Side B Celebrates Same-Sex Attraction. What Could Be More Controversial?

There is another kind of sexual attraction that is universally denigrated in our culture. Those who merely describe it get canceled. What is this forbidden and controversial kind of desire?

In my interaction with the Side B, celibate gay Christian community and literature, I have heard much about the positives of being gay, of being subject to homosexual sexual desire. While “Side B” Christians accept the biblical restriction of sexual intercourse to marriage, they recognize that being gay, being subject to such a pattern of sexual attraction, is part of their condition in this life. It is not something they brought upon themselves, not something they willed, but part of their nature. Therefore, in spite of its unnaturalness in certain respects, reflecting the fall and the misery of our condition, it also can be reflective of the goodness of creation. In particular, with same-sex attraction come other traits of personality and attention to the world that might be underrepresented among the heterosexual population.

Side B Christians have received plenty of pushback from their conservative brethren. Sexual desire, particularly homosexual desire, is not something that conservative Christians tend to want to celebrate.

But there is another kind of sexual desire that is almost universally denigrated in our culture. Influential public figures regularly describe it as, by nature, violent and rapacious. Those subject to it are vilified in strong language. No one stands up to defend it publicly. Even those who merely describe it get canceled.

What is this forbidden and controversial kind of sexual desire?

Male, heterosexual sexual desire.

In our culture, male, heterosexual sexual desire is exclusively described as negative and potentially predatory. If you know of a counter-example, please send it my way.

We have moved a long way from, on the one hand, a patriarchal culture, and on the other, the culture of sexual freedom that allowed for heterosexual sexual indulgence. Masculinity itself is toxic. Normal, civilized, upright men must be wary that they do not rape women, including the women to whom they are married.

If there is any recognition that the sexual encounter between men and women will be unequally distributed, in the male initiating, in the pleasure involved being different, in the emotional needs being different, this is considered reflective of male vice.

The Gospel Cancellation

Consider the recent feature on The Gospel Coalition blog of an excerpt of Josh Butler’s book on sex from a Christian perspective, Beautiful Union. Even those defending him have acknowledged that his graphic language about sex, drawing metaphors to Christ and the church, were hard to read. Just before encountering this discussion, my wife and I were starting to read Stan Jones’ books teaching children about sex to our five-year-old son. I cringed at each anatomical word. Is that reflective of any fault of the book’s?

The fact is the Bible says that the marital relationship between a man and a woman is reflective of the relationship between Christ and the Church. There is no equality between Christ and his church in terms of their role in the union between them. There is equality in the benefits they receive.

If Butler (Josh, not Judith) indicates that the male is the active party in sexual intercourse, the female the passive - and he is talking about biology here, not about whether the woman is willing and consensual for her part - this should at least be uncontroversial for Christ and the Church! Even if you’re a feminist, you don’t think that salvation involves Christ and the Church in a type of equal, consensual relationship. I suppose feminists should be Arminians at least. Butler’s metaphor might make a feminist uncomfortable concerning male and female relations, assuming that they misinterpret him as feminists always do misinterpret descriptions of the natural world. But no Christian should object to Christ being the active party in our salvation.

But, of course, Butler’s words are not only obviously true concerning God. His words about men and women are obviously accurate as well. The active-passive relationship refers to what our bodies do in sexual intercourse, not to the human will. The male body takes action, projecting its seed into the woman. The woman’s body receives. If that’s controversial to you, marry someone of the opposite biological sex. Or watch a sex-ed video.

Given that simple description of the biology of male and female roles in sexual intercourse leads to controversy, and particularly for it making men equivalent to rapists, it seems that a defense of male, heterosexual desire is in order. In the same way that Side B Christians have defended and celebrated the blessings of being gay, something must be said to defend the goodness of male, heterosexual sexual desire.

In Defense of Male, Heterosexual Sexual Desire

One of the main reasons male, heterosexual sexual desire is so suspect is for its directly physical character. To put it plainly, the character of male sexual desire is that it is a desire for the physical act directly, but also and ultimately for an emotional relationship. The character of female sexual desire is that it is a desire for an emotional relationship, but also and eventually for a physical, sexual expression of that emotional union. The end result of each desire is the same, but the initial object of each desire is different, almost opposite.

Given the complementarity of the two forms of sexual desire, one might think that each simply has its place. But instead, the more physical kind of desire is morally suspect in our culture. This is undoubtedly because we associate the ethical and the moral with the spiritual and personal, rather than the physical. Liberal morality, in particular, in the philosophical sense, views human beings as disembodied individuals, possessing moral dignity. They are to interact as free members of a kingdom of ends on terms of perfect equality and by freely willed contract.

