Is premarital sex immoral?

[DC Al Fine]

I'm surprised at how well Yes is polling with left leaning posters. This seems like the sort of stance that makes one right wing by default.

[DC Al Fine]

Yes, very much so (leftist, abnormal).

is not focused on enough by Evangelicals

well that part's just simply not true

Ehh, I always found that the purity ring types were more of a loud minority than actually representative of the median Evangelical congregation. Could be wrong though.

Yes but since I'm in Atlas I don't have to worry about any of that.

Yes but since I'm in Atlas I don't have to worry about any of that.

Heh

[DC Al Fine]

Perhaps moral foundations theory is a better way to communicate what I mean than "libertarian"/non-"libertarian". It's in any case not obvious to me that all sex that isn't a serious felony can be assumed to be moral, although right now isn't the best time to explain why not since I'm supposed to be at work.

Agreed here. Much of our society has failed to distinguish between immoral and "should be banned", even though the distinction ought to be relatively simple.

[DC Al Fine]

For those of you who said “yes” in answer to the OP, what are your thoughts?

My thoughts are that believing that something is immoral does not automatically mean wanting it legally prohibited and punished as a federal sex crime (literally sane).

I'd even agree here.  I don't think premarital sex should be illegal, even though I find it deeply immoral.

Yes, immoral =/= illegal

[DC Al Fine]

So, outside of the potential to produce children out of wedlock, are there any secular grounds for declaring premarital sex immoral?

I've heard utilitarian arguments for it. That's still related to potential offspring, but its not exclusively about that. People with low partner counts (especially virgins) before the wedding night tend to have higher rates of marriage satisfaction and lower divorce rates, and there is some evidence that this isn't entirely driven by religion.

The notion that socially conservative moral views can't be arrived at without the assistance of religion seems rather dubious to me*. 21st century social liberalism tends to prioritize consent and indivdual choice over other other concerns, in a way that most moral systems, even secular ones like utilitarianism and the categorical imperative don't.

Coming from outside that moral system, the cultural blinders are fairly obvious. This view seems to take certain social liberal assumptions as self evident, when that is not the case.

* I don't know whether you actually believe that Crabcake, but it comes up enough on Atlas, that I thought it was worth dealing with either way.

[DC Al Fine]

So, outside of the potential to produce children out of wedlock, are there any secular grounds for declaring premarital sex immoral?

I've heard utilitarian arguments for it. That's still related to potential offspring, but its not exclusively about that. People with low partner counts (especially virgins) before the wedding night tend to have higher rates of marriage satisfaction and lower divorce rates, and there is some evidence that this isn't entirely driven by religion.

The notion that socially conservative moral views can't be arrived at without the assistance of religion seems rather dubious to me*. 21st century social liberalism tends to prioritize consent and indivdual choice over other other concerns, in a way that most moral systems, even secular ones like utilitarianism and the categorical imperative don't.

Coming from outside that moral system, the cultural blinders are fairly obvious. This view seems to take certain social liberal assumptions as self evident, when that is not the case.

* I don't know whether you actually believe that Crabcake, but it comes up enough on Atlas, that I thought it was worth dealing with either way.

I don't buy this notion by the way. For that matter, I don't buy the concept of "social conservatism" in general - I reject the two axes model of political affiliation as a cartoonish abstraction that is no better (imho slightly worse) than the left-right dichotomy of old. The reason I specifically asked for secular arguments is that I don't personally have a religious framework to my views. Don't mind if people do, but if I'm going to be seriously debating about whether something is immoral, it will be a very short debate unless I can find an argument that stands outside of religious law.

I also don't buy that utilitarian argument. Partially because in general I dislike utilitarian reasoning, which often strikes me as arbitrary and subjective judgements that masquerade as hard mathematical reasoning. But also I find it treating people as representatives of a statistical data set is very dark, when you break things down. For example, there is evidence that mixed racial marriages break down at a higher rate than marriages between the same race. Does that make miscegenation immoral?

I'm not a utilitarian either Crabcake. You asked for a secular argument for premarital sex being immoral and I gave an example.

Why don't you tell me your moral presuppositions or basis for your ethics and I can tell you if there are any arguments basee on them?

[DC Al Fine]

So, outside of the potential to produce children out of wedlock, are there any secular grounds for declaring premarital sex immoral?

I've heard utilitarian arguments for it. That's still related to potential offspring, but its not exclusively about that. People with low partner counts (especially virgins) before the wedding night tend to have higher rates of marriage satisfaction and lower divorce rates, and there is some evidence that this isn't entirely driven by religion.

The notion that socially conservative moral views can't be arrived at without the assistance of religion seems rather dubious to me*. 21st century social liberalism tends to prioritize consent and indivdual choice over other other concerns, in a way that most moral systems, even secular ones like utilitarianism and the categorical imperative don't.

Coming from outside that moral system, the cultural blinders are fairly obvious. This view seems to take certain social liberal assumptions as self evident, when that is not the case.

* I don't know whether you actually believe that Crabcake, but it comes up enough on Atlas, that I thought it was worth dealing with either way.

I don't buy this notion by the way. For that matter, I don't buy the concept of "social conservatism" in general - I reject the two axes model of political affiliation as a cartoonish abstraction that is no better (imho slightly worse) than the left-right dichotomy of old. The reason I specifically asked for secular arguments is that I don't personally have a religious framework to my views. Don't mind if people do, but if I'm going to be seriously debating about whether something is immoral, it will be a very short debate unless I can find an argument that stands outside of religious law.

I also don't buy that utilitarian argument. Partially because in general I dislike utilitarian reasoning, which often strikes me as arbitrary and subjective judgements that masquerade as hard mathematical reasoning. But also I find it treating people as representatives of a statistical data set is very dark, when you break things down. For example, there is evidence that mixed racial marriages break down at a higher rate than marriages between the same race. Does that make miscegenation immoral?

Apart from consequentialism, what secular arguments could there be justifying the existence of any institution?

Secular agnostic anti-utilitarian here, so I think I can take this one. There are many schools of secular moral thought that don't involve a heuristic of utility-maximization. It's harder to say they're not "consequentialist", because honestly "consequentialism" is a meaningless buzzword rather than a coherent philosophy, and basically every moral framework from Divine Command Theory to Kantian deontology to Benthamite utilitarianism can be said to focus on a certain kind of consequences.

The moral framework I subscribe to, virtue ethics, justifies the existence of political institutions as necessary to shepherd people toward living a good life. It's the whole foundation of Aristotle's Politics, one of the founding texts on Western political philosophy. And while Aristotle was full of sh*t in a lot of ways, this is one of the parts of his thought that really holds up IMO.

How do you determine what the virtues are?