In a piece advocating a zero tolerance approach to sex with minors, an interesting further dimension arises, foregrounding issues of consent and wider cultural attitudes to sex which set a context for abusive actions:
It’s like drink-driving. Decades of relativism on that issue were probably fair to nice folk who were driving home after a glass or two and meant no harm. But a lot of people died. So now we have an absolutist approach and a lot of mildly tipsy drivers have been very harshly punished – perhaps unfairly in the immediate, individual sense – but far fewer people die. No, Adam Johnson, child abuse is not a grey area | Victoria Coren Mitchell | Opinion | The Guardian
For a while now I've ben wondering whether this is laying foundations for a very different sort of social contract around sexual behaviour than has been around since the mid 20th century. Here's why I'm wondering that.
It seems to me that a great deal of the 'sexual revolution' has been on terms formed by patriarchy: presumed female compliance and male rights (often grounded in a 'might is right' sensibility) with an ethic rooted in a walk-away attitude which recognises very little emotional entail. This background, I suggest, meant that the sexual revolution was conducted largely on patriarchal terms in many ways. And Christian ethics on the matter were caught in a double bind of having been associated with a quasi-Gnostic attitude towards matter and body and so simply pleasure-denying -and hypocritically so- on the one hand. And on the other hand, it had been stated and explained through a cultural lens inextricably bound up with patriarchal assumptions and attitudes albeit ones that forked from the more libertine versions of patriarchy.
But, what I think we may be seeing in the world outside of the the churches and other religious sub-cultures, is a problematising of presumed sexual liberties. What I mean by this is that the recognition of not just physical coercion but also psychological coercion and grooming begins to erode the presumption of consent until it is fairly obvious and explicit. In time this constructs a degree of hesitancy about the idea of sexual intercourse early in a relationship particularly where drink or drugs may have been involved.
And in another cultural strand, we have a recognition of the profound psychological impact of assault and particularly of unconsented sexual contacts of all kinds (verbal, touching or violent). Such recognition is partly related to issues of psycho-somatic unity drawn from the discoveries and implications of scientific research and treatment of the aftereffects of abuse and a growing realisation about the mechanisms of grooming, priming etc. In conjunction with a rightful concern for the vulnerable and more careful thinking at institutional levels (and thus in terms of training in workplaces etc) about rights, equality and diversity, there is a fuller cultural groundswell towards care and caution in matters of sexual expression, I think.
To be sure this is not the same as a former 'Christian' sensibility based in "sex only within marriage" (contaminated as it was by ideas of property and male supremacy /female incompetency). However, it is nevertheless an ethic based on consent, care and awareness of vulnerability and consequences.
Christian sexual ethics need to be rethought and restated against this background. Much groundwork for this has actually been done (I think of the work of Jack Dominion, for example) but I think that Evangelicals probably need to re-examine the presumed interpretations rooted in Genesis 1 and 2 and a handful of NT texts.
That's as far as I've got with that, really at the moment. I would be interested in comments that help push the ideas above forward or at least engage with them constructively. I'm not so interested in restatements of the 'traditional' positions: I know them well, want to keep faith with the best intents and insights of them but I want also to tackle whether the cultural matrix for interpreting sexual mores is changing in the kind of way I'm trying to sketch above and whether Christian theology can engage the positive aspects of the changes in an open and yet critical manner.
