After reading all of Chapter 15, please select ONE of the following primary source readings:
- “Plain Sex” by Alan H. Goldman
-or-
- “Sexual Morality” by Roger Scruton
-or-
- “Why Shouldn’t Jimmy and Johnny Have Sex? A Defense of Homosexuality” by John Corvino
-or-
- “Seduction, Rape, and Coercion” by Sarah Conly
-or-
- “Sex Under Pressure: Jerks, Boorish Behavior, and Gender Hierarchy” by Scott A. Anderson
Write a short, objective summary of 250-500 words which summarizes the main ideas being put forward by the author in this selection. Please add examples of the lecture selected and DONT PLAGIARISM.
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Write a short, objective summary of 250-500 words which summarizes the main ideas being put forward by the author in this selection.
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Chapter 15
Sexual Morality Image is the cover of the textbook:
Background is a blue sky with white
clouds over a grassy plain. A forked dirt
path cuts through the grass, leading in
two different directions. The title of the
textbook, Doing Ethics, appears in large
white letters, followed by the subtitle
and author in smaller font: Moral
Reasoning, Theory, and Contemporary
Issues. Fifth Edition. Lewis Vaughn.
Copyright © 2019 W. W. Norton & Company
Introduction
Two kinds of moral issues are involved in discussions of sex:
1) those that focus on the morality of specific types of sexual acts
and the context of those acts
2) those that concern an individual’s free consent to such acts
Background: Sexual Behavior – 1
The central question:
What kind of sexual behavior is morally permissible, and under
what circumstances?
Background: Sexual Behavior – 2
People generally give one of three answers to the central question:
1. Sex is permissible only in a marriage between a man and a
woman.
2. Sex is permissible between informed, consenting adults.
3. Sex is permissible between informed, consenting adults who
are bound by love or commitment.
Background: Sexual Behavior – 3
Conventional view: Sex is morally acceptable only between one
man and one woman who are married to each other by legal
authority; premarital sex and extramarital sex are wrong.
A religious strain of the conventional view says that some sex
acts performed by married partners—acts that are incompatible
with procreation—are also prohibited, including masturbation,
oral sex, anal sex, and use of contraceptives.
Background: Sexual Behavior – 4
Liberal view (nonpolitical): As long as basic moral standards
are respected (for example, no one is harmed or coerced), any
sexual activity engaged in by informed, consenting adults is
permissible.
All kinds of sexual behavior condemned by the conventionalist
would be morally acceptable, including premarital sex,
extramarital sex, group sex, masturbation, and homosexuality.
Background: Sexual Behavior – 5
Moderate view: Sex is permissible, whether in marriage or not,
if the consenting partners have a serious emotional connection.
Moral sex does not require marriage, but it does entail more
than just the informed, freely given consent of the people
involved. For some, this needed connection is love, affection, or
mutual caring; for others, it’s a commitment to sustaining the
relationship.
Background: Sexual Behavior – 6
• By age 20, 77 percent of adults have had sex and 75 percent
have had premarital sex.
• By age 44, 94 percent of women and 96 percent of men have
had premarital sex.
• Among teenagers and young adults (ages fifteen to twenty-
one), 11 percent of women and 4 percent of men have
reported a same-sex sexual experience.
Background: Campus Sexual Assault – 1
• Sexual assault against college and university women on
campus is shockingly common. Research suggests that 1 in 5
female undergraduates will be sexually assaulted while
attending college.
• Sexual assault against men on campuses is around 1 in 20.
• Sexual assault can have serious psychological and physical
effects.
• Many criticize authorities in schools and government for not
taking it seriously enough, saying the responses by both
government officials and school administrators have been ill-
informed, naïve, and even callous.
Background: Campus Sexual Assault – 2
Rape versus sexual assault
Rape: the penetration of the vagina or anus with any body part
or object, or the penetration of the mouth by the sex organ of
another person, without the consent (verbal or nonverbal) of
the victim
Sexual assault: broader term, which includes rape as well as
nonpenetrative sexual acts such as attempted rape, forced
kissing, and unwanted groping of sexual parts
Background: Campus Sexual Assault – 3
Elements of college life that increase the likelihood of sexual
assault:
• number of times one is in contact with “in-network
strangers”
• partying
• hookup culture
Background: Campus Sexual Assault – 4
Perpetrators are:
• mostly male;
• typically someone the victim knows: boyfriends, ex-boyfriends,
classmates, acquaintances, coworkers, or friends (which further
complicates the decision to report incidents).
