Is sex-for-sex's sake a new cult? -Aug 16, 2006

By Theo Hobson

When it was recently alleged that George Michael had been cruising on Hampstead Heath, the singer reacted with defiance: why shouldn't he? It was a valid lifestyle choice, he protested. Many liberal voices have agreed. In the Observer newspaper, an academic explained that cruising was an integral part of urban gay culture.

Why does cruising repel me? Does it mean that I am homophobic? No. It repels me for the same reason that straight swingers' clubs repel me, and the straight use of prostitutes repels me, and straight promiscuity repels me. The defenders of anonymous sex will reply that my reaction is prudish, outdated, moralistic. We are just being honest, they will say: it is simply a fact that many people enjoy having sex with strangers. It is often called "no-strings" sex - there is no pretence that a relationship will ensue. It is the mere satisfaction of an appetite. If both parties are consenting adults, what is immoral about this?

It is a good question: it must be answered with care. The pursuit of anonymous sex denies that sex and love are joined. It denies that the proper use of sexuality is in the expression of emotional intimacy, the sealing of the strongest of all chosen human bonds. It therefore damages the tradition called sexual love; the tradition that celebrates sexual fidelity between couples.

It will be responded that different traditions of sexuality can co-exist - fidelity for some, cruising and swinging for others. Why should those who opt for the former condemn anonymous sex? Again, this is a good question. The answer is that there is necessarily a conflict between the ideal of fidelity and the urge to infidelity. It goes on in almost every human heart. The ideal of sexual fidelity is a delicate flower. It is always threatened by the other definition of sex - as the satisfaction of an appetite. In a sense this latter definition is more realistic. Sexuality is an anarchic force. It is natural to seek to gratify one's lust. It is therefore natural to separate sex from loving fidelity.

Because the tradition of sexual love goes against our animal nature, it involves struggle - against the anarchy of sexual hedonism. It declares that sexuality must be tamed, ordered. It necessarily rejects and condemns its dangerous shadow-side. This was obviously a basic part of Christian tradition, whose ruins we inhabit. It was also a basic part of Freud's teaching: he held that civilization depends on sexual repression.

But the effect of his work was to associate repression with dishonesty, and sexual anarchism with liberation. He failed to provide a new positive story about the necessity of repression. He had wanted to update the old narrative of sexuality, to move it from myth to science. But in practice he helped to destroy it, to launch a new myth of sexual liberation. We are therefore without a decent secular account of the need to order the anarchy of sexual desire, to subdue lust to love.

Almost all of our culture colludes in the childish pretence that sex is just about fun, harmless self-expression. I am not just talking about pop culture and advertising (women faking orgasm as they shampoo their hair). Intellectual culture conspires, principally through not daring to tackle the issue. Our brave pundits are terrified of being thought moralistic prudes, so they back off, and let the myth of sex-as-harmless-fun flourish. The trend is only challenged by a few feminists, and a few religious conservatives: marginal figures. The mainstream response is a worldly-wise ironic shrug. It is common for young-ish intellectual-ish types such as David Baddiel to display their frank acceptance of pornography, to treat it as a perfectly valid cultural form. This is deemed a sign of moral maturity; liberation from a judgemental mindset. The worst thing to be, in our strange culture, is a prude.

We need a new idiom of sexual morality. We must learn to tell the complex truth: that the celebration of anonymous sex, and of pornography, is a threat to the precious tradition of sexual love.

This is not just about censure, the expression of disapproval. We must also develop a new culture of celebration; we must regain confidence in the tradition of sexual love. This sounds odd, for we assume that sexual love just happens, that it needs no cultural effort to promote it. This is a false assumption: lust is natural, but sexual love is a complex tradition that needs nurturing, guarding. It is a cultural construct that must always be re-constructed. We must tell the right stories, celebrate the right models, upbuild this supremely benign myth, the best tradition in human history. We must be more culturally careful if we want our children to know how to fall in love.

And that entails condemning the cult of sex-for-sex's sake. You can condemn something without wanting it banned. I do not want pornography or prostitution to be banned. But I do want a culture that is more honest about the threat to its moral ecology, that frowns on anonymous sex, that dares to say that promiscuity is the death of love.

Theo Hobson is a freelance writer and theologian. His books include Against Establishment: An Anglican Polemic and Anarchy, Church and Utopia: Rowan Williams on the Church.

Strong reactions to this article are being expressed on the Guardian’s ‘comment is free’ website, where it first appeared.