If we as human beings have legitimate sexual needs and not just drives or desires, then it's understandable that within a lawful marriage, people feel entitled to sexual favors or services and even demand them: in fact, that is inescapable within a religion that restricts sexual relations to marriage. The comments in response to the Matthew Stearmer essay I'm looking at show interesting examples of this, and I take them as corroborating witnesses that religious cultures construct sexual needs as well as secular cultures.
Jewish law considers sexual relations a wife's basic right, which the husband is obligated to provide. There are even rules for how often he must provide it, and if he doesn't it can be grounds for divorce. Following Stearmer's argument, Jewish marriage law thus “removes the potential for open and honest communication which is the hallmark of a unified celestial marriage,” not to mention the traditional Christian marriage according to the traditional interpretations of Ephesians 5: 22-33: "Wives, submit yourselves unto your own husbands" etc.
We can object that Paul's instruction to wives to be subject to their husbands is "as unto the Lord" - in the same way that the Church is subject to Christ, and that therefore in this ideal, a husband will invite his wife to come unto him and find rest, and make sure that he gives her an easy yoke and a light burden. But it has been most easy for husbands to stick with a paraphrase of John 15:14: “thou art my wife if thou dost whatsoever I command thee,” without considering the bit about “Henceforth I call you not servants.” Cherry-picking scriptures is a venerable practice, and Mormons continue to be champions at it.
Our radical new ideas of marriage as an equal partnership founded on respect and open, honest communication between a man and a woman would have horrified the learned men of the Enlightenment. Horace Walpole called Mary Wollstonecraft "a hyena in petticoats" after she published her Vindication of the Rights of Woman, most of whose ideas seem so mainstream now. If you haven't read it, you should. It's good. I used to have a nice Penguin Classics edition but I think I lost it. Maybe I should get it in Dover Thrift.
Jewish law considers sexual relations a wife's basic right, which the husband is obligated to provide. There are even rules for how often he must provide it, and if he doesn't it can be grounds for divorce. Following Stearmer's argument, Jewish marriage law thus “removes the potential for open and honest communication which is the hallmark of a unified celestial marriage,” not to mention the traditional Christian marriage according to the traditional interpretations of Ephesians 5: 22-33: "Wives, submit yourselves unto your own husbands" etc.
We can object that Paul's instruction to wives to be subject to their husbands is "as unto the Lord" - in the same way that the Church is subject to Christ, and that therefore in this ideal, a husband will invite his wife to come unto him and find rest, and make sure that he gives her an easy yoke and a light burden. But it has been most easy for husbands to stick with a paraphrase of John 15:14: “thou art my wife if thou dost whatsoever I command thee,” without considering the bit about “Henceforth I call you not servants.” Cherry-picking scriptures is a venerable practice, and Mormons continue to be champions at it.
Our radical new ideas of marriage as an equal partnership founded on respect and open, honest communication between a man and a woman would have horrified the learned men of the Enlightenment. Horace Walpole called Mary Wollstonecraft "a hyena in petticoats" after she published her Vindication of the Rights of Woman, most of whose ideas seem so mainstream now. If you haven't read it, you should. It's good. I used to have a nice Penguin Classics edition but I think I lost it. Maybe I should get it in Dover Thrift.
Traditional marriage practices are corrosive to the goal of unity as our new perspective understands it. I feel that this cannot be emphasized enough: traditional marriage practices are against Celestial ideals as we have come to understand them.
Traditional marriage practices, of course, do make sexual relations a duty: to fulfill the other's (generally the husband's) needs. Stearmer's right in saying that it's disrespectful to women to teach them that they're responsible for fulfilling their husbands' sexual needs, but he seems to part company with other voices from the Big Bad World who say the same thing.
After all, if I have sexual needs and can demand their fulfillment from a lawfully-wedded spouse, then I can also demand the right to serve my needs with other people, of the opposite or the same sex. I can assert that today's more permissive culture allows me to meet my legitimate needs in mutually respectful ways with other consenting parties, whether within a marriage of more modern definition or without.
So Stearmer goes beyond the common church argument of "sex is a need but only for marriage" to seemingly try to remove all excuses for any kind of behavior that goes outside of the Law of Chastity. And how neat it seems: none of us have any excuse, especially not gay people.
Traditional marriage practices, of course, do make sexual relations a duty: to fulfill the other's (generally the husband's) needs. Stearmer's right in saying that it's disrespectful to women to teach them that they're responsible for fulfilling their husbands' sexual needs, but he seems to part company with other voices from the Big Bad World who say the same thing.
After all, if I have sexual needs and can demand their fulfillment from a lawfully-wedded spouse, then I can also demand the right to serve my needs with other people, of the opposite or the same sex. I can assert that today's more permissive culture allows me to meet my legitimate needs in mutually respectful ways with other consenting parties, whether within a marriage of more modern definition or without.
So Stearmer goes beyond the common church argument of "sex is a need but only for marriage" to seemingly try to remove all excuses for any kind of behavior that goes outside of the Law of Chastity. And how neat it seems: none of us have any excuse, especially not gay people.