Challenging Collective Religious/Social Beliefs About Sex, Marriage, and Family

Abstract

Some religious thinkers and organizations commonly back up their conclusions about sexual morality with myths that are not supported by history or by the majority of Americans. The word myth, as used here, is defined by Webster's Encyclopedic Unabridged Dictionary as “an unproved collective belief that is accepted uncritically and is used to justify a social institution,” such as a sexual value system. Using an established philosophical distinction between sexual values derived from a fixed worldview (cosmology or Weltanschauung) and from a process worldview, the history of sexuality in the Judaic and Christian traditions, and current sociological data, the author challenges the validity of five myths associated with what is commonly proclaimed as “traditional American religious values.” These beliefs focus on the moral unacceptability of premarital sexual relationships; divorce and remarriage; alternatives to sexually exclusive marriage; abortion, Mifepristone (RU 486), and embryonic stem-cell research; and the dissociation of procreation and sexual intercourse. The validity of these uncritically accepted collective beliefs is examined and refuted with data from the history of sexual values in Western religious traditions and with current data on Euro-American sexual behavior.