Appropriate Vulnerability:
A Sexual Ethic for Singles
KAREN LEBACQZ
A LL OF US spend our first years single. Most of us
spend our last years single. As adults, we are single
by circumstance or by deliberate choice. Given these sim-
ple facts, it is surprising how little attention and how
precious little support the churches have given to
singleness (except for the monastic tradition, with its very
particular demands and charisms). The scriptural witness
on singleness is virtually ignored, despite the fact that
Jesus never married and Paul preferred singleness.
Throughout history, churches have simply assumed that
marriage is the norm for Christians.
Single sexuality, when it is discussed at all, falls under
the category of "premarital sex." Churches clearly ex-
pect that those who are single will get married and that
those who have been married and are now single through
divorce or widowhood will simply disappear into the
closet until they marry again. The slogan recently adopted
by the United Methodist Church might stand as a sum-
mary of the traditional Christian view of sexuality:
"celibacy in singleness, fidelity in marriage."
A new ethic for single sexuality is needed, for the tradi-
tion that requires celibacy in singleness is not adequate.
This situation does not mean that anything goes or that
the church has nothing to offer by way of a positive ethic
for single people. The task is to thread our way between
two views of sexuality: the "old testament" or "thou
shalt not" approach exemplified by much of church tradi-
tion, and the "new testament" or "thou shalt" approach
evident in much of our current culture.
Dr. Lebacqz is professor of Christian ethics at Pacific
School of Religion, Berkeley, California.
May 6, 1987
The "old testament" or legalistic approach to single
sexuality is well summed up in a delightful limerick by
Joseph Fletcher (in Moral Responsibility: Situation Ethics
at Work [Westminster, 1967], p. 88):
There was a young lady name Wilde
Who kept herself quite undefiled
by thinking of Jesus
and social diseases
And the fear of having a child.
The "thou shalt not" ethic was characterized by fear-
fear of pregnancy and venereal disease—and by a series
of "don'ts": don't have sex, don't take pleasure in it
(at least, not if you are a woman) and don't talk about
it. As the limerick suggests, sexual involvement was
regarded as "defiling." "Bad girls" and "good girls"
were defined according to their willingness to be sexual
or not. There was no discussion of the sexuality of di-
vorced or widowed men and women, and gay men and
lesbian women simply stayed in the closet.
With the advent of the so-called "sexual revolution"
and the birth control pill, fear of pregnancy was gone.
After the "thou shalt not" of Christian tradition, we en
countered the * 'thou shalt'' of contemporary culture. Here,
"love" was all that counted. Women were "liberated"
and virginity was redefined as ' 'bad.'' Now people talked
about sex all the time, with everyone. Far from being
defiling, sexual involvement was regarded as mandatory.
Sex was supposed to be pleasurable, and "how-to" man-
uals abounded. Finally, everyone knew how—but had
forgotten why. In short, fear was replaced by pressure-
pressure to engage in sex, to do it right, to enjoy it, and
435
to let the world know how much and how well you were
doing it.
The result is a clash often internalized into a "Catch
22." In the wonderfully perceptive comic strip Cathy,
Cathy Guisewite captures the confusion of many. As the
almost-but-not-quite-liberated "Cathy" is getting dressed
to go out on a date, she reflects: "I'm wearing the
'heirloom lace' of my grandmother's generation . . . with
the conscience of my mother's generation . . . coping
with the morals of my generation . . . No matter what
I do tonight, I'm going to offend myself."
Neither the legalistic approach of earlier Christian
morality nor the permissive approach of contemporary
culture provides a satisfactory sexual ethic for singles.
And without a good sexual ethic for singles, there can-
not be a good sexual ethic for couples either,
C AN WE construct a positive, Christian sexual ethic
for single people? I think so. Let us begin with
Christian tradition, which affirms that sex is a gift from
God. It is to be used within the boundaries of God's pur-
poses. As part of God's creation, sex is good. Like all
of creation, however, it is tainted by the fall, and
therefore becomes distorted in human history. It needs
redemption. Such redemption is achieved by using sex-
uality in accordance with God's purposes and through
God's grace.
The two redeeming purposes of sexuality have always
been understood as procreation and union. With these
purposes in mind, Christian tradition maintained that mar-
riage was the proper context for sex, since it was the
proper context for raising children and for achieving a
true union. Catholics have tended to stress procreation
as the primary purpose while Protestants have stressed
union, but both agree on the fundamental purposes of
sexual expression.
This tradition has had enormous practical implications
for singles. The tradition condemns all genital sexual ex-
pression outside marriage, on the assumption that it
violates the procreative and unitive purposes of sexuali-
ty. Nongenital sexual expression is also suspect, because
it is thought to lead inexorably to genital expression.
