Theologians working in the key of Hans Urs von Balthasar or, more recently, David Bentley Hart have come to a renewed appreciation of the deep links between truth and beauty. Because I have great sympathies for this line of thought, I am often self-conscious of how mainline Protestant traditions – including the one in which I carry out my ministry – have failed to articulate the beauty of traditional church teachings on sexuality. The reduction of the church’s teaching on sexual ethics to a series of prohibitions (particularly when bereft of such native articulations as those which Roman Catholics possess in, say, the writings of John Paul II) leaves even Christians vulnerable to the possibility that Dan Savage will play more of a role than the church in the formation of their views on the gift of sexuality – a reality that is readily apparent to pastors who do premarital counseling for young adults on a regular basis.
In her recent critique of “hook-up” culture, Lauren Lankford not only provides a concise overview of how the church links beauty and sexuality, she throws in a little Biology 101:
Not only is sex the perfect image of intimacy, passion and desire, it triggers the release of chemicals that train your body to remember what feels good, and how to get it again. Dopamine is a natural drug that gets you high. This is what keeps you going back again. Drugs like methamphetamine access dopamine to achieve the same effect. Your body begins such a bond just with cuddling, kissing, and everything between there and “real” sex. Oxytocin is dopamine’s partner, the emotional binding agent that teaches you to trust and reduces fear.
However, dopamine and oxytocin don’t play fair. They don’t care if it’s just for fun, if it’s “just this one night” or if the person you’re going home with is going to be around next week. They don’t care if it’s make-up sex, breakup sex or all-the-way sex. They don’t care if you just “mess around,” or if you go all the way. They’re going to feed your addiction, commitment or not.
The fact that elementary biology and the ancient wisdom of the church are, in our time, coinciding to form a serious indictment of the casual violence of casual sex in our time is a theological resource that deserves the attention of those who must minister to that violence’s victims – whether they know they are victims or not.
July 31st, 2011 | 4:09 pm
I think this author captures it all in the single recognition that “love is sacrificial, not selfish”.
August 2nd, 2011 | 9:46 pm
Hate to open this door but its actually not a bad argument for SSM. Basically its saying that most humans are destined to be ‘addicted to sex chemicals’ for at least a good portion of their adult life. Both DSM and SSM then provide a secular purpose of managing that addiction in the least possible destructive way…call it a type of methadone clinic approach. Best to avoid the addiction but if not do it here where you’re less likely to get hurt or hurt others…..wonder if anyone said anything a bit along those lines in the Bible? Hmmmmmm….naaa can’t be.
August 2nd, 2011 | 11:16 pm
Hate to open this door but its actually not a bad argument for SSM. Basically its saying that most humans are destined to be ‘addicted to sex chemicals’ for at least a good portion of their adult life.
I don’t think anyone is arguing that gay people “choose” to feel homosexual desires (just as presumably nobody “chooses” to lust after dead bodies, small children, siblings, beasts, or anything else, appropriate or not – the whole point of lust is that it is an appetite, and beyond the control).
But whether gay sex is normal, natural, inevitable, good, or bad, has nothing to do with the question of whether their union is or can ever be the same as a marriage.
You’re welcome to believe that the differences between “same sex marriage” vs. real marriage are insignificant, but you’re not welcome to mandate that I believe they’re insignificant, because it’s quite demonstrable that these differences are not in fact insignificant.
August 3rd, 2011 | 4:33 am
“The same”? Is my marriage ‘the same’ as the one Anna Nicole Smith had to that old rich guy? Is yours? Seems to me that all marriages will share some traits and won’t share other traits.
But I think you’re missing the point here, and its a very interesting point. The author is basically saying we are all drug addicts because sexual pleasure is a ‘natural high’….the word ‘natural’ doesn’t alter the fact that its a high. In one shot she instantly makes sense of the fact that many religions have had a cult of celibacy and also shoots down the meme that ‘marriage is about children’. She is saying that to the degree we engage in any sexual pleasure at all, we are likely to become addicts hence if we are going down that road better to go down the ‘methadone clinic’ road rather than ‘shooting up in the back ally’. SSM shares the trait wish DSM of being a more positive place to channel ‘sex addiction’ than ‘the hookup culture’
August 5th, 2011 | 6:20 am
The author is basically saying we are all drug addicts because sexual pleasure is a ‘natural high’….
And you think that therefore the author is saying we should naturally rework all the laws in our nation so that we can prioritize that natural addiction and make it the center of our life?
I don’t think that is what the author was saying.
I think the author was urging us NOT to be slaves to our passions, but to give in to passion only when it is appropriate.
Now, whether or not it’s appropriate for gays to be with each other (monogamously or not) is a question I simply don’t know the answer to. But even if it were true that gays should (a) be with each other and (b) be monogamous, that has nothing to do with the marriage debate, unless one has specific assumptions about the purpose of marriage that basically produce a tautology.
And the rules of logic say you can’t use your conclusion as a premise to support your conclusion. It doesn’t follow logically.
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