Tuesday, April 28, 2015
Sexual revolution and other Wikipedia pages
Morality and religion
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
(Redirected from Religion and morality)
Jump to: navigation, search
Morality and religion is the relationship between religious views and morals. Many religions have value frameworks regarding personal behavior meant to guide adherents in determining between right and wrong. These include the Triple Jems of Jainism, Judaism's Halacha, Islam's Sharia, Catholicism's Canon Law, Buddhism's Eightfold Path, and Zoroastrianism's "good thoughts, good words, and good deeds" concept, among others.[1] These frameworks are outlined and interpreted by various sources such as holy books, oral and written traditions, and religious leaders. Many of these share tenets with secular value frameworks such as consequentialism, freethought, and utilitarianism.
Religion and morality are not synonymous. Morality does not depend upon religion although this is "an almost automatic assumption."[2] According to The Westminster Dictionary of Christian Ethics, religion and morality "are to be defined differently and have no definitional connections with each other. Conceptually and in principle, morality and a religious value system are two distinct kinds of value systems or action guides."[3] Morality is an active process which is, "at the very least, the effort to guide one's conduct by reason, that is, doing what there are the best reasons for doing, while giving equal consideration to the interests of all those affected by what one does."[4]
Value judgments can vary greatly between religions, past and present. People in various religious traditions, such as Christianity, may derive ideas of right and wrong by the rules and laws set forth in their respective authoritative guides and by their religious leaders.[5] Equating morality to adherence to authoritative commands in a holy book is the Divine Command Theory.[6] Polytheistic religions such as Buddhism and Hinduism generally draw from a broader canon of work.[7] There has been interest in the relationship between religion and crime and other behavior that does not adhere to contemporary laws and social norms in various countries. Studies conducted in recent years have explored these relationships, but the results have been mixed and sometimes contradictory.[8] The ability of religious faiths to provide value frameworks that are seen as useful is a debated matter. Religious commentators have asserted that a moral life cannot be led without an absolute lawgiver as a guide. Other observers assert that moral behavior does not rely on religious tenets, and secular commentators point to ethical challenges within various religions that conflict with contemporary social norms.
Contents [hide]
1 Relationship between religion and morality
2 Religion and societal mores
3 Religious frameworks
4 Religion and crime
5 Criticism of religious values
6 Secular morality
7 See also
8 Notes
9 References
Relationship between religion and morality[edit]
Within the wide range of ethical traditions, religious traditions co-exist with secular value frameworks such as humanism, utilitarianism, and others. There are many types of religious values. Modern monotheistic religions, such as Islam, Judaism, Christianity, and to a certain degree others such as Sikhism, define right and wrong by the laws and rules set forth by their respective gods and as interpreted by religious leaders within the respective faith. Polytheistic religious traditions tend to be less absolute. For example, within Buddhism, the intention of the individual and the circumstances should be accounted for to determine if an action is right or wrong.[9] A further disparity between the morals of religious traditions is pointed out by Barbara Stoler Miller, who states that, in Hinduism, "practically, right and wrong are decided according to the categories of social rank, kinship, and stages of life. For modern Westerners, who have been raised on ideals of universality and egalitarianism, this relativity of values and obligations is the aspect of Hinduism most difficult to understand".[10]
According to Stephen Gaukroger, "It was generally assumed in the 17th century that religion provided the unique basis for morality, and that without religion, there could be no morality."[11] This view slowly shifted over time. In 1690, Pierre Bayle asserted that religion "is neither necessary nor sufficient for morality."[12] Modern sources separate the two concepts. For example, The Westminster Dictionary of Christian Ethics says that,
For many religious people, morality and religion are the same or inseparable; for them either morality is part of religion or their religion is their morality. For others, especially for nonreligious people, morality and religion are distinct and separable; religion may be immoral or nonmoral, and morality may or should be nonreligous. Even for some religious people the two are different and separable; they may hold that religion should be moral and morality should be, but they agree that they may not be.[13]
Richard Paula and Linda Elder of the Foundation for Critical Thinking assert that "most people confuse ethics with behaving in accordance with social conventions, religious beliefs, and the law". They separate the concept of ethics from these topics, stating that
The proper role of ethical reasoning is to highlight acts of two kinds: those which enhance the well-being of others—that warrant our praise—and those that harm or diminish the well-being of others—and thus warrant our criticism.[14]
They note problems that could arise if religions defined ethics, such as (1) religious practices like "torturing unbelievers or burning them alive" potentially being labeled "ethical", and (2) the lack of a common religious baseline across humanity because religions provide different theological definitions for the idea of sin.[14] They further note that various documents, such as the UN Declaration of Human Rights lay out "transcultural" and "trans-religious" ethical concepts and principles such as slavery, genocide, torture, sexism, racism, murder, assault, fraud, deceit, and intimidation which require no reliance on religion (or social convention) for us to understand they are "ethically wrong".[14]
Religion and societal mores[edit]
According to critic Gregory S. Paul, theists assert that societal belief in a creator god "is instrumental towards providing the moral, ethical and other foundations necessary for a healthy, cohesive society."[15] Yet, empirical evidence indicates the opposite.[16] High rates of religiosity are correlated with "higher rates of homicide, juvenile and early adult mortality, STD infection rates, teen pregnancy, and abortion in the prosperous democracies."[15] Paul concludes that
The non-religious, proevolution democracies contradict the dictum that a society cannot enjoy good conditions unless most citizens ardently believe in a moral creator. The widely held fear that a Godless citizenry must experience societal disaster is therefore refuted.[17]
Religious frameworks[edit]
Religions provide different ways of dealing with moral dilemmas. For example, there is no absolute prohibition on killing in Hinduism, which recognizes that it "may be inevitable and indeed necessary" in certain circumstances.[18] In Christian traditions, certain acts are viewed in more absolute terms, such as abortion or divorce. In the latter case, a 2008 study by the Barna Group found that some denominations have a significantly higher divorce rate than those in non-religious demographic groups (atheists and agnostics). However Catholics and Evangelical Christians had the lowest divorce rates and the agnostic/atheist group had by far the lowest number of married couples to begin with.[19]
According to Thomas Dixon, "Many today ... argue that religious beliefs are necessary to provide moral guidance and standards of virtuous conduct in an otherwise corrupt, materialistic, and degenerate world."[20] In the same vein, Christian theologian Ron Rhodes has remarked that "it is impossible to distinguish evil from good unless one has an infinite reference point which is absolutely good."[21] Thomas Dixon states, "Religions certainly do provide a framework within which people can learn the difference between right and wrong."[20]
Religion and crime[edit]
The overall relationship between faith and crime is unclear. A 2001 review of studies on this topic found "The existing evidence surrounding the effect of religion on crime is varied, contested, and inconclusive, and currently no persuasive answer exists as to the empirical relationship between religion and crime."[22] Dozens of studies have been conducted on this topic since the twentieth century. A 2005 study by Gregory S. Paul published in the Journal of Religion and Society argues for a positive correlation between the degree of public religiosity in a society and certain measures of dysfunction,[23] an analysis published later in the same journal contends that a number of methodological problems undermine any findings or conclusions to be taken from the research.[24] In another response, Gary Jensen builds on and refines Paul's study.[25] His conclusion is that a "complex relationship" exists between religiosity and homicide "with some dimensions of religiosity encouraging homicide and other dimensions discouraging it".
