In a recent column you wrote: "If sexual relationships are to
have the potential to be holy and life giving, they must be fully consensual
and they must be grounded in mutual love. Otherwise they are exploitive,
meeting the needs of one, but not the other. That is why rape is always
wrong. It is the imposition of one with power on one without power. That
is why sex with multiple partners is wrong, for it reduces sex to a loveless
thrill, not a sustaining and loving relationship."
It seems to me that the last sentence does not necessarily
follow from the first in that I can imagine having sex with multiple
partners, either at the same or different times as meeting the test of the
first sentence which test I accept as very legitimate.
You and I will simply have to be in disagreement. Sex to me is
the ultimate relationship of intimacy and calls the partners to the ultimate
level of commitment. I think that this kind of commitment elicits in those
who follow it a new dimension of consciousness that makes us more deeply and
fully human.
I do not think that monogamy is natural, especially among males
of any of the higher mammals. I do think that it takes a very deep
commitment and that the nature of such a commitment introduces us to new
levels of consciousness. To give yourself away totally means that you have
to possess yourself totally. To give yourself away in commitment to another
is to accept great vulnerability, but that is now what I think life is all
about. I would not trade the depth of love and trust that a monogamous
relationship creates for anything. I do not believe the pathway to that
deep human experience can be found in multiple relationships.
My best,
John Shelby Spong
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