Preface: How This Book Is Organized and How to Use It

History of the Text

Sexual Ethics: An Anthology is an accessible and provocative collection of readings on conceptual, ethical, and policy issues about sex. Designed for students, teachers, and anyone interested in exploring one of the major moral topics of our times, this collection avoids jargon and obscurity in favor of clear, straightforward discussion, covering a wide array of cases from all sides. It is intended to provoke thought, generate discussion, and analytically clarify the definitions, arguments, assumptions, and options of our personal, public, and political treatment of sex.

Unlike many books, which make their way from author to publisher to classroom, this anthology made the trip the other way around. It started in a classroom and then made its way to the publishing house. Now it's coming full circle. Toward the end of the first decade of the 2000s, when I was revamping my department's offerings and putting several applied ethics courses into rotation, I decided to teach a stand-alone course on sexual ethics. Such a course made sense, seeing as how sex was a major moral issue in society, every bit as controversial and publicly debated as medicine, business, and the environment. I assumed, then, that there would be textbooks on sexual ethics, focused on practical problems and organized in the same ways the medical ethics, business ethics, engineering ethics, and environmental ethics books on my shelves were. To my surprise, I found none. There were excellent books on the philosophy of sex and while those included some applied moral and policy articles, they focused mainly on conceptual, ontological, and epistemological issues. There were also quite a few books from particular sectarian perspectives whose aims were largely about doctrinal clarification or religious training. There were also various books on feminist theory and gender studies, which tended to center on conceptual, historical, and theoretical concerns, often using abstruse vocabulary. Finally, there were anthologies on very specific issues, such as entire books on sexual harassment law. While all useful for their purposes, these books did not address the needs of a wide-ranging, non-sectarian, accessible, applied ethics course. So, I created my own reader from the sizable literature on sexual ethics. When the class was a success, I decided to turn that reader into a book anyone could use. This is that book.

Purpose of the Text

Applied ethics courses have been popular on college campuses for years. Delving into subjects from medicine to business to law to technology to the environment, they tap into an interest and a need people have to talk about, think about, write about, and hopefully learn about issues that grip our moral consciousness as well as our legislatures. Somewhat surprisingly, given the popularity of medical, business, and environmental ethics, sexual ethics courses are less common even though society seems seized at times with debate over sex and sexuality. The public controversies over gay marriage, pornography, premarital sex, sexual harassment, and adultery, just to name a few, have been as prominent and intense as those about abortion, healthcare costs, corporate misconduct, climate change, and endangered species. There could be several reasons why this is case. Perhaps it is because we are still embarrassed to talk about issues that feel as personal as sex, whether from a puritan inheritance or from a worry that others will think we must be talking about ourselves. Perhaps it is because the very act of talking about sex is sometimes part of a moral controversy itself - as with sexual harassment - and teachers worry that some discussions might be interpreted as inappropriate. Perhaps it is because sex is the area in which humans are both most literally and uncomfortably similar to animals - driven by the same powerful instinctual physical desires of beasts rutting in the field - and most anxiously and distancingly different from animals - driven to interpret, judge, and question those desires. Whatever the case, we seem to find it easier to talk about euthanasia than homosexuality in the classroom - although oddly, we seem to find much more talk about homosexuality in the media than euthanasia.

One way to address this asymmetry between public controversy and classroom discussion is to recognize that the passions and euphemisms and furor in public debates over sex should be taken seriously and can be discussed clearly, analytically, explicitly, and respectfully. A book that clearly labels sexual ethics as an academic and policy area worthy of focused, practical, attention can help with that.

Organization of the Text

This book is organized into three levels. The first level is a set of broad categories of concepts that shape various specific issues. For example, the concept of consent is crucial in analyzing the morality and legality of numerous sexual acts. Therefore, the broad category of consent and coercion is the rubric under which issues of sexual harassment, rape, and cognitive maturity are grouped. The second level is a set of applied framing questions that situate the broader conceptual problems with reference to specific issues. These questions do not exhaust the moral terrain but focus on the way the concepts work in real-world moral and legal decisions. For example, under the broad category of marriage and fidelity, one framing question asks whether purely online romances should count as adultery. The third level is the set of articles themselves, arguing for one conclusion over another, one judgment over another, and one policy over another. For example, under the broad category of homosexuality and policy, and under the framing question of how we should assess attempts to change sexual orientation, one legal brief argues that "conversion therapy" should be criminalized as malpractice and another argues that it is justified by the right of the therapist to free speech.

With any text like this, the editor has a painful time selecting material. There are often so many good articles on a topic, sometimes only a few good articles on an important topic, and always far too many topics to cover at all. There are hard decisions then, as to what to cover and what to leave for another day. Inevitably, some readers will be disappointed that a topic or article important to them is left out. That is entirely understandable, but limitations of space preclude covering all that would be useful. In choosing the articles for this book, then, I had to decide what selection criteria would guide me. I chose topics I considered to be major issues, but "major" was interpreted in two ways. In one sense, "major" meant "amount of controversy in society." Using that criterion, gay marriage had to be included since it has recently been a monumental cultural focus at the level of individual, city, state, nation, legislature, and supreme court. Interracial marriage, though controversial in its own time and important to look at for the history of sexual ethics, was left out because it currently engenders little public outcry. In another sense, however, "major" meant "getting at the conceptual heart of sexual ethics." Using that criterion, the medical treatment of intersexed infants is included, even though it is a rare condition, and the moral analysis of pedophilia is included, even though there is hardly any public demand for decriminalizing sex with children.

Instructional Benefits of the Text

Having been created in the classroom, for college and law students of all levels and all majors, this book has been deliberately designed to be as user-friendly as possible, always in reference to what makes a text most useful for students, teachers, or anyone who wants a clear direction of where to go and a clear explanation of what to expect. The goal has essentially been to create a ready-to-go course. The specific user-friendly design elements include:

1. Categorization: The book is divided into six broad categories that emphasize how conceptual issues shape debates (Consent, Marriage, Homosexuality, Transgender, Commerce, Paraphilia) with a short introduction to the topic at the beginning of the section.
2. Framing Questions: Each major section of the book includes specific framing questions that address a major moral or policy issue, not to limit the issues but to show how various concepts are employed in real-world cases (e.g., How should we define rape? Should we legalize gay marriage? Should pornography be protected as free speech?).
3. Introduction: The book begins with a concise introductory chapter on concepts and definitions of sex, sexuality, and sexual ethics that brings theoretical issues into clear view, providing the philosophical and scientific background for discussing the readings and explicitly showing how these conceptual issues have direct practical application. For example, definitions of sex are not just intellectual puzzles - definitions legally determine whether or not rape has occurred and thus determine whether or not someone goes to prison. The chapter includes recent empirical research on how people define sex and sexuality and recent empirical research on the moral psychology of emotional reactions to sexual issues.
4. Discussion Starters: Each of the three sections in the introductory chapter (what is sex? what is sexuality? what is sexual ethics?) begins with 5 discussion starters, geared toward getting a...