# Sex. Once and for all. **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [July 10, 2009, 12:18am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/sex-once-and-for-all/502512 "2009-07-10T00:18:25Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 8
**Author:** ![ashman165](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/8e8cbc/32.png) [@ashman165](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ashman165)\ **Post date:** [July 13, 2009, 6:53am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/sex-once-and-for-all/502512/141 "2009-07-13T06:53:01Z")
> [@JRDelirious](#): > > Sure thing. I’ll hurl scorn upon “Dr. Laura” any day of the week. But that’s not establishing social censure against _abstinence_, it’s establishing social censure against\*\* those who seek to impose it \*\*upon us. But just any common person who just says, when asked, “no, thank you, I’d rather wait” should NOT be made uncomfortable for it. We’re not arguing that people can’t choose abstinence or even encourage it. Indeed, we’re arguing specifically that people are free to decide the issue for themselves. Of course people can suggest it to them; that’s the nature of friends anyway, right? To give advice? But the difference we’re discussing is when it changes from “I think you should wait before doing the deed until you’re married because that’s what I did and it worked for me” to “you _must_ wait and I’m going actively retard your knowledge on ways to have sex with minimal risk because I don’t like the idea of you having dominion over your own body because Jesus says so.” The former is acceptable. I tell my that they should wait before having sex until the time they _know_ they can handle it, and its consequences. But that ultimately they must make that decision and assuming they’re going to make a questionable decision, here are the umpteen bazillion ways to reduce the risk of pregnancy, and to mitigate negative physical consequences. ---
**Author:** ![ashman165](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/8e8cbc/32.png) [@ashman165](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ashman165)\ **Post date:** [July 13, 2009, 7:17am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/sex-once-and-for-all/502512/142 "2009-07-13T07:17:41Z")
> [@ITR\_champion](#): > > As for why many people oppose premarital sex, the answer is that many countries including America have been doing experiments on the topic in the last couple generations. We have places in America that have experiment with virtually eliminating marriage and in-wedlock childbirth. They are called inner-city ghettos. Within these places, rates of marriage among adults and legitimacy in birth are low, well below half and below a third in some states. And what’s the result of this experiment? The social and economic conditions of the ghettos speak for themselves. They speak particularly loudly when compared with the wealthiest and healthiest parts of the country, which not coincidentally have high marriage rates and low out-of-wedlock birth rates. Care to cite the results of this “study”? Where’s its data? What are the maths behind the conclusions you draw? How often do they have sex in these controlled situations in which no babies are born? Is the rate of birth per number of sexual encounters statistically higher than the rest of the world? Well, hello there _non causa pro causa_; how’ve you been -haven’t seen you all day. Just because they might have more babies (which is dubious), it doesn’t follow that the total number of babies born is meaningful. If they happen to have, let’s say, 3 trillion sex acts a year in these ghettos, and only, let’s say, 3 billion babies are born are year, then they have a birth to fucking ratio of about 1000 to 1. Of course, this is exaggerated to show the point that it’s the rate of birth (which excludes failed pregnancies and STIs as considerations) which is important. Not the sheer number. ---
**Author:** ![Jack\_Batty](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jack_batty/32/3201_2.png) [@Jack\_Batty](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jack_Batty)\ **Post date:** [July 13, 2009, 1:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/sex-once-and-for-all/502512/143 "2009-07-13T13:26:06Z")
> [@mswas](#): > > It certainly does. It spreads disease, it results in dysfunctional relationships that affect families, groups of friends and often results in dramatic scenes in public, often including assault and murder. It results in unwanted pregnancy. And, of course, we all know as simple common knowledge that there has \*never \*been a dysfunctional married couple. Yep, no dramatic scenes, assaults or murder among the morally matrimonied, lemme tell ya. ---
**Author:** ![ashman165](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/8e8cbc/32.png) [@ashman165](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ashman165)\ **Post date:** [July 13, 2009, 1:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/sex-once-and-for-all/502512/144 "2009-07-13T13:50:15Z")
> [@mswas](#): > > Seconded. It certainly does. It spreads disease, it results in dysfunctional relationships that affect families, groups of friends and often results in dramatic scenes in public, often including assault and murder. It results in unwanted pregnancy. > > Saying that people having sex in private doesn’t affect society at large is simply false. It’s not a valid argument because it’s incorrect on an objective/empirical level. Oh, really? I’d love to take a look at your data. The sex I’ve had in my life hasn’t affected anyone other than the people with whom I’ve been having it. So, clearly your assertion that having sex affects all of society is false. ---
**Author:** ![DianaG](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/7ab992/32.png) [@DianaG](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DianaG)\ **Post date:** [July 13, 2009, 1:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/sex-once-and-for-all/502512/145 "2009-07-13T13:53:15Z")
> [@mswas](#): > > it results in dysfunctional relationships that affect families, groups of friends and often results in dramatic scenes in public, often including assault and murder. It results in unwanted pregnancy. So does marriage. ---
