Chapter 1 Pro-“Sexual Abstinence Before Marriage” Discourses in US History

Sexual abstinence before marriage can seem, at first sight, a necessary requirement of our forefathers’ sexual lives. The absence of reliable contraception and the ideal of the virginity of the bride to guarantee the legitimacy of her husband’s offspring were reason enough to desire it. However, what were pro-abstinence before marriage discourses concerned with in the past? By whom were they formulated? At whom were they targeted, and why? At which point was sexuality considered legitimate? This historical chapter will attempt to answer these questions in order to situate contemporary discourses on abstinence in their historical context, and to underline the similarities they share with, as well as the ways in which they differ from previous discourses on this issue.

1. Lifelong Abstinence vs. Abstinence Before Marriage The requirement of abstinence is strongly grounded in religion, therefore it is important to distinguish between the two different types of sexual abstinence present in the Christian tradition: lifelong celibacy and premarital abstinence. The crucial difference between those two types of celibacies lies in their respective relationship to the concept of family. Whereas, as this book underlines, premarital abstinence reasserts the necessity of marriage and family, lifelong celibacy, on the contrary, questions it. Lifelong celibacy, which is still demanded from the Catholic clergy, reflects the traditional catholic vision that sexuality is innately sinful and that even within marriage it draws the believer away from God. Since early Christianity, sexuality has been seen as a link to the earthly realm that needed to be renounced to achieve spiritual immortality. As feminist theologian Rosemary Radford Ruether explains in her work Christianity and the Making of the Modern Family,

[t]he renunciation of sex was seen as a key expression of world renunciation, but not necessarily because sex was the most urgent need of the body; for many monks, hunger, the craving of the belly, was a more insistent bodily demand, and less easy to control. Rather, sex tied a person to marriage and family […]. Through sex and marriage, “the world” as a social system of power and possessions was reproduced. To renounce marriage was to renounce that 2 Pro-“Sexual Abstinence Before Marriage” Discourses in US History ______“world” in all its social, economic, and political implications.1 Early Christianity, with its demand for lifelong celibacy, was consequently very much anti-family and privileged the spiritual bonding of Christian brotherhood over “blood” ties. It thus erased social and ethnic differences, which made it a deeply subversive movement. A telling example of this potential can be found in the lives of numerous female saints who were supported by other Christians in refusing the marriages forced on them by their families in order to answer their spiritual calling and join a religious community.2 Later on, female religious communities would also provide women with a significant sphere of power and freedom; however, they would also be used to alienate them. With the spread of Christianity, the subversive elements of the Christian message were significantly weakened. As for celibacy, it lost its equalising dimension and began to be used to enforce hierarchic differences in the community with its institutionalisation by the clergy. The celibate clergy was thus asserted as standing higher on the spiritual scale than its non-abstinent parishioners. Yet as Radford Ruether underlines, though channelled by the Church, this higher status of celibate priesthood would continue to carry (up to the present day in Catholic communities) the subversive “anti-family” message “that marriage is a second-class choice for Christians. Those who aspire to perfection should renounce sex, marriage, and reproduction for a chaste single life.”3 The Reformation staunchly opposed this vision of sexual abstinence. Still inscribing himself in the Augustinian tradition that saw sexuality as necessarily sinful after the Fall, Luther nevertheless condemned lifelong celibacy. Radford Ruether states his position on the issue as follow:

For Luther, marriage had been given to men and women by God in Paradise as the basic unit of society for companionship and procreation. Since the Fall, all - that is, all men - had been affected with sinful lust. Thus the celibate ideal was both wrong and impossible, as it went against both created and fallen nature. All should marry because God’s intention from the beginning had been to unite men and women in marital union and bid them to procreate. Almost all must marry because the lustful urges that had arisen from the Fall could be contained without sin only in marriage. Without marriage, lust would quickly lead to fornication for all but an exceptional few (again, men) who could be celibate without falling into sexual sin.4

She further explains that Luther saw the celibate ideal as “an insult to God”, who had intended men and women to live together and procreate, and could