Factors that increase the risk of a man becoming an assailant:
• negative attitude toward women
• acceptance of rape myths
• consumption of violent/degrading pornography
• being controlling
• lacking empathy
• perception of a lack of sanctions for abusive behavior
Background: Campus Sexual Assault – 5
Title IX considers sexual assault in colleges as a form of
discrimination and threatens schools with loss of federal
funding if they do not work to stop sexual assault, prevent
future occurrences, adjudicate the competing claims of
supposed victim and assailant, and mete out justice for both.
Title IX gives survivors of sexual assault a legal means to pursue
justice if they believe their school has not adequately handled
their case.
Background: Campus Sexual Assault – 6
The primary moral questions related to sexual assault on campus
are:
1. whether and how justice is served after a sexual assault
occurs.
2. whether the requirement of consent is met in any kind of
sexual encounter.
Background: Campus Sexual Assault – 7
1. Whether and how justice is served after a sexual assault
occurs:
• how the college/university handles an allegation of assault
and how it treats the person claiming assault as well as the
accused
• How should officials weigh the evidence:
o Preponderance of evidence?
o Clear and convincing?
Background: Campus Sexual Assault – 8
2. Whether the requirement of consent is met in any kind of
sexual encounter:
• In sexual activity, consent must be clear and freely granted by
individuals capable of giving consent.
• From “no means no” to “yes means yes”:
o Affirmative consent, a clearly signified “yes,” is better than
requiring a clearly stated “no.”
Moral Theories – 1
Natural law theory: Right actions are those directed toward the
aims revealed in nature.
• According to the Roman Catholic account of the theory, since
procreation is foremost among these aims, actions consistent
with it are permissible and actions incompatible with it are
forbidden.
Moral Theories – 2
The Vatican:
“Experience teaches us that love must find its safeguard in the
stability of marriage, if sexual intercourse is truly to respond to
the requirements of its own finality and to those of human
dignity. These requirements call for a conjugal contract
sanctioned and guaranteed by society.”
Moral Theories – 3
Kant’s categorical imperative: We must always treat people as
ends in themselves, never merely as a means to an end.
• Some thinkers have derived a liberal view of sexual ethics
from Kant’s theory.
• Thomas Mappes defines “using another person” as violating
the requirement that interactions with that person be based
on voluntary informed consent.
• “Using another person” happens through (1) coercion or (2)
deception.
Moral Theories – 4
A Kantian theory:
• Any sexual activity in which one person deceives or coerces
another is wrong.
• But when the principle of voluntary informed consent is
respected, a broad range of sexual practices is permissible.
Moral Theories – 5
Utilitarianism:
• Utilitarianism is likely to sanction many kinds of sexual
activity on the grounds that they produce the greatest overall
happiness or good for all concerned.
• Sexual behavior that results in the greatest net good (the
greatest utility) is morally right regardless of whether it is
unconventional, “unnatural,” deviant, marital, extramarital,
procreative, or recreational.
Moral Arguments – 1
Alan Goldman:
• The key difference between the conventional view and the
liberal view of sexuality is that the former insists that sexual
behavior has a morally significant goal, and the latter assumes
that sex has no goal at all.
• Several faulty theories of sexuality are based on the idea that
sex’s rightful goal is procreation, communication, or the
expression of love, and that “sex which does not … fulfill one of
these functions is in some way deviant or incomplete.”
Moral Arguments – 2
Alan Goldman:
• Sex is not a means to some other goal—sex is just “plain sex.”
• Sexual desire is “desire for contact with another person’s body
and for the pleasure which such contact produces.”
• Sexual pleasure, according to Goldman, is what is most
valuable about sex.
Moral Arguments – 3
Igor Primoratz:
• “We have no reason to believe that there is only one morally
acceptable aim or purpose of human sexual experience and
behavior, whether prescribed by nature or enjoined by
society. . . . Sex has no special moral significance; it is morally
neutral.”
Moral Arguments – 4
Conventional sexual morality:
• Rejects “plain sex” arguments
• Sexual encounters have a deeper, more significant meaning
than sexual liberals would admit.
