I am having an affair with a married man who is my coworker. I did not begin the affair, he pursued me. His wife does not know. I feel guilty about it but I am in love with him. He says that he loves me but that he also loves his wife because although she is abusive and he feels no attraction to her she was there for him when he was very ill two years ago. Are my actions unethical? If she doesn't know and I am truly in love with him is it okay? Are his actions more unethical than mine?

What is this question, the confession of a character in Desperate Housewives ? Glad to serve as your priest, or shrink: (1) "I am having an affair with a married man who ismy coworker. I did not begin the affair, he pursued me." What does this matter, that "he pursued me," if you ended up in bed together? Why mention something irrelevant? I suspect because it might not be true; you are engaging in rationalizing exculpation ("it's not my doing!") to evade responsibility. Are you conveniently forgetting or suppressing your attempts (either conscious or unconscious) to get him interested? Men very often approach only a woman who has already sent them subtle inviting messages. You ask, at the end , "Are his actions more unethical than mine?" This, too, suggests, that you are concerned with apportioning responsibility. ("He's worse than I am!") (2) "His wife doesnot know." How do you know this? Because he told you that he didn't tell her? Maybe he's lying. (He's...

My girlfriend likes to hang out with some people at our school who like to call themselves whores, sluts, and the like. They will sit around and say things like "Gee, you're such a slut! Don't give me that look, I'm just a whore as well!" They also don’t care when other people refer to them in the same manner. This kind of talk really bothers me; I find it insulting, demeaning, and distasteful. It has only been leveled at me once before I told them not to include me in it, and they have honored my request. The thing is, I just find it downright impolite, and it drives me crazy to hear them talk like that. It is not at all an accurate description of any of them, they just do it for the hell of it, I guess. Now, my question is, am I being too sensitive? It has nothing to do with me directly, but it still bothers me and makes me feel uncomfortable. I just do not see the need to be like that at all, it just seems pointless and demeaning. Do I have the right to feel so strongly about it and be hurt that my...

Let's see if I got this right. Your GF and her GFs call themselves "sluts," and this bothers you, because you find it demeaning, etc., yet "slut," you say, "is not at all an accurate description of any of them." Well, what if it were? What if they often partied in the football team locker room? Would you find their behavior, and not merely the word, demeaning to themselves? My guess if that if you think the word is demeaning, then you also think the behavior is demeaning. That, I submit, is your mistake.

I can just about fathom how Catholics consider the early 'termination' of an embryo or a foetus murder but the birth control dictate flummoxes me. They can't seriously be suggesting that every spermatozoa exists for the sole purpose of impregnating a women and that denying them access to the uterus is a sin. This has to be a very bizarre and damaging interpretation of Biblical Scripture and not one shared by other Christian sects. Orgasms are genetically encoded to further the survival of a species. The fun element is a plus but reproduction is not the be all and end all - monkeys and people would not masturbate otherwise. And wouldn't involuntary nocturnal emissions by male Catholic celibates suggest this is just a natural thing, independent of religious strictures? Is there any justification for such a belief beyond the Bible and is such a belief at all tenable in philosophical terms?

Instead of my rehearsing the arguments surrounding the Catholic prohibition of contraception (and its permitting, contrary to the teachings of St. Augustine, "natural family planning"), allow me to send you to the literature you should read to get a handle on the philosophical and theological issues. If you want to focus only on the 20th Century (bypassing Clement of Alexandria, Augustine, and St. Thomas Aquinas), you have to start with Pope Pius XI, "On Christian Marriage" ("Casti connubii"), Catholic Mind 29, 2 (1931): 21–64. Then read Pope Paul VI, "Humanae Vitae," Catholic Mind 66 (September 1968): 35–48; reprinted (pp. 167–83) in Robert Baker and Frederick Elliston, eds., Philosophy and Sex , 2nd edition (Buffalo, N.Y.: Prometheus, 1984). For criticism of Paul VI's encyclical, see (originally from Ethics ), Carl Cohen, "Sex, Birth Control, and Human Life," in Robert Baker and Frederick Elliston, eds., Philosophy and Sex , 2nd edition (Buffalo, N.Y.: Prometheus, 1984), pp. 185–99....

This question is about the moral obligation involved in a loving relationship. Assuming one has been in a loving relationship for a long period of time, (however, there are no attachments such as children or marriage), is it morally obligatory to tell this loved person if one has flirted/cheated slightly? Thank you.

In what follows, I ignore "flirting," perhaps merely arbitrarily, because flirting is ubiquitous and seems too innocuous for a serious moral investigation; others might well disagree, and I ask them kindly to fill in the lacuna(e) in my reply. (Perhaps this question and its replies can be added to the "Sex" category of the web site.) I don't know what you mean by "cheated slightly ." We could have (there have been) many arguments, philosophical, theological, and polemical, over what counts as "cheating" and what doesn't, and what moral significance cheating of various types or degrees has. If only we could establish a continuum from tiny cheating to huge cheating.... To my ear, "I cheated [but only] slightly" sounds like an excuse someone might use to get off the moral hook (Clinton), hoping for a generous and sympathetic reply from the other person (he in effect got one from Hilary). As an older sister once said to her just-starting-college female sibling (in a full-page advertisement for a...

