Secular justifications for the belief that excessive sexuality is immoral?

[Drinkgasoline]

I was having a conversation with a student today about a variety of topics which eventually led to the discussion of “sleeping around” and how it is a waste and immoral.

What made me think though, is that without a religious backing, it was difficult for me to justify believing that sexuality is immoral. There are of course different slants you can take on the normative ethical theories but no universal concepts between them. To be fair I haven’t studied this topic in detail at all as it isn’t really of interest to me and I find other topics of philosophy far more rewarding, but I thought it was worth a thread anyway.

So any non-religious justifications against this sort of behaviour?

 

[mymamamary]

Stds

The huge emotional damage that Pre and Extra Maritial sex causes

the immorality it promotes e.g rape, lust***

**this one should really convince him.

 

[mab23]

you can cause harm to others or yourself (STDS)

causes lust, lack of self control , and in turn we have kids being trafficed around as prostitutes

 

[GWright]

So any non-religious justifications against this sort of behaviour?

Promiscuity is what directly fuels abortion and STD proliferation, harming both individuals and general society. This is shown via the erroneous concept of “safe sex” - as if sexual intercourse was somehow inherently dangerous.

But it isn’t sex which is inherently dangerous, it is sleeping with multiple partners while having no great knowledge (if any) - of their sexual health & history, whilst using imperfect “protection” against STD and pregnancy.

Given that no form of contraception is 100% effective against pregnancy or STD, (and even layered contraception can fail), you could argue that “safe sex” encourages needless risk taking and so is immoral. Sure, the risk for the individual is small, but it soon becomes a significant problem, once scaled up regionally or globally, and the small individual risk is multiplied by millions or billions of people.

“Safe sex” relates to artificial methods which attempt to suppress the natural consequences of sex, which shows that promiscuity, ie using sex as a mere toy for gratification, is a misuse of sex.

Abortions on grounds of mere convenience, (i.e. the greater vast majority), and STD treatments, cost taxpayers many millions of dollars/pounds which they can ill-afford. Especially not long term (eg costs £20-something thousand per year to treat a single HIV patient, and they require treatment every year until the end of their natural life).

This is a huge waste of taxpayers money, being used to address the wholly needless consequences of irresponsible sex.

Promiscuous sex can also hurt the individual via feelings of having been “used” or taken advantage of, or can train a person to think only of themselves and their own gratification.

 

[Pat_Payne]

Being over-sexed is exactly like over-drinking… at some point it ceases to be a pleasurable activity and becomes an addiction, where “once is too much and a million is never enough.” And there comes a point where the person wants desperately to stop but can’t, and with that comes spiritual cancer.

And, really, you can point to all the ruined lives that sex addiction leaves in its wake. The lost jobs, the jailings, the imprisonments, the hospitalizations, the lost marriages, the feelings of despair. Lust kills, or better, it consumes like a flame till there’s nothing left. In one of the 12-step books, there is a line about how “John Barleycorn became the best advertisement for AA.” Well, I feel that Larry Flynt is an excellent argument for sex-addiction diversion/12-step.

 

[ThinkingSapien]

What made me think though, is that without a religious backing, it was difficult for me to justify believing that sexuality is immoral.

I’d drop the concept of immorality all together. While “immoral” may also have a secular meaning it is strongly associated with religious contexts in the western world and that may muddy your discussion a bit.

Instead try to find what your common ground is. For example, you may find that you both have for your common ground that you both wish to minimize physical and emotional harm.Then from there demonstrate how an “excessively sexual” person would tend to cause or experience this harm. With that you may be able to convince the student that there are some disadvantages to being “excessively sexual.”

I don’t think you will be able to show that such behaviour invariably causes harm though. There are some rather sexually liberated individuals that have avoided the negative consequences that the other posters have listed so far. At best I think you can only try to convince that such behaviour raises the risk of certain outcomes provided that you can present a preponderance of evidence for the claim.

 

[Drinkgasoline]

I’d drop the concept of immorality all together. While “immoral” may also have a secular meaning it is strongly associated with religious contexts in the western world and that may muddy your discussion a bit.

Instead try to find what your common ground is. For example, you may find that you both have for your common ground that you both wish to minimize physical and emotional harm.Then from there demonstrate how an “excessively sexual” person would tend to cause or experience this harm. With that you may be able to convince the student that there are some disadvantages to being “excessively sexual.”