• Sexual experiences express and affirm moral values, and the
right kind of sex expresses and affirms the right kind of
values.
Moral Arguments – 5
Homosexuality
• Many arguments center around the charge that
homosexuality is unnatural or abnormal.
• Some argue that if homosexual behavior is not found among
animals in nature, then it is unnatural and, therefore, morally
unacceptable.
• But biologists and others have found that homosexual
attachments and behavior occur throughout the animal
kingdom.
Moral Arguments – 6
Homosexuality
• Many who denounce homosexuality use “unnatural” to mean
“out of the norm,” and this unnaturalness means it is immoral.
• But does it follow from an action’s statistical abnormality that
it is immoral?
Moral Arguments – 7
Homosexuality
Michael Levin’s argument:
• Homosexuality is a misuse of a bodily part.
• This misuse leads to unhappiness because it frustrates “an
innately rewarding desire.”
• Society has an interest in promoting happiness.
• Therefore, since homosexuality makes for unhappiness,
society ought to discourage it by not legalizing it.
Moral Arguments – 8
Homosexuality
A typical rejoinder to Levin:
• Evolutionary adaptations tell us nothing about how people
ought to behave.
• Contrary to natural law theory, knowing how nature is tells us
nothing about how we ought to be.
Credits
This concludes the PowerPoint slide set for Chapter 15
Doing Ethics: Moral Reasoning and Contemporary Issues
Fifth Edition (2019) by Lewis Vaughn.
Copyright © 2019 W. W. Norton & Company
- Chapter 15
Introduction
Background: Sexual Behavior – 1
Background: Sexual Behavior – 2
Background: Sexual Behavior – 3
Background: Sexual Behavior – 4
Background: Sexual Behavior – 5
Background: Sexual Behavior – 6
Background: Campus Sexual Assault – 1
Background: Campus Sexual Assault – 2
Background: Campus Sexual Assault – 3
Background: Campus Sexual Assault – 4
Background: Campus Sexual Assault – 5
Background: Campus Sexual Assault – 6
Background: Campus Sexual Assault – 7
Background: Campus Sexual Assault – 8
Moral Theories – 1
Moral Theories – 2
Moral Theories – 3
Moral Theories – 4
Moral Theories – 5
Moral Arguments – 1
Moral Arguments – 2
Moral Arguments – 3
- Moral Arguments – 4
Moral Arguments – 5
Moral Arguments – 6
Moral Arguments – 7
Moral Arguments – 8
Credits
Chapter 15
Sexual Morality Image is the cover of the textbook:
Background is a blue sky with white
clouds over a grassy plain. A forked dirt
path cuts through the grass, leading in
two different directions. The title of the
textbook, Doing Ethics, appears in large
white letters, followed by the subtitle
and author in smaller font: Moral
Reasoning, Theory, and Contemporary
Issues. Fifth Edition. Lewis Vaughn.
Copyright © 2019 W. W. Norton & Company
Introduction
Two kinds of moral issues are involved in discussions of sex:
1) those that focus on the morality of specific types of sexual acts
and the context of those acts
2) those that concern an individual’s free consent to such acts
Background: Sexual Behavior – 1
The central question:
What kind of sexual behavior is morally permissible, and under
what circumstances?
Background: Sexual Behavior – 2
People generally give one of three answers to the central question:
1. Sex is permissible only in a marriage between a man and a
woman.
2. Sex is permissible between informed, consenting adults.
3. Sex is permissible between informed, consenting adults who
are bound by love or commitment.
Background: Sexual Behavior – 3
Conventional view: Sex is morally acceptable only between one
man and one woman who are married to each other by legal
authority; premarital sex and extramarital sex are wrong.
A religious strain of the conventional view says that some sex
acts performed by married partners—acts that are incompatible
with procreation—are also prohibited, including masturbation,
oral sex, anal sex, and use of contraceptives.
Background: Sexual Behavior – 4
Liberal view (nonpolitical): As long as basic moral standards
are respected (for example, no one is harmed or coerced), any
sexual activity engaged in by informed, consenting adults is
permissible.
All kinds of sexual behavior condemned by the conventionalist
would be morally acceptable, including premarital sex,
extramarital sex, group sex, masturbation, and homosexuality.
