Sexual Morality and Ethics Catch-All

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I wanted to start this thread to catch all of the random stuff that crops up on the topic from other threads, like the DADT thread. Whether it be hetero-, bi-, or homo-, everyone has their views on sexual morality and what's within limits and what isn't. This might be a good place to try to discuss that.

Edited title of thread to better reflect where discussion is going so far

Mostly tagging to follow the discussion, but my opinion is that anything that happens between consenting adults (or consenting high school aged minors, as long as all parties involved are minors) is kick-ass.

Adding onto what I said in my last post:

As far as sexuality being on a spectrum, this is something that I've held for a while as being the case. I know that there's a vestige of heterosexuality to me, as I do sometimes react physically to women. However, it's fleeting, and the desire to actually do something with a woman isn't there like it is with guys. So, according to a Kinsey scale, I'm probably about a 5.6 or so (6 being 100% homosexual, 0 being 100% heterosexual).

However, even if that .4 bit were to pop up, my choice still remains to not go there with a woman. I just can't do it unless I had to for some reason. That's why I don't consider myself anything close to bisexual, and I know I'm nowhere near the straight end of things.

ELewis17 wrote:

(or consenting high school aged minors, as long as all parties involved are minors) is kick-ass.

Not sure if it`s not a derail but does anyone actually know how and when the age of "adultness" was decided? I mean 18 (and 21) seem to be pulled completely out of thin air. Is there some science or religious thingie behind it?

Cultural, and it varies. In my state, there's a 5 year window that starts at 14 or 15. The law states: A person is guilty of sexual abuse of a minor if: A. The person engages in a sexual act with another person, not the actor's spouse, who is either 14 or 15 years of age and the actor is at least 5 years older than the other person. Violation of this paragraph is a Class D crime)
So a 14 year old can legally consent to sex with an 18 year old. Personally I'd rather it be a three year window, but at least we don't have the problem where a guy two months older than his 17 year old girlfriend can be arrested and labeled a child molester.

Edit - Here's the Wikipedia page for age of majority, and here's the page for age of consent which does have a section on historical ages of consent.

Wikipedia[/url]]The age of consent in Minnesota is 16.
If the actor is in a position of authority, the age of consent is 18. If the victim is under the age of 13 the actor must be no more than 36 months older. If the victim is 13, 14 or 15 the actor must be no more than 48 months older. The specifics of these laws are covered under Sections 609.34x of the Minnesota Criminal Code.

The use of the word victim here makes me sad. Though our age of consent laws actually do make some sense.

The word "victim" comes from whoever wrote the wikipedia article. The actual Minnesota laws use the word "complainant."

Although I think the point on choice has been tackled very well I would like to offer an analogy for anyone holding strong moral opposition to LBGT. Perhaps this will help by distancing you from the 'offensive content'.

For the most part you can not choose what you find funny. You may mature and due your experiences and new knowledge your humor may change but for practical purposes you can not choose to legitimately laugh at any random joke, some of them will work for you and some won't. If you're on board with that then please consider that attraction is likely far deeper than humor.

I read recently that the Kinsey scale has largely been made irrelevant by new research. I question that, because 1) I can't find the contradictory research, and 2) the Kinsey scale just seems to work. Any ideas?

As long is everyone involved is an adult and consenting, I don't have a moral problem with pretty much any sexual behavior (even stuff that I may find personally repulsive).

I am proud to live in a state where I can f*ck in my front yard. Problem is this is the midwest, and I do not want to see that. Like two beanbags swaying in the wind.

Not morality, but actual concerns are what get in my craw. Our messed up morality to sex helps us lead our peer nations in young pregnancy, disease, fetal and infant death. Anyone following my twitter or Tyler Barber saw that Texas leads the nation in teen pregnancy, but abstinence only works.

When "moral" sex ed leads to disease and death, something is very wrong in Sprockets.

I think sexual morality is a personal thing. I get to decide where I stand, and where other people stand (and how they act upon that) is no business or concern of mine. I agree with laws that protect children against pedophiles, but think our laws go too far such that an adult can be arrested for molesting a child that does not exist (such as an undercover cop pretending to be a child online, or non-photographic art created by an adult that depicts children). I agree that rape should be illegal, but I wish we could figure out a way to get rid of all the ambiguity (and room for abuse) in borderline cases.

