Why are the Abrahamic religions against it (I think Judiasm is)?
Why does society sometimes frown on it (shacking up, “she’s a slut”, etc)?
Supposing you take precautions are taken against diseases and unwanted pregnancy, and both parties are of age, why should people be married to do it?
I’m not sure this should be in GD or GQ, but it’s not an IMHO, so no answers like “Me and my GF/BF don’t care about that, we do it anyway”.
How did it get the stigma?
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To give a rather dour look on it, my guess would be that this probably comes principally from the ancient Jewish idea that anything more complicated than it needed to be, and that can’t be easily summarised in a contract and debated in court, is bad.
Once you start sleeping around, legal issues arise in terms of property ownership. If the wife is impregnated, then whose inheritance does the child receive? If the husband is killed by his lover’s jealous husband, is that an acceptable killing, or plain murder?
Overall, it’s simpler to just say, “Don’t do it. One hole’s as good as another so just stick with the one you got.” So assuming a crabby, ancient Jewish Rabbi, being asked to decide on marriage issues, it seems realistic to guess that he decided in favor of what made life easy and organized for him, rather than anything particularly mystical.
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I would note that during the middle ages and perhaps up through the rennaisance, there may have been some idea that having a lover was considered as acceptable, given the prevalence of arranged marriages. I’m not sure how acceptable this was, nor how prevalent. (It may be more of a literary device.)
I think the rationale is that codefied, sanctified relationships with all others prohibited reduces the chances of the negative consequences of envy and jealousy.
If things are one for one, and taboo relationships are non-existent, then there are fewer murderous love triangles.
See, why wait until a man kills his faithless wife, or a suitor kills his rival, or any of the other permutations? Nip it in the bud! Wife for Husband, Husband for Wife, 'til Death Do Us Part, and if anybody deviates from the path so much as a cubit or a jot or a tittle or a big hard rod, stone 'em.
Of course this system doesn’t account for the mutability of the human heart, but you can’t have everything. Human beings tend to be inexplicably keen on absolutes.
I don’t have cites, but isn’t it generally accepted that sex only within marriage was originally a way to establish both paternity and STD free brides? Only if your bride was a virgin and you subsequently kept her away from other men could you be sure you A. wouldn’t get syphilis on your wedding night and B. any subsequent babies were yours.
Religiously, Jesus at least recommended that everyone who could manage it should be celibate, so as to concentrate their energy on prayer and love on God. Those who couldn’t manage it were recommended marriage, but honestly I’m not sure why he said that part. I always assumed it was just a holdover from Jewish law, again for disease prevention.
More currently (as in, the last century in the US at least) and more GD-worthy, I think, it’s a test of character, especially for women. “Loose” women are also considered dumb, morally weak, impulsive or trashy. None of those are qualities we like to see in the people that will be staffing our nursing homes and teaching our children someday. In my mother’s generation, it was expected that a young man was actually *supposed *to pressure a girl into sex, but if she gave in, she failed some sort of social test and was branded a whore. Now we just surround them with sexual images of very young people, sell them sexy clothes, teach them sexy dances and then yell at them when they have sex. At least we’re yelling at the boys, too. I guess that’s some sort of progress.
(And THANK YOU for specifying Abrahamic religions. I get so annoyed at threads that ask questions about “religion” as if we all believe in the same sky god.)
Avoiding the spread of disease and preventing pregnancy had to have been two awfully big motivations in the day.
Doesn’t the idea of marriage go far beyond Judaism? As a religion Judiasm had remarkably little influence in the ancient world, just as Christianity didn’t until 300 CE. Yet every co-existing Mediterranean culture had some concept of marriage, both BCE and CE.
I’m not as knowledgeable about them but I believe most major Asian cultures, at least in the larger historical kingdoms, also have marriage as a basic rite that goes back BCE.
I agree with WhyNot that’s it much more about proving paternity as well as the duties of the parents to their children and the formalities of the state recognizing the legalities than it is about western religion.
Religion doesn’t come from the gods or god singular, after all. It takes what it already sacred in the culture and invents reasons to adhere to them. If marriage is good, then anything that goes against marriage is bad and mores move to correspond to that equation.
The OP reads to me as if religion created marriage. It’s the other way around.
What gets me is the hypocrisies of those that want to wait. If you aren’t opposed to Birth Control, and you want to wait until marriage, how is oral sex and fooling around any different than sex? I can understand not wanting to have sex to prevent pregnancy, but if you aren’t opposed to birth control, there is that, Pills + condoms = no chance. If it is a religious thing, why is oral sex any different? If it is an intimacy thing, or an issue of complications, how is oral sex different?
While it’s probable that humanity is naturally inclined to fairly Bonoboish behavior, we do still seem to be primarily attracted to life mating. That marriage is fairly universal is just a representation of a biological trait, I would guess. Prohibitions against adultery though tend to vary. For probably most of human history, and fairly globally, it was assumed that men would sleep around. Hence the existence always of classes of women who were outside of society to be slept with (prostitutes, actresses, etc.)
That women have tended to not be allowed to sleep around the same as men probably has to do with most societies viewing women as property (as well as inheritance issues.)
The Abrahamic tradition makes oral (and anal) sex sinful as well. Traditionally, both were considered as “buggering” (it seems.)
Interesting guess, but I don’t buy it. Things that come naturally to us don’t need complex legal specifications, as religious marriage does. If life-mates were universal, then wouldn’t most cultures - heck, SOME cultures - have them? It would just sort of happen, the same way wiping your anus after defecation happens. Methods may vary, but EVERY culture has a cleaning method after using the facilities, but most of us don’t need to include it in our holy books of law.
