Generally, Sex Before Marriage is Not Morally Sound

Thank you. I’ll firstly address my opponent’s rebuttals to my case, before moving on to criticise his and build further on mine. I’d firstly like to point out my case is not that sex before marriage is for the most part immoral, but there are simply many cases where it is ill advised: as my opponent pointed out, sex which confuses eros, or lust, compared to agape, a higher love, ought to be treated with extreme caution. However, this is true both before and after marriage. The act of sex is only an expression of agape or eros depending on the circumstance, and in itself is not an expression of either. My opponent claims marriage makes sex about agape and eros, but why? Is sex the night before a marriage done by two individuals expressing their love towards one another immoral, but the sex the night of a marriage between two coerced into marriage only for financial gain moral? Of course not! It is the other way around: the expression of agape is what makes it moral. Marriage ought to be the clear signifier to society that two people truly love one another, but it is not a good in itself. It is a covenant with society for secularists and a covenant with God for the religious that highlights how these people care for one another. Highlights. It does not create agape, but makes official its existence. This is important as it moves to my opponent’s second point that marriage says “I love you and only you.” However, this isn’t what marriage says. In Islamic and Mormon culture marriage can be polygamous. In some Indian subcultures marriage can be polyandrous. Moreover, it is not only about “I will never leave you”, at least not in the sexual sense, as Fletcher’s thought experiment conveyed. To conclude my defence, my opponent is right to say that sex before marriage has many risks and consequences, and they are what are important when considering whether to have sex before marriage. However, this is also true after marriage, which he seems to forget. Now, I shall move on to my opponent’s case, after defending my position of agape justifying sex before marriage, as long as it promotes love and is done for the right reasons. I mention this because most of my friend’s case in fact lies in line with mine. We agree that the key virtue is agape, and that sex is how we can convey this, but it has been misused by many. Moreover, marriage, the institution we use to symbolise this, has been misused and devalued in modern society. We can agree that the cases such as Kardashian and Spears’ Hollywood marriages lasting no time at all and being done for the wrong reasons. However, I’d also point to Tom Hanks and Rita Wilson being married now for 25 years to show how what marriage ought to be like. As Tom Hanks said: “When I met Rita [Wilson], I thought, 'oh, this is what it’s supposed to be like when you are married to someone. It’s supposed to be this carefree and easy.’” I bring this up because the message is the one I convey. While one can still show agape while not having sex, as my friend Crypto rightly said, that doesn’t take it off of the table. It is in fact the way for many, many people to really bond with the other person. Again, to quote Rita Wilson: “[Tom] leaves me notes, by the phone or the coffeemaker. I keep them all. He also sends me pictures from his phone all day—where he is, what he’s doing, something he saw”. You don’t need to have sex. But there is no reason why you ought not have sex. Moreover, having a child, everyone can agree, changes things. However, it does not necessarily change things for the worse. For many, it makes things better. To again point to the thought experiment by Joseph Fletcher, “When the child was born, they [her family] all loved him because of what they had done for them.” If the child is loved, truly loved with agape, then it is fine to have a child out of wedlock. On the other hand, a child in a loveless marriage is in fact a terrible thing to do to the child, and having a child in a marriage where you and your spouse no longer love each other will harm the child as well. While it’s true that children in marriage are generally cared for, the same is true for children born out of marriage; children truly loved is a great thing, and simplifying it to being inside or outside of marriage is crude and simply doesn’t cohere to reality. Children born in a loveless or unready relationship outside of marriage is just as bad as in one. Again, a loving relationship is all that is important. Finally, I’ll conclude by adding one more arrow to my bow: sex before marriage makes sure you’re compatible with the other person. Sex before marriage is useful in working out whether you have the chemistry to be together. My opponent points out that you need both eros and agape in a relationship. I disagree that you need them in balance, or even at all, but if you’re going to have a sexual relationship, you need to be compatible and have chemistry with one another. To tell the story of Jessica, who remained abstinent until her wedding night: Our bodies wanted different things from one another, so what we ended up with was a horizontal battle. I would hear married girlfriends talk about the joys of make-up sex and continue to sip my coffee in silence. We would fight, and then have bad sex and then fight some more. Every flaw in our marriage … seemed much more miserable when combined with the possibility of faking orgasms until death did we part. There was no relief. Six months into our marriage, the idea of separating seemed more appealing than feigning headaches for the rest of my life.[1] While the agape possibly was originally there, the notion that they needed to have sex drained away and killed the love that originally blossomed. To conclude, I wish to quote Shakespeare: “Love looks not with the eyes, but with the mind, And therefore is wingèd Cupid painted blind.” Agape is what is most important. In a sexual relationship with another, as long as we keep agape central, sex before marriage is a perfectly moral thing to do, and will express agape on the deepest level. 1 - http://www.huffingtonpost.com...;