When discussing whether Homosexuality is morally right or morally wrong, I've always argued that if we allow homosexuality then we would have to allow incest as well. Before arriving to this conclusion I first looked at the various arguments defending homosexuality which mainly consisted of the following: 1) It's consensual (with the exception of rape); 2) It doesn't harm anyone; and 3) It's a matter of love (i.e., we should have the right to be with whomever we love). Now my reasoning is this: All three of those arguments could be used to defend incest! Imagine a father who becomes sexually involved with his 20-year old daughter. Both would be consenting, they are not harming anyone, and they presumably have some type of attraction towards each other. My question is if my argument is a good one or am I missing something?

You might be interested in reading Innocent Blood by P.D. James. Some conservative sexual theorists would agree with your reasoning and use it as the reductio of the view that homosexuality is permissible (indeed, they might use it to criticize liberal sexual ethics altogether). A libertarian, and some liberals, would also agree with your reasoning, and accept the conclusion that incest, under certain conditions, would be permissible. Your point (3), by the way, is largely irrelevant, if you continue to frame it in terms of "love." Homosexual acts need not be justified in terms of their coming from or expressing love. Moral rights to self-determination (e.g., making decisions about how to conduct a satisfying sex life) seem enough. You could try to block the move from homosexuality to incest by invoking possible harms, but that might not be strong enough, especially because the harms would presumably be "self-regarding" (and few liberals accept moral paternalism). You raise a good question, and...

Could you tell me, what are the main problems in modern ethics of sex?

One thing you can do is to scroll down the list of panelists, and when you come to a dude named "Alan Soble," click on the arrow to the left of his name (not on the name itself, since all hell will break loose if you do that). Almost all the questions answered by this panelist have to do with sex, many with sexual ethics. If you are slightly more ambitious, you might go to his encyclopedia entry at http://www.iep.utm.edu/s/sexualit.htm or, if you are more than slightly ambitious, you might read his essay "The Fundamentals of the Philosophy of Sex," which is in his book The Philosophy of Sex , 4th edition only (Rowman, 2002), or even the entirety of his reader-friendly book, The Philosophy of Sex and Love: An Introduction (Paragon House, 1998). Your question admits of such a long answer that it is impossible to answer it here without a panelist's other obligations (moral, political, sexual, occupational) suffering a great deal. And, after all, sex is not all that important. As Marcus Aurelius...

In Western culture, polygamy is generally considered immoral. Is there sufficient justification for this classification? Can it honestly be said that polygamy is wrong? I don't only mean one man/many wives but all the various possible arrangements of multiple partners, for instance one woman/multiple husbands, multiple husbands/multiple wives, etc.... There are some economic advantages to multiple adult partners living together. Take for example a situation where a man has two wives. The man works and so does one of the women. You now have a dual income household. The second woman does not work, but instead stays home and cares for any children and housekeeping duties. What would normally fall on one woman (working, housekeeping and child-rearing) is divided between two. It is assumed that all parties are consenting adults who consider themselves equal to one another. This has the added advantage of reducing the child day care costs so often frustrating for households with just two parents who...

You might want to consult question #341 on this web site. There I wrote, in response to the obverse question, "Why monogamy?", the following wiseacre answer that, nevertheless, contains some truth [which answer I have mildly revised, since it was first written on November 3, 2005]: Here are some standard replies to the question "Why monogamy?" (some worse than others): (1) Why not? [Vy a duck?] (2) Monogamy reduces your chances of contracting an STD; polygamy implies that you must trust more than one spouse or mate to be sexually faithful and to practice safe sex effectively if not faithful. (3) Monogamy is better than polygamy because you barely have enough time and energy and money for one relationship, let alone two. [Woody Allen: You want an orgy ? We can barely get 4 people together for bridge or bowling.] But: it is not necessarily true that it is more difficult to get along with 2 or 3 or 4 spouses in one dwelling than with only 1. The presence of the other spouse(s) may very well...

Hello, I would like to ask a question about ethics involved when nudity is permitted in public places. I live in Sydney, Australia. At one of the most popular beaches here (which hosts tens of thousands of people per day and is freely available to anyone who wishes to go there), a man was arrested and fined $500. This was punishment because he had been on the beach with a camera, surreptitiously photographing women who were lying on the sand, with no tops on. He was discreet such that almost none knew at the time that he had photographed them - after they apprehended him, police went around with his camera, identifying people and approaching them with the images in hand. Many people using this beach choose to sunbathe disrobed, of their own free will. The man admitted that his actions were intended to further his own sexual gratification. Although I think the man's behaviour was in poor taste, using others as mere means to his own selfish ends, on consideration I cannot see why it should be held...

This is not exactly a "sex" question. I think it belongs under "law": what are the proper limits of the law in prohibiting behavior; what is the relationship between law and morality (bad taste, indecency); what are the various senses of "privacy" and how should the law handle violations of privacy? There are indeed many entires in the "law" area of this web site that speak to these questions. One problem I have with the question is that it does not state the law (statute) under which the man was prosecuted. Does Sydney have an explicit law that prohibits the use of photographic equipment on beaches where there is nude sunbathing? If so, why? Or was some other law invoked to prosecute this fellow? (Public nuisance? Environmental hazard?) I once lived, many years ago, in Austin, Texas; in the town there was [still is?] a large pool, Barton Springs, at which women were permitted to be topless. Men would gather around or outside the pool and watch/look/leer and take pictures. No one, as far as I know, was...

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