Background: Sexual Behavior – 5
Moderate view: Sex is permissible, whether in marriage or not,
if the consenting partners have a serious emotional connection.
Moral sex does not require marriage, but it does entail more
than just the informed, freely given consent of the people
involved. For some, this needed connection is love, affection, or
mutual caring; for others, it’s a commitment to sustaining the
relationship.
Background: Sexual Behavior – 6
• By age 20, 77 percent of adults have had sex and 75 percent
have had premarital sex.
• By age 44, 94 percent of women and 96 percent of men have
had premarital sex.
• Among teenagers and young adults (ages fifteen to twenty-
one), 11 percent of women and 4 percent of men have
reported a same-sex sexual experience.
Background: Campus Sexual Assault – 1
• Sexual assault against college and university women on
campus is shockingly common. Research suggests that 1 in 5
female undergraduates will be sexually assaulted while
attending college.
• Sexual assault against men on campuses is around 1 in 20.
• Sexual assault can have serious psychological and physical
effects.
• Many criticize authorities in schools and government for not
taking it seriously enough, saying the responses by both
government officials and school administrators have been ill-
informed, naïve, and even callous.
Background: Campus Sexual Assault – 2
Rape versus sexual assault
Rape: the penetration of the vagina or anus with any body part
or object, or the penetration of the mouth by the sex organ of
another person, without the consent (verbal or nonverbal) of
the victim
Sexual assault: broader term, which includes rape as well as
nonpenetrative sexual acts such as attempted rape, forced
kissing, and unwanted groping of sexual parts
Background: Campus Sexual Assault – 3
Elements of college life that increase the likelihood of sexual
assault:
• number of times one is in contact with “in-network
strangers”
• partying
• hookup culture
Background: Campus Sexual Assault – 4
Perpetrators are:
• mostly male;
• typically someone the victim knows: boyfriends, ex-boyfriends,
classmates, acquaintances, coworkers, or friends (which further
complicates the decision to report incidents).
Factors that increase the risk of a man becoming an assailant:
• negative attitude toward women
• acceptance of rape myths
• consumption of violent/degrading pornography
• being controlling
• lacking empathy
• perception of a lack of sanctions for abusive behavior
Background: Campus Sexual Assault – 5
Title IX considers sexual assault in colleges as a form of
discrimination and threatens schools with loss of federal
funding if they do not work to stop sexual assault, prevent
future occurrences, adjudicate the competing claims of
supposed victim and assailant, and mete out justice for both.
Title IX gives survivors of sexual assault a legal means to pursue
justice if they believe their school has not adequately handled
their case.
Background: Campus Sexual Assault – 6
The primary moral questions related to sexual assault on campus
are:
1. whether and how justice is served after a sexual assault
occurs.
2. whether the requirement of consent is met in any kind of
sexual encounter.
Background: Campus Sexual Assault – 7
1. Whether and how justice is served after a sexual assault
occurs:
• how the college/university handles an allegation of assault
and how it treats the person claiming assault as well as the
accused
• How should officials weigh the evidence:
o Preponderance of evidence?
o Clear and convincing?
Background: Campus Sexual Assault – 8
2. Whether the requirement of consent is met in any kind of
sexual encounter:
• In sexual activity, consent must be clear and freely granted by
individuals capable of giving consent.
• From “no means no” to “yes means yes”:
o Affirmative consent, a clearly signified “yes,” is better than
requiring a clearly stated “no.”
Moral Theories – 1
Natural law theory: Right actions are those directed toward the
aims revealed in nature.
• According to the Roman Catholic account of the theory, since
procreation is foremost among these aims, actions consistent
with it are permissible and actions incompatible with it are
forbidden.
Moral Theories – 2
The Vatican:
“Experience teaches us that love must find its safeguard in the
stability of marriage, if sexual intercourse is truly to respond to
the requirements of its own finality and to those of human
dignity. These requirements call for a conjugal contract
sanctioned and guaranteed by society.”
Moral Theories – 3
Kant’s categorical imperative: We must always treat people as
ends in themselves, never merely as a means to an end.
• Some thinkers have derived a liberal view of sexual ethics
from Kant’s theory.
• Thomas Mappes defines “using another person” as violating
the requirement that interactions with that person be based
on voluntary informed consent.