**Author:** ![marshmallow](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/df705f/32.png) [@marshmallow](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/marshmallow)\ **Post date:** [July 13, 2009, 4:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/sex-once-and-for-all/502512/146 "2009-07-13T16:05:09Z")
Among a given population there will be something like 20-35% authoritarians. Is there a big overlap here with having, well, a big stick up your ass? Or is this more a religious thing? Like Europe for example, they used to be pretty uptight until they started to lose God, or am I off base here? ---
**Author:** ![Superfluous\_Parentheses](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/8edcca/32.png) [@Superfluous\_Parentheses](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Superfluous_Parentheses)\ **Post date:** [July 13, 2009, 4:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/sex-once-and-for-all/502512/147 "2009-07-13T16:32:41Z")
> [@jtgain](#): > > I wasn’t saying that at all. But since we are abandoning the “Wait until you are married line”, what do we tell the kids? Do we say that casual sex is okay? Yes. I’m not convinced by arguments for any other position. Sex is not some horrible thing that’s only to be condoned if it’s in a “serious” relationship (and with the lights off). There is no reason to prohibit consensual sex. ---
**Author:** ![marshmallow](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/df705f/32.png) [@marshmallow](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/marshmallow)\ **Post date:** [July 13, 2009, 4:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/sex-once-and-for-all/502512/148 "2009-07-13T16:55:13Z")
> [@Superfluous\_Parentheses](#): > > There is no reason to prohibit consensual sex. Life in Lubbock, Texas, taught me two things: One is that God loves you and you’re going to burn in hell. The other is that sex is the most awful, filthy thing on earth and you should save it for someone you love. – Butch Hancock ---
**Author:** ![sqweels](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/f19dbf/32.png) [@sqweels](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/sqweels)\ **Post date:** [July 13, 2009, 5:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/sex-once-and-for-all/502512/149 "2009-07-13T17:28:53Z")
> [@ITR\_champion](#): > > Perhaps your understanding of this and other issues would advance a great deal if you understood that most people don’t care whether they have your approval or not. Are we talking about sex and the disapproval it receives from some quarters, or what? > [@](#): > > Nor do they care whether they’re “with the program” or “behind the times”. In fact, one reason why the people you despise remain so popular is precisely because they’re willing to stand up for morality even when faced with that sort of attack from the less-holy-than-thou crowd. Again, are you talking about the busybodies who are trying to impose abstinence-only on society, or what? It’s ridiculous to portray them as victims who are being attacked. And how are they “standing up for morality”? Define morality. > [@](#): > > As for why many people oppose premarital sex, the answer is that many countries including America have been doing experiments on the topic in the last couple generations. We have places in America that have experiment with virtually eliminating marriage and in-wedlock childbirth. Nonsense. There is no experiment. People are embracing their freedom as individuals. The experiment is to try to suppress sexual behavior through artificial means like abstinence-only education and religious-based social disapproval. > [@](#): > > The social and economic conditions of the ghettos speak for themselves. They speak particularly loudly when compared with the wealthiest and healthiest parts of the country, which not coincidentally have high marriage rates and low out-of-wedlock birth rates. Let’s see the statistics for premarital sex and contraceptive use for the latter group. > [@](#): > > As this thread shows, there are plenty of people willing to bleat about how monogamous marriage is an archaic institution that people should stop participating in. These people always ignore the fact that tens of millions of people have actually put this theory into practice and the result has been an enormous disaster. Traditional morality caused imaginary suffering as described by **Der Trihs** and his friends. Excluded middle. Nothing to do with my position. Wait until you’re 18. Be in a committed relationship. Double up on contraceptive methods. Get married when you’ve finished your education, gotten your career underway, and have found the right person. Don’t have children before that. That’s conservative enough. > [@](#): > > The collapse of traditional morality and the introduction of a new morality has caused real suffering A new morality has not been introduced. That what I’m getting at in this thread. The old morality is not powerful enough to stop people from having sex, but it is powerful enough to stop a new morality from gelling (and to stop a lot of people from buying contraceptives). ---
**Author:** ![msmith537](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/d9b06d/32.png) [@msmith537](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/msmith537)\ **Post date:** [July 13, 2009, 5:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/sex-once-and-for-all/502512/150 "2009-07-13T17:29:03Z")
> [@straggler](#): > > Err.. _ **yes** _ it does. Insightful and compelling in its brevity. ---
**Author:** ![ashman165](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/8e8cbc/32.png) [@ashman165](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ashman165)\ **Post date:** [July 13, 2009, 5:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/sex-once-and-for-all/502512/151 "2009-07-13T17:35:29Z")
> [@msmith537](#): > > Insightful and compelling in its brevity. Don’t mock him, bro. I was totally convinced by his succinct cogency. ---