Some works indicate that lower levels of religiosity in a society may be correlated with lower crime rates—especially violent crime. Phil Zuckerman's 2008 book, Society without God, notes that Denmark and Sweden, "which are probably the least religious countries in the world, and possibly in the history of the world", enjoy "among the lowest violent crime rates in the world [and] the lowest levels of corruption in the world".[26][a] The 2005 Paul study stated that, "In general, higher rates of belief in and worship of a creator correlate with higher rates of homicide, juvenile and early adult mortality, STD infection rates, teen pregnancy, and abortion in the prosperous democracies," and "In all secular developing democracies a centuries long-term trend has seen homicide rates drop to historical lows" with the exceptions being the United States (with a high religiosity level) and "theistic" Portugal.[27][b] On April 26, 2012, the results of a study which tested their subjects' pro-social sentiments were published in the Social Psychological and Personality Science journal in which non-religious people had higher scores showing that they were more inclined to show generosity in random acts of kindness, such as lending their possessions and offering a seat on a crowded bus or train. Religious people also had lower scores when it came to seeing how much compassion motivated participants to be charitable in other ways, such as in giving money or food to a homeless person and to non-believers.[28][29]
Other studies seem to show positive links in the relationship between religiosity and moral behavior[30][31]—for example, surveys suggesting a positive connection between faith and altruism.[32] Modern research in criminology also acknowledges an inverse relationship between religion and crime,[33] with some studies establishing this connection.[34] A meta-analysis of 60 studies on religion and crime concluded, "religious behaviors and beliefs exert a moderate deterrent effect on individuals’ criminal behavior".[35] However, in his books about the materialism in Americas Evangelical Churches Ron Sider accuses fellow Christians of failing to do better than their secular counterparts in the percentage adhering to widely held moral standards (e.g., lying, theft and sexual infidelity).[36]
A Georgia State University study published in the academic journal Theoretical Criminology suggests that religion helps criminals to justify their crimes and might "encourage" it.[37] The research concluded that "many street offenders anticipate an early death, making them less prone to delay gratification, more likely to discount the future costs of crime, and thus more likely to offend".[38]
Criticism of religious values[edit]
Religious values can diverge from commonly-held contemporary moral positions, such as those on murder, mass atrocities, and slavery. For example, Simon Blackburn states that "apologists for Hinduism defend or explain away its involvement with the caste system, and apologists for Islam defend or explain away its harsh penal code or its attitude to women and infidels".[39] In regard to Christianity, he states that the "Bible can be read as giving us a carte blanche for harsh attitudes to children, the mentally handicapped, animals, the environment, the divorced, unbelievers, people with various sexual habits, and elderly women".[40] He provides examples such as the phrase in Exodus 22:18 that has "helped to burn alive tens or hundreds of thousands of women in Europe and America": "Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live," and notes that the Old Testament God apparently has "no problems with a slave-owning society", considers birth control a crime punishable by death, and "is keen on child abuse".[41] Blackburn notes morally suspect themes in the Bible's New Testament as well.[42]
Philosopher David Hume stated that, "the greatest crimes have been found, in many instances, to be compatible with a superstitious piety and devotion; Hence it is justly regarded as unsafe to draw any inference in favor of a man's morals, from the fervor or strictness of his religious exercises, even though he himself believe them sincere.".[43]
Bertrand Russell stated that, "there are also, in most religions, specific ethical tenets which do definite harm. The Catholic condemnation of birth control, if it could prevail, would make the mitigation of poverty and the abolition of war impossible. The Hindu beliefs that the cow is a sacred animal and that it is wicked for widows to remarry cause quite needless suffering."[44] He asserts that
You find this curious fact, that the more intense has been the religion of any period and the more profound has been the dogmatic belief, the greater has been the cruelty and the worse has been the state of affairs....You find as you look around the world that every single bit of progress in humane feeling, every improvement in the criminal law, every step toward the dimunition of war, every step toward better treatment of the colored races, or every mitigation of slavery, every moral progress that there has been in the world, has been consistently opposed by the organized churches of the world.[45]
According to Paul Copan, Jewish laws in the bible show an evolution of moral standards towards protecting the vulnerable, imposing a death penalty on those pursuing forced slavery and identifying slaves as persons and not property.[46]
According to Bertrand Russell, "Clergymen almost necessarily fail in two ways as teachers of morals. They condemn acts which do no harm and they condone acts which do great harm."[47] He cites an example of a clergyman who was warned by a physician that his wife would die if she had another (her tenth) child, but impregnated her regardless which resulted in her death. "No one condemned him; he retained his benefice and married again. So long as clergymen continue to condone cruelty and condemn "innocent" pleasure, they can only do harm as guardians of the morals of the young."[48]
Russell further states that, "The sense of sin which dominates many children and young people and often lasts on into later life is a misery and a source of distortion that serves no useful purpose of any sort or kind."[49] Russel allows that religious sentiments have, historically, sometimes led to morally acceptable behavior, but asserts that, "in the present day, [1954] such good as might be done by imputing a theological origin to morals is inextricably bound up with such grave evils that the good becomes insignificant in comparison."[50]
Secular morality[edit]
Main article: Secular morality
All the world’s major religions, with their emphasis on love, compassion, patience, tolerance, and forgiveness can and do promote inner values. But the reality of the world today is that grounding ethics in religion is no longer adequate. This is why I am increasingly convinced that the time has come to find a way of thinking about spirituality and ethics beyond religion altogether.[51]
The 14th Dalai Lama, Tenzin Gyatso, 10 September 2012
The 14th Dalai Lama, Tenzin Gyatso in 2007
There are number of secular value frameworks, such as consequentialism, freethought, humanism, and utilitarianism. Yet, there have been opposing views about the ability of both religious and secular moral frameworks to provide useful guides to right and wrong actions.
Various non-religious commentators have supported the ability of secular value frameworks to provide useful guides. Bernard Williams argued that, "Either one's motives for following the moral word of God are moral motives, or they are not. If they are, then one is already equipped with moral motivations, and the introduction of God adds nothing extra. But if they are not moral motives, then they will be motives of such a kind that they cannot appropriately motivate morality at all ... we reach the conclusion that any appeal to God in this connection either adds to nothing at all, or it adds the wrong sort of thing."[52] Other observers criticize religious morals as incompatible with modern social norms. For example, popular atheist Richard Dawkins, writing in The God Delusion, has stated that religious people have committed a wide variety of acts and held certain beliefs through history that are considered today to be morally repugnant. In accordance with Godwins Law he has stated that Adolf Hitler and the Nazis held broadly Christian religious beliefs that inspired the Holocaust on account of antisemitic Christian doctrine, that Christians have traditionally imposed unfair restrictions on the legal and civil rights of women, and that Christians have condoned slavery of some form or description throughout most of Christianity's history.[citation needed] According to Paul Copan, the position of the Bible to slaves is a positive one for the slaves in that Jewish laws imposed a death penalty on those pursuing slavery and treated slaves as persons, not property.[46]
See also[edit]
##Ethics in religion
##Morality without religion
##Criticism of Islam#Morality
Notes[edit]
a.^ Zuckerman identifies that Scandinavians have "relatively high rates of petty crime and burglary", but "their overall rates of violent crime—such as murder, aggravated assault, and rape—are among the lowest on earth" (Zuckerman 2008, pp. 5–6).b.^ The authors also state that "A few hundred years ago rates of homicide were astronomical in Christian Europe and the American colonies,"[53] and "[t]he least theistic secular developing democracies such as Japan, France, and Scandinavia have been most successful in these regards."[54] They argue for a positive correlation between the degree of public religiosity in a society and certain measures of dysfunction,[23] an analysis published later in the same journal argues that a number of methodological problems undermine any findings or conclusions in the research.[24]
References[edit]
1.Jump up ^ Esptein, Greg M. (2010). Good Without God: What a Billion Nonreligious People Do Believe. New York: HarperCollins. p. 117. ISBN 978-0-06-167011-4.
2.Jump up ^ Rachels, (ed) James; Rachels, (ed) Stuart (2011). The Elements of Moral Philosophy (7 ed.). New York: McGraw-Hill. ISBN 0-078-03824-3.
3.Jump up ^ Childress, (ed) James F.; Macquarrie, (ed) John (1986). The Westminster Dictionary of Christian Ethics. Philadelphia: The Westminster Press. p. 401. ISBN 0-664-20940-8.
4.Jump up ^ Rachels, (ed) James; Rachels, (ed) Stuart (2011). The Elements of Moral Philosophy (7 ed.). New York: McGraw-Hill. ISBN 0-078-03824-3.
5.Jump up ^ Blackburn, Simon (2001). Ethics: A Very Short Introduction. Oxford: Oxford University Press. pp. 9–10. ISBN 978-0-19-280442-6.
6.Jump up ^ Rachels, (ed) James; Rachels, (ed) Stuart (2011). The Elements of Moral Philosophy (7 ed.). New York: McGraw-Hill. ISBN 0-078-03824-3.
7.Jump up ^ Bodhippriya Subhadra Siriwardena, 'The Buddhist perspective of lay morality', 1996
8.Jump up ^ Edgar Saint George, "Religion's Effects On Crime Rates"
9.Jump up ^ Peggy Morgan, "Buddhism." In Morgan, Peggy; Lawton, Clive A., eds. (2007). Ethical Issues in Six Religious Traditions (Second ed.). Columbia University Press. pp. 61, 88–89. ISBN 978-0-7486-2330-3.
10.Jump up ^ Miller, Barbara Stoler (2004). The Bhagavad Gita: Krishna's Counsel in Time of War. New York: Random House. p. 3. ISBN 0-553-21365-2.
11.Jump up ^ Gaukroger, Stephen (2012). Objectivity: A Very Short Introduction. Oxford: Oxford University Press. p. 91. ISBN 978-0-19-960669-6.
12.Jump up ^ Gaukroger, Stephen (2012). Objectivity: A Very Short Introduction. Oxford: Oxford University Press. p. 91. ISBN 978-0-19-960669-6.
13.Jump up ^ Childress, (ed) James F.; Macquarrie, (ed) John (1986). The Westminster Dictionary of Christian Ethics. Philadelphia: The Westminster Press. p. 400. ISBN 0-664-20940-8.
14.^ Jump up to: a b c Paul, Richard; Elder, Linda (2006). The Miniature Guide to Understanding the Foundations of Ethical Reasoning. United States: Foundation for Critical Thinking Free Press. pp. np. ISBN 0-944-583-17-2.
15.^ Jump up to: a b Paul, Gregory S. (2005). "Cross-National Correlations of Quantifiable Societal Health with Popular Religiosity and Secularism in the Prosperous Democracies". Journal of Religion & Society 7: 1. Retrieved 8 October 2012. Archived copy
16.Jump up ^ Paul, Gregory S. (2005). "Cross-National Correlations of Quantifiable Societal Health with Popular Religiosity and Secularism in the Prosperous Democracies". Journal of Religion & Society 7: 7–8. Retrieved 8 October 2012. According to Paul, "Data correlations show that in almost all regards the highly secular democracies consistently enjoy low rates of societal dysfunction, while pro-religious and antievolution America performs poorly."
17.Jump up ^ Paul, Gregory S. (2005). "Cross-National Correlations of Quantifiable Societal Health with Popular Religiosity and Secularism in the Prosperous Democracies". Journal of Religion & Society 7: 7–8. Retrieved 8 October 2012.
18.Jump up ^ Werner Menski, "Hinduism." In Morgan, Peggy; Lawton, Clive A., eds. (2007). Ethical Issues in Six Religious Traditions (Second ed.). Columbia University Press. p. 5. ISBN 978-0-7486-2330-3.