Even in our culture, life-mates are considered optimal, but not expected. No one expects a widower to stay single forever, or a person who is divorced - not even “The Church” (or synagogue, or whatever other religious institution you might be a part of.) Serial monogamy is an interesting idea, but it’s not anything like the concept of “mating for life”.
Inheritance, I buy. It’s pretty natural and probably universal to want to signal to others very strongly who you want to get your stuff when you die, and it’s good for them to honor that so people aren’t killing each other over your tchochkes. Marriage is a way to signal that clearly.
Yes, I agree AND I think it also has to do with the concurrent deification and demonization of womanhood. The Madonna/whore complex that people (men and women) project onto women. If a woman is Eve, she needs to be protected from her wicked sinful base instincts. If she is to be worthy of being a Mother Madonna, she must first prove herself steadfast and in control of her baser female nature. The only way to prove that is to not take a lover, or to be very, very careful and quiet while doing so.
Well as you yourself state, there is legal issues, so regardless of whether humans don’t need something religious to tell them to do something they naturally want to do, there is cause to see why it has become so. Eventually, if stuff goes bad between the couple, some Rabbi, chieftan, or shaman has to be the one to arbitrate. So it makes sense that he would have to grant the right for the pair to unite.
In the case of Christianity, there’s also the view that God comes before family. From a cynical standpoint, essentially faithfullness to God (in the guise of his earthly minions) is how you can receive the blessing of God for your family. So again it makes sense that if we know that biologically that humans are attracted to life mates and parenting, then keeping the fortunes of these loved ones as hostage to the faith, empowers the faith. As such, only allowing marriage to occur when approved by God is a symbol of God’s power over you and your loved ones.
As social systems evolved beyond one big guy with a stick and the folks who watch his back, it began to become important to clearly define who was us, and who was them. Since fatherhood is always more or less a matter of report and opinion, and motherhood a directly observable fact, us was defined as born to one of us. The matter of fatherhood, once it was discovered, was a fairly important one, at least to men. The guy mentioned above was a man. The guy with the stick decided that he, and the folks who watched his back wanted to be sure that all the kids who were born of one of us were really one of us.
This is the human need at the time of Abraham. Women needed a social fabric that protected them and their infants reliably, even with accidental death of the man who fathered their child. Men needed to conserve their assets to provide for their own children, and each to feel confident that these were his own children. Within this framework of need, the religion of Abraham found an answer.
Families defined as one man and one or more women, with all the children those women had worked well for nomads. It worked a bit less well for settled people, and in fact, as the Jews settled, they practiced less polygamy, and more monogamy. Priests and hierarchical religious organizations find it very useful to be able to license marriage, by requiring sanctification of the estate, and in most cases, payment from the participants.
Societies grew, and collided, and absorbed each other, and times changed. Along the way, it seems that there were participants of monogamous relationships, of both sexes that found it to have benefits beyond the ones noted by religious authorities, or social pressures. The opinions of these people were passed on to their children, and the idea gained a lot of strength, both as a moral standard, and as model for a successful way to integrate individuals into the world of people in which they must survive.
The condemnation of those who practice different procreative habits is as reasonable as the level of authority of the condemner. In most cases, that authority is non existent. In the case of children, it is absolute. Every child must be protected by the rights that used to be conferred by the social and legal concept of legitimacy. With the technology of the today, every child is the legitimate heir of some man. Our law has yet to completely catch up to that.
Tris
Perhaps because over time societies/cultures learned that people often enough failed to take said precautions? Just a WAG on my part. 
This thread is about Abrahmic religions. But I would like to add this fact- today Hindu religious practice has stricter strictures against extramarital sex.
Though the old Hindu mythological stories have numerous instances of sex outside marriage and polygamy among both women and men, today the fundamentalist Hindus totally believe that it is a sin to have sex outside marriage and would be a cause of societal decline.
Hindu temple sculptures depict amorous scenes where holy men perform sex, two or threesome sometimes, oral sex etc and so it seems that until about 10th century the prevailing attitude about sex was liberal.
So, the rigid definition of adultery probably came through Moslem and Christian influence and to keep men and women from mixing with people of other religion. So this is an interesting double play in the world of religion.
Overall, I deem this situation as somewhat sad.
Is it possible that another motivation for men to want their women “pure” is because then there can be no comparison of lovemaking technique?
Just a thought.
Throughout much of modern history, there was no lovemaking technique. After all, the clitoris wasn’t even discovered until the 16th century. The Kama Sutra notwithstanding.
Is Jesus reported to have made this recommendation, or was it just Paul?
In Matthew’s Gospel, responding to the issue of when a man may divorce is wife, Jesus says: (Context)
Paul says, in his letter to the Corinthians: (Context)
A bit of both really.
Grim
The Catholic tradition, maybe - but the Talmud, I believe, explicitly permits anal sex (between married partners, of course). I’m not sure about oral sex.
I was thinking of Matthew 19, but yes, of course Paul said much more about it than Jesus (through Matthew’s report) did. 4-6 speak to me of the acceptance of marriage under God’s Law, and 11-12 of the preference of celibacy. ETA: Because, at least in most current translations, it says “he that is able to recieve [the gift of eunuchood from God]”, not “he that would like to” or “he that chooses to”. I read it as, “If you can possibly stand to, you should.” But, of course, IANABiblical Scholar. And it’s certainly possible that either I misunderstand or the word “able” is a poor translation.