A Reliable Sexual Ethic

In the aftermath of the recent Bill Cosby verdicts, I heard a piece of a conversation between a women’s advocate and a talk show host. He voiced an observation that I have heard so many times, regarding so many sexual assaults, and from so many sources that it has begun to sound cliché. Somehow, crimes of this sort are not about sex, but about power.

I am always left scratching my head. No one would mistake the host I reference for being progressive. He is one of the most politically conservative voices on radio and television. So, trust me when I say this is not a political rant so much as a theological one. How are Cosby’s crimes, as well as other forms of rape, NOT about sex? I can see where power may factor into the overall anatomy of such an offense, as a means to an end. Still, these are, first and foremost, sexual offenses, and such offenders are sexual predators and deviants, even the once beloved Cosby.

If this seems like a distinction without a difference, bear with me. From where does this tendency to emphasize power abuse over sexual deviation come? Could it be that it is awkward to speak of the latter because “sexual deviation” demands the starting point of “a sexual standard,” and that defining such a standard is uncomfortable? After all, it seems that everyone these days is entitled to define his or her own sexual standard. That anything goes between “consenting adults” seems to be the one I hear most often.

Even in these days of shifting standards, there would probably be consensus that Cosby’s acts are deviant. Still, it is easier (and intellectually lazier) to couch the issue in terms of power, because any discussion of “deviancy” demands that we also define “normalcy.” Intuitively, people know that establishing such a starting point would be a hopelessly arbitrary endeavor unless it was already established for us.

For the Christian, there is only standard, that is, one normalcy:

¹⁸Then the Lord God said, “It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him a helper fit for him” … ²¹So the Lord God caused a deep sleep to fall upon the man, and while he slept took one of his ribs and closed up its place with flesh.²²And the rib that the Lord God had taken from the man he made into a woman and brought her to the man. ²³Then the man said,

“This at last is bone of my bones
            and flesh of my flesh;
she shall be called Woman,

because she was taken out of Man.”

²⁴Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and they shall become one flesh.  – Genesis 2:18, 21-24

One male, one female, one new and enduring monogamous union; This is the standard of normalcy away from which everything else must be labelled “deviation.” Obviously, human beings have been moving this ancient boundary stone almost since the moment it was laid, but that only means that most moderns live by no standard at all. After all, a standard is not a standard if it can be altered tomorrow so as to accommodate some new movement, some new societal wind, some new lust, some new emotion, or some new circumstance. Like the ancient Hebrews in the days of the Judges, we think we are free to do what seems right in our own eyes.

The wheels in my head began to muse over this topic months ago, not because of Cosby, but because of the so-called “Me Too” movement. (My wife warned me about chiming-in. Words and motives are so easily misunderstood.) Allow me to make this disclaimer preemptively: What I am about to say has nothing to do with forcible rape, actions against a child or impaired person, or antics such as Cosby’s. These things incense, and in some instances, enrage me.

With that disclaimer out of the way, I must confess that I cannot get wound up by every claim of “victimization” that has surfaced recently. I recall the use of such terms as “the casting couch” and “sleeping one’s way to the top.” These phrases, often accompanied by a wink, implied a willingness on the part of a female to participate in an improper encounter so as to advance her own career. That does not absolve the man in power - that creepy producer, executive, politician, etc. He remains the same deviant cad most of us agree that he is. He may very well have abused his power as a means to his decadent end. But, if a woman chooses to pay such a price so as to achieve what she wants for herself, she has also relied on his power as a means to fulfilling her own dreams. She has consented to place her own ambition ahead of her chastity. She is no victim, and to claim such a status trivializes real victimhood regarding authentic sexual crimes.

Again, to couch these matters in terms of power rescues all of us from being placed in that awkward position of asserting a standard, from which sexual deviancy can be defined. But, none of these obfuscations will do any of us any good when the Judge of the World shines His light upon the issue. God’s people must pursue purity in all such matters, even the ones the world refuses to condemn.