marriage, sex and morality

Currently, in the blogosphere:

Aaron (at Singapore Angle), wrote about premarital sex and argued that Singaporean parents and teachers are likely to be too conservative to teach sex education effectively and hence perhaps sex education should be "outsourced" to professionals.

Ben writes that the "real problem" is not pre-marital sex, but unprotected sex with non-regular sex partners. He also seems to hint that people discussing this issue might confuse between "conceptions of sin" and "real harm".

Kitana writes that marriage, sex and having children are personal and private decisions and issues, and it is not the business of the rest of society (or the government) to indicate what one ought or ought not to do.

I apologized if I have misread or misrepresented any of the three positions above (do correct me if I am wrong). The purpose of this post is not a response to any of the above-mentioned articles, but to explore a theme which all three have in common: what is the role of morality when it comes to issues of marriage and sex? Is such a role desirable? I note that a complete and extensive discussion on this topic would require the length of a book (or more), hence this post is but a brief cursory discussion.

The Institution of Marriage

"Pre-martial sex" means sex before marriage. If we are to talk about the morality of pre-marital sex, we need to talk about what marriage is, and perhaps doing so will reveal some clues about how morality fits into all of this. According to the wikipedia article on marriage, the definition of marriage differed throughout history and across cultures. That should not surprise us. The article also says that the modern definition of marriage would be "a union that is formally recognized by the state", although the article also mentions some might disagree with that definition.

There are two quick lessons we can draw from this. Firstly, marriage is culture-dependent. This will provide some difficulty for views about marriage which are morally absolute (i.e. have no subjectivity at all). Secondly, "being recognized" by the state (or religion, or some authority) appears to be a necessary requirement for a marriage. This provides some difficulty for views which will want to argue that marriage is the business of only the two individuals involved, and no one else.

Consider briefly the issue of gay marriage as an example. There is nothing preventing homosexuals from cohabiting with each other, and nothing effectively preventing them from having consensual homosexual sex with each other. So what difference does it make whether or not they are legally married or not? Perhaps marriage is not just about two individuals living together, but also about the recognition by the government of their union. The government is a third involved party in a marriage, and by extrapolation, it is "society as a whole" that is the third involved party (since the government supposedly represents the interests of society as a whole). This is why I personally believe Singapore will not allow gay marriages at least for the next 50 years or so. Singapore society currently, as a whole, is probably not tolerant to gay unions. Hence the government will not be willing to legalize it, since it (supposedly) represents Singapore society as a whole. If it is indeed so, then gay marriage is not legalized not due to any objective argument that homosexual marriage is immoral (in the absolute sense), but because society as a whole does not accept it (due to whatsoever reasons). [Note that I have refrained from using the word "majority" to describe society as a whole, because it is possible that certain voices within society might be more influential than other voices.]

Religion and Marriage

What perhaps makes talking about marriage messy is the fact that to many, marriage is not just a civil affair, but also a religious one. This becomes messy because religion is loaded with morality, and different religions support a different version of morality. For example, for most people, polygamy is considered to be immoral. Yet, it is something which Islam allows. So, if I ask the question: "So is polygamy immoral or not" is your answer "depends on your religion" or "It is, but the Muslims will disagree with me"? What if one day your son converts to Islam and takes multiple wives. Would you consider him to have done something immoral?

Morality and Pre-marital sex

There is no doubt that there are individuals in Singapore who believe that pre-marital sex is morally permissible. There is also no doubt that individuals who believe that is not morally permissible also exist. The first question is, why is this so? It appears to me that the answer lies in values, beliefs and ideologies. The first group of individuals share certain values and ideologies (liberalism, for e.g.) which the members of the second group does not share, and vice versa. And like all values and ideologies, they are influenced by (but not limited to) religion and culture.

The second question: so is pre-marital sex morally permissible or not? Is your answer to the question "depends on your values or ideologies" or "yes/no, but people with differing values would disagree with me"? If you are (say, a Christian) and you firmly believe pre-marital sex is immoral. What if one day your child (who does your share your beliefs) goes out and has pre-marital sex, would you consider him/her to have done something immoral?

