Like a Virgin

TMcD,

In reference to your post here, which was in response to my post here, I just want to point out that I made it quite clear more than once that I was advocating consenting sexually mature humanoids having sex with each other, not with animals. All this reminds me of a remake of a Bob Dylan song I just heard on NPR yesterday that went something like “Genghis Kahn couldn’t keep / all his men supplied with sheep...” At any rate, the bit about the sheep was merely an over-the-top rhetorical flourish meant to point out that there never has been some golden age when “married” men and women only had sex with each other inside the bonds of marriage, which seems to be a common misconception by some evangelical Christians these days (although given that the leader of the National Association of Evangelicals, Ted Haggard, was just outed, maybe they’ll reconsider – nah, I’m sure they won’t.). And I refer to the Greco-Roman practices, not only because I know them better, but because they are documented better than other pre-Christian cultures. In addition, Christianity was born in the Greco-Roman world and so Christianity (and thus modern Western society) has inherited and re-interpreted almost every existing pagan practice.

Like you, I agree that the state has the duty and obligation to legislate human behavior, including matters impinging upon sexuality such as the age of consent. The only provisos are that it should do so rationally (as you say) and humanely. The problem with most Christian teachings on sexuality are that they have no rational basis anymore, and when you point this out to Christians, they say stupid things like, “Well, it’s in the Bible or the Church teaches it, so it’s God’s will and we just don’t understand his reasons.” They are also not humane (sex is evil). So they want to legislate public policy based on their faith in the Bible or Church teaching. Which brings up another point. You’ve probably got better things to do than get caught up in such lengthy blogs, but I’d like you to clarify your sentence that I somehow argued or implied that "a practice [which] began with the Christian Church ... must ipso facto be unjust." This reminds me of the scene in Monty Python’s Life of Brian, at which I must digress:

REG:
Yeah. All right, Stan. Don't labour the point. And what have they [the Romans] ever given us in return?!
XERXES:
The aqueduct?
REG:
What?
XERXES:
The aqueduct.
REG:
Oh. Yeah, yeah. They did give us that. Uh, that's true. Yeah.
COMMANDO #3:
And the sanitation.
LORETTA:
Oh, yeah, the sanitation, Reg. Remember what the city used to be like?
REG:
Yeah. All right. I'll grant you the aqueduct and the sanitation are two things that the Romans have done.
MATTHIAS:
And the roads.
REG:
Well, yeah. Obviously the roads. I mean, the roads go without saying, don't they? But apart from the sanitation, the aqueduct, and the roads--COMMANDO:
Irrigation.
XERXES:
Medicine.
COMMANDOS:
Huh? Heh? Huh...
COMMANDO #2:
Education.
COMMANDOS:
Ohh...
REG:
Yeah, yeah. All right. Fair enough.
COMMANDO #1:
And the wine.
COMMANDOS:
Oh, yes. Yeah...
FRANCIS:
Yeah. Yeah, that's something we'd really miss, Reg, if the Romans left. Huh.
COMMANDO:
Public baths.
LORETTA:
And it's safe to walk in the streets at night now, Reg.
FRANCIS:
Yeah, they certainly know how to keep order. Let's face it. They're the only ones who could in a place like this.
COMMANDOS:
Hehh, heh. Heh heh heh heh heh heh heh.
REG:
All right, but apart from the sanitation, the medicine, education, wine, public order, irrigation, roads, a fresh water system, and public health, what have the Romans ever done for us?
XERXES:
Brought peace.
REG:
Oh. Peace? Shut up!

There, I feel better. But back to the thread at hand. I assume you’re referring to the practice of marriage. But I never said or implied marriage began with the Christian Church. In fact, there really isn't anything about marriage that the Christian Church invented, other than infusing existing practices with theological significance (i.e. making it a sacrament). So Christian teachings on sexuality are almost all theology – and a theology almost entirely based on practices started in pre-Christian cultures for particular reasons that made sense within a particular society at a particular time, but no longer did at the time when Christianity was born. Here’s a big example of a pre-existing sexual practice that the Christian Church has ripped from its original social context and then re-interpreted in the light of non-rational, theological thought:

Virginity. A woman’s virginity originally operated as a way to guarantee that she gave birth to a son of your own blood who was a suitable heir for your legacy. This is an entirely rational thing to do, IF you think there’s something special about your own genos and if traditional inheritance practice requires you to have a son from your own loins (note how Abraham takes Hagar to have a son when Sarah can’t instead of adopting). So that's why every god only ever rapes/seduces a virgin. There are no exceptions to this rule. Stories of seduction by Zeus, Poseidon, Apollo and the rest of the pantheon exclusively involve virgins because impregnating a virgin was the mortal ideal as well. Often these stories of virgin seduction are made more dramatic by having the god get to the virgin on the night of her impending “wedding” to a mortal. Thus Zeus disguises himself as Amphytrion and sleeps with Alcmene on her wedding night, and then the real Amphytrion follows soon after the god (undoubtedly the second performance wasn’t as good as the first). Alcmene then gives birth to twins: Zeus is the father of Heracles, and Amphytrion the father of Iphicles.

On the mortal plane, as the earthly father of a daughter, you guarded her virginity, not because you wanted her to remain “morally pure”, but because you wanted to make sure that her future “man” would be certain that any child born from her was his. Otherwise she was spoiled goods. That’s why you married her off as quickly as possible after puberty – girls in antiquity usually were “married” sometime between 14-16 years of age to older men of 20-30 years of age. To put it another way, in antiquity probably 80-90% of marriages would be considered illegal in most US states today. Well, as this sociological obsession with blood-lines begins to break down (in large part because of laws legalizing adoption), what does the Christian Church do? It comes under the spell of certain philosophies just becoming popular that argue that all material and matters of the flesh are not divine, or even “evil”, especially Eros. Christianity then keeps the traditional stipulation that girls must remain virgins and adds that this is necessary because sex is “sinful” and of the flesh, and this change also requires that men remain virgins. So now sex becomes something earthy, material and sinful, and only tolerated inside the bonds of marriage to procreate. In fact it’s so “dirty” and non-divine that now as a part of the sacred story God must come upon the Virgin as a spirit, not to ensure that she gives birth to his son, but to make sure that she miraculously remains a “virgin” with undespoiled flesh and worthy of giving birth to the son of a god. In short, the Christian teachings on virginity have completely ripped it from its original, rational function and sociological context and infused it with an irrational, spiritual and theological significance.

And then, as the circle of the earth has spun out the years, decades, centuries and millennia, we arrive to modern times when society has changed even further. Now girls/women and boys/men are educated up into their 20s and 30s, so marriage isn’t such a great idea until that education is well under way or over. But the biological drive remains as strong as ever – humans have evolved, like all life forms, to start having sex soon after puberty is reached. Meanwhile new, reliable contraceptives have come on line to avoid unwanted pregnancies and STDs, and what do most Christian churches say? Pre-marital sex is evil, and use of contraceptives before marriage is evil and the Catholic Church even says all use of contraceptives is evil (“Every sperm is sacred...”). This is just stupid and then impacts public policy like refusing to hand out condoms to teens and promoting abstinence programs up into the late twenties and encouraging over population.

So I guess what I’d like to know is, what new benefit(s) do you think that the Church and Christian teaching has/have brought to marriage and sexuality for society as a whole? Do Christian teachings about homosexuality, bisexuality, prostitution, or adultery stand up to rational inquiry any better than virginity? I think not.