19.Jump up ^ Barna Group (31 March 2008). "New Marriage and Divorce Statistics Released". Barna Group. Retrieved 19 November 2011.
20.^ Jump up to: a b Dixon, Thomas (2008). Science and Religion: A Very Short Introduction. Oxford: Oxford University Press. p. 115. ISBN 978-0-19-929551-7.
21.Jump up ^ Ron Rhodes. "Strategies for Dialoguing with Atheists". Reasoning from the Scriptures Ministries. Retrieved January 4, 2010.
22.Jump up ^ Baier, Colin J.; Wright, Bradley R. E. (February 2001). ""If You Love Me, Keep My Commandments": A Meta-analysis of the Effect of Religion on Crime". 38. No. 1. Journal of Research in Crime and Delinquency. p. 3. Retrieved 20 November 2011. Original in italics.
23.^ Jump up to: a b Paul, Gregory S. (2005). "Cross-National Correlations of Quantifiable Societal Health with Popular Religiosity and Secularism in the Prosperous Democracies: A First Look". Journal of Religion and Society (Baltimore, Maryland) 7.
24.^ Jump up to: a b Gerson Moreno-Riaño; Mark Caleb Smith; Thomas Mach (2006). "Religiosity, Secularism, and Social Health". Journal of Religion and Society (Cedarville University) 8.
25.Jump up ^ Gary F. Jensen (2006) Department of Sociology, Vanderbilt University Religious Cosmologies and Homicide Rates among Nations: A Closer Look http://moses.creighton.edu/JRS/2006/2006-7.html http://moses.creighton.edu/JRS/pdf/2006-7.pdf Journal of Religion and Society, Volume 8, ISSN 1522-5658 http://purl.org/JRS
26.Jump up ^ Zuckerman, Phil. Society Without God: What the Least Religious Nations Can Tell Us about Contentment. New York: New York University Press. p. 2. ISBN 978-0-8147-9714-3. Zuckerman's work is based on his studies conducted during a 14-month period in Scandinavia in 2005–2006.
27.Jump up ^ Paul, Gregory S. (2005). "Cross-National Correlations of Quantifiable Societal Health with Popular Religiosity and Secularism in the Prosperous Democracies: A First Look". Journal of Religion and Society (Baltimore, Maryland) 7: 4, 5, 8, and 10.
28.Jump up ^ Highly Religious People Are Less Motivated by Compassion Than Are Non-Believers by Science Daily
29.Jump up ^ Laura R. Saslow, Robb Willer, Matthew Feinberg, Paul K. Piff, Katharine Clark, Dacher Keltner and Sarina R. Saturn My Brother’s Keeper? Compassion Predicts Generosity More Among Less Religious Individuals
30.Jump up ^ KERLEY, KENT R., MATTHEWS, TODD L. & BLANCHARD, TROY C. (2005) Religiosity, Religious Participation, and Negative Prison Behaviors. Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion 44 (4), 443–457. doi:10.1111/j.1468-5906.2005.00296.x
31.Jump up ^ SAROGLOU, VASSILIS, PICHON, ISABELLE, TROMPETTE, LAURENCE, VERSCHUEREN, MARIJKE & DERNELLE, REBECCA (2005) Prosocial Behavior and Religion: New Evidence Based on Projective Measures and Peer Ratings. Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion 44 (3), 323–348. doi:10.1111/j.1468-5906.2005.00289.x
32.Jump up ^ e.g. a survey by Robert Putnam showing that membership of religious groups was positively correlated with membership of voluntary organisations
33.Jump up ^ As is stated in: Doris C. Chu (2007). Religiosity and Desistance From Drug Use. Criminal Justice and Behavior, 2007; 34; 661 originally published online Mar 7, 2007; doi:10.1177/0093854806293485
34.Jump up ^ For example: ##Albrecht, S. I., Chadwick, B. A., & Alcorn, D. S. (1977). Religiosity and deviance:Application of an attitude-behavior contingent consistency model. Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, 16, 263–274.
##Burkett, S.,& White, M. (1974). Hellfire and delinquency:Another look. Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion,13,455–462.
##Chard-Wierschem, D. (1998). In pursuit of the "true" relationship: A longitudinal study of the effects of religiosity on delinquency and substance abuse. Ann Arbor, MI: UMI Dissertation.
##Cochran, J. K.,& Akers, R. L. (1989). Beyond Hellfire:An explanation of the variable effects of religiosity on adolescent marijuana and alcohol use. Journal of Research in Crime and Delinquency, 26, 198–225.
##Evans, T. D.,Cullen, F. T.,Burton, V. S.,Jr.,Dunaway, R. G.,Payne, G. L.,& Kethineni, S. R. (1996). Religion, social bonds, and delinquency. Deviant Behavior, 17, 43–70.
##Grasmick, H. G., Bursik, R. J., & Cochran, J. K. (1991). "Render unto Caesar what is Caesar’s": Religiosity and taxpayer’s inclinations to cheat. The Sociological Quarterly, 32, 251–266.
##Higgins, P. C., & Albrecht, G. L. (1977). Hellfire and delinquency revisited. Social Forces, 55, 952–958.
##Johnson, B. R.,Larson, D. B.,DeLi,S.,& Jang, S. J. (2000). Escaping from the crime of inner cities:Church attendance and religious salience among disadvantaged youth. Justice Quarterly, 17, 377–391.
##Johnson, R. E., Marcos, A. C., & Bahr, S. J. (1987). The role of peers in the complex etiology of adolescent drug use. Criminology, 25, 323–340.
##Powell, K. (1997). Correlates of violent and nonviolent behavior among vulnerable inner-city youths. Family and Community Health, 20, 38–47.
35.Jump up ^ Baier, C. J.,& Wright, B. R. (2001). "If you love me, keep my commandments":A meta-analysis of the effect of religion on crime. Journal of Research in Crime and Delinquency,38,3–21.
36.Jump up ^ See, for instance, Ronald J. Sider, The Scandal of the Evangelical Conscience: Why Are Christians Living Just Like the Rest of the World? (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Baker, 2005). Sider quotes extensively from polling research by The Barna Group showing that moral behavior of evangelical Christians is unexemplary.
37.Jump up ^ "New Study Suggests Religion May Help Criminals Justify Their Crimes". www.slate.com. Retrieved March 10, 2013.
38.Jump up ^ Volkan Topalli, Timothy Brezina, Mindy Bernhardt (February 2013). "With God on my side: The paradoxical relationship between religious belief and criminality among hardcore street offenders". Theoretical Criminology.
39.Jump up ^ Blackburn, Simon (2001). Ethics: A Very Short Introduction. Oxford: Oxford University Press. p. 13. ISBN 978-0-19-280442-6.
40.Jump up ^ Blackburn, Simon (2001). Ethics: A Very Short Introduction. Oxford: Oxford University Press. p. 12. ISBN 978-0-19-280442-6.
41.Jump up ^ Blackburn, Simon (2001). Ethics: A Very Short Introduction. Oxford: Oxford University Press. pp. 10, 12. ISBN 978-0-19-280442-6.
42.Jump up ^ Blackburn, Simon (2001). Ethics: A Very Short Introduction. Oxford: Oxford University Press. pp. 11–12. ISBN 978-0-19-280442-6.
43.Jump up ^ David Hume, "The Natural History of Religion." In Hitchens, Christopher (2007). The Portable Atheist: Essential Readings for the Nonbeliever. Philadelphia: Da Capo Press. p. 30. ISBN 978-0-306-81608-6.
44.Jump up ^ Russell, Bertrand (1957). Why I Am Not a Christian: And Other Essays on Religion and Related Subjects. New York: George Allen & Unwin Ltd. p. vii. ISBN 978-0-671-20323-8.
45.Jump up ^ Russell, Bertrand (1957). Why I Am Not a Christian: And Other Essays on Religion and Related Subjects. New York: George Allen & Unwin Ltd. pp. 20–21. ISBN 978-0-671-20323-8.
46.^ Jump up to: a b Copan, Paul. "Does the Old Testament Endorse Slavery? An Overview". Retrieved 5 July 2012.
47.Jump up ^ Russell, Bertrand (1957). Why I Am Not a Christian: And Other Essays on Religion and Related Subjects. New York: George Allen & Unwin Ltd. p. 68. ISBN 978-0-671-20323-8.
48.Jump up ^ Russell, Bertrand (1957). Why I Am Not a Christian: And Other Essays on Religion and Related Subjects. New York: George Allen & Unwin Ltd. pp. 68–69. ISBN 978-0-671-20323-8.
49.Jump up ^ Russell, Bertrand (1957). Why I Am Not a Christian: And Other Essays on Religion and Related Subjects. New York: George Allen & Unwin Ltd. p. 166. ISBN 978-0-671-20323-8.
50.Jump up ^ Russell, Bertrand (1957). Why I Am Not a Christian: And Other Essays on Religion and Related Subjects. New York: George Allen & Unwin Ltd. p. 195. ISBN 978-0-671-20323-8.
51.Jump up ^ Dalai Lama (10 September 2012). "Dalai Lama". Facebook. Facebook. Retrieved 10 September 2012.
52.Jump up ^ Williams, Bernard (1972). Morality. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. pp. 64–65. ISBN 0-521-45729-7.
53.Jump up ^ Paul, Gregory S. (2005). "Cross-National Correlations of Quantifiable Societal Health with Popular Religiosity and Secularism in the Prosperous Democracies: A First Look". Journal of Religion and Society (Baltimore, Maryland) 7: 4, 5, 8.