**Author:** ![msmith537](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/d9b06d/32.png) [@msmith537](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/msmith537)\ **Post date:** [July 13, 2009, 6:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/sex-once-and-for-all/502512/152 "2009-07-13T18:03:40Z")
> [@mswas](#): > > Seconded. It certainly does. It spreads disease, it results in dysfunctional relationships that affect families, groups of friends and often results in dramatic scenes in public, often including assault and murder. It results in unwanted pregnancy. > > Saying that people having sex in private doesn’t affect society at large is simply false. It’s not a valid argument because it’s incorrect on an objective/empirical level. Irrelevant. Your statement is valid for nearly every form of human interaction(except the pregnancy part). > [@ashman165](#): > > Originally Posted by msmith537 > Insightful and compelling in its brevity. > > Don’t mock him, bro. I was totally convinced by his succinct cogency. It was a perfectly cromulant argument. > [@ITR champion](#): > > As for why many people oppose premarital sex, the answer is that many countries including America have been doing experiments on the topic in the last couple generations. We have places in America that have experiment with virtually eliminating marriage and in-wedlock childbirth. They are called inner-city ghettos. Within these places, rates of marriage among adults and legitimacy in birth are low, well below half and below a third in some states. And what’s the result of this experiment? The social and economic conditions of the ghettos speak for themselves. They speak particularly loudly when compared with the wealthiest and healthiest parts of the country, which not coincidentally have high marriage rates and low out-of-wedlock birth rates. Clearly you have never been to a college campus or a city like New York because there are plenty of people having pre-marital sex there. I don’t have any stats to suggest that poor people are having more or less sex than middle class or wealthy people. So I have to believe part of the problem is that they may be less inclined to take responsible actions like using birth control. ---
**Author:** ![mswas](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/e99b99/32.png) [@mswas](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/mswas)\ **Post date:** [July 14, 2009, 5:49am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/sex-once-and-for-all/502512/153 "2009-07-14T05:49:07Z")
> [@Jack\_Batty](#): > > And, of course, we all know as simple common knowledge that there has \*never \*been a dysfunctional married couple. Yep, no dramatic scenes, assaults or murder among the morally matrimonied, lemme tell ya. I fail to see your point. Bottom line premarital sex is not costless for society at large. Neither is marriage, but no one is arguing that marriage has null impact on society, so it’s not relevant. ---
**Author:** ![mswas](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/e99b99/32.png) [@mswas](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/mswas)\ **Post date:** [July 14, 2009, 5:50am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/sex-once-and-for-all/502512/154 "2009-07-14T05:50:44Z")
> [@marshmallow](#): > > Among a given population there will be something like 20-35% authoritarians. Is there a big overlap here with having, well, a big stick up your ass? Or is this more a religious thing? Like Europe for example, they used to be pretty uptight until they started to lose God, or am I off base here? You’re offbase in that Europeans never stopped being authoritarian, they just changed the flavor of it and found a convenient nation to outsource the violence to. ---
**Author:** ![mswas](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/e99b99/32.png) [@mswas](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/mswas)\ **Post date:** [July 14, 2009, 5:54am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/sex-once-and-for-all/502512/155 "2009-07-14T05:54:14Z")
> [@msmith537](#): > > Irrelevant. Your statement is valid for nearly every form of human interaction(except the pregnancy part). Not irrelevant because people were trying to deny a basic truth, it does not matter if it is universally applicable. You are giving a pass to faulty logic whereby people are trying to use ideology to supplant simple cause and effect. You’re right that it shouldn’t need to be said, but it DID need to be said, and that it needed to be said was not an insufficiency on my part but an insufficiency on the part of those who needed to hear it. All human interaction has a social impact on people other than just the two people interacting. Yes, the degree of that impact is variable, but casual sex does have a societal cost. I could probably easily cite venereal disease statistics, but is that really necessary? I find that for a message board that likes to think of itself as containing some of the smartest people on Earth it’s amazing how many people should not have made it past the second grade due to a distinct lack of understanding of simple cause and effect. ---
**Author:** ![anya\_marie](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/ebca7d/32.png) [@anya\_marie](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/anya_marie)\ **Post date:** [July 14, 2009, 6:22am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/sex-once-and-for-all/502512/156 "2009-07-14T06:22:36Z")
I would like to be married but i do not regret having premarital sex. I do not have children. I am not a christian, and I do not go to any church. I use contraception, and try to treat others as I would want to be treated. I have only met a few people i would consider marrying; the men i have met do not seem to have much interest in marriage, for their own reasons. Sometimes i would go on a date with a man thinking he was a decent person but there were inevitable personality clashes between me and them, there was also one who used crack cocaine that HAD to go. I have also been dumped because i would not “shack up” after only two dates. It makes me laugh to hear “God wants.” If god wants it so damn much why is it I keep crossing paths with such men? ---
