Sorting out priorities

Sorry about the editing; I felt I went a little too far in discussing matters publicly. I'd write you with the details, except I know that you won't take board discussions into e-mail. :) (Editing jobs, by the way, can sometimes make edited posts sound more exciting than they were. This was a run-of-the-mill tragic love affair; I just didn't want to air my dirty laundry in public, since it involved a second person.) "Two people experiencing mutual pleasure with one another's bodies simply CAN'T harm one another." Let me try again. Sex is good. I said that before, and I'll say it again. I don't think that sex, in itself, is harmful. However, there are times when something is better than having sex. In such cases, choosing to have sex rather than doing the better thing creates harm. Here are two examples, both assuming the scenario you describe: two people experiencing mutual pleasure with one another's bodies. 1) Sexual pleasure is good. But if it begins to crowd out equally important things in one's life, harm can arise. To switch metaphors for a moment, I experience pleasure when I spend twelve hours a day on the Internet. It took far too long for me to realize that the rest of my life was being harmed by the fact that I was spending twelve hours a day on the Internet. During the time before I realized this, I would have said that I was receiving lasting benefit from what I was doing; unfortunately, I now know that I was wrong. It would have been quite possible for me to have utterly destroyed my life and gone to my death convinced that I had not been harmed by the Internet – that's how strong a drive Internet surfing is for me. The sex drive works the same way in some people; people will fall head over heels with someone and neglect the other aspects of their life. Sometimes (though not always) this leads to lasting damage in their lives. Therefore, given the choice between having sex when it would cause you to severely neglect necessary aspects of your life and not having sex, any decent person will not have sex. 2) Sexual pleasure is good. But other things in one's life may be more important. For example, suppose that you have a friend who's in a monogamous relationship with another man. One night, you and this other man decide to have sex. The next morning you wake up and say, "Oh, hell, why did we do that?" There is no denying that you received mutual pleasure with one another's bodies. But you did so at the expense of a third person you both hold dear. Therefore, given the choice between having sex when a third person would be needlessly hurt and not having sex, any decent person will not have sex. In each of these cases, it's never the case that sex is innately bad. What has happened is that a good thing (sex) has been chosen instead of a better thing (refraining from sex because one's life would be improved by it for one reason or another). Here is a third example: 3) Sexual pleasure is good. But other things in one's life may be more important, such as protecting one's partner from lasting harm due to societal reaction to one's relationship. Therefore, Jimf3 has chosen not to have sex with boys in our society. This doesn't mean, needless to say, that Jimf3 believes that sex is bad. He simply believes that there are things in life that are more important than sex. Heather [E-mail]   [Home Page]