54.Jump up ^ Paul, Gregory S. (2005). "Cross-National Correlations of Quantifiable Societal Health with Popular Religiosity and Secularism in the Prosperous Democracies: A First Look". Journal of Religion and Society (Baltimore, Maryland) 7: 11.
Categories: Morality
Religious ethics
Navigation menu
Create account
Log in
Article
Talk
Read
Edit
View history
Main page
Contents
Featured content
Current events
Random article
Donate to Wikipedia
Wikipedia store
Interaction
Help
About Wikipedia
Community portal
Recent changes
Contact page
Tools
What links here
Related changes
Upload file
Special pages
Permanent link
Page information
Wikidata item
Cite this page
Print/export
Create a book
Download as PDF
Printable version
Languages
Suomi
Edit links
This page was last modified on 12 April 2015, at 00:24.
Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License; additional terms may apply. By using this site, you agree to the Terms of Use and Privacy Policy. Wikipedia® is a registered trademark of the Wikimedia Foundation, Inc., a non-profit organization.
Privacy policy
About Wikipedia
Disclaimers
Contact Wikipedia
Developers
Mobile view
Wikimedia Foundation
Powered by MediaWiki
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Morality_and_religion
Morality and religion
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
(Redirected from Religion and morality)
Jump to: navigation, search
Morality and religion is the relationship between religious views and morals. Many religions have value frameworks regarding personal behavior meant to guide adherents in determining between right and wrong. These include the Triple Jems of Jainism, Judaism's Halacha, Islam's Sharia, Catholicism's Canon Law, Buddhism's Eightfold Path, and Zoroastrianism's "good thoughts, good words, and good deeds" concept, among others.[1] These frameworks are outlined and interpreted by various sources such as holy books, oral and written traditions, and religious leaders. Many of these share tenets with secular value frameworks such as consequentialism, freethought, and utilitarianism.
Religion and morality are not synonymous. Morality does not depend upon religion although this is "an almost automatic assumption."[2] According to The Westminster Dictionary of Christian Ethics, religion and morality "are to be defined differently and have no definitional connections with each other. Conceptually and in principle, morality and a religious value system are two distinct kinds of value systems or action guides."[3] Morality is an active process which is, "at the very least, the effort to guide one's conduct by reason, that is, doing what there are the best reasons for doing, while giving equal consideration to the interests of all those affected by what one does."[4]
Value judgments can vary greatly between religions, past and present. People in various religious traditions, such as Christianity, may derive ideas of right and wrong by the rules and laws set forth in their respective authoritative guides and by their religious leaders.[5] Equating morality to adherence to authoritative commands in a holy book is the Divine Command Theory.[6] Polytheistic religions such as Buddhism and Hinduism generally draw from a broader canon of work.[7] There has been interest in the relationship between religion and crime and other behavior that does not adhere to contemporary laws and social norms in various countries. Studies conducted in recent years have explored these relationships, but the results have been mixed and sometimes contradictory.[8] The ability of religious faiths to provide value frameworks that are seen as useful is a debated matter. Religious commentators have asserted that a moral life cannot be led without an absolute lawgiver as a guide. Other observers assert that moral behavior does not rely on religious tenets, and secular commentators point to ethical challenges within various religions that conflict with contemporary social norms.
Contents [hide]
1 Relationship between religion and morality
2 Religion and societal mores
3 Religious frameworks
4 Religion and crime
5 Criticism of religious values
6 Secular morality
7 See also
8 Notes
9 References
Relationship between religion and morality[edit]
Within the wide range of ethical traditions, religious traditions co-exist with secular value frameworks such as humanism, utilitarianism, and others. There are many types of religious values. Modern monotheistic religions, such as Islam, Judaism, Christianity, and to a certain degree others such as Sikhism, define right and wrong by the laws and rules set forth by their respective gods and as interpreted by religious leaders within the respective faith. Polytheistic religious traditions tend to be less absolute. For example, within Buddhism, the intention of the individual and the circumstances should be accounted for to determine if an action is right or wrong.[9] A further disparity between the morals of religious traditions is pointed out by Barbara Stoler Miller, who states that, in Hinduism, "practically, right and wrong are decided according to the categories of social rank, kinship, and stages of life. For modern Westerners, who have been raised on ideals of universality and egalitarianism, this relativity of values and obligations is the aspect of Hinduism most difficult to understand".[10]
According to Stephen Gaukroger, "It was generally assumed in the 17th century that religion provided the unique basis for morality, and that without religion, there could be no morality."[11] This view slowly shifted over time. In 1690, Pierre Bayle asserted that religion "is neither necessary nor sufficient for morality."[12] Modern sources separate the two concepts. For example, The Westminster Dictionary of Christian Ethics says that,
For many religious people, morality and religion are the same or inseparable; for them either morality is part of religion or their religion is their morality. For others, especially for nonreligious people, morality and religion are distinct and separable; religion may be immoral or nonmoral, and morality may or should be nonreligous. Even for some religious people the two are different and separable; they may hold that religion should be moral and morality should be, but they agree that they may not be.[13]
Richard Paula and Linda Elder of the Foundation for Critical Thinking assert that "most people confuse ethics with behaving in accordance with social conventions, religious beliefs, and the law". They separate the concept of ethics from these topics, stating that
The proper role of ethical reasoning is to highlight acts of two kinds: those which enhance the well-being of others—that warrant our praise—and those that harm or diminish the well-being of others—and thus warrant our criticism.[14]
They note problems that could arise if religions defined ethics, such as (1) religious practices like "torturing unbelievers or burning them alive" potentially being labeled "ethical", and (2) the lack of a common religious baseline across humanity because religions provide different theological definitions for the idea of sin.[14] They further note that various documents, such as the UN Declaration of Human Rights lay out "transcultural" and "trans-religious" ethical concepts and principles such as slavery, genocide, torture, sexism, racism, murder, assault, fraud, deceit, and intimidation which require no reliance on religion (or social convention) for us to understand they are "ethically wrong".[14]
Religion and societal mores[edit]
According to critic Gregory S. Paul, theists assert that societal belief in a creator god "is instrumental towards providing the moral, ethical and other foundations necessary for a healthy, cohesive society."[15] Yet, empirical evidence indicates the opposite.[16] High rates of religiosity are correlated with "higher rates of homicide, juvenile and early adult mortality, STD infection rates, teen pregnancy, and abortion in the prosperous democracies."[15] Paul concludes that
The non-religious, proevolution democracies contradict the dictum that a society cannot enjoy good conditions unless most citizens ardently believe in a moral creator. The widely held fear that a Godless citizenry must experience societal disaster is therefore refuted.[17]
Religious frameworks[edit]
Religions provide different ways of dealing with moral dilemmas. For example, there is no absolute prohibition on killing in Hinduism, which recognizes that it "may be inevitable and indeed necessary" in certain circumstances.[18] In Christian traditions, certain acts are viewed in more absolute terms, such as abortion or divorce. In the latter case, a 2008 study by the Barna Group found that some denominations have a significantly higher divorce rate than those in non-religious demographic groups (atheists and agnostics). However Catholics and Evangelical Christians had the lowest divorce rates and the agnostic/atheist group had by far the lowest number of married couples to begin with.[19]
According to Thomas Dixon, "Many today ... argue that religious beliefs are necessary to provide moral guidance and standards of virtuous conduct in an otherwise corrupt, materialistic, and degenerate world."[20] In the same vein, Christian theologian Ron Rhodes has remarked that "it is impossible to distinguish evil from good unless one has an infinite reference point which is absolutely good."[21] Thomas Dixon states, "Religions certainly do provide a framework within which people can learn the difference between right and wrong."[20]
Religion and crime[edit]
The overall relationship between faith and crime is unclear. A 2001 review of studies on this topic found "The existing evidence surrounding the effect of religion on crime is varied, contested, and inconclusive, and currently no persuasive answer exists as to the empirical relationship between religion and crime."[22] Dozens of studies have been conducted on this topic since the twentieth century. A 2005 study by Gregory S. Paul published in the Journal of Religion and Society argues for a positive correlation between the degree of public religiosity in a society and certain measures of dysfunction,[23] an analysis published later in the same journal contends that a number of methodological problems undermine any findings or conclusions to be taken from the research.[24] In another response, Gary Jensen builds on and refines Paul's study.[25] His conclusion is that a "complex relationship" exists between religiosity and homicide "with some dimensions of religiosity encouraging homicide and other dimensions discouraging it".
