I’m fairly sure that someone in old age would be happier having had various sexual relations that may never have lasted as far as they would have liked, than have spent their whole life waiting for the one that never came.

One only has to look at the literature from the 19th Century to see how true that was - the bitter old maid was a sexist cliche, but I’m sure there was plenty of truth in it (except of course there were just as bitter old single men), those who never got married never even got the compensation of passing sexual relations.

This statement gets right to the heart of the matter. For many people, being told what to do by a cultural and social elite or a body of text and interpretation begins and ends the question of morality and ethics. I have such a hard time getting my head around this point of view but it’s out there and it’s in control of many important portions of our society and government.

A excellent article in the most recent issue of the UU quarterly magazine encapsulated this problem in the context of liberal religious denominations (which struck home for me as I also grew up downstate).

Picture it like this: Imagine society as a giant maze, with success as a prize at the end. Some people are born right by the exit. Others start in more difficult places. They can’t just wander out. They have to make all the right moves.

From a God’s-eye view, those are great questions. But if you’re inside the maze, that mind-set won’t get you out. Why does this maze have to be so hard? Why does that wall have to be there? Why can’t I have a clear path to the prize? It doesn’t help. No matter how good those questions are objectively, if I’m so deep in the maze that I seriously doubt I’ll ever get out, I don’t need them in my head.

http://www.uuworld.org/ideas/articles/36467.shtml

And if we’re going to go into the bigger picture, where we’re talking about health AND happiness, perhaps a simple “sexual health and happiness do not hinge upon marriage/marital status?”

Of course, when we say those simple statements, we have to go nuts proving otherwise, because that simply is so tough for anyone reared in such a pro-marital culture. And of course, it irks me to no end that we even have things defined as marital/pre-marital/extramarital in the first place.

And Jill? Just a bug ol’ yep to everything you said. The irony, of course, is that somehow, our incapable-of-rational thought youth, who apparently can’t handle the intricacies of sex CAN somehow handle the intricacies of marriage, which includes sex.

“perpetuating this fuckery” = awesome. thanks, jill.

i would love get my frame on and distill this swarm of issues down to a couple of coherent concepts. how can you say “marriage doesn’t make sex safer or better” without using the negative phrasing? “marriage is irrelevant to sexual health?” “marriage is a useless sex safety strategy?”

I find that very frustrating because one thing I see over and over again at ST is people trying very hard to make good choices but being hampered by ignorance. It’s really hard to set firm boundaries for sex when you believed you’ve crossed some inviolable cultural line just by having sex in the first place.

Treating teens and young adults as if they can’t think for themselves and denying them all the information they need to make an informed decision is turning out to be incredibly destructive but the abstinence only folks carry on as if they can’t see the harm they’re causing. I get the impression they truly can’t see how they and their programs are contributing to the problem and instead view it as a failure on the part of their students to follow the teachings. That perceived failure seems to reinforce the perceived incompetence, perpetuating this fuckery.

At 23 it’s hard for me to understand that people might not remember being my age or younger, to the point where they think we’re all mostly helpless and unable to run any aspect of our lives. At what point in that mindset do young adults become full-fledged people, deemed able to take care of themselves? Does marriage cure that too?