I have a friend who is atheist/agnostic who recently became divorced from his wife. The topic of sex came up, where I told him I believe it is only proper in marriage. He stated that that wasn’t going to happen. How would you approach the subject or benefits to waiting, remembering he does not really believe in God? Thank you!
This is going to be a bit longwinded, but I think this is the most airtight case that can be made for sexual abstinence without resorting to any theological arguments.
Ask your friend if he believes in the concept of inherent human dignity; that every human being has inalienable rights and that we all have a moral duty to respect those rights.
I assume and hope your friend would say yes. From there, I would point out that if this is the case, there must be a hierarchy of rights, and first and foremost among them must be the right to life: just as you cannot have a right to privacy without a right to private property, or a right to a fair wage without a right to work, so you cannot have any human rights without a right to live to begin with. Ask him if he agrees with this.
If so, ask him if he would agree that these rights must be granted even to the most defenseless and dependent among us and that we are not at liberty to determine whether or not a human being is worthy of those rights. If he agrees, then you can point out that he must reject abortion as an evil, as it destroys the life of a scientifically verifiable human being, and acceptance of abortion amounts to a denial and destruction of human dignity and human rights. If we accept that human beings don’t even have an inherent right to be born, we cannot logically or consistently say that a human being has any inherent dignity, and thus inalienable rights, at all.
That being the case, one would also have to say that the means of transmitting life, namely sex, are of the gravest importance and consequence and should be used with the utmost of care and responsibility. This means accepting the fact that a child may result from the act and being prepared to welcome that possibility whenever one engages in such relations. Even with the most effective methods of birth control, there is always a chance that pregnancy will result, and so one must accept the risk of assuming the responsibility of parenthood, even if that is not the intention of the people engaging in the act, just as a man who drives drunk will have to take responsibility for taking the life of another, even though that wasn’t his intention when he got behind the wheel.
Once we accept that, we must also consider the needs of the potential child. Study after study shows that, on the whole, children do best in a stable environment with both their biological mother and father. Only the most cold-hearted would deny that the weakest among us are entitled the greatest protection and care, so we should always strive to provide our children with the best possible conditions for their growth and development. This means that those who are willing to take on the responsibility of parenthood should be willing to commit to stay together and raise their children. The proper way to make this commitment is to be married. Marriage, as has been understood from the dawn of man, is a binding promise to stay faithful to one’s spouse and has always been ordered towards procreation.
Thus, we can come to a simple conclusion by retracing the steps we have followed on this chain of reason so far:
1.) Human beings have inherent dignity and rights.
2.) The right to life must logically be the first among these.
3.) Abortion is a denial of the right to life, and thus human rights altogether.
4.) Sex, which is naturally ordered towards procreation, must be understood and entered into with the acceptance of that understanding.
5.) Children have a right, whenever possible, to a stable home environment with both biological parents.
6.) Therefore, those who engage in sexual intercourse should be willing to provide such an environment to their potential children.
7.) The proper way to provide such an environment is through the legal institution of marriage, which encourages and protects such an arrangement, and is in fact designed specifically towards that end. If two people are willing to take on the role of committed parents, then they must be willing to enter into the social contract of marriage.
8.) Therefore, sex should be reserved for marriage.
Now, one could bring up the issue of sterile couples, homosexuals, or even various non-procreative forms of sexual activity among fertile couples. But of these questions, those of homosexuality and non-procreative uses of the sexual function boil down again, in my opinion, to whether there is such a thing as inherent human dignity. If there is, then the means by which human life is generated must be treated as being of the utmost sanctity. Homosexual acts and non-procreative heterosexual acts serve to diminish the proper understanding and meaning of sex and thus cheapen the value of sex and, consequently, human life.
As for sterile couples, there is nothing inherently wrong with their engaging in sexual intercourse, anymore than it is wrong for a bird with a broken wing to try to fly. Sterile couples do not change or actively defile the meaning of sexual union in principle. They are still performing the act in its proper context; it is just incidental that the act is ineffective in their case. Deliberately performing acts that have no procreative potential in principle, on the other hand, represents a willful negation of the inherent meaning of sexuality.
