Changes in Sexual Morality

Different societies have different rules regulating sexual conduct.  It might be the case that these different rules reflect differences in the knowledge of the two societies.  This is the opinion that people express when they maintain that one system of sexual morality is more advanced than another.  In this view one set of rules should be seen as being unambiguously superior to the other.  Much as the latest technological advances offer improvements over more primitive technology, when it comes to sexual mores, the old should be discarded in favor of the new.

The problem with this is that the analogy doesn't quite hold.  The new moral and ethical values are not unambiguously superior to the old ways.  We observe that standards have become looser over the last hundred years and conclude that looser standards are more modern and hence superior.  However, this does not follow.  Change is not necessarily progress.

In order for sexual morality to be comprehensible it is necessary to tell what is wrong with promiscuity.  Who is hurt?  I argue that the more promiscuous you are, the more likely it will be that you will become sexually involved with someone who is violating a prior commitment.  The fact that you have made yourself available to such a relationship makes such a breach more likely.  It is wrong to place others in danger as well as causing actual injury.

A direct rule against promiscuity will not be useful.  This is simply a rule that you shouldn't have too many partners.  How many is too many?  A violation of this rule would be harder to detect.  Typically a rule will be against a specific act.  Rules against patterns of behavior are more difficult to enforce.  For this reason, the rules governing sexual conduct tend to pertain to specific acts, such as having sex outside of a committed relationship.  Whether the partners need to be married or not will vary from society to society.

This variance should not be thought of as being similar to a technological advance.  It is not because we know more about human sexuality that we are more permissive than people were in the past.  The reason for the change is an adaptation to a different sex ratio.  There are simply more women than men in our society.  In the ages we compare the present to, the situation was reversed.  There were more men.

Traditionalists will contend that the proper rules of sexual morality are timeless.  Here is why I disagree.  Suppose there were twice as many women as men.  Do you really think that it would be the best arrangement to have half of the women remain celibate for life?  I contend that it would be better to allow the men to have two wives, either concurrently or sequentially.  I should point out that we have nowhere near twice as many women as men.  We are closer to equality.  However, my point still holds.  As long as we maintain that it is better to allow all the women to marry, we acknowledge that the ideal system of moral and ethical values will depend on the sex ratio and hence may vary over time and between societies.