The Joys of Sex

Over the past four years, under President Bush’s leadership, two sex-related subjects have been making headlines on a regular basis. The first is same-sex marriage, and the second has lately slipped into the background: abstinence-only [sex] education. Other than both being examples of the government regulating our sexual knowledge and behavior, they are also both issues that raise questions about why we marry in the first place. In a day and age in which, like all days and ages, individuals have sex with people of all genders and at a variety of ages, what remains so enticing about marriage? And what are the perks for those who marry young?

One sure incentive is that the institution of marriage holds a high and celebrated position in American society. Smiling billboards of married couples, television sitcoms, children’s books: The ideal is promoted everywhere. Another reason, though, has less to do with glossy images and more to do with sex. If you observe religious prohibitions on premarital sex, the postponement of sexual activity until marriage sure is a good reason to run with your differently-gendered would-be lover to the religious institution of your choice as soon as possible.

Same-sex marriage aside, how does abstinence-only education relate to “the most enduring human institution” (that’s Bush’s way of referring to marriage)? Well, if our getting it on were celebrated without the ceremony, the mortgage and the lifetime commitment, we would probably all but stop running to the altar. I never thought I’d say it, but I think the Bush administration has got at least this one thing right: If my communities are any indication, I’d conclude that the more accepted premarital sexual relationships are, the later and less likely couples are to get married. Where Bush and I differ, however, is on the interpretation of that likelihood. I think it’s great; Bush doesn’t.

I’m also not terribly enthused—though I am rather amused—by the implications of that truism. What it means is that the more religious among us are likely to be in officially-condoned sexual relationships at an earlier age than the secular. Maybe it’s just my own frustration speaking here, but isn’t there something…wrong with that? If one of the driving forces behind the postponement of sex until marriage is that sex is risky, powerful and potentially sacred territory, then in some ways it makes more sense to encourage sexual activity before tying the knot. Being that sexual desire is associated with shame and distraction, than why not encourage our young people to demystify it, to integrate it into their lives and not choose a long-term partner based on sexual curiosity?

As I learned at my high school classmate’s Orthodox Jewish wedding this summer, the prohibition of premarital sex can be a driving force towards marriage. If Becca and Michael had traveled in my college circles, they likely would have been no strangers to midnight treks up Garden Street and “sleeping” through morning classes. They didn’t travel in my circles, though, and inside sources tell me that they weren’t familiar with such scenarios. If they were, who knows if they would have gotten married? I certainly couldn’t say for certain, but I have a hunch they wouldn’t. At least not now.

And at the age of 21, I think that’s perfectly fine. In fact, I think it’s great: Why should the fact of mutual heterosexual desire mean that we should all run for “authorization” (Dick Cheney’s term from Tuesday’s debate)? A better way to preserve the “sanctity of marriage” (Bush’s words) would be to distinguish a lifelong emotional, personal, financial commitment from sexual curiosity and desire. An unintended consequence of marriages like my former classmate’s is that young folks are making life-altering decisions largely informed by sexual desire. And as millions of people can testify, desire waxes and wanes and can point us in what we later realize to have been downright ridiculous directions. So why should unrealized sexual desire be a legitimate motivation for marriage?

The irony is that religious/sexual conservatives get to be in condoned sexual relationships years before more secular and modern religious types. What a bizarre axis of further division. In fact, celebrated and sanctioned sexuality might be one department in which biological determinism has something going for it: The existence of religious young people’s physical desires might be swept under the rug but the wedding plans dance highly visibly atop. At the same time, the less traditionally religious folks among us can choose to either ignore their hormones or take the so-called “ungodly” path. And well, my currently chaste status not withstanding, the path of least religion (at least in my sex life) sounds good to me.

Ilana J. Sichel ’05 is a literature concentrator in Dudley House. Her column appears on alternate Fridays.