Some works indicate that lower levels of religiosity in a society may be correlated with lower crime rates—especially violent crime. Phil Zuckerman's 2008 book, Society without God, notes that Denmark and Sweden, "which are probably the least religious countries in the world, and possibly in the history of the world", enjoy "among the lowest violent crime rates in the world [and] the lowest levels of corruption in the world".[26][a] The 2005 Paul study stated that, "In general, higher rates of belief in and worship of a creator correlate with higher rates of homicide, juvenile and early adult mortality, STD infection rates, teen pregnancy, and abortion in the prosperous democracies," and "In all secular developing democracies a centuries long-term trend has seen homicide rates drop to historical lows" with the exceptions being the United States (with a high religiosity level) and "theistic" Portugal.[27][b] On April 26, 2012, the results of a study which tested their subjects' pro-social sentiments were published in the Social Psychological and Personality Science journal in which non-religious people had higher scores showing that they were more inclined to show generosity in random acts of kindness, such as lending their possessions and offering a seat on a crowded bus or train. Religious people also had lower scores when it came to seeing how much compassion motivated participants to be charitable in other ways, such as in giving money or food to a homeless person and to non-believers.[28][29]
Other studies seem to show positive links in the relationship between religiosity and moral behavior[30][31]—for example, surveys suggesting a positive connection between faith and altruism.[32] Modern research in criminology also acknowledges an inverse relationship between religion and crime,[33] with some studies establishing this connection.[34] A meta-analysis of 60 studies on religion and crime concluded, "religious behaviors and beliefs exert a moderate deterrent effect on individuals’ criminal behavior".[35] However, in his books about the materialism in Americas Evangelical Churches Ron Sider accuses fellow Christians of failing to do better than their secular counterparts in the percentage adhering to widely held moral standards (e.g., lying, theft and sexual infidelity).[36]
A Georgia State University study published in the academic journal Theoretical Criminology suggests that religion helps criminals to justify their crimes and might "encourage" it.[37] The research concluded that "many street offenders anticipate an early death, making them less prone to delay gratification, more likely to discount the future costs of crime, and thus more likely to offend".[38]
Criticism of religious values[edit]
Religious values can diverge from commonly-held contemporary moral positions, such as those on murder, mass atrocities, and slavery. For example, Simon Blackburn states that "apologists for Hinduism defend or explain away its involvement with the caste system, and apologists for Islam defend or explain away its harsh penal code or its attitude to women and infidels".[39] In regard to Christianity, he states that the "Bible can be read as giving us a carte blanche for harsh attitudes to children, the mentally handicapped, animals, the environment, the divorced, unbelievers, people with various sexual habits, and elderly women".[40] He provides examples such as the phrase in Exodus 22:18 that has "helped to burn alive tens or hundreds of thousands of women in Europe and America": "Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live," and notes that the Old Testament God apparently has "no problems with a slave-owning society", considers birth control a crime punishable by death, and "is keen on child abuse".[41] Blackburn notes morally suspect themes in the Bible's New Testament as well.[42]
Philosopher David Hume stated that, "the greatest crimes have been found, in many instances, to be compatible with a superstitious piety and devotion; Hence it is justly regarded as unsafe to draw any inference in favor of a man's morals, from the fervor or strictness of his religious exercises, even though he himself believe them sincere.".[43]
Bertrand Russell stated that, "there are also, in most religions, specific ethical tenets which do definite harm. The Catholic condemnation of birth control, if it could prevail, would make the mitigation of poverty and the abolition of war impossible. The Hindu beliefs that the cow is a sacred animal and that it is wicked for widows to remarry cause quite needless suffering."[44] He asserts that
You find this curious fact, that the more intense has been the religion of any period and the more profound has been the dogmatic belief, the greater has been the cruelty and the worse has been the state of affairs....You find as you look around the world that every single bit of progress in humane feeling, every improvement in the criminal law, every step toward the dimunition of war, every step toward better treatment of the colored races, or every mitigation of slavery, every moral progress that there has been in the world, has been consistently opposed by the organized churches of the world.[45]
According to Paul Copan, Jewish laws in the bible show an evolution of moral standards towards protecting the vulnerable, imposing a death penalty on those pursuing forced slavery and identifying slaves as persons and not property.[46]
According to Bertrand Russell, "Clergymen almost necessarily fail in two ways as teachers of morals. They condemn acts which do no harm and they condone acts which do great harm."[47] He cites an example of a clergyman who was warned by a physician that his wife would die if she had another (her tenth) child, but impregnated her regardless which resulted in her death. "No one condemned him; he retained his benefice and married again. So long as clergymen continue to condone cruelty and condemn "innocent" pleasure, they can only do harm as guardians of the morals of the young."[48]
Russell further states that, "The sense of sin which dominates many children and young people and often lasts on into later life is a misery and a source of distortion that serves no useful purpose of any sort or kind."[49] Russel allows that religious sentiments have, historically, sometimes led to morally acceptable behavior, but asserts that, "in the present day, [1954] such good as might be done by imputing a theological origin to morals is inextricably bound up with such grave evils that the good becomes insignificant in comparison."[50]
Secular morality[edit]
Main article: Secular morality
All the world’s major religions, with their emphasis on love, compassion, patience, tolerance, and forgiveness can and do promote inner values. But the reality of the world today is that grounding ethics in religion is no longer adequate. This is why I am increasingly convinced that the time has come to find a way of thinking about spirituality and ethics beyond religion altogether.[51]
The 14th Dalai Lama, Tenzin Gyatso, 10 September 2012
The 14th Dalai Lama, Tenzin Gyatso in 2007
There are number of secular value frameworks, such as consequentialism, freethought, humanism, and utilitarianism. Yet, there have been opposing views about the ability of both religious and secular moral frameworks to provide useful guides to right and wrong actions.
Various non-religious commentators have supported the ability of secular value frameworks to provide useful guides. Bernard Williams argued that, "Either one's motives for following the moral word of God are moral motives, or they are not. If they are, then one is already equipped with moral motivations, and the introduction of God adds nothing extra. But if they are not moral motives, then they will be motives of such a kind that they cannot appropriately motivate morality at all ... we reach the conclusion that any appeal to God in this connection either adds to nothing at all, or it adds the wrong sort of thing."[52] Other observers criticize religious morals as incompatible with modern social norms. For example, popular atheist Richard Dawkins, writing in The God Delusion, has stated that religious people have committed a wide variety of acts and held certain beliefs through history that are considered today to be morally repugnant. In accordance with Godwins Law he has stated that Adolf Hitler and the Nazis held broadly Christian religious beliefs that inspired the Holocaust on account of antisemitic Christian doctrine, that Christians have traditionally imposed unfair restrictions on the legal and civil rights of women, and that Christians have condoned slavery of some form or description throughout most of Christianity's history.[citation needed] According to Paul Copan, the position of the Bible to slaves is a positive one for the slaves in that Jewish laws imposed a death penalty on those pursuing slavery and treated slaves as persons, not property.[46]
See also[edit]
##Ethics in religion
##Morality without religion
##Criticism of Islam#Morality
Notes[edit]
a.^ Zuckerman identifies that Scandinavians have "relatively high rates of petty crime and burglary", but "their overall rates of violent crime—such as murder, aggravated assault, and rape—are among the lowest on earth" (Zuckerman 2008, pp. 5–6).b.^ The authors also state that "A few hundred years ago rates of homicide were astronomical in Christian Europe and the American colonies,"[53] and "[t]he least theistic secular developing democracies such as Japan, France, and Scandinavia have been most successful in these regards."[54] They argue for a positive correlation between the degree of public religiosity in a society and certain measures of dysfunction,[23] an analysis published later in the same journal argues that a number of methodological problems undermine any findings or conclusions in the research.[24]
References[edit]
1.Jump up ^ Esptein, Greg M. (2010). Good Without God: What a Billion Nonreligious People Do Believe. New York: HarperCollins. p. 117. ISBN 978-0-06-167011-4.
2.Jump up ^ Rachels, (ed) James; Rachels, (ed) Stuart (2011). The Elements of Moral Philosophy (7 ed.). New York: McGraw-Hill. ISBN 0-078-03824-3.
3.Jump up ^ Childress, (ed) James F.; Macquarrie, (ed) John (1986). The Westminster Dictionary of Christian Ethics. Philadelphia: The Westminster Press. p. 401. ISBN 0-664-20940-8.
4.Jump up ^ Rachels, (ed) James; Rachels, (ed) Stuart (2011). The Elements of Moral Philosophy (7 ed.). New York: McGraw-Hill. ISBN 0-078-03824-3.
5.Jump up ^ Blackburn, Simon (2001). Ethics: A Very Short Introduction. Oxford: Oxford University Press. pp. 9–10. ISBN 978-0-19-280442-6.
6.Jump up ^ Rachels, (ed) James; Rachels, (ed) Stuart (2011). The Elements of Moral Philosophy (7 ed.). New York: McGraw-Hill. ISBN 0-078-03824-3.
7.Jump up ^ Bodhippriya Subhadra Siriwardena, 'The Buddhist perspective of lay morality', 1996
8.Jump up ^ Edgar Saint George, "Religion's Effects On Crime Rates"
9.Jump up ^ Peggy Morgan, "Buddhism." In Morgan, Peggy; Lawton, Clive A., eds. (2007). Ethical Issues in Six Religious Traditions (Second ed.). Columbia University Press. pp. 61, 88–89. ISBN 978-0-7486-2330-3.
10.Jump up ^ Miller, Barbara Stoler (2004). The Bhagavad Gita: Krishna's Counsel in Time of War. New York: Random House. p. 3. ISBN 0-553-21365-2.
11.Jump up ^ Gaukroger, Stephen (2012). Objectivity: A Very Short Introduction. Oxford: Oxford University Press. p. 91. ISBN 978-0-19-960669-6.
12.Jump up ^ Gaukroger, Stephen (2012). Objectivity: A Very Short Introduction. Oxford: Oxford University Press. p. 91. ISBN 978-0-19-960669-6.
13.Jump up ^ Childress, (ed) James F.; Macquarrie, (ed) John (1986). The Westminster Dictionary of Christian Ethics. Philadelphia: The Westminster Press. p. 400. ISBN 0-664-20940-8.
14.^ Jump up to: a b c Paul, Richard; Elder, Linda (2006). The Miniature Guide to Understanding the Foundations of Ethical Reasoning. United States: Foundation for Critical Thinking Free Press. pp. np. ISBN 0-944-583-17-2.
