'Consenting adults' may be the new standard, but it's not improved

In these confusing times, where can we go to find helpful moral guidance? In a previous post, I wrote about the Presbyterian Church (USA)'s attempt to offer that kind of guidance to teens through their God's Gift of Sexuality curriculum. The goal, according to a writer for the project speaking at an introductory workshop, was to free teens from rules so they could find the loving choice in each situation. This, they offered, was the new and improved way to find moral guidance.

The writer/presenter did not expect the question of how teens would recognize the loving choice. They rather assumed people would instinctively know the loving choice. Even if the curriculum didn't deal with it directly, surely people would realize what consenting adults did in private was their own business and did not need to be subject to moralistic second guessing.

It's been a familiar refrain for more than a generation: what consenting adults do in private is their own business. This seems to be the new standard for sexual morality. It may be new, but it is not improved. It is less than useless in making ethical distinctions.

Consider the first term: consent. Anyone who has worked with sexual harassment policies has seen the difficulty here. Too often the line between coercion and consent falls in different places, depending on who's drawing the line.

One says, "The conduct was consensual. You said yes; you agreed." The other responds, "Of course I agreed; I know what damage you could do to my career if I had said no."

The first answers, "I never threatened you." The second replies, "You didn't have to: I knew your position in the company and what you could do if you wanted to."

Consider the second term: adult. At the workshop, I raised the question "What magic thing happens on your 18^th or 16^th birthday that suddenly makes you able to offer intelligent, informed consent to sexual activity?"

A youth delegate to the workshop took that ball and ran with it. "Yeah," she added, "lots of my friends are more responsible than some college kids I know. Why can they make choices we can't?" The only honest answer to the youth's question is "well, we have to draw a line somewhere, and we know 10 is too young and 20 is too old."

Finally consider the last term: private. What does privacy have to do with anything? What impact does a "right of privacy" have in determining moral conduct? The right of free speech means conduct otherwise illegal is acceptable as long as you just write or talk about it. I hate to imagine what would happen to murder mystery writers otherwise!

But do we really want to say conduct otherwise immoral is moral simply because it's done in private? The "in private" venue of an action is essentially irrelevant. Murder is immoral whether done in public or private. Robbery is immoral whether done in public or in private. Adultery is immoral whether done in public or in private.

"What consenting adults do in the privacy of their own bedrooms is their own business" is certainly a popular slogan in this generation. It has attained the status of received cultural wisdom, at least in certain segments of society. But upon reflection, whether an act is performed by consenting adults in private is either meaningless or irrelevant in weighing moral alternatives.

The Christian tradition has held to the words of Jesus: the creator's intent was that sexuality was exercised in the context of a loving relationship where a man left his father and mother and was joined to his wife and the two become one flesh. The standard still has much to commend itÂ… but that's a story for another post.