It seems that sexual morality has two aspects:
- Social: promotion and maintenance of a system of stable, reliable and productive relations between the sexes, and
- Personal: bringing sex into relation to other concerns and connections, so the experience makes sense and its implicit meaning can be meant.
Neither aspect makes sense given an understanding of human action that reduces rationality to satisfaction of desire and formal standards like maximum equal freedom. Hence current confusions.
And a third
According to C. S. Lewis, almost all areas of human life have these two aspects. He uses the analogy of a fleet of ships. Each ship must function well internally, and also in relation to the other ships. He points out that the two are related. A malfunctioning ship is likely to run into other ships. And ships that are constantly ramming one another are unlikely to remain long in good order.
And he identifies a third aspect, right relation with God, which, in his metaphor, would be getting all the boats where they need to go. A well-ordered fleet that arrives in Sydney instead of New York is a failure through and through, no matter how well the fleet and individual ships performed.
Postcards from Sydney
Re: “A well-ordered fleet that arrives in Sydney instead of New York is a failure through and through, no matter how well the fleet and individual ships performed”
On the contrary my dear friend.
Had it not been for Captain Arthur Philip and his (first) fleet arriving at Botany Bay in 1788, we would not have this glorious example of British civilisation “down-under”!
God Save the Queen!