Sexual Ethics in College Textbooks: A Suggestion

Abstract

This paper responds to a survey of 10 sexuality textbooks that revealed pervasive uncertainty about the nature of sexual ethics and inconsistency about the role of social scientists vis-à-vis ethics. To help bring more consistency to the textbook offerings and to argue the legitimacy of including scientifically based ethical judgments in sexuality textbooks, this paper invokes the long-standing Western tradition of natural law theory, which holds that adherence to, or violations of, the inherent requirements of healthy and wholesome collective human functioning are the essential meaning of right and wrong, good and evil. Proposing an empirically grounded tripartite model of the human (organism, psyche, and spirit), this approach clarifies the nature of human sexuality and specifies the interpersonal as the determinative consideration. The overall suggestion is that, on such a philosophical basis and in cases where research findings approach a consensus, not only can sexologists qua sexologists responsibly say what ought or ought not to be done sexually—that is, they can make ethical judgments—but also, as a matter of professional responsibility, they are ethically bound to do so and to report such judgments in the sexuality textbooks.