Putting it all together

Pre-marital sex is but one area where there is moral controversy and disagreement due to differing worldviews (abortion, homosexuality are examples of others). It is empirically well known that differing worldviews are not easily resolved by mere argumentation. And hence, as long as there is substantial representation in the relevant differing worldviews, such moral controversies can be expected to remain. This does not make the job easy for the relevant authorities who has to decide what laws and public policies to adopt based on "society as a whole".

Consider a policy such as sex education. The relevant authorities will have to decide if they want to have sex education, and how to carry it out. Aside from (pertinent and important) factors such as social problems and STDs, another factor they will need to consider is societal receptiveness to the policy. If, for example, sex education focused more on abstinence, liberal-minded individuals might be unhappy because abstinence is nowhere as effective as safe sex in preventing STDs or unwanted pregnancies. Yet, if they focused more on safe sex, conservative-minded individuals might be unhappy because they will feel that such education will promote pre-marital sex, which to them is something immoral. You cannot please everybody. Governance (or so it appears to me) is about balancing all the factors, making a decision, and then you spin the press in an attempt to persuade and pacify those individuals who will be unhappy.

I have a suggestion on how we can best deal with such situations of moral disagreement. We can try to appreciate and understand worldviews different from our own, instead of just arguing for our own views all the time. One vehicle which might be useful for this mutual learning is rational and civil discourse. Perhaps after better understanding what each other's worldviews are, we will be able to say "I disagree with what you are saying, but I respect and appreciate the reasoning behind your views, and that you follow a different set of rules than I" This doesn't make the disagreement go away of course (it probably never will go away), but perhaps this is the right first step to allow us to come together and talk about what laws and which policies will be truly in the best interests of all of us.

That said, I'm not optimistic about my suggestion actually taking place. Empirically, I think it can be shown that generally people have very little interest in appreciating the views of their opponents, and my judgement is that for Singaporeans, this is even less so.

tacit assumptions, worldview and religion

As a human being, we are required to act (i.e. do something), most of the time in our lives. When we make a conscious, rational action, (such as opening the door upon hearing the door bell ring), the action can be said to be one which is motivated (i.e. not random or irrational). Perhaps, all voluntary action is motivated. But whatever the case, a motivated action could be said to be caused by beliefs, desires, or a combination of both. For example, upon hearing a doorbell, i believe that someone was behind the door, I also believe that when someone is at the door I should open the door and see who it is, hence I choose to act on these beliefs, and voluntarily opened the door. Another example: I am feeling hungry, and I believe there is food in the kitchen. So I walked to the kitchen to find the food to satisfy my desire to eat something. If we have no beliefs or desires we cannot act.

Desires, for the most part, are just impulses or appetites. But beliefs can be quite complicated. Beliefs can also be normative (suggest a preferred path of action). For example, I believe that when someone is at the door, I should open the door. In fact, a good number (all?) of the conscious decisions we make in life are based on our normative beliefs. But where do these normative beliefs come from? I am going to assume that all our beliefs come from the outside world, i.e. from what we detect from our senses. [Just a quick argument: if a baby is born without sight, sound, smell, hearing and touch, do you think he able to learn anything? think anything?]

Our most basic beliefs come directly from our senses: 'I see a bright object [the sun]", i feel something underneath my feet [the floor]". But our more complex beliefs, such as our normative beliefs, are usually taught to us, directly or indirectly. For the most part, it is our parents and our teachers (or whoever who had a hand in bringing us up) which imparts to us these beliefs, either through teachings or being a role model. Later on in life, when we develop a stronger cognitive ability, we form our own beliefs based on our previous beliefs and new data from our senses. Once in a while, we may even come across sensory data which seems so incoherent with our previous beliefs that we choose to reject one or more of our past beliefs.

Some (many) of our beliefs, are tacit. Meaning, we do not consciously think about them, or are aware of them. But we believe them anyway. For example, if you get to work every morning by driving a car. Do you check if your car has been rigged with a car bomb before you start the engine? Do you check if there is anybody hiding in the backseat? Probably these thoughts never crossed your mind. But somewhere deep in your motivational self, you must have believed that your car is free from car bombs or murderers hiding in the back seat, otherwise you would not have drove your car to work. Note that this belief is also an assumption, that you do not really have any evidence that your car was not rigged with a bomb, nor did you check if there was indeed someone hiding behind the back seat. You just assumed so.

