Ethics

Ethics Study Guide

Chapter 10: Social and Personal Issues

©2018 Achieve Page 73 of 116 , Plato writes about how opposite-sex sex acts cause pleasure by nature, while same-sex sexuality is unnatural. In Book Eight he considers how to have legislation banning illegitimate procreative sex, homosexual acts, and masturbation accepted by society. St. Thomas Aquinas St. Thomas Aquinas compared the sexuality of humans to that of other mammals and concluded that what is natural in human sexuality is the desire to engage in heterosexual coitus. He believes that heterosexual coitus was designed by the Christian God to preserve the species; therefore heterosexual coitus is the natural expression of human sexual nature. He believed the penis was designed by God to implant sperm in a woman’s vagina for procreation, and any deviation from this was a violation of God’s design and unnatural. Therefore, activities such as masturbation, homosexual sex, or fellatio were deemed immoral offenses. Aquinas’ criterion for natural is based on the belief that God designed us only to have sexual contact for purposes of procreation. Objectives After reading this chapter, you should be able to: 1. Understand the various contemporary views of equality and discrimination. 2. Comprehend Pineau’s communication-based model of sexual interaction. 3. Conceptualize English’s ideas of obligations between parents and children. 4. Compare other ideas related to sexual ethics. 10.1 Friendship In her famous essay What do Grown Children Owe Their Parents? , Jane English argues that there are things that adult children ought to do for their parents, but they do not owe them anything. She characterized friendship not by reciprocity, but by mutuality. She states friends accept what they need and offer what they can give. Friends should not be motivated by gain, but by affection. When friendships end, the duties of friendship also end and any past unrequested sacrifices should not be considered debts. Therefore, the relationship between parents and adult children should be one of friendship. Parental sacrifices should not be motivated by mutual gain and do not result in debt that children must pay as adults. 10.2 Natural Law and Sex Plato In Laws