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Is anyone of the opinion that even honest, non-coercive casual sex is immoral, for secular reasons? I think I share a common preference among men that I’d rarely pass up on a hookup with an attractive woman but would probably not date a woman long-term who has slept around too much (“too much” is probably decided on a case-by-case basis and there are other factors involved). I can see how that’s hypocritical in one sense. And according to my own value system, I’m denigrating the value of women I have no long-term intentions with but other men with my shared preferences might. But a certain libertarian perspective also says “whatever is honest, legal, and uncoerced is ethical” and men (including me, probably) will just have to learn to settle later in life for women with a higher body count than they deem acceptable.
While I can't quite bring myself to call casual sex immoral, I can definitely stand on terming it anti-social and/or degenerative to society.
First, two major starting assumptions:
(1) The reasons people commit murder in all non-nomadic societies across epochs can be roughly grouped into three broad areas: Money / resources, social standing or prestige, and sexual partner access or exclusivity.
(2) The Judeo-Christian theory of marriage, which has strongly influenced secular marriage laws in western societies, is concerned with regulating sexual activity to ensure more couples are starting more families instead of a very, very few percentage of men impregnating everyone, leaving much of their progeny to fend for themselves and, if the local community is small enough, getting to really thorny issues around incest and inbreeding in just a few generations. Long term monogamous pair bonding that produces above replacement level births is the best way in humans have come up with for building long lasting societies that persist over multiple centuries if not longer.
Any personal sexual strategy that ignores the first assumption (why murder?) and is directly in opposition to the second (marriage is good and we should be marriage-like even if we aren't doing the vows/ring/contract thing) is degenerative at the societal level even if it is well managed at the individual level. I think a really useful analogy is hard drugs like heroin or even cocaine. Why isn't there a sincere decriminalization / legalization movement for those drugs the way there is/was one for marijuana? Is it so hard to imagine people "responsibly" using cocaine / heroin in the privacy of their own homes? Sure, if they use it and then go out and engage in other behavior that's illegal or antisocial, we arrest them for that secondary behavior. But what's so wrong with just the use itself?
Well, the standard argument (that I agree with) goes "it's just far too high of a risk that even infrequent use of cocaine and heroin will result in extremely damaging behaviors." This doesn't even touch on the much stronger risk of addiction and the secondary degenerative behaviors that go towards supporting an addiction.
Sex is extremely powerful and therefore poses some real risk - again - at the aggregate societal level. There are certainly people out there who can find casual sex partners who understand that they are casual sex partners and both parties (or more than two if you're into that ;-) ) can leave the experience feeling fine. But, in my estimation, the vast majority of society cannot, especially over repeated trials. This brings up one important additional point related to body count.
Hyping female virginity is odd in a society with technology that allows us to determine paternal identity. No one who recommends low body county for women says this (in the West) because "how do we figure out who the kid's dad is?!?" No, the argument - often poorly formed - is that there is something suspicious about a woman who sleeps around with multiple guys even if both she and those guys are up front about the casual nature of the relationship. She is seen as somehow less valuable because of these repeated liaisons. Let's throw in a trope (because culture wars are fun) that our hypothetical female in this scenario also has some trendy tattoos, several piercings, and rotates through hair-dying phases. Why is this woman both often so compelling yet so reviled? Risk. She is signaling her high risk tolerance - preference even. Well, why is that bad? People are allowed to make their own risk assessments of their partners. True, but an overall higher risk tolerant society, especially at the point of family creation, will start to see higher base levels of instability. This doesn't guarantee fast and radical demise of the society as a whole, but it can absolutely raise the base levels of violent interpersonal conflict.
(A quick aside: Substitute in a Andrew Tate kind of fellow bedding random models at will for the female in our above scenario if you like - I don't think the responsibility in casual sex is anything other than equal across sexes).
So, what to do about casual sex in a society that now absolutely condones and even actively supports it? The first and obvious answer is to simply reject it. I'm not saying "virgin until marriage" but I am saying serial monogamy (with relationships lasting in several months) or celibacy / masturbation. In terms of finding a good partner, explicitly ask them about things like body count, perspectives on casual sex etc. If they adhere to the default line of "people shouldn't be judged on their sexual history!" well ... you have your answer, don't you?
From a policy level, I'd love to see massive bonuses for earlier family formation and marriage (i.e. you get huge tax incentives to get married and procreate before 30) ... however, I feel like this is legally really hard to do and would get into a whole strong of Supreme Court cases. There are more intelligent legal minds on The Motte who can comment. A general trend to support more sexual modesty would help, but that's not going to happen. Structured dating is something I'm sort of optimistic on. There's a tacit acknowledgement that the big dating apps create a tyranny of choices for women, and a desert/starvation feedback loop for most men. I've (anecdotally) seen a trend back towards social-group expansion dating where women won't go out with someone who has been "endorsed" by a friend. This also carries with it the added friction of not wanting to be that girl/guy in the friend group who just bounces around from bed to bed. (A fun question to ask related to this is "Sure, people shouldn't be judged on their sexual histories ... how many friends do you have who are avowed sluts / cocksmen?")
Wrapping up where I started, because casual sex can be consensual in a way that murder/rape/theft cannot be, I don't think I can quite file it under "IMMORAL.That's a paddlin" but I think it's fair to say that regular casual-sex-havers are probably not who we want to model all of society on and should be viewed as a sort of 1970s swingers kind of eccentric or outcast.
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