I am going to propose, that we call the entire collection of all our beliefs (tacit or otherwise) our worldview. And indeed, the collection of all our beliefs is indeed our view of the world. Everything we have ever experienced, seen or heard, was taught to us, what we inferred and deduced in our minds; this is what we perceive the world to be. I am quite sure, all of us, except for maybe Descartes, have never systematically considered ALL our beliefs. And even if we did, we probably could not be able to uncover all our tacit beliefs. Hence probably, we all have some beliefs which come into conflict with each other. Perhaps later when the conflict in beliefs is brought to our attention, we will choose to abandon one (or more) beliefs to maintain coherence. But I think it is safe to assume that nobody has a set of beliefs (i.e. worldview) that is 100% coherent with each other.

Now I am going to propose, that for our purposes, we equate the word "religion" to the word "worldview". Let me try to justify that proposition. Religion has a very muffled and confused meaning the way it is used in our society. My religion is either Christian, Muslim, Buddhist, Hindu, Taoist or free thinker. We have very conveniently categorized religion to a point that we identity religion to be an institution, instead of it being a set of beliefs which propose to teach us how to live our lives. The belief "there is a god" is a religious belief, but the implications of such a belief would lead to other beliefs such as "I believe there is a heaven" or "I believe in reincarnation", and such beliefs in turn strongly affect the way we choose what actions we do in our lives. Note that according to this definition, all individuals have a religion, because all individuals have a worldview.

A rejoinder is that we may choose to declare ourselves a certain religion (because we were "born into" the religion), but we find that we don't really believe in what that religion says. Then my response is simple, your declared faith has little to do with what your real "faith" is, i.e. what are the set of inner-most beliefs which govern your daily behavior in life. For some religious people, their inner-most set of beliefs align very closely to the tenets of the institutionalised religion, but others align less closely. Many (most?) of us don't subscribe to a religious institution, so our religion/worlview is just based on what we have experienced, learnt and reasoned in life so far. Which, no surprise, varies greatly from person to person. In fact, I believe each and every one of us has a unique worldview. Each and every one of us have a unique "library" of sensory experience, and it is from this store of sensory experience which we derive our beliefs, and our worldview.

Now, here is the really important point I wish to make. Most (all?) of our beliefs, are assumptions. Take the belief "there is a god". A good number of people believe that to be true. But there is no way to know for sure, if there is a god. Incidentally, there is also no way to know for sure if there is no god (atheists might disagree with me here). At best, we have varying degrees of confidence in the belief of the existence (or non-existence) of a god. And therefore it remains an assumption. Take the belief that 'there is someone behind the door when you hear the bell'. You usually would not doubt such a belief. But there is no way you know for sure, if there is indeed someone who is behind the door. Perhaps it is a monkey who pressed the bell, perhaps there was a technical fault with the electronics of the device. There is no way you can know for sure, but you assume anyway. In fact, those of us familiar with Descartes or The Matrix, will know, almost everything we know and assumed to be true, could possibly been untrue. There is no way to know for sure.

To conclude, I want to separate different uses of the term "religion". The definition of "religion" which I am interested in, and which I believe is most pertinent when it comes to intellectual discourse, is that one's religion is one's worldview. A set of beliefs, including assertions about how we ought to live our life. I also claim that religion has a functional purpose. That religion is a necessary part of our life, or else we would have no intentional motivations, and we would fail to do anything, except perhaps to satisfy our desires (some people claim this is all we do anyway, but to deny that is a separate argument altogether). Lastly, I claim most of the set of beliefs which make up our worldview (and our religion) are assumptions. They may be beliefs we believe very strongly in, or believes that we have strong reason to believe in, but they are not beliefs which we can know for sure to be true.

moral realism

Firstly, if it is not at all obvious by now, I am not particularly interested (at the moment at least) in arguing for or against the propositions: "homosexuality is unnatural" or "homosexuality is immoral". My own views on the ethics of homosexuality will emerge later as I describe my attempt to outline a framework of ethical discourse which I think would be useful, especially among two very differing points of view.

If you (especially if you subscribe to Christian ethics) have read my previous post (short discussion on christian ethics and homosexuality), you might disagree with me when I said 'Christian ethics don't apply to individuals who do not believe in the assumptions of Christianity', and your rebuttal might something along the lines of: 'according to Christian ethics, if God says it is wrong, it is wrong period. It's rightness or wrongness does not depend on whether or not you believe it to be right or wrong."

