Sexual Morality

Sexual Morality

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One day, a friend of mine who teaches literature, said something that he hoped would shock me. During a conversation about Walt Whitman, he declared that one of most important things that Americans have forgotten is that sex is fun. Furthermore, one of the things that Whitman can help us appreciate is that sex can be had just for fun, and that it doesn’t need to have the heavy theological meaning that we Christians say it should have.

I couldn’t resist asking him the following question: Don’t you love your daughter? At that point, my friend couldn’t help but concede that perhaps Whitman was wrong, and that, far from being something recreational, human sexuality is much closer to what we Christians say it is… A profound expression of a very specific kind of love. A complete, exclusive, free act of self-giving that is open to new life.