Ethics of Sex: From Taboo to Delight

This book is a book that pastors should have on their shelf. It is an anthology. Containing 10 essays. They are on: (1) Male/Female sex differences (2) What is Marriage? (3) Contraception from an Embryo's point of view (4) Contraception: Pastoral considerations (5) Self-pollution (6) Sex-education [really an essay on 'modesty'] (7) Polygamy (8) Homosexuality (9) Transgenderism (10) A Theology of Sex. Each essay is well-researched, well-reasoned, and well-written. Buy this book.

This book is neither vague nor unseemly. It teaches not only what is right and wrong, but also how to speak about what is right and wrong. It leaves room for respectful disagreement among those who are able to avoid nuclearizing quibbles: not to say that disagreements on this topic all amount to quibbling, but that the book pitches a tent big enough for whoever may be willing to tabernacle together graciously with its general premise. Certainly, that premise is "conservative", or maybe "traditional" or "catholic". Part of the book's interest is how its catholicity interacts with Roman Catholicism; here the writers make a particularly fine demonstration of the best a Reformation heritage has to offer. Any catholic premise is likely to appear narrow in these latter days of sexual ethics. Readers would do well to remember that the moment's transgenderism is this morning's civil unions, last night's shacking up, yesternoon's no-fault divorce, and the prior evening's default marital contraception. The thousands of years of ethical no-brainers stacked up before that brief weekend of human philosophy are worthy of the contemporary person's consideration. The Ethics of Sex reapplies the historical intellectual diligence many residents and even students of the present time have never been challenged or taught to employ. Additionally, it makes a genuine call upon the testimony of science, and demonstrates with integrity the service of that discipline as handmaiden rather than overlord.