What’s wrong with traditional sexual morality?

It’s clear enough why the old sexual morality had to go. It is much less clear what should replace it.

One reason why the sexual revolution had to happen was that the foundations of the old sexual morality had crumbled like sand. They had been held up by religious teachings that fewer and fewer people accepted, even believers themselves. But religious dogma is only part of the story. Society’s prohibitions around sex have a deeper root than faith.

Put simply, before effective contraception, there were very good reasons for strictly controlling who slept with whom. To copulate was to risk conceiving and to do so without being prepared to face the consequences was grossly irresponsible. That’s why, whether or not there was a formal institution of marriage, all over the world, to sleep together was to commit to taking care of the children.

If you believe that religion is a human invention rather than divine revelation, it is little wonder that it aligned itself with this ethos, adding divine command as an incentive to follow it. In Christendom, this ran out of control, with many denominations becoming almost obsessed with regulating sexual behaviour. This is ironic, since Jesus himself took little interest in bedroom ethics. He was strongly against…