15.^ Jump up to: a b Paul, Gregory S. (2005). "Cross-National Correlations of Quantifiable Societal Health with Popular Religiosity and Secularism in the Prosperous Democracies". Journal of Religion & Society 7: 1. Retrieved 8 October 2012. Archived copy
16.Jump up ^ Paul, Gregory S. (2005). "Cross-National Correlations of Quantifiable Societal Health with Popular Religiosity and Secularism in the Prosperous Democracies". Journal of Religion & Society 7: 7–8. Retrieved 8 October 2012. According to Paul, "Data correlations show that in almost all regards the highly secular democracies consistently enjoy low rates of societal dysfunction, while pro-religious and antievolution America performs poorly."
17.Jump up ^ Paul, Gregory S. (2005). "Cross-National Correlations of Quantifiable Societal Health with Popular Religiosity and Secularism in the Prosperous Democracies". Journal of Religion & Society 7: 7–8. Retrieved 8 October 2012.
18.Jump up ^ Werner Menski, "Hinduism." In Morgan, Peggy; Lawton, Clive A., eds. (2007). Ethical Issues in Six Religious Traditions (Second ed.). Columbia University Press. p. 5. ISBN 978-0-7486-2330-3.
19.Jump up ^ Barna Group (31 March 2008). "New Marriage and Divorce Statistics Released". Barna Group. Retrieved 19 November 2011.
20.^ Jump up to: a b Dixon, Thomas (2008). Science and Religion: A Very Short Introduction. Oxford: Oxford University Press. p. 115. ISBN 978-0-19-929551-7.
21.Jump up ^ Ron Rhodes. "Strategies for Dialoguing with Atheists". Reasoning from the Scriptures Ministries. Retrieved January 4, 2010.
22.Jump up ^ Baier, Colin J.; Wright, Bradley R. E. (February 2001). ""If You Love Me, Keep My Commandments": A Meta-analysis of the Effect of Religion on Crime". 38. No. 1. Journal of Research in Crime and Delinquency. p. 3. Retrieved 20 November 2011. Original in italics.
23.^ Jump up to: a b Paul, Gregory S. (2005). "Cross-National Correlations of Quantifiable Societal Health with Popular Religiosity and Secularism in the Prosperous Democracies: A First Look". Journal of Religion and Society (Baltimore, Maryland) 7.
24.^ Jump up to: a b Gerson Moreno-Riaño; Mark Caleb Smith; Thomas Mach (2006). "Religiosity, Secularism, and Social Health". Journal of Religion and Society (Cedarville University) 8.
25.Jump up ^ Gary F. Jensen (2006) Department of Sociology, Vanderbilt University Religious Cosmologies and Homicide Rates among Nations: A Closer Look http://moses.creighton.edu/JRS/2006/2006-7.html http://moses.creighton.edu/JRS/pdf/2006-7.pdf Journal of Religion and Society, Volume 8, ISSN 1522-5658 http://purl.org/JRS
26.Jump up ^ Zuckerman, Phil. Society Without God: What the Least Religious Nations Can Tell Us about Contentment. New York: New York University Press. p. 2. ISBN 978-0-8147-9714-3. Zuckerman's work is based on his studies conducted during a 14-month period in Scandinavia in 2005–2006.
27.Jump up ^ Paul, Gregory S. (2005). "Cross-National Correlations of Quantifiable Societal Health with Popular Religiosity and Secularism in the Prosperous Democracies: A First Look". Journal of Religion and Society (Baltimore, Maryland) 7: 4, 5, 8, and 10.
28.Jump up ^ Highly Religious People Are Less Motivated by Compassion Than Are Non-Believers by Science Daily
29.Jump up ^ Laura R. Saslow, Robb Willer, Matthew Feinberg, Paul K. Piff, Katharine Clark, Dacher Keltner and Sarina R. Saturn My Brother’s Keeper? Compassion Predicts Generosity More Among Less Religious Individuals
30.Jump up ^ KERLEY, KENT R., MATTHEWS, TODD L. & BLANCHARD, TROY C. (2005) Religiosity, Religious Participation, and Negative Prison Behaviors. Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion 44 (4), 443–457. doi:10.1111/j.1468-5906.2005.00296.x
31.Jump up ^ SAROGLOU, VASSILIS, PICHON, ISABELLE, TROMPETTE, LAURENCE, VERSCHUEREN, MARIJKE & DERNELLE, REBECCA (2005) Prosocial Behavior and Religion: New Evidence Based on Projective Measures and Peer Ratings. Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion 44 (3), 323–348. doi:10.1111/j.1468-5906.2005.00289.x
32.Jump up ^ e.g. a survey by Robert Putnam showing that membership of religious groups was positively correlated with membership of voluntary organisations
33.Jump up ^ As is stated in: Doris C. Chu (2007). Religiosity and Desistance From Drug Use. Criminal Justice and Behavior, 2007; 34; 661 originally published online Mar 7, 2007; doi:10.1177/0093854806293485
34.Jump up ^ For example: ##Albrecht, S. I., Chadwick, B. A., & Alcorn, D. S. (1977). Religiosity and deviance:Application of an attitude-behavior contingent consistency model. Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, 16, 263–274.
##Burkett, S.,& White, M. (1974). Hellfire and delinquency:Another look. Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion,13,455–462.
##Chard-Wierschem, D. (1998). In pursuit of the "true" relationship: A longitudinal study of the effects of religiosity on delinquency and substance abuse. Ann Arbor, MI: UMI Dissertation.
##Cochran, J. K.,& Akers, R. L. (1989). Beyond Hellfire:An explanation of the variable effects of religiosity on adolescent marijuana and alcohol use. Journal of Research in Crime and Delinquency, 26, 198–225.
##Evans, T. D.,Cullen, F. T.,Burton, V. S.,Jr.,Dunaway, R. G.,Payne, G. L.,& Kethineni, S. R. (1996). Religion, social bonds, and delinquency. Deviant Behavior, 17, 43–70.
##Grasmick, H. G., Bursik, R. J., & Cochran, J. K. (1991). "Render unto Caesar what is Caesar’s": Religiosity and taxpayer’s inclinations to cheat. The Sociological Quarterly, 32, 251–266.
##Higgins, P. C., & Albrecht, G. L. (1977). Hellfire and delinquency revisited. Social Forces, 55, 952–958.
##Johnson, B. R.,Larson, D. B.,DeLi,S.,& Jang, S. J. (2000). Escaping from the crime of inner cities:Church attendance and religious salience among disadvantaged youth. Justice Quarterly, 17, 377–391.
##Johnson, R. E., Marcos, A. C., & Bahr, S. J. (1987). The role of peers in the complex etiology of adolescent drug use. Criminology, 25, 323–340.
##Powell, K. (1997). Correlates of violent and nonviolent behavior among vulnerable inner-city youths. Family and Community Health, 20, 38–47.
35.Jump up ^ Baier, C. J.,& Wright, B. R. (2001). "If you love me, keep my commandments":A meta-analysis of the effect of religion on crime. Journal of Research in Crime and Delinquency,38,3–21.
36.Jump up ^ See, for instance, Ronald J. Sider, The Scandal of the Evangelical Conscience: Why Are Christians Living Just Like the Rest of the World? (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Baker, 2005). Sider quotes extensively from polling research by The Barna Group showing that moral behavior of evangelical Christians is unexemplary.
37.Jump up ^ "New Study Suggests Religion May Help Criminals Justify Their Crimes". www.slate.com. Retrieved March 10, 2013.
38.Jump up ^ Volkan Topalli, Timothy Brezina, Mindy Bernhardt (February 2013). "With God on my side: The paradoxical relationship between religious belief and criminality among hardcore street offenders". Theoretical Criminology.
39.Jump up ^ Blackburn, Simon (2001). Ethics: A Very Short Introduction. Oxford: Oxford University Press. p. 13. ISBN 978-0-19-280442-6.
40.Jump up ^ Blackburn, Simon (2001). Ethics: A Very Short Introduction. Oxford: Oxford University Press. p. 12. ISBN 978-0-19-280442-6.
41.Jump up ^ Blackburn, Simon (2001). Ethics: A Very Short Introduction. Oxford: Oxford University Press. pp. 10, 12. ISBN 978-0-19-280442-6.
42.Jump up ^ Blackburn, Simon (2001). Ethics: A Very Short Introduction. Oxford: Oxford University Press. pp. 11–12. ISBN 978-0-19-280442-6.
43.Jump up ^ David Hume, "The Natural History of Religion." In Hitchens, Christopher (2007). The Portable Atheist: Essential Readings for the Nonbeliever. Philadelphia: Da Capo Press. p. 30. ISBN 978-0-306-81608-6.
44.Jump up ^ Russell, Bertrand (1957). Why I Am Not a Christian: And Other Essays on Religion and Related Subjects. New York: George Allen & Unwin Ltd. p. vii. ISBN 978-0-671-20323-8.
45.Jump up ^ Russell, Bertrand (1957). Why I Am Not a Christian: And Other Essays on Religion and Related Subjects. New York: George Allen & Unwin Ltd. pp. 20–21. ISBN 978-0-671-20323-8.
46.^ Jump up to: a b Copan, Paul. "Does the Old Testament Endorse Slavery? An Overview". Retrieved 5 July 2012.
47.Jump up ^ Russell, Bertrand (1957). Why I Am Not a Christian: And Other Essays on Religion and Related Subjects. New York: George Allen & Unwin Ltd. p. 68. ISBN 978-0-671-20323-8.