Other than those two things, I don't really see how it's any of my business. Now mind you, there is a lot of sexual stuff that I find to be totally gross. My moral stance is that we can't outlaw something just because we'd never, ever even try it ourselves (except for that one time in college when we got totally drunk). That seems to be at the heart of laws that restrict or discriminate against homosexuals. There is no problem with homosexuals, but there are apparently a lot of people who think homosexuality is so gross that homosexuals don't deserve the same rights as everyone else. I think that's immoral, and it's not what our country is supposedly all about.

I agree with pretty much everything LobsterMobster said.

Rallick wrote:

I agree with pretty much everything LobsterMobster said.

Don't encourage him!

I believe adults should be able to do what they want and I will do my best not to judge anyone for his or her unusual proclivities, but the moment you start crapping on each other I will stare at you in horror before turning and running away in the other direction.

SallyNasty wrote:
Rallick wrote:

I agree with pretty much everything LobsterMobster said.

Don't encourage him!

Shh! I'm just trying to get at his mom!

Morality has no place near sex. The morality component should kick in long before anything even approaching a sexual act is possible. Once at the brink of a sexual encounter there should have been several warning breaches of morality completely independent from the specifics of the sexual act.

In my opinion the 'morality' comes from the context, not the act itself. 'Traditional' sex can be immoral for any number of reasons.

(kinda busy at work so I'm really just tagging, but I'll expand on this view if necessary later on.)

I read recently that the Kinsey scale has largely been made irrelevant by new research.

Dunno about the scale, but I heard on NPR recently that Kinsey's wild-assed guess that 10% of the population is gay is wrong. According to the person I was listening to, the actual figure, from using data that's admittedly not really designed for this, was pretty close to 5%. I think the actual figure was 4.6%, but I'm not certain.

Kinsey apparently even said, at the time, that his 10% figure wasn't very good, but it was the best he could do.

Rezzy wrote:

Morality has no place near sex. The morality component should kick in long before anything even approaching a sexual act is possible. Once at the brink of a sexual encounter there should have been several warning breaches of morality completely independent from the specifics of the sexual act.

In my opinion the 'morality' comes from the context, not the act itself. 'Traditional' sex can be immoral for any number of reasons.

(kinda busy at work so I'm really just tagging, but I'll expand on this view if necessary later on.)

I have exactly the same viewpoint. There is no such thing as sexual morality just as there is no such thing as baseball morality. They are activities for people to engage in and it is the circumstances surrounding the act that make it moral or immoral. The specifics of the activity are irrelevant.

Malor wrote:
I read recently that the Kinsey scale has largely been made irrelevant by new research.

Dunno about the scale, but I heard on NPR recently that Kinsey's wild-assed guess that 10% of the population is gay is wrong. According to the person I was listening to, the actual figure, from using data that's admittedly not really designed for this, was pretty close to 5%. I think the actual figure was 4.6%, but I'm not certain.

Kinsey apparently even said, at the time, that his 10% figure wasn't very good, but it was the best he could do.

Yeah, I've seen anywhere from 3% to 15% put out there, but I'd definitely agree that it's somewhere in the 5% range, plus or minus a couple of percentage points.

I still think his concept of a sliding scale makes the most sense of anything I've seen, both in a personal experience sense and a broader societal sense.

What consenting adults (notice I didn't specify a number ) do in their private relationships is their own business. As long as it does no harm to others I believe the true American who embraces personal freedom should be ok with it.

I'll go ahead and be the guy who brings it up: while I don't particularly have moral issues with interspecies relationships, I do consider it abusive to non humans who don't understand what's going on, and thus am against it.

So really, I'm against sexual activity with any living thing that doesn't understand what's going on, and nonconsensual sexual activity. I suppose really that could all be labeled under non consensual activity.

And I'm glad to get that clarification about the Kinsey research. Where people peg estimated homosexual population groups really doesn't matter to me. The scale itself is the gem of his research.

Dan Savage taught me that up to 1% of the population is asexual.

Rallick wrote:
SallyNasty wrote:
Rallick wrote:

I agree with pretty much everything LobsterMobster said.

Don't encourage him!

Shh! I'm just trying to get at his mom!

I don't think you need to try that hard.

