This page was written by Jess Hoare, an A level student, February 2007
Same-sex marriages
In December 2005 same sex marriages became legal in Britain giving gay couples the same rights as heterosexual couples in areas such as pensions, property, social security and housing. In many other areas of the world same sex marriages are also legal. For example in Denmark which was the first country to make it legal in 1989. However church weddings are not allowed. Later other European countries followed. In the US it largely varies from sate to state. Vermont became the first state to offer same sex marriages in 2000. In addition to this California, Massachusetts and Oregon also offer the partnership. Tony Blair said that the new laws are “correcting an obvious injustice” for gay men and lesbians.
Roger Lockyer and Percy Steven are a gay couple who were one of the first couples in the queue to carry out a civil partnership, after waiting 39 years. They married on the 21st December, the day the law became legal in Britain at Westminster Register Office. Roger and Percy can now be seen as each other’s next of kin.
Same sex adoption
Same sex couples are now allowed to adopt children together, which has been seen as the biggest overhaul in the British adoption law in 30 years. Before the new law came into action same sex couples had to decide which partner would adopt the child, and therefore giving the other partner less parental right. The law has also changed for unmarried heterosexual couples and it is thought that opening the law up to unmarried couples will encourage more people to consider adoption.
Sex without consent
The Home Office says that “Giving consent is active not passive and its up to everyone to make sure that their partner agrees to sexual activity”. There are many situations in which consent can’t be given. For example being under age and mentally ill.
A recent study by the Metropolitan Police showed that more than a third of women who reported being raped have consumed alcohol immediately before the attack. This has lead to the law being changed. Juries can now decide whether a woman was too drunk to give consent.
Masturbation
This is a fascinating case study, because it results in completely opposing views. Utilitarians see no problem whatsoever in masturbation. There is no medical evidence that masturbation causes any harm. In fact, there is some evidence that masturbation can relieve stress, and can actually reduce testicular cancer (the idea of 'cleaning the pipes').
However, Natural Law sees masturbation as intrinsically wrong. Aquinas said masturbation was as bad as rape. The Catholic Church would no longer support this view, but they do see masturbation as "an intrinsically and gravely disordered action" Catechism 2352.
Historically, it was believed, as this image shows, that each sperm was like a 'person seed' - the womb was seen as earth. Therefore every wasted sperm was a potential human life lost. When our understanding of reproduction changed, and we found out about the female ovum, the Catholic Church didn't change their teaching.
The Church teaches that sex should be unitive and procreative. Any sexual activity on your own cannot fulfil these purposes. Masturbation is contrary to the Primary Precept of reproduction.
By masturbation is to be understood the deliberate stimulation of the genital organs in order to derive sexual pleasure. "Both the Magisterium of the Church, in the course of a constant tradition, and the moral sense of the faithful have been in no doubt and have firmly maintained that masturbation is an intrinsically and gravely disordered action." "The deliberate use of the sexual faculty, for whatever reason, outside of marriage is essentially contrary to its purpose." For here sexual pleasure is sought outside of "the sexual relationship which is demanded by the moral order and in which the total meaning of mutual self-giving and human procreation in the context of true love is achieved."
To form an equitable judgment about the subjects' moral responsibility and to guide pastoral action, one must take into account the affective immaturity, force of acquired habit, conditions of anxiety, or other psychological or social factors that lessen or even extenuate moral culpability.
Open Marriage
"Consider the following case: A couple sought treatment from one of the authors (DKS) following the husband’s discovery that his wife was having an affair. The couple explained that they had agreed from the outset of their relationship to have a sexually open marriage, with the provision that each partner would be fully informed of the other’s sexual exchanges with outsiders and that outside sexual relationships would never become “emotional.” In this case, the husband became irate and cited his wife’s affair after learning that she had pursued sexual relations with the sameman on several occasions over 6months and had weekly phone conversations in which they discussed their personal lives. In initial sessions, the wife professed remorse for violating the couple’s prior agreement and agreed to suspend the outside relationship. However, as treatment progressed, she expressed increasing despair over her lack of emotional fulfillment and disclosed her ambivalence about staying in the marriage. In subsequent sessions she gained awareness of, and was able to articulate, both shame and enduring resentments of the couple’s own emotional and sexual relationship. Although the husband then tentatively agreed to a monogamous relationship at her request, he subsequently expressed resentment over the altered terms of their explicit marriage contract and renewed his attacks on her emotional infidelity.After several months of sorting through conflicting individual and relationship needs in therapy, the wife filed for divorce. In working with this couple, the therapist struggled to define the client. An initial agreement to accept the couple’s working definition of a shared relationship value espousing a sexually open marriage became untenable as the partners progressively diverged in their respective needs. Ultimately, when confronted with conflicting goals of the two partners, the therapist aligned himself with the partner expressing needs and values more consistent with hisownbeliefs—a common resolution pursued by therapists and fraught with its own ethical dilemmas (Margolin, 1982)." From Treating Infidelity: Clinical and Ethical Directions