48.Jump up ^ Russell, Bertrand (1957). Why I Am Not a Christian: And Other Essays on Religion and Related Subjects. New York: George Allen & Unwin Ltd. pp. 68–69. ISBN 978-0-671-20323-8.
49.Jump up ^ Russell, Bertrand (1957). Why I Am Not a Christian: And Other Essays on Religion and Related Subjects. New York: George Allen & Unwin Ltd. p. 166. ISBN 978-0-671-20323-8.
50.Jump up ^ Russell, Bertrand (1957). Why I Am Not a Christian: And Other Essays on Religion and Related Subjects. New York: George Allen & Unwin Ltd. p. 195. ISBN 978-0-671-20323-8.
51.Jump up ^ Dalai Lama (10 September 2012). "Dalai Lama". Facebook. Facebook. Retrieved 10 September 2012.
52.Jump up ^ Williams, Bernard (1972). Morality. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. pp. 64–65. ISBN 0-521-45729-7.
53.Jump up ^ Paul, Gregory S. (2005). "Cross-National Correlations of Quantifiable Societal Health with Popular Religiosity and Secularism in the Prosperous Democracies: A First Look". Journal of Religion and Society (Baltimore, Maryland) 7: 4, 5, 8.
54.Jump up ^ Paul, Gregory S. (2005). "Cross-National Correlations of Quantifiable Societal Health with Popular Religiosity and Secularism in the Prosperous Democracies: A First Look". Journal of Religion and Society (Baltimore, Maryland) 7: 11.
Categories: Morality
Religious ethics
Navigation menu
Create account
Log in
Article
Talk
Read
Edit
View history
Main page
Contents
Featured content
Current events
Random article
Donate to Wikipedia
Wikipedia store
Interaction
Help
About Wikipedia
Community portal
Recent changes
Contact page
Tools
What links here
Related changes
Upload file
Special pages
Permanent link
Page information
Wikidata item
Cite this page
Print/export
Create a book
Download as PDF
Printable version
Languages
Suomi
Edit links
This page was last modified on 12 April 2015, at 00:24.
Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License; additional terms may apply. By using this site, you agree to the Terms of Use and Privacy Policy. Wikipedia® is a registered trademark of the Wikimedia Foundation, Inc., a non-profit organization.
Privacy policy
About Wikipedia
Disclaimers
Contact Wikipedia
Developers
Mobile view
Wikimedia Foundation
Powered by MediaWiki
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Morality_and_religion
Divine law
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Jump to: navigation, search
See also: Divine judgment
This article needs additional citations for verification. Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. (June 2012)
Divine law is any law that comes directly from the will of God, in contrast to man-made law. Like natural law (which may be seen as a manifestation of divine law) it is independent of the will of man, who cannot change it. However it may be revealed or not, so it may change in human perception in time through new revelation. Divine law is commonly equated with eternal law, meaning that if God is infinite, then his law must also be infinite and eternal.
In Thomas Aquinas's Treatise on Law, divine law, as opposed to natural law, comes only from revelation or scripture, hence biblical law, and is necessary for human salvation. According to Aquinas, divine law must not be confused with natural law. Divine law is mainly and mostly natural law, but it can also be positive law.
See also[edit]
Antinomianism
Biblical law in Christianity
Book of the Law of the Lord
Canon law
Glossary of ancient Roman religion § ius divinum
Great Commandment
Halakha
The Law of Christ
Mitzvah
New Commandment
Noahide Laws
Regulative principle of worship, later name for ius divinum in 17th-century English church debates
Religious law
Rule according to higher law
Sharia
Ten Commandments
Treatise On the Response of the Tao
External links[edit]
Catholic Encyclopedia: Moral Aspect of Divine Law
[show]
v ·
t ·
e
Philosophy
[show]
v ·
t ·
e
Law
Scales of justice
Stub icon This religion-related article is a stub. You can help Wikipedia by expanding it.
Stub icon This law-related article is a stub. You can help Wikipedia by expanding it.
Categories: Divine command theory
Christian terminology
God
Philosophy of law
Religious law
Theism
Religion stubs
Law stubs
Navigation menu
Create account
Log in
Article
Talk
Read
Edit
View history
Main page
Contents
Featured content
Current events
Random article
Donate to Wikipedia
Wikipedia store
Interaction
Help
About Wikipedia
Community portal
Recent changes
Contact page
Tools
What links here
Related changes
Upload file
Special pages
Permanent link
Page information
Wikidata item
Cite this page
Print/export
Create a book
Download as PDF
Printable version
Languages
Dansk
Deutsch
Español
Interlingua
Italiano
Lietuvių
مصرى
Nederlands
Suomi
中文
Edit links
This page was last modified on 1 March 2015, at 04:16.
Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License; additional terms may apply. By using this site, you agree to the Terms of Use and Privacy Policy. Wikipedia® is a registered trademark of the Wikimedia Foundation, Inc., a non-profit organization.
Privacy policy
About Wikipedia
Disclaimers
Contact Wikipedia
Developers
Mobile view
Wikimedia Foundation
Powered by MediaWiki
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Divine_law
Divine law
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Jump to: navigation, search
See also: Divine judgment
This article needs additional citations for verification. Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. (June 2012)
Divine law is any law that comes directly from the will of God, in contrast to man-made law. Like natural law (which may be seen as a manifestation of divine law) it is independent of the will of man, who cannot change it. However it may be revealed or not, so it may change in human perception in time through new revelation. Divine law is commonly equated with eternal law, meaning that if God is infinite, then his law must also be infinite and eternal.
In Thomas Aquinas's Treatise on Law, divine law, as opposed to natural law, comes only from revelation or scripture, hence biblical law, and is necessary for human salvation. According to Aquinas, divine law must not be confused with natural law. Divine law is mainly and mostly natural law, but it can also be positive law.
See also[edit]
Antinomianism
Biblical law in Christianity
Book of the Law of the Lord
Canon law
Glossary of ancient Roman religion § ius divinum
Great Commandment
Halakha
The Law of Christ
Mitzvah
New Commandment
Noahide Laws
Regulative principle of worship, later name for ius divinum in 17th-century English church debates
Religious law
Rule according to higher law
Sharia
Ten Commandments
Treatise On the Response of the Tao
External links[edit]
Catholic Encyclopedia: Moral Aspect of Divine Law
[show]
v ·
t ·
e
Philosophy
[show]
v ·
t ·
e
Law
Scales of justice
Stub icon This religion-related article is a stub. You can help Wikipedia by expanding it.
Stub icon This law-related article is a stub. You can help Wikipedia by expanding it.
Categories: Divine command theory
Christian terminology
God
Philosophy of law
Religious law
Theism
Religion stubs
Law stubs
Navigation menu
Create account
Log in
Article
Talk
Read
Edit
View history
Main page
Contents
Featured content
Current events
Random article
Donate to Wikipedia
Wikipedia store
Interaction
Help
About Wikipedia
Community portal
Recent changes
Contact page
Tools
What links here
Related changes
Upload file
Special pages
Permanent link
Page information
Wikidata item
Cite this page
Print/export
Create a book
Download as PDF
Printable version
Languages
Dansk
Deutsch
Español
Interlingua
Italiano
Lietuvių
مصرى
Nederlands
Suomi
中文
Edit links
This page was last modified on 1 March 2015, at 04:16.
Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License; additional terms may apply. By using this site, you agree to the Terms of Use and Privacy Policy. Wikipedia® is a registered trademark of the Wikimedia Foundation, Inc., a non-profit organization.
Privacy policy
About Wikipedia
Disclaimers
Contact Wikipedia
Developers
Mobile view
Wikimedia Foundation
Powered by MediaWiki
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Divine_law
Divine judgment
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Jump to: navigation, search
See also: Divine command theory
Question book-new.svg
This article relies largely or entirely upon a single source. Relevant discussion may be found on the talk page. Please help improve this article by introducing citations to additional sources. (April 2010)
Unbalanced scales.svg
This article may be unbalanced towards certain viewpoints. Please improve the article by adding information on neglected viewpoints, or discuss the issue on the talk page. (April 2010)
Part of a series on
Salvation
Michelangelo's "The Creation of Adam"
General concepts
Conditional salvation
Divine judgment
Eschatology
Immortality
Last Judgment
Particular judgment
Resurrection (of the dead)
Soteriology
Special salvation
Transcendence
Universal reconciliation
Particular concepts
Conditionalism
Entering heaven alive
Intermediate state
One true faith
Soul sleep
Punishment
Hell (Christian views)
Purgatory
Soul death
Reward
Heaven in Christianity
World to come
v ·
t ·
e
Divine judgment means the judgment of God or other supreme beings within a religion. The concept is prominent in Abrahamic religions, most significantly in the Last judgment.
Contents [hide]
1 Objective and subjective judgment
2 Ancient beliefs 2.1 Greco-Roman beliefs
3 See also
4 References
5 External links
Objective and subjective judgment[edit]
In Catholic doctrine, divine judgment (Latin judicium divinum), as an imminent act of God, denotes the action of God's retributive justice by which the destiny of rational creatures is decided according to their merits and demerits. This includes:
God's knowledge of the moral worth of the acts of free creatures (scientia approbationis et reprobationis), and His decree determining the just consequences of such acts;
the Divine verdict upon a creature amenable to the moral law, and the execution of this sentence by way of reward and punishment.
The judgment, as it is in God, cannot be a process of distinct and successive acts; it is a single eternal act identical with the Divine Essence. But the effects of the judgment, since they take place in creatures, follow the sequence of time. The Divine judgment is manifested and fulfilled at the beginning, during the progress and at the end of time.
