‘Sexual behaviour should be a matter of public norms and legislation’ Discuss
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Sexual ethics
Institution
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Oxford A Level Religious Studies for OCR
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‘Sexual behaviour should be a matter of public norms and legislation’ Discuss.
Sexual behaviour includes homosexual relationships, extra-marital relations and pre-marital sex
and has always been an area of great significance to people. Sigmund Freud Frued, for
example, argued that human sexuality is a defining feature of our personalities. Sexual
behaviour is an immensly controversial topic and has a multitude of personal moral issues and
debates surrounding it. Many debates about sexual morality contain resentment or rejections of
religious beliefs about marriage and sexual acts. Through critical analysis, it will become clear
that sexual behaviour should mostly be private but sexual bhevaiour which causes harm like
pedophilia should be a matter of public norms and legislation.
Sexual behaviour should mostly be private especially in regards to homosexuality. Public norms
and legislationlegilsation haves been used to entrench discrimination and deprive certain
individuals of their social and economic rights and their access to justice. Laws against
homosexuality often define homosexuality as ‘carnal knowledge against the order of nature’ and
refer to it as ‘gross indecency’. We cannot and should not uphold such views as they demean
the value and the humanity of people. In the UK, the Wwolfenden report (1957) decriminalised
homosexuality between two consenting adults and stated that the law should prevent abuse and
protect the young and other vulnerable individuals, it should not intrude on matters of personal
morality. Thomas Aquinas, influenced by Cicero and Aristotle, is therefore unconvincing when
he argues that our sexual behaviour should be governed by the primary and the secondary
precepts which the Cchurch uphold should seek to uphold. Aquinas argued that homosexuality
was ‘contra naturam’ and that it was ‘intrinsically disordered’. Those who engage in homosexual
behaviour have not used their reason correctly to interpret the natural law but have instead
chosen to follow the apparent good instead of the real good. To Aquinas, we must follow the
primary precepts because these help us achieve our aim of doing good and avoiding evil (the
synderesis). The primary precept of reproduction would mean that we should be ‘fruitful and
multiply’ and homosexuality would frustrate this command as the telos of sex is not being met.
Yet as convincingly argued by Stephen Fry, natural law promotes views that leads to the
‘stigmatisation and victimisation’ that leads to playground bullying and statistics which show that
the LGBTQ+ community is twice more likely than the heterosexual teen to comtemplate suicide.
Therefore, it is clear that sexual behvaiour in regards to homosexuality should mostly be private
and should not be subject to societal norms and legislation, especially when they uphold
dangerous and harmful views.
Contrastingly, Immaneual Kant, in his absolutist theory, argued that sexual relations should
absolutely be governed by ethical principles which the law should codify. The only sexual
relations that are morally acceptable are those which occur between a married man and
womaen. Kant thus argued that sexual behaviour can only legitimtaly take place within the
institution of marriage and nowherething else. To Kant, sexual desires present in extra/pre
marital sex are morally condemable. Such desires are inherently objectifying and are
incompatible with respect for humanity. It is the cause of the deepest degradation as ‘the person
is cast aside as one casts away a lemon which has been sucked dry’. In Kant's categorical
imperative, he argues that we cannot treat people ‘as a means to an end’ we must always treat
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