Given such a view of sexuality, it is difficult for single
people to claim their sexuality or to develop a positive
ethic for that sexuality.
Standards within both Catholic and Protestant tradi-
tions have recently loosened, but there has been no fun-
damental challenge to this basic paradigm. Today, some
Catholics and most Protestants accept "preceremonial"
sex between responsible and committed adults. (Paul
Ramsey argues that this is marriage in the moral sense.
See his "On Taking Sexual Responsibility Seriously
Enough," in Gibson Winter, editor, Social Ethics
[Harper & Row, 1968], p. 45 ff.) Both traditions have
moved toward affirming union as primary, while still
upholding the importance of procreation. The meaning
of the two fundamental purposes has been expanded by
replacing the term "procreative" with "creative" and
436
the term "unitive" with "integrative." (See Catholic
Theological Society of America, Human Sexuality: New
Directions in American Catholic Thought [Paulist Press,
1977], p. 86.) Thus, there is some acceptance of non-
marital sexual expression, provided it is in the context
of deep interpersonal commitment.
But however important such revisions may be, they do
not really accept sexuality outside marriage. Single sex-
uality is still difficult to claim. Neither Catholic nor Prot-
estant tradition provides a totally satisfactory explana-
tion of why sexuality should be fully expressed only in
marriage or in a "preceremonial" relationship that will
eventuate in marriage. Both traditions still uphold mar-
riage as the ideal, but give no satisfactory reasons for
that ideal.
I accept part of the method that has led to the tradi-
tional interpretation, but wish to offer an additional in-
sight into the nature of sexuality that might provide a
fuller appreciation of the ethical context in which sex-
uality is expressed. I agree with the traditional under-
standing that sex is a gift from God to be used within
the confines of God's purposes. However, I would add
to the traditional purposes of union and procreation
another God-given purpose of sexuality that I believe
opens up a different understanding of human sexuality
and of a sexual ethic for singles (as well as couples).
Precisely because sex-
uality involves
vulnerability, it needs
protective structures.
Sexuality has to do with vulnerability. Eros, the desire
for another, the passion that accompanies the wish for
sexual expression, makes one vulnerable. It creates possi-
bilities for great joy but also for great suffering. To desire
another, to feel passion, is to be vulnerable, capable of
being wounded.
There is evidence in Scripture for this view of sex-
uality. Consider the Song of Songs (the "holy of holies"),
which displays in glowing detail the immense passion
and vulnerability of lovers. This is not married or
"preceremonial" sexuality, nor are children the justifica-
tion for the sexual encounter. It is passion pure and sim-
ple. And it is graphic sex. The Stoic fear of passion is
not biblical. From the Song of Songs we can recover the
importance of sexual desire as part of God's creation.
It is equally important to recover the creation stories
in Genesis. These are so often the grounds for our inter-
pretation of what God intends human sexuality to be. It
is from these stories that we take the phrase "be fruitful
and multiply" and turn it into a mandate for procrea-
tion. It is from these stories that we hear the deep call
for union between sexual partners: "This at last is bone
of my bones and flesh of my flesh . . . and the two shall
become one flesh."
Without denying the importance of these phrases and
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their traditional interpretation, I would stress another
passage—one that has been ignored but is crucial for com-
pleting the picture. The very last line in the creation story
in Genesis 2 reads: "And the man and his wife were both
naked, and they felt no shame" (Gen. 2:25). In ancient
Hebrew, "nakedness" was a metaphor for vulnerabili-
ty, and "feeling no shame" was a metaphor for ap-
propriateness. (On this topic I am indebted to the work
of Stephen Breck Reid of Pacific School of Religion.)
We can therefore retranslate the passage as follows: "And
the man and his wife experienced appropriate vulnerabili-
ty." As the summation and closure of the creation story,
the verse tells us that the net result of sexual encounter—
the purpose of the creation of man and woman as sexual
beings who unite with one another to form "one flesh"—
is that there be appropriate vulnerability.
V ULNERABILITY may be the precondition for both
union and procreation: without a willingness to be
vulnerable, to be exposed, to be wounded, there can be
no union. To be "known," as Scripture so often describes
the sexual encounter, is to be vulnerable, exposed, open.
Sexuality is therefore a form of vulnerability and is
to be valued as such. Sex, eros, passion are antidotes
to the human sin of wanting to be in control or to have
power over another. "Appropriate vulnerability" may
describe the basic intention for human life—which may
be experienced in part through the gift of sexuality.
