{"id":17,"date":"2010-03-29T11:17:17","date_gmt":"2010-03-29T11:17:17","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.humanistporn.com\/?p=17"},"modified":"2010-03-29T11:17:17","modified_gmt":"2010-03-29T11:17:17","slug":"can-atheists-have-a-code-of-sexual-morality","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.humanistporn.com\/?p=17","title":{"rendered":"Can Atheists Have a Code of Sexual Morality?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Carnal Nation<\/a> features a regular column by sex therapist and author Dr Marty Klein called Sexual Intelligence<\/a>. He’s just published a great column called Can Atheists Have A Code Of Sexual Morality<\/a>?<\/p>\n

This question is at once hilarious, insulting, pathetic, and revealing. It only makes sense if you believe in two things:
\n1. Moral thought and behavior are essentially determined by the fear of punishment;
\n2. The definition of \u201cmorality\u201d regarding sex is different than it is for other human endeavors.<\/p>\n

And indeed, young children and emotionally under-developed adults do make moral choices based on the fear of punishment. Organized religion relies on and promotes this style of personality organization: \u201cDo the right thing or God will punish you.\u201d<\/p>\n

And what is the right thing regarding sex? Every organized religion has highly specific answers to this question. They mostly involve \u201cGod doesn\u2019t want you to do sex this way; God strongly prefers you do sex that way.\u201d And if you disagree with God about your sexual expression, see rule #1.<\/p>\n

… <\/p>\n

So here is the adult version of atheist sexual ethics: Do not do unto others as you would not have others do unto you.<\/p>\n

(Memo to religious people\u2014does this sound familiar?)<\/p>\n

In more contemporary and pragmatic language, atheists operationalize sexual ethics this way:
\n* Consent
\n* Honesty
\n* Responsibility<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Dr Klein makes a great case for reason and understanding-based sexual ethics as opposed to the “Don’t have sex for fear of punishment” model. Well worth reading.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Carnal Nation features a regular column by sex therapist and author Dr Marty Klein called Sexual Intelligence. He’s just published a great column called Can Atheists Have A Code Of Sexual Morality? This question is at once hilarious, insulting, pathetic, and revealing. It only makes sense if you believe in two things: 1. Moral thought […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[4,7],"tags":[18,14,13,6],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.humanistporn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.humanistporn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.humanistporn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.humanistporn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.humanistporn.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=17"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.humanistporn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":18,"href":"https:\/\/www.humanistporn.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17\/revisions\/18"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.humanistporn.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=17"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.humanistporn.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=17"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.humanistporn.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=17"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}