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PaperclipPerfector  5mo ago (text post)   32836 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of May 26, 2025

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Christianity was different in that it put restrictions on male sexuality, as well as female sexuality. Now there was a new standard for men to live up to.

Matthew 5: 27 “You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall not commit adultery.’ 28 But I say to you that everyone who looks at a woman with lustful intent has already committed adultery with her in his heart."

Matthew 19: 3 And Pharisees came up to him and tested him by asking, “Is it lawful to divorce one's wife for any cause?” 4 He answered, “Have you not read that he who created them from the beginning made them male and female, 5 and said, ‘Therefore a man shall leave his father and his mother and hold fast to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh’? 6 So they are no longer two but one flesh. What therefore God has joined together, let not man separate.” 7 They said to him, “Why then did Moses command one to give a certificate of divorce and to send her away?” 8 He said to them, “Because of your hardness of heart Moses allowed you to divorce your wives, but from the beginning it was not so. 9 And I say to you: whoever divorces his wife, except for sexual immorality, and marries another, commits adultery."

1 Timothy: 3 The saying is trustworthy: If anyone aspires to the office of overseer, he desires a noble task. 2 Therefore an overseer must be above reproach, the husband of one wife, sober-minded, self-controlled, respectable, hospitable, able to teach, 3 not a drunkard, not violent but gentle, not quarrelsome, not a lover of money.

...12 Let deacons each be the husband of one wife, managing their children and their own households well. 13 For those who serve well as deacons gain a good standing for themselves and also great confidence in the faith that is in Christ Jesus.

1 Corinthians 7: Now concerning the matters about which you wrote: “It is good for a man not to have sexual relations with a woman.” 2 But because of the temptation to sexual immorality, each man should have his own wife and each woman her own husband. 3 The husband should give to his wife her conjugal rights, and likewise the wife to her husband. 4 For the wife does not have authority over her own body, but the husband does. Likewise the husband does not have authority over his own body, but the wife does. 5 Do not deprive one another, except perhaps by agreement for a limited time, that you may devote yourselves to prayer; but then come together again, so that Satan may not tempt you because of your lack of self-control.

...10 To the married I give this charge (not I, but the Lord): the wife should not separate from her husband 11 (but if she does, she should remain unmarried or else be reconciled to her husband), and the husband should not divorce his wife."

So men must be as chaste as women; no whoring around, no mistresses, no divorce-remarry-divorce-remarry, no casual sex.

I do not think Abrahamism and Christianity in particular is special in regulating the sexuality of both sexes. There's plenty of other moral doctrines that do. It may do it more or in different ways, but the proposition that one sex had total dominion on the other at any point in history except in times of rape and pillage is highly dubious.

But Christianity, as per those quotes from Scripture, put the same limitations on men. For Judaism (and Islam afterwards) divorce was the right of a man, easier for him to obtain, and the divorced woman was left in a parlous position. The Classical world at the time of early Christianity, such as Rome, had no qualms about men divorcing and remarrying multiple times. Polygamy may have been tolerated culturally in some societies, ease of sexual access for men was unquestioned (legal prostitution, mistresses, etc.)

Christianity came along and said no. One wife. No mistresses. Wives have the same right of sexual access to their husbands as husbands have to their wives. No sleeping around before/within marriage. No prostitution. No divorce.

Now, did Christians live up to that code? Of course not. But as a change from the prevailing attitudes, it was incredible. Even the stories of martyrs, like St Perpetua, defying the traditional authority of father and husband and family were amazing new changes in the status and freedom of women.

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