Whatever happened to purity? Pt1

Peter Van Der Merwe, writing about conservative music critics who thunder about the decline of values makes an interesting point in favour of these outmoded figures:

It is easy to laugh at [these] remarks, now that the object of his fury has safely receded into the past. But the really interesting thing about them, the thing that makes them worth quoting, is that fundamentally he is right. His denunciations, like those of many conservative critics, are more informative than the bland enthusiasms of the followers of fashion.

There is a new study (note this link will download a PDF) out by the Guttmacher Institute about premarital sex and the use of contraception.They are, in this scenario, the bland followers of fashion. And then there is Michael J New who takes the time to criticize teh study. He is the conservative critic who is more informative.

How is he more informative? Well New spots right away that the real issue is not, as that data assembled by Guttmacher clearly shows,  "that regardless of faith tradition, most women both use artificial contraception and engage in premarital sexual activity". No, the big change, as New notes (and, from his perspective, the big danger) is that this activity is becoming normalized. Just about everyone has always sinned sexually, the change in recent years has been the normalization of this.

And I use the word "sinned" advisedly here. If we think back to the Monica Lewinsky scandal, the defence offered by Clinton's supporters was not that what what he had done was okay. Everyone agreed (or pretended to agree for the sake of public discussion) that he should have not cheated on his wife with an office intern. What they defended was that he had lied about it. Everyone, they said, lies about sex.

I've been on about self love this week and this is a good example of why it matters so much in moral life. Consider two women who regularly attend mass at a Catholic church. Both have given into their desires to have sex even though they are not married. One, however, tortures herself with guilt while the other says to herself, "Everyone lies about sex." Neither contests the church teaching that sex outside marriage is a sin, the difference is in how they feel about themselves for sinning this way.  One values purity and therefore misses it when lost. The other puts no value on purity and therefore feels no real reason to stop loving herself even if she feels at some level that she ought not to be having sex.

And thus we can see how very informative Michael J New's response to the Guttmacher study is. His challenge is not to challenge the data. he doesn't even try. His challenge is to prove that there is still a normative group (or an ought-to-be-normative group) who do not believe that everyone lies about sex. And his response here is worth quoting at length:

To Guttmacher’s credit, this study is a bit more nuanced than other studies that analyze religion and sexual activity. Instead of simply comparing the behavior of people who adhere to various faiths, the Guttmacher study actually considers frequency of church attendance. Here they do find some differences. Never-married women who attend church services once a week are considerably less likely to have ever had sex than those who attend less frequently. Similarly, never-married women who report that religion is very important in their daily lives are less likely to have engaged in sexual activity.

However, the study could have been more nuanced. First, the authors analyze neither the contraceptive usage nor the sexual activity of women who attend church more than once a week. 

And you can see his problem both in a telling admission and a desperate response to that telling admission. The telling admission is here:

Never-married women who attend church services once a week are considerably less likely to have ever had sex than those who attend less frequently.

It's that "less likely"  that gives the game away. If we consult the study itself we learn that 48% of never-married women between the ages of 51 to 44 who report going to church at least once a week are sexually active. That's a staggering number. Particularly when you consider the full implications of the "never-married" qualification and the age range here. A lot of those now not-active girls in their teens will undoubtedly become active before marrying. This tells us that purity has anemic normative power even among women who go to church every week.

And so the desperation move that the study ought to have considered women who attend church more than once a week. No doubt the numbers would be lower. I suspect that if we analyzed only women who go to mass every single day and who are nuns, the numbers would be lower still. And this would prove what?

And this is even worse:

Furthermore, this study fails to draw a distinction between sexual activity and sexual intercourse. Previous research indicates that some women who state that they have engaged in sexual activity have never actually engaged in intercourse.

Pardon me for thinking that Michael J New doesn't normally think its a good thing that teenage girls are wanting to give and receive oral sex. According to strict Catholic teaching, this is actually worse because fellatio is, among other things, contraceptive in intent.

And it ought to trouble New a lot more than it does that there is an implicit assumption here that the issue really only matters when applied to women.

What has disappeared here is the value of purity. It used to be a safe assumption that people cared about being pure. In matters sexual it was assumed that women at least would feel shame if their secret  behaviours did not at least aspire to some kind of purity. That is no longer the case.

The really odd thing here is the absolute impotence of moralists such as Michael J New to do anything about it. What did they misjudge if their ideas no longer have that much sway even among women who go to church weekly? That's a subject for Friday.