**Author:** ![mswas](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/e99b99/32.png) [@mswas](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/mswas)\ **Post date:** [July 14, 2009, 6:41am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/sex-once-and-for-all/502512/157 "2009-07-14T06:41:27Z")
> [@anya\_marie](#): > > I would like to be married but i do not regret having premarital sex. I do not have children. I regret some of the premarital sex I had but not others. Really I only regret sleeping with one person. > [@](#): > > Sometimes i would go on a date with a man thinking he was a decent person but there were inevitable personality clashes between me and them, there was also one who used crack cocaine that HAD to go. I have also been dumped because i would not “shack up” after only two dates. LOL, I thought women knew if they were going to sleep with you in like thirty seconds? Both of my wives were in a bigger hurry to get me into bed than I was them. My first wife had me come over to her house on the first date, and my second wife would’ve gone for it immediately except there were mitigating social factors, IE, I was introduced to her by a friend who was infatuated with her but she fell in love with me immediately. There is nothing better than having sex with someone for the first time, but sex is never costless. ---
**Author:** ![ashman165](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/8e8cbc/32.png) [@ashman165](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ashman165)\ **Post date:** [July 14, 2009, 6:49am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/sex-once-and-for-all/502512/158 "2009-07-14T06:49:55Z")
> [@mswas](#): > > Not irrelevant because people were trying to deny a basic truth, it does not matter if it is universally applicable. You are giving a pass to faulty logic whereby people are trying to use ideology to supplant simple cause and effect. You’re right that it shouldn’t need to be said, but it DID need to be said, and that it needed to be said was not an insufficiency on my part but an insufficiency on the part of those who needed to hear it. > > All human interaction has a social impact on people other than just the two people interacting. Yes, the degree of that impact is variable, but casual sex does have a societal cost. I could probably easily cite venereal disease statistics, but is that really necessary? Yes, outrageous claims require outrageous support. All we’ve gotten so far is your profoundly pathetic religious dogma to back up your claim. That isn’t evidence. It isn’t even assertion. It’s mindless drivel. ---
**Author:** ![Jack\_Batty](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jack_batty/32/3201_2.png) [@Jack\_Batty](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jack_Batty)\ **Post date:** [July 14, 2009, 12:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/sex-once-and-for-all/502512/159 "2009-07-14T12:50:23Z")
> [@mswas](#): > > I fail to see your point. > > Bottom line premarital sex is not costless for society at large. Neither is marriage, but no one is arguing that marriage has null impact on society, so it’s not relevant. Well if pre-marital sex and post-marital sex hold the same amount of risk to society, I say … where’s my blow-job and what’s the fucking difference? I could posit just as many ills that marriage as a whole unleashes on society, should we condemn that as well (which, by the way, would be fine with me)? ---
**Author:** ![kanicbird](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/5f8ce5/32.png) [@kanicbird](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kanicbird)\ **Post date:** [July 14, 2009, 1:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/sex-once-and-for-all/502512/160 "2009-07-14T13:01:48Z")
There is a lot on sex, but very little of it really matters. Sex is a sexual union of 2 into one, they 2 people act then on as a combined person, it is a spiritual union. The physical pleasure must be weighted by what the other person is bringing into the life of the person. Is that person generally good and caring, or is that person selfish and cruel to others? You will pick up the traits of the other person. The sexual union is a spiritual marriage, the paper, the formal ceremony and the like don’t really matter spiritually, though making a public statement about the marriage would count for something, but really making a public statement about having sex is saying the same thing. I don’t believe God states anything against premarital sex as sex is marriage in itself. The issues is not sex, but who you are and who the other person is that matters. There is not only the union between man and woman which is a marriage, but between human and God - that is also a marriage. God’s way is to have the union between human and God come first, and always be first, then God can arrange the marriage between man and woman, and as God conforms man to the likeness of His Son, the marriage of man and woman becomes the marriage of Christ and His church, the man representing Christ living in him and the woman representing humanity. Without an understanding of what sex is, some have boiled it down to no sex before marriage, but IMHO this is not the way of God, and (again IMHO) God wants us not only to have sex, but have it often and early in life when one is mature enough to understand it, and before that age a non-sexual form of ‘making love’ that naturally exists between a mother and child, the sexual/reproductive aspect coming out once the child reaches a age and finds the person God has for them. God does not want us not to enjoy sex/love making, we are made to love each other, and enjoy the body He has given us, just He wants it in the way that is best for us. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/sex-once-and-for-all/502512.md?page=7) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/sex-once-and-for-all/502512.md?page=9)