In the beginning, God pronounced judgment upon the whole race, as a consequence of the fall of its representatives, the first parents (Genesis 3). Death and the infirmities and miseries of this were the consequences of that original sentence. Besides this common judgment there have been special judgments on particular individuals and peoples. Such great catastrophes as Noah's flood (Genesis 6:5), the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah (Genesis 28:20), the earthquake that swallowed up Korah and his followers (Numbers 16:30), the plagues of Egypt (Exodus 6:6; 12:12) and the evil that came upon other oppressors of Israel (Ezekiel 25:11; 28:22) are represented in the Bible as Divine judgments. The fear of God is such a fundamental idea in the Old Testament that it insists mainly on the punitive aspect of the judgment (cf. Proverbs 11:31; Ezekiel 14:21). These truths led many of the rabbis to teach that all the evil which befalls humanity is a special chastisement from on high, a doctrine based on an understanding that God has all power, and must give it unto creatures first, before they can use it, as the Book of Job shows.
There is also a judgment of God in the world that is subjective. By their acts a person adheres to or deviates from the law of God, and thereby places themselves within the sphere of approval or condemnation. In a sense then, each individual exercises judgment on themselves. Hence it is declared that Christ came not to judge but to save (John 3:17; 8:15; 12:47). The internal judgment proceeds according to a person's attitude: towards Christ (John 3:18). Though all the happenings of life cannot be interpreted as the outcome of Divine judgment, whose external manifestation is therefore intermittent, the subjective judgment is coextensive with the life of the individual and of the race.
The judgment at the end of time will complement the previous visitations of Divine retribution and will manifest the final result of the daily secret judgment[clarification needed]. By its sentence the eternal destiny of creatures will be decided. As there is a twofold end of time, so there is likewise a twofold eternal judgment: the particular judgment, at the hour of death, which is the end of time for the individual, and the general judgment, at the final epoch of the world's existence, which is the end of time for the human race.
Ancient beliefs[edit]
This section does not cite any references or sources. Please help improve this section by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. (April 2010)
See also: Ancient Egyptian religion: Afterlife and Book of the Dead.
Anubis conducts Hunefer to judgment, where his heart will be weighed against the feather of truth; the fourteen gods above sit in order of judgment, with the underworld ruler Osiris, flanked by Isis and Nephthys, to the right, and the monstrous Ammit waiting next to the scales to devour the souls of those whose hearts are heavier than the feather
The idea of a final readjustment beyond the grave, which would rectify the sharp contrast so often observed between the conduct and the fortune of men, was prevalent among all nations in pre-Christian times. Such was the doctrine of metempsychosis or the transmigration of souls, as a justification of the ways of God to man, prevailing among the Hindus of all classes and sects, the Pythagoreans, the Orphic mystics and the Druids among the Celts. The doctrine of a forensic judgment in the unseen world, by which the eternal lot of departed souls is determined, was also widely prevalent in pre-Christian times.
The Pharaonic Egyptian idea of the judgment is set forth with great precision of detail in the "Book of the Dead", a collection of formulas designed to aid the dead in their passage through the underworld.
The Babylonians and the Assyrians made no distinction between the good and the bad so far as the future habitation is concerned. In the Gilgames epic the hero is marked as judge of the dead, but whether his rule was the moral value of their actions is not clear.
With the Jews, the judgment of the living was a far more prominent idea than the judgment of the dead. The Pentateuch contains no express mention of remuneration in the future life, and only at a comparatively late period, under the influence of a fuller revelation, the belief in resurrection and judgment began to play a capital part in the faith of Judaism. The traces of this theological development are plainly visible in the Machabean era. Then arose the two great opposing parties, the Pharisees and the Sadducees, whose different interpretations of Scripture led to heated controversies, especially regarding the future life.
The Sadducees denied all reward and penalty in the hereafter, while their opponents encumbered the truth with many details. Thus some of the rabbis asserted that the trumpet which would summon the world to judgment would be one of the horns of the ram which Abraham offered up instead of his son Isaac. Again they said: "When God judges the Israelites, He will stand, and make the judgment brief and mild; when He judges the Gentiles, he will sit and make it long and severe." Apart from such rabbinical fables, the current belief reflected in the writings of the rabbis and the pseudographs at the beginning of the Christian Era was that of a preliminary judgment and of a final judgment to occur at the consummation of the world, the former to be executed against the wicked by the personal prowess of the Messiah and of the saints of Israel, the latter to be pronounced as an eternal sentence by God or the Messiah. The particular judgment of the individual person is lost sight of in the universal judgment by which the Messiah vindicate the wrongs endured by Israel.
With Alexandrian Judaism, on the contrary, with that at least of which Philo is the exponent, the dominant idea was that of an immediate retribution after death. The two dissenting sects of Israel, the Essenes and the Samaritans, were in agreement with the majority of Jews as to the existence of a discriminating retribution in the life to come. The Essenes believed in the preexistence of souls, but taught that the after-existence was an unchanging state of bliss or woe according to the deeds done in the body. The eschatological tenets of the Samaritans were at first few and vague. Their doctrine of the resurrection and of the day of vengeance and recompense was a theology patterned after the model of Judaism, and first formulated for the sect by its greatest theologian, Marka (A.D. fourth century).
Greco-Roman beliefs[edit]
Hermes as Guide of Souls prepares to lead a woman to the afterlife (5th century BC lekythos)
The so-called "Book of the Dead" (Nekyia) in the Odyssey depicts judgment in the afterlife by Minos, the "radiant son of Zeus" who in his mortal life had been king of Crete.[1] Three egregious sinners are singled out for eternal punishment, but the theological implications of the scene are unclear. Plato elaborates on the concept in the myth of Er at the end of the Republic. Each misdeed receives a tenfold penalty, with rewards also proportional. Elsewhere,[2] Plato names the judges as Minos and Rhadamanthys, but he also draws on the tenets of Orphic religion. A third judge was Aeacus; all three were once mortal kings whose excellence as rulers among the living was transferred to the dead.[3] Vergil's depiction of the afterlife in the Aeneid[4] is consonant with the Homeric view as well as that of Plato, and he makes it clear that everyone faces judgment.
The mystery religions of the Hellenistic era offered initiates the hope of salvation through confession, judgment, and forgiveness, as well as ritual purity. The Isaic mysteries were influenced by the traditional religion of ancient Egypt, which had symbolized the judgment of the soul through its weight on the scale of truth.[5] Orphic initiates were buried with devotional texts that provided instructions for navigating the hazards of the underworld and addressing the judges; the soul who speaks correctly will be given a drink from the pool of Memory before joining the heroes who have gone before.[6]
See also[edit]
Divine retribution
General judgment
Particular judgment
Last judgment
References[edit]
1.Jump up ^ Odyssey 11.568–71.
2.Jump up ^ Plato, Apologia 41 A.
3.Jump up ^ Radcliffe Guest Edmonds, Myths of the Underworld Journey: Plato, Aristophanes, and the 'Orphic' Gold Tablets (Cambridge University Press, 2004), p. 148.
4.Jump up ^ Vergil, Aeneid Book 6.
5.Jump up ^ J. Gwyn Griffiths, The Divine Verdict: A Study of Divine Judgement in the Ancient Religions (Brill, 1991), passim, especially pp. 294–295 on Homeric, Platonic, and Vergilian views; pp. 313–322 online on confession, judgment, and forgiveness. Citations of ancient sources are those of Griffiths.
6.Jump up ^ Richard Janko, “Forgetfulness in the Golden Tablets of Memory,” Classical Quarterly 34 (1984) 89–100; W.K.C. Guthrie, "The Future Life as Seen by Orpheus," in Orpheus and Greek Religion: A Study of the Orphic Movement (New York: Norton, 1966, revised edition), pp. 148–191 online.
This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Herbermann, Charles, ed. (1913). Catholic Encyclopedia. Robert Appleton Company.
External links[edit]
PD-icon.svg "Divine Judgment". Catholic Encyclopedia. New York: Robert Appleton Company. 1913.
Jewish Encyclopedia: Judgment, Divine
[hide]
v ·
t ·
e
Types of justice
In philosophy
Commutative ·
Distributive ·
Divine ·
Interactional ·
Global ·
Natural ·
Organizational ·
Procedural ·
Restorative ·
Retributive ·
Social ·
Transformative ·
Victor's
Substantive areas
Climate ·
Criminal ·
Environmental ·
Gender ·
Military ·
Racial ·
Sexual ·
Spatial ·
Trade
Other
Frontier ·
Poetic
Categories: Judgment in Islam
Judgment in Christianity
Navigation menu
Create account
Log in
Article
Talk
Read
Edit
View history
Main page
Contents
Featured content
Current events
Random article
Donate to Wikipedia
Wikipedia store
Interaction
Help
About Wikipedia
Community portal
Recent changes
Contact page
Tools
What links here
Related changes
Upload file
Special pages
Permanent link
Page information
Wikidata item
Cite this page
Print/export
Create a book
Download as PDF
Printable version
Languages
Ελληνικά
Edit links
This page was last modified on 6 October 2014, at 21:16.
Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License; additional terms may apply. By using this site, you agree to the Terms of Use and Privacy Policy. Wikipedia® is a registered trademark of the Wikimedia Foundation, Inc., a non-profit organization.
Privacy policy
About Wikipedia
Disclaimers
Contact Wikipedia
Developers