If this is so, then a new approach to sexual ethics
follows. If humans are intended to have appropriate
vulnerability, then the desire to have power or control
over another is a hardening of the heart against vulner-
ability. When Adam and Eve chose power, they lost their
appropriate vulnerability and were set against each other
in their sexuality. Loss of vulnerability is paradigmatic
of the fall. Jesus shows us the way to redemption by
choosing not power but vulnerability and relationship.
The implications for a sexual ethic are profound. Any
exercise of sexuality that violates appropriate vulnerability
is wrong. This includes violations of the partner's vul-
nerability and violations of one's own vulnerability. Rape
is wrong not only because it violates the vulnerability
of the one raped, but also because the rapist guards his
own power and refuses to be vulnerable.
Similarly, seduction is wrong, for the seducer guards
her or his own vulnerability and uses sex as a weapon
to gain power over another. Any sexual encounter that
hurts another, so that she or he either guards against
vulnerability in the future or is unduly vulnerable in the
future, violates the "appropriate vulnerability" which
is part of the true meaning and purpose of our God-given
sexuality. Prostitution and promiscuity are also generally
wrong. In each there tends to be either a shutting down
of eros or a form of masochism in which the vulnerability
is not equal and therefore not appropriate. Sex is not "just
for fun'' or for play or for physical release, for showing
off, or for any of a host of other human emotions and
expressions that are often attached to sexuality. It is for
May 6, 1987
the appropriate expression of vulnerability, and to the
extent that that expression is missing, the sexual expres-
sion is not proper.
Nothing in what has been said so far suggests that the
only appropriate expressions of vulnerability are in mar-
riage. Premarital and postmarital sexuality might express
appropriate vulnerability. Gay and lesbian unions, long
condemned by the church because of their failure to be
procreative, might also express appropriate vulnerabili-
ty. At the same time, some sexual expression within mar-
riage might not be an appropriate expression of vulnera-
bility—for example, spousal rape or unloving sexual en-
counter. We must beware of the deceptions through
which we reduce or deny vulnerability in sexuality—
both the "swinging singles" image and notions of sex-
ual "duty" in marriage deny appropriate vulnerability.
But what about singleness specifically? Is there any
need for a special sexual ethic for single people? Precisely
because sexuality involves vulnerability, it needs pro-
tective structures. A few years ago, the United Church
of Christ proposed a "principle of proportionality" for
single sexuality. According to this principle, the level
of sexual expression should be commensurate with the
level of commitment in the relationship. While I have
some problems with this principle, it does have the merit
of suggesting that the vulnerability involved in sexual
encounter requires protection. The more sexual involve-
ment there is to be, the more there needs to be a context
that protects and safeguards that vulnerability. As Stanley
Hauerwas puts it, "genuine love is so capable of destruc-
tion that we need a structure to sustain us" (A Community
of Character: Toward a Constructive Christian Social
Ethic [University of Notre Dame Press, 1981], p. 181).
Traditionally, monogamous marriage has been under-
stood to provide that needed context. Whatever the ac-
tual pitfalls and failures of marriage in practice, certainly
in theory the commitment of a stable and monogamous
marriage provides a supportive context for vulnerable
expressions of the self. Marriage at its best ensures that
the vulnerability of sexuality is private and that our
failures remain protected in a mutually vulnerable and
committed relationship.
Singleness carries no such protections. It is an unsafe
environment for the expression of vulnerability. No cove-
nant of fidelity ensures that my vulnerability will not lead
to my being hurt, foolish, exposed, wounded. In short,
in singleness the vulnerability that naturally accompanies
sexuality is also coupled with a vulnerability of context.
Thus, singleness is a politically more explosive arena for
the expression of vulnerability in sex because it lacks the
protections of marriage. It heightens vulnerability.
An adequate sexual ethic for singles must therefore at-
tend to what is needed for appropriate vulnerability in
sexuality. Attention must be paid to the structural
elements in the particular situation that heighten or pro-
tect vulnerability. For example, a sexual ethic for singles
might take one form for those who are very young and
another for those who are older. The protections of age
437
and experience may make it sensible to permit sexual
encounter for those who are older and single, while
restricting it for the very young. Unequal vulnerability
is not appropriate. In a culture, therefore, where men
tend to have more power than women and women are
more vulnerable than men, great care will be needed to
provide an adequate context for the expression of
sexuality.
We need a theology of vulnerability. Until such a
438
theology is forthcoming, we can only struggle toward a
proper sexual ethic. Single people will have to explore
their own vulnerability to find its appropriate expression
in sexuality. Neither the "thou shalt not" of traditional
prohibitions nor the "thou shalt" of contemporary culture
provides an adequate sexual ethic for singles. "Celibacy
in singleness" is not the answer. An appreciation of the
link between sexuality and vulnerability is the precon-
dition for an adequate sexual ethic. •
The Christian CENTURY