Though I agree that informed consent between two sober adults is necessary I'm not sure it's sufficient. A thought experiment;

-Persons A and B are sober consenting adults.
-Person A knows they have HIV.
-Person B does not have HIV but knows person A does and understands the consequences of being infected.
-Person A and B agree to and proceed to have unprotected sex.

Does the informed consent make this situation ethical? If not then where do we draw that line of "it does" vs "it does not"?

Legally speaking informed consent is what differentiates it from assault and (should the recipient die) murder. Both ethically and legally it raises questions as to whether anyone agreeing to be so infected could possibly have been of sound mind at the time of consent which enters into the realm of some rather nebulous psychology.

Now suppose we replace HIV transmission in the above situation with incest and it's related risks. This one is generally illegal regardless of consent, how about ethically? In situations where pregnancy is impossible due to same-gender or sterilization?

Krev - assuming everyone in the situation above is adult, sober and consenting, it's not an unethical act. Maybe a stupid one, but not unethical.

Krev82, I do think that person B has the right to take the risk, and that it is not immoral for person A to participate. Provided the relationship is free of pressure.

I am however comfortable with it being against the law, on the basis that practically it would be too difficult to prove one way or the other in a court.

Mostly tagging, but I wanted to add something about the 10% wild-ass-guess comment. I'm kind of hazy on the details and I don't remember if it was brought up in that Liam Neeson movie, or if it was from research I did later, but my understanding is that the 10% figure isn't so much a guess as based on flawed methodology, and misunderstanding of what the number actually meant.

1) The misunderstanding has to do with what was asked. The question that spawned the figure wasn't "Identify your sexual orientation on this scale". It was more along the lines "Have you ever had sexual contact with someone of the same sex?" I don't know if experimentation (e.g. got really drunk in college) or sexual abuse were accounted for.
2) The methodology issue is due to sample bias, since a large chunk of the people he questioned were prisoners. Considering the time period, prisoners were probably less likely to slap him for asking the question, but they are also much more likely to answer "Yes", due to the lack of alternatives in a long term, single-sex environment. That doesn't necessarily mean that the number is wrong, but the data isn't as reliable as a could be.

krev82 wrote:

Though I agree that informed consent between two sober adults is necessary I'm not sure it's sufficient. A thought experiment;

-Persons A and B are sober consenting adults.
-Person A knows they have HIV.
-Person B does not have HIV but knows person A does and understands the consequences of being infected.
-Person A and B agree to and proceed to have unprotected sex.

Does the informed consent make this situation ethical? If not then where do we draw that line of "it does" vs "it does not"?

Legally speaking informed consent is what differentiates it from assault and (should the recipient die) murder. Both ethically and legally it raises questions as to whether anyone agreeing to be so infected could possibly have been of sound mind at the time of consent which enters into the realm of some rather nebulous psychology.

Now suppose we replace HIV transmission in the above situation with incest and it's related risks. This one is generally illegal regardless of consent, how about ethically? In situations where pregnancy is impossible due to same-gender or sterilization?

My stance is that anything that takes place with informed consent is ethical. The key word their is 'informed'. I don't know about anyone else, but I simply don't know enough about living with HIV to make an informed decision on krev's hypothetical situation - as I stand today, I'm not educated enough to give informed consent on having unprotected sex with an HIV positive partner.

Moving onto the topic of incest, I think that it's possible for an incestuous relationship (with informed consent from both parties) to be ethical, regardless of the legality of it. Law and ethics influence each other, but there's not a 1-to-1 parity there.

Incest is a strange case. We instinctively disinclined to have sex with our siblings and there are potential health concerns; if our sibling shares our own recessive genetic flaws they are more likely to manifest in our potential offspring. Then again that's really more of a health issue, and we don't argue much about whether it's ethical to do things merely because they are unhealthy.

You might ask whether it's ethical to have a child with someone with a high risk of a genetic disorder that will shorten the child's life or reduce its quality. What about a low risk?

Seth wrote:

I read recently that the Kinsey scale has largely been made irrelevant by new research. I question that, because 1) I can't find the contradictory research, and 2) the Kinsey scale just seems to work. Any ideas?

Gender and sexuality aren't just arranged along a binary with homosexual at one end and heterosexual at the other.

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