• “Using another person” happens through (1) coercion or (2)
deception.
Moral Theories – 4
A Kantian theory:
• Any sexual activity in which one person deceives or coerces
another is wrong.
• But when the principle of voluntary informed consent is
respected, a broad range of sexual practices is permissible.
Moral Theories – 5
Utilitarianism:
• Utilitarianism is likely to sanction many kinds of sexual
activity on the grounds that they produce the greatest overall
happiness or good for all concerned.
• Sexual behavior that results in the greatest net good (the
greatest utility) is morally right regardless of whether it is
unconventional, “unnatural,” deviant, marital, extramarital,
procreative, or recreational.
Moral Arguments – 1
Alan Goldman:
• The key difference between the conventional view and the
liberal view of sexuality is that the former insists that sexual
behavior has a morally significant goal, and the latter assumes
that sex has no goal at all.
• Several faulty theories of sexuality are based on the idea that
sex’s rightful goal is procreation, communication, or the
expression of love, and that “sex which does not … fulfill one of
these functions is in some way deviant or incomplete.”
Moral Arguments – 2
Alan Goldman:
• Sex is not a means to some other goal—sex is just “plain sex.”
• Sexual desire is “desire for contact with another person’s body
and for the pleasure which such contact produces.”
• Sexual pleasure, according to Goldman, is what is most
valuable about sex.
Moral Arguments – 3
Igor Primoratz:
• “We have no reason to believe that there is only one morally
acceptable aim or purpose of human sexual experience and
behavior, whether prescribed by nature or enjoined by
society. . . . Sex has no special moral significance; it is morally
neutral.”
Moral Arguments – 4
Conventional sexual morality:
• Rejects “plain sex” arguments
• Sexual encounters have a deeper, more significant meaning
than sexual liberals would admit.
• Sexual experiences express and affirm moral values, and the
right kind of sex expresses and affirms the right kind of
values.
Moral Arguments – 5
Homosexuality
• Many arguments center around the charge that
homosexuality is unnatural or abnormal.
• Some argue that if homosexual behavior is not found among
animals in nature, then it is unnatural and, therefore, morally
unacceptable.
• But biologists and others have found that homosexual
attachments and behavior occur throughout the animal
kingdom.
Moral Arguments – 6
Homosexuality
• Many who denounce homosexuality use “unnatural” to mean
“out of the norm,” and this unnaturalness means it is immoral.
• But does it follow from an action’s statistical abnormality that
it is immoral?
Moral Arguments – 7
Homosexuality
Michael Levin’s argument:
• Homosexuality is a misuse of a bodily part.
• This misuse leads to unhappiness because it frustrates “an
innately rewarding desire.”
• Society has an interest in promoting happiness.
• Therefore, since homosexuality makes for unhappiness,
society ought to discourage it by not legalizing it.
Moral Arguments – 8
Homosexuality
A typical rejoinder to Levin:
• Evolutionary adaptations tell us nothing about how people
ought to behave.
• Contrary to natural law theory, knowing how nature is tells us
nothing about how we ought to be.
Credits
This concludes the PowerPoint slide set for Chapter 15
Doing Ethics: Moral Reasoning and Contemporary Issues
Fifth Edition (2019) by Lewis Vaughn.
Copyright © 2019 W. W. Norton & Company
- Chapter 15
Introduction
Background: Sexual Behavior – 1
Background: Sexual Behavior – 2
Background: Sexual Behavior – 3
Background: Sexual Behavior – 4
Background: Sexual Behavior – 5
Background: Sexual Behavior – 6
Background: Campus Sexual Assault – 1
Background: Campus Sexual Assault – 2
Background: Campus Sexual Assault – 3
Background: Campus Sexual Assault – 4
Background: Campus Sexual Assault – 5
Background: Campus Sexual Assault – 6
Background: Campus Sexual Assault – 7
Background: Campus Sexual Assault – 8
Moral Theories – 1
Moral Theories – 2
Moral Theories – 3
Moral Theories – 4
Moral Theories – 5
Moral Arguments – 1
Moral Arguments – 2
Moral Arguments – 3
- Moral Arguments – 4
Moral Arguments – 5
Moral Arguments – 6
Moral Arguments – 7
Moral Arguments – 8
Credits