I don’t think you will be able to show that such behaviour invariably causes harm though. There are some rather sexually liberated individuals that have avoided the negative consequences that the other posters have listed so far. At best I think you can only try to convince that such behaviour raises the risk of certain outcomes provided that you can present a preponderance of evidence for the claim.

Immorality doesn’t have to have anything to do with religion, from what you’re saying it seems as if a secularist can’t see what’s right and wrong? There are many fantastic secularist moral philosophers with great ideas on morality so I’m not sure what you’re trying to get at with your first paragraph.

Thanks for all the thoughts everyone.

 

[Sair]

Abortions on grounds of mere convenience, (i.e. the greater vast majority), and STD treatments, cost taxpayers many millions of dollars/pounds which they can ill-afford. Especially not long term (eg costs £20-something thousand per year to treat a single HIV patient, and they require treatment every year until the end of their natural life).

This is a huge waste of taxpayers money, being used to address the wholly needless consequences of irresponsible sex.

I would question whether it would be in any way better for society as a whole if these ‘convenient’ abortions did not take place. And it’s worth pointing out that the vast majority of all abortions - whether ‘convenient’ or considered - are performed at a time when the foetus is nonsentient, and cannot suffer.

It’s also fair to say that irresponsible eating costs taxpayers rather more than irresponsible sex. Obesity leads to all kinds of problems and affects more people, even young children. If one wishes to consider morality from a secular standpoint, it’s usually necessary to take consequences into account. Abortion and std’s are, certainly, highly undesirable consequences of promiscuous and careless sexual activity, but for the sake of consistency, these consequences need to be considered in the same light as the consequences of other behaviours. In general, overeating does not attract the same opprobrium as sexual promiscuity, especially from religious believers. The question is, why?

Promiscuous sex can also hurt the individual via feelings of having been “used” or taken advantage of, or can train a person to think only of themselves and their own gratification.

I would agree with this. Although they’re usually lumped together under the umbrella heading of ‘fornication’, there is a big difference between so-called ‘casual’ sex and that which takes place between a couple in a committed relationship who happen not to be married. Treating sex as something that one does ‘just for fun’ (emphasis on the ‘just’) does encourage some people to view others as, to put it crudely, living, breathing sex toys, and certainly diminishes the enriching and sharing experience that sex can (and, I believe, should) be.

 

[ThinkingSapien]

Immorality doesn’t have to have anything to do with religion

It doesn’t, but I think there may have already been a context set for interpreting the word. In the statement “Being over sexual is immoral” unless there’s some other moral framework identified I think the student already understands you are using a framework derived from your religion.

from what you’re saying it seems as if a secularist can’t see what’s right and wrong?

The question is some one ambiguous in that you and a secular humanist won’t have total agreement on what is right or wrong. As long as you are talking about something for which you both agree (such as murder, casual theft) then one could go so far as to say that you both know “right” from “wrong.” Once you get into something for which you don’t have agreement then either one of you might be on grounds to say the other doesn’t know “right” from “wrong” within a certain domain.

Say a secular humanist builds her morality around the directives “minimize emotional and physical harm and injury, increase happiness” there will be some things on which you agree. But for such a person once you get to victimless crimes, masturbation, Fallopian pregnancies, or in the case of your student the topic of sleeping around then you will likely not have agreement.

 

[Drinkgasoline]

It doesn’t, but I think there may have already been a context set for interpreting the word. In the statement “Being over sexual is immoral” unless there’s some other moral framework identified I think the student already understands you are using a framework derived from your religion.

The question is some one ambiguous in that you and a secular humanist won’t have total agreement on what is right or wrong. As long as you are talking about something for which you both agree (such as murder, casual theft) then one could go so far as to say that you both know “right” from “wrong.” Once you get into something for which you don’t have agreement then either one of you might be on grounds to say the other doesn’t know “right” from “wrong” within a certain domain.

Say a secular humanist builds her morality around the directives “minimize emotional and physical harm and injury, increase happiness” there will be some things on which you agree. But for such a person once you get to victimless crimes, masturbation, Fallopian pregnancies, or in the case of your student the topic of sleeping around then you will likely not have agreement.

Some very fair points here, I see what you’re saying.

I do have an atheist friend (as I do many in the scientific community) who agrees with me on pretty much every moral issue we’ve ever discussed. I don’t derive my morality and ethics from the Bible and I don’t really think other people should either but that’s a whole different story…