter. He was literally caught with his pants down in a Zoom meeting. He was masturbating over Zoom.
And the way people reacted to that, if sex is just something you do that’s pleasurable, maybe it’s tacky like picking your nose. We don’t say, hey, we can see you picking your nose there. Mind just going to the bathroom, get a Kleenex and do that? Even there we might say, okay, what are you four years old?
We’re much more, and rightly so, repulsed at the thought of someone engaging in masturbation, especially in public and view of others. So much so that’s a crime in places, to engage in that behavior where other people can see that victimizes other people. So clearly, sex is not a something that has no purpose, not even something that’s just for pleasure. It’s something very, very important.
So what about the idea though, that it’s for love? Well, sex is a way of showing love to other people. Isn’t that enough? And here I would say, this is still somewhat incoherent, or I can’t really explain all of our intuitions about sexuality. Because for example, think about all the people we love. If you had a circle of all the people you love, and then the circle of people you have sex with, that circle should be really, really, really small. For me it has one person, my wife. And there’s this much larger circle of people that I love.
The vast majority of people that we love in life, 99.9% of them, we don’t have sex with. And in fact, two have sex with them would probably be an unloving act. Think about family members, for example, are other people that we might have relations with. No. Sex is not for, it is for showing love, but it’s a very particular kind of love. It just can’t be a generic sort of love.
And that’s what I would press people on who would say, oh, well sex is just about love. And that also goes back to the previous counter-example on infidelity. Because if you have the love of friendship with more than one person, why can’t you have more than one sexual love? You either have to bite this bullet on polyamory or admit, no, sex is for a particular kind of bond, a union that is ideally permanent, that is a complete gift of self to another person.
So, well, what would that be? That’s why I would say the best expression of what sex is for is to say, sex is for the expression of marital love. So then, well, what is marital love? Marital love is a kind of love, all love seeks union. If I love food, I want to be united with that food. In my belly.
If you love a friend, you want … If you say you love a friend but you never spend time with them, you never talk to them, you don’t really love that person. You want to have union with them. You want to have a union of minds, for example. You spend time together, you talk with each other.
So marital love is then, it’s a self, it is an expression of a particular kind of love that finds its fulfillment in bodily union. So a lot of this comes from the philosopher Alexander Pruss’s essay. I want to say that it’s called One Flesh, or One Body. I believe it’s called One Body. Let’s just, let’s look it up here and check. Alex Pruss, One Body, An Essay in Christian Sexual Ethics. Super good, and I definitely recommend.
And so I think that that would make sense of sexuality, if it is designed to be an expression of marital love. And so to express it in other contexts would lead to being disordered, such as why fornication is wrong. You’re choosing to have this bodily union, ordered towards the creation of a new human life. So it’s ordered towards this lifelong union. But to engage in it promiscuously, or just for seeking the pleasure with other people, is extremely disordered. It’s harmful for the couple that are involved. It’s harmful for the child who could come into existence. And it’s disordered in other contexts as well, where it’s being used not towards that end of forming a true union.
And a true union is not just rod A and slot B. When the dentist sticks his fingers in my mouth, not united. To be united means two incomplete parts are now joined towards a whole, or towards a goal that is larger than themselves. So that can only take place, then, for the reproductive organs when men and women are united to each other.
Now, I didn’t want to get into all the objections and arguments, especially things related to homosexuality. Like I said, that’s not the goal of what I wanted to have just in this episode. All I’m saying is that if we’re going to talk about sexual ethics in this culture, I think we don’t do ourselves a favor if we just go right on out and start with all of our arguments.
We need to get people who affirm the goodness of sexuality. Because I also affirm that, the church affirms that, that sex is a good thing that God gave us. I want them to answer these questions: well, what is sex, even? Can you even define it? And then, what is it for? When does it become disordered? Is consent the only morally relevant factor, or are there others? And so then I would encourage those who reject the Catholic teaching on sexuality, come up with your own robust view of sexual ethics that answers these questions.
And then, C, does it account for our intuitions about particular cases? Like I brought up about infidelity, disordered sexuality, wanting to have, let’s say, sexual relations with an inanimate object. Is that disordered? Some people say, well, who cares? If they want to be happy, whatever. At the same time, that attitude, that modern attitude, who cares if that person thinks they’re a cat and they want to lick themselves clean?
Well, yeah, you can say who cares all you want. But the question is, is it disordered or not? And there are people who identify as trans-species, they think that they’re cats. The question is not, who cares? It’s, do we care about them if they’re living a disordered life that’s ultimately not good for them?
So that’s my thoughts. I hope this was helpful for you all. Like I said, if you want to go deeper in this, I talk about this a little bit more in Made This Way with my friend Lela Miller that I co-authored with. And there is this more philosophical approach you might find interesting, One Body, An Essay in Christian Sexual Ethics by Alexander Pruss. Pruss? Pruss. So, thank you guys so much. And yeah, I hope that you have a very blessed day.
Narrator:
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