QUESTION:

“Is premarital sex always sinful?”

THE RELIGION GUY’S ANSWER:

The question above was the headline with an April article by Talley Cross, a “gender and sexuality” blogger with patheos.com. She responded with a cautious “no.”

A “yes” answer is the contrary and familiar doctrine and tradition in Judaism, Christianity, Islam and other faiths, and as we’ll see below has lately gotten a degree of backing from surprising places.

That age-old teaching is terribly counter-cultural these days and also subject to critique from within religions. The Gallup Poll says in 2001 a slim 53% majority of Americans thought sex between an unmarried man and woman was morally acceptable, but as of last year the number reached a record 76%. (Adultery got only 9% acceptance.)

In a 2019 Pew Research Center poll, 57% of those who identified as Christians “always” or “sometimes” approved of unwed sex for those in a “committed relationship” without marriage, with fully 79% approval among the non-religious respondents. As for casual sex without any “committed relationship,” 50% of the Christians accepted this “always” or “sometimes and the non-religious did so by 83%.

The influential New York Times (ditto for NPR) has developed an interest in a variant known as “polyamory,” romantic relationships with knowledge and consent among three or more participants, who sometimes take additional partners on the side.

Could secular feminism and some kind of religion converge in a Sexual Revolution rethink?

Attention journalists: Here are some chapter headings from the latest advice book on sex:

“Men and Women Are Different”

“Some Desires Are Bad”

“Loveless Sex Is Not Empowering”

“Violence Is Not Love”

“People Are Not Products”

“Marriage Is Good”

“Sex Must Be Taken Seriously”

“Listen to Your Mother”

To which geezers in The Guy’s swiftly passing generation can only respond with something that, today, would be #DUH.”

Yet Americans who’ve grown up since the blitz of the 1960s Sexual Revolution have been immersed in a culture that promotes and expects commitment-free hook-ups and casual sex, even very early in a relationship.

Turns out women feel disheartened, dishonored and coerced by this supposed “freedom,” and have good reason to be, says Britain’s Louise Perry in her spirited book “The Case Against the Sexual Revolution: A New Guide to Sex in the 21st Century” (Polity Press). She assails so-called “liberal feminism” for routinely handing countless women a raw deal.

Her preachments will be routine common sense for folks who resist fierce cultural pressure and remain guided by religious teachings of the past few thousand years.

What might especially intrigue reporters is that Perry, a fellow journalist with the Daily Mail and the New Statesman and an anti-rape crusader, makes a thoroughly secularized case that nonetheless coincides at many points with a religious tradition toward which she expresses zero trace of fondness.