Kal, your questions about sex outside of marriage: My own answer, and one I think I can put up with reasonable expectation of your respect, is: [i"What does your conscience tell you?"* By which I don’t mean something smarmy, a “any* decent* person would know the answer” sort of snark-bite, but rather, “Is this act, in this particular time and place, ethical?” I’m not absolutely wedded to Joseph Fletcher’s situation ethics, but he had some excellent points.
As an example of something that verges on the technical definition of adultery, I am e-acquainted with a Quaker couple, both professional artists by trade and (trained) counselors by avocation. As a couple, they were brought in on an intervention regarding a woman who had been brutalized, and I use the term advisedly, by her ex-husband. Prior to the last round of physical abuse that led to his arrest, he had committed such a massive campaign of emotional abuse that she was effectively disengaged from any capacity for intimacy and had an absolutely trashed self-image.
My friends the S’s of course saw this as something in need of healing, and brought her into their home. At Mrs S’s instigation, Mr S, a very gentle and compassionate man, did what was for all practical purposes wooing their houseguest, rebuilding her capacity for intimate contact and her image of herself by showing her that a gentle, caring man could find her attractive and worthy of his attention. I neither know nor care if there was sexual contact there; the nature of the intervention was itself a technical violation of marriage vows (“forsaking all others” etc.) but one done by half of a couple with mutual consent to accomplish long-range good for another. (She is, by the way, healing and, I’m given to understand, now dating while getting a divorce.)
It may have gone completely past people, but the idea that teenagers feel sexual desire is not in my mind an issue of lust – they are moving from childhood to adulthood, with the need to identify and sort what they need in a life partner. It would be absurd to do this as a pure intellectual exercise. Rather, the gift of God is that desire precedes maturity, providing opportunity to learn by trial and error.
The most common Greek word for sin literally means “falling short” – as in a spear or arrow not going all the way to the intended target. My personal views on casual sex are probably best expressed in those terms: it’s far short of what it could be, settling for gratification instead of fulfillment. At the same time, I do understand frustration. So the most I want to say ethically about that is that if it is not a situation in which there is a meeting of minds as to what it will not be, there’s a real problem.
But in general, I dislike the whole idea of pontificating about sexual ethics – tempting as it is to make those value judgments. I have my own life to live, my own goals to strive for (and inevitably fall short of), my own failings to repent and atone for. My sole conceivable interest in Miller and Sol’s sex life comprise these: (1) in the extremely unlikely event they want my advice on something; (2) the debt I owe them as fellow human beings to ensure that they realize that what neo-Pharisees decide to cobble up is not necessarily God’s own opinions on the matter; and (3) the demand on me, both in general as a citizen and Christian and the particular call placed on me personally, to stand in defense of their relationship, and those of other gay people, against those who would denigrate it.
Bottom line: I’m acutely aware of the lumberyard of planks and beams in my own eyes, and not particularly interested in ignoring it to check others’ eyes for dust particles. (And, as a childless man with a talent for communications, acutely aware of where that metaphor might be going, courtesy of Niven and Pournelle! ;))
Just that I’ve dealt with a few too many sniping posts lately, and my sense of humor was frayed. 