CA Family Council

I’m telling my sons that Cornell exposes the poverty of a sexual ethic built almost entirely around consent. We have told young people that sex can be easily detached from marriage, permanence, fidelity, children, responsibility, even love, and that as long as everyone says yes, the encounter is morally legitimate. That leaves women with an impoverished set of categories afterward. If a sexual experience leaves her feeling ashamed, degraded, used, or disgusted, our culture gives her very little language for saying: I consented, but it was still wrong. I participated in something that was bad for me. Instead, the options increasingly become: it was liberation, or it was rape. But there is a third category: consensual sexual behavior can still be degrading, exploitative, reckless, and morally destructive. Consent matters because sexual coercion or assault is a grave violation of another person. No man has the right to force himself on a woman, exploit her impairment or incapacity, or use her body against her will. But the absence of coercion/assault does not make a sexual act good. Consent establishes a floor, not a moral vision. It tells us when a boundary has been violated; it cannot tell us what sex is for, where it belongs, or what men and women owe one another before, during, and after it. Marriage can. Marriage does not treat sex as a free-floating act whose morality is determined only by whether two people consent in the moment. It reserves sex for a specific context because sex is powerful, consequential, and sacred. Before the sexual act, a man and woman stand before their families, their community, and God and make a public, lifelong commitment to one another. That commitment gives sex its proper purpose, perspective, and protection. Sex then becomes not merely something two people agree to do, but the bodily expression of a covenant they have already made: fidelity, permanence, mutual obligation, and openness to the children their union can create. That framework asks much more of a man than, “Did she say yes?” It asks: Have you promised yourself to her? Will you remain faithful to her? Will you accept responsibility for the children sex may create? Will you still be there tomorrow, next year, and fifty years from now? Marriage offers a richer sexual ethic. It says consent is necessary, but it is not enough. Sex belongs inside a covenant strong enough to bear its meaning, its potential, its vulnerability, and its consequences. That is what I want my sons to understand. The goal is not merely to become men who can secure consent. It is to become men worthy of making, and keeping, the kind of promise that gives sex its proper home.