Applied Ethics: Perspective on Sexual Ethics GEC 108

Human Sexuality

 Male and female is the twofold expression of human nature. Like human life itself,
sexual difference is not arbitrary but is willed by God.
 Men and women are equal in dignity and yet are different from one another in
important ways, including in their bodies and how they relate to each other and
to the world.
 Sexuality affects every aspect of who we are (see CCC, no. 2332). Through sexual
difference, we see that men and women are created for each other. As male or
female, our differences complement each other and allow us to relate to one
another in profoundly personal ways. 
 "Valuing one's body in its femininity or masculinity is necessary if I am going to
be able to recognize myself in an encounter with someone who is different. In
this way we can joyfully accept the specific gifts of another man or woman, the
work of God the Creator, and find mutual enrichment. It is not a healthy attitude
which would seek 'to cancel out sexual difference because it no longer knows
how to confront it'" (Laudato si, no. 155).
 Through masculinity and femininity, God has written into the human person a mutuality
of one to the other. This points to the "spousal meaning" of the body, whereby the
human body is seen to be.
 St. John Paul II explains as man and woman existing not merely "'side by side' or
'together,' but [also as] called to exist mutually 'one for the other.'" Men and
women are created to give of themselves to each other. They manifest God's
image both from their common humanity and their communio with each other
 Human sexuality is woven into the fabric of each man and woman. It carries within it the
powers of love and life and is the human source of our most basic relationships as
members of a family.
 Human sexuality indicates the capacity of persons to love one another and be united
with others in friendship and community.
 Sexual difference is a sign of our call to love, to communion, inscribed within
who we are, including our very bodies.
 As Pope Francis notes, "It needs to be emphasized that 'biological sex and the
socio-cultural role of sex (gender) can be distinguished but not separated'"
The main assumptions from Revelation

 The first assumption is that the duty to love everyone, and to act in that love, includes
all of morality.  Thus, any genuine moral duty can be derived by analyzing the nature of
love and examining ourselves and the world. 
 If we do not analyze the nature of love, we might erroneously think that we can
do evil to others so that a greater good might come of it. 
 But love is focused on particular actions, and to do evil to someone is contrary
to love, even if the evil is done for the sake of a greater good.  And if we do not
examine ourselves and the world, when we may harm our neighbor out of
ignorance while trying lovingly to promote his or her good.
 The second assumption is that all the forms of love—romantic, filial, friendly, collegial,
fraternal, etc.—are forms of the very same thing, love or, as the Greek Scriptures have
it, agapê. 
 agapê is not a distinctive form of love beside the romantic, filial, and so on. 
The word agapê has at least the same range of meanings in biblical Greek as
“love” does in English—and maybe even more. 
 the New Testament uses the language of agapê more or less interchangeably
with that of philia.  And so the Scriptures present us with the idea of the forms
of love as unified by all being forms of love or agapê.
 The third assumption is that romantic love is consummated through a sexual union
as one flesh.  This union is primarily biological rather than psychological in nature
 The final assumption from Revelation is that romantic love is natural to human beings. 
It is not a mere creation of a particular culture.  The way romantic love
is expressed obviously differs between cultures, but romantic love satisfies a yearning
to cleave to another that is a normal part of human life.

Love and its forms

 There are, at least, three intertwined aspects to all forms of love: appreciation,
benevolence (willing the good to the beloved), and a striving for union.
 the need for the interconnection of the three aspects in intrahuman love as
follows.  Without appreciation of the beloved, our benevolence is apt to
degenerate into a proud and superior philanthropic attitude.  Simply willing the
good, without appreciating the other, would not be love.  And what kind of a
reason could we have for pursuing union with the other if we did not see the
other as having a value? 
 the pursuit of union is needed in love.  An appreciation of the other without a
pursuit of union is impoverished.  If one does not desire to possess the beloved,
to be joined with the beloved, does one fully appreciate the beloved? 
Appreciation naturally flows over into a desire for possession and union.
 if we pursue union and appreciate the other but do not seek the other’s good,
we do not have love, but a self-defeating selfishness. 
  For genuine union with the other involves pursuit of the other’s goals, and an
appreciation of goods is incomplete when it does not motivate us to further
those goods.  And it is only if, with a mixture of humility and surprised joy, we
see our being united with the other as good for the other that we can hope that
the other will fully be joined to us.
 the best way to differentiate the forms of love is by means of the union they impel
one to. Aquinas’s distinction between two types of union: formal and real. 

Formal union
 the union of mind and will implied by the fact that one loves someone. 
This consists of an “indwelling” of lover in beloved and beloved in lover
that is mutual even if the love is unreciprocated. 
 The lover enters the beloved by intellect, because the lover strives to
understand the beloved from the inside, seeing the beloved’s goals and
nature from the beloved’s own point of view
 Formal union, thus, is always present in love, because it simply comes from
the benevolent and appreciative aspects of love. 

Real union
 Real union is a way of being together with the other person, not just in
mind and will, but externally.  This may involve intellectual conversation,
hugging, writing an article together, caring for physically, sexual union, etc. 
 Love can exist without real union—lovers can, after all, find themselves
separated.  But in love, one always at least seeks real union. 
 And one does not seek just any real union.  One seeks a real union
appropriate to or expressive of the form of love.  The kinds of real union
that the relationship calls for.  Indeed, we can think of some kinds of real
union as paradigmatic of the form of love, and as consummating the form
of love.
 It is important that our love for people have a form that is appropriate to the beloved, to
ourselves, and to the relationship.  
 people can love others in the wrong way, and that creates distortion.  Then, how
can one love in the wrong way?  If the sum total of morality is found in love, the
answer to this question has to be grounded in a demand of love.  This demand is
that the love takes a form that is appropriate to the lover, beloved and their
relationship.  This is one way in which love is responsive to reality: love needs to
take a form which fits the reality of the situation. 
 In love, we need to sensitively discern the situation and understand the persons
involved, and make the form of the love be appropriate to that.  Love, thus, is
not open to changes of form, but actively seeks to ensure that its form fits the
people and their relationship.  This dynamism on the part of love is what allows
for commitment. 

Romantic love
  How is this form of love distinguished from other forms of love? 
 Like all the other forms of agapê, romantic love includes an appreciation of the
other, a will to further the other’s good, a formal union, and tendency to a real
union.          
 Romantic love is one of the basic and natural human loves.  While some of
its expressions are culturally defined, romantic love itself goes beyond culture.
 in romantic love there is a particularly significant component of appreciation of the other
as a physical being, a person of body and soul. 
 in romantic love, the other is appreciated not just as a physical being, but as
a sexual being.
 What does it mean for the appreciation to be sexual in nature?  The mere co-
occurrence of sexual arousal does not make something be sexual in nature.  A
romantic lover one appreciates the beloved, in an essentially first-person way
that could be expressed by him or her in words
 there is a focus on or directedness towards sexual union—the lovers yearn for
this, that it calls for marital commitment.

Sexual union

 what is this sexual union the yearning for which helps define romantic love?  Presumably
sex is a crucial part of the story.  But why should sex help fulfill the yearnings of a basic
form of love?  Presumably, the real union in a basic form of love has to be something non-
trivial, something significant.
 We do have a pretty clear intuition that at least when intercourse occurs in the right
circumstances and for the right motivations between a man and a woman, then
there is a real union as one flesh that the lovers seek
 One striking thing about intercourse between a man and a woman is that it involves
not just a random pair of organs but matched and cooperating sets of organs. 
These organs are matched not simply for geometric reasons. Rather, the sets of
organs are functionally matched.  What is this goal? And the goal of their mutual
biological striving, which defines the way in which they are matched,
is reproduction. 
 What is happening in intercourse is human mating—there is a biological striving in
the direction of reproduction.  This striving occurs whether or not the couple
endorses it, even when reproduction is impossible due to temporary or permanent
infertility.
 For there is a value in a bodily striving for a great end, and reproduction—the procreation
of a new human person—is a great end.  This value is present in the biological activity of
intercourse, and it is present even when the striving cannot be completed.  An activity of
reproductive type is not something trivial.
 the significance that intercourse between a man and woman has is a significance
that other sexual activities do not have.  If what makes intercourse fitting as the
 physical aspect of the real union romantic love yearns for is the cooperative
functioning of the reproductive systems, then these other activities do not yield that
union.  (A consequence of this would be that no activity that a man
.
Commitment, openness to life and love
           
 36r.domantic lovers do not yearn for just a biological union.  A merely biological union
would not do justice to them as embodied persons, beings of soul and body.  They yearn
for a union that does justice to a form of interpersonal love. 
 the physical aspect of the union, which is constituted by the joint striving of the
reproductive systems, needs to be in harmony with the attitudes of the two
as persons.
 an act of sexual intercourse, in order to help constitute the real union that romantic
love seeks, must be open to life, in the sense that the couple does nothing to
oppose the reproductive striving.  The couple cannot fight that which unites them if
this is to be an integrated real union of persons
 Typically, the parts are united with one another for their lifetime.  Sexual
intercourse, however, is a brief act.  There is, then, a temporal dimension that is
needed to make it more fully a union analogous to that of the parts of one
organism.  Moreover, human persons exist through time, and their union
as persons requires a temporal dimension.  The brief act of intercourse can be, as it
were, stretched through time by means of a uniquely personal act—an act of loving
commitment, in this case a loving commitment for life, indeed a marriage.  It is only
in the context of such a commitment until the death of the two individual organisms
that the sexual union is fully a personal union of one flesh.