To better explain my point, I need to explain an important distinction of moral philosophy: the difference between moral relativism, and moral realism. Moral relativism, casually explained, is basically 'what is right for me is what I believe to be right, what is right for you is what you believe to be right.' If you are a moral relativist, you believe that there is no absolute right or wrong; what is right or wrong depends totally on your personal beliefs. Moral realism, on the other hand, is precisely the opposite. A moral realist believes that "true morality" exists, whatever it is, and it applies to all humans, regardless of what each individual may believe.

When I said 'Christian ethics don't apply to individuals who do not believe in the assumptions of Christianity', I was NOT making a morally relativistic statement. That means, I was NOT saying: 'Christian ethics only works for Christians. You cannot judge a non-Christian to be immoral (even if you are a Christian) because non-Christians do not subscribe to Christian ethics.'

What I WAS saying is this: since many non-Christians do not believe in the existence of God, they therefore would not believe in Christian ethics, and as a result any moral discourse which appeals to Christian beliefs will not be very productive or successful. I was making a claim about how people with different conceptions (beliefs) of ethics and morality will have a very difficult time talking to each other. I was NOT making a claim about whether it is not justified or incorrect for a Christian to apply Christian ethics to non-Christians (I will talk more about this later).

Take the assertion 'Homosexuality is immoral because it is unnatural" as an example. If your concept of "unnatural" is based on religious conceptions on what is natural or not, then when you try and talk to someone who does not share those religious conceptions, then you will very likely not have a very useful discussion (this usually results in insults, name-calling, and anything but what we call civil discourse).

The point that I've taken so many words to make so far may seem quite "duh", but it is quite important for me to lay this point clearly, for I will be attempting to argue for a possible platform of discourse where you can talk meaningfully to another party who does not share the same ethical beliefs, yet at the same time not abandoning your own (such as for example, Christians talking to homosexuals), and without resulting to insulting and name-calling.

short discussion on christian ethics and homosexuality

Since I started it with my previous post, I will continue to discuss a little bit more about the ethics of homosexuality, especially with regards to Christianity. Setting the screwball argument aside, let me revisit this structure for the argument "homosexuality is unnatural, hence immoral":

Premise [1]: Homosexuality is unnatural
Premise [2]: Whatever is unnatural, must be immoral
hence, conclusion [C]: Homosexuality is immoral.

If one subscribes to Christian ethics, one might unpack premise [2] further, into something like this:

Premise [3]: Whatever is unnatural, is not from the intended design of God.
Premise [4]: Whatever is not the intended design of God, it is evil/immoral/sinful.

Now, I believe this is a gross over-simplification of Christian ethics, and is not quite the response a sophisticated Christian theologian would supply to the "Christianity vs Homosexuality" debate, but I think for purposes of this post, it will suffice.

Now supposing, (and a very big "supposing"), this is around the arena why Christians think homosexuality is immoral. One obvious implication from the formulation of this argument is the conclusion [C] cannot stand if one denies the existence of a God, or believes in the existence of a God but denies either premise [3] or premise [4] (or both).

That also means, atheists, agnostics, and basically anyone who is not Christian, Muslim or Jew, would probably fall in the category of "this argument does not work for me". My point is simple (although I've made a big detour in making it): Christian ethics don't apply to individuals who do not believe in the assumptions of Christianity. And that also means, a moral conclusion (such as "homosexuality is immoral") derived from Christian ethics (assuming it is so derived), also does not apply to these individuals.

The question is then, how then should Christians and non-Christians interact when it comes to such ethical controversies? If we declare, "Christian ethics only apply to Christians" and ignore them completely, would we not be guilty of oppressing and marginalizing Christians? Yet, if we make law (criminalizing homosexuality) based assumptions and postulations which don't apply to the certain groups of individuals, are we not oppressing and marginalizing those individuals instead?

This is only a short primer. I'm planning to blog about a more complex idea where Christians and homosexuals (or non-Christians, for that matter) can have a platform of discourse, and yet not compromise their own ethical beliefs. That idea will need to be rolled out in stages though, and I will blog about them separately, but soon.