There are places in which human beings interact (or should interact) on these terms, most notably the economy, the legal system, and in democratic politics (at least on the small-“l” liberal view). But the bedroom is not one of them. In the bedroom, whether of the married or unmarried, human beings interact not as free and equal persons but as sexually differentiated, bodily encumbered men and women. And sexual desire is not merely a desire for another person but for another person as sexually differentiated, as a man or as a woman. And again, it is male or female sexual desire for a man or a woman.

Also, desire, especially sexual desire, is far beyond the control of our wills. In sexual desire, we are controlled by forces much deeper than our will, further back anatomically than our pre-frontal cortex. The idea of an ethic of consent controlling sexual interaction may have come from feminists, but it is a sort of autistic, engineer-brain kind of proposal. “Let’s sign on the dotted line, delineate which acts we shall perform, and then carry it out robotically.” Left-brain sex.

Au contraire, in the intercourse of the sexes, we are subject to forces beyond our control, but arising from our sexually differentiated psyches. There is a push and pull, give and take, wooing and being wooed that must occur in sexual interactions. It is not two parties equally willing and equally interested in the same things. This is why the Christian tradition located consent in the marriage ceremony. One consents to marry; one cannot consent to sex isolated from marriage or even entirely and individually to each sexual encounter within marriage. The full and willing participation by both parties in an act that consummates the marriage is something that must be hard-won and practiced within marriage.

While an “active-passive” distinction is involved in the very physiology of sex, it is also present in the psychology, as generally, the man must pursue and initiate, the woman respond and be persuaded. The “marital debt” is not to have perfunctory relations, but to woo and be wooed, to persuade and be persuaded. The married man is not required to take “no” for an answer, but the best “yes” is that from a woman who is willing and able to say “no.”

I want to go out on yet another limb and say a bit more about the physical character of male, heterosexual sexual desire. The physical has a very important place in human love generally. Babies who do not receive physical touch are psychologically stunted. Hugging, kissing, and even hand-shaking have important roles in human love, friendship, and even business interactions, depending on the culture.

This does not immediately lead to the goodness of sexual intercourse as an expression of love, for of course, female sexual desire often includes spending time on the hugging and cuddling forms of physical touch. Desire that has to go every time to the erotic, or immediately thereto, will not win a woman.

Nevertheless, male, heterosexual sexual desire is not devoid of this ordinary desire for physical comfort and touch. While the particular form of physical touch desired is only appropriate for marriage, in that context, it is the deepest form of loving, physical touch, the most comforting of embraces.

By Jean-Pol GRANDMONT - Own work, CC BY 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=89452273

The differences between the male and female bodies should be remembered here. The body of the woman is one that offers physical comfort; the female genitalia provide a home for the male. The female breasts can be as comforting to a man as they are to a nursing infant or a small child resting on his or her mother’s bosom. There is nothing inherently sinister about the desire to be close to and to touch the embodiment of nurturing, maternal love.

I have passed over even the less immodest element of male desire, that it is for the woman recognized as beautiful, something women are quite happy to have recognized and praised. There is nothing patriarchal about honoring and appreciating female beauty.

Likewise, when the proper constraints are in place, whether through law or at least Christian custom, to restrict sexual intercourse to marriage, male, heterosexual sexual desire is among the strongest motives for men to mature, to adopt responsibility, to grow up, and so on. The desire to be physically intimate with a woman focuses the mind on the project of becoming a worthy husband, a good man, and someone fit to be a father to children.

My readers may want to look into Roger Scruton’s account of sexual desire, Sexual Desire: A Philosophical Investigation. His thesis is summarized in this talk, “Sexual Morality for Heathens.” And in this talk at Princeton, I asked the first question in the Q&A, concerning something very much like the topic of this essay.

Some of my readers may not appreciate Side B’s defense of the presence of good in homosexual sexual desire. Others may be uncomfortable with a defense of heterosexual male desire. But I hope to indicate that there is something more common to appreciate and defend: Our common, human nature. The given character of our constitution, to various extents broken by the fall and mixed with sin, deserves to be appreciated for its reflection of the created order, of God’s goodness, and of the human capacity for love, marriage, and friendship.

I can do no better than to close with these words from Wendell Berry (quoted by Rod Dreher in his defense of Butler):

Sexual love is the heart of community life. Sexual love is the force that in our bodily life connects us most intimately to the Creation, to the fertility of the world, to farming and the care of animals. It brings us into the dance that holds the community together and joins it to its place.