Sexual Morality

I think the strongest argument for sexual morality comes from Goldman when he describes sex as the desire for physical contact with another person’s body. I think as a college aged student with certain priorities on the mind I come into this with a fair amount of bias, and it’s no surprise I find the most “liberal” of the views on sexual morality the most appealing. That being said I will defend Goldman’s argument by elaborating on the historical context he touched on when he mentioned contraception. One has only to travel back in time a few hundred years to find a period when raising a family was extremely difficult. Resources were scarce, and in places with harsh winters surviving was even more difficult and precarious. The birthing process itself was extremely painful without the advancements in pain regulation we have today. The chance of the mother dying in child birth was also greater, as well as the chance of the child dying in infancy. Sex had to be restricted to the notion of being simply for procreation, because the risks associated with treating it as an activity for pleasure were simply too great. Sex in the not too distant past could really only be implemented when one was financially secure with the resources at hand to deal with the almost inevitable consequences of what would result. In fact, I would go so far as to say that in conditions like these, treating sex as a means-to-an-end was morally responsible. To treat it otherwise would pose a grave threat to both mother and child. But as Goldman mentions, the advent of contraception and its widespread acceptance today has rendered this idea of sex as a means-to-an-end reproductively speaking as outdated. There is nothing wrong with the views of the past in my opinion; they were prudent for the time. But life is the process of change, and I believe our views could fall more in line with Goldman’s in an attempt to ease the tensions that can arise from the confusion surrounding sexual conduct, as well as to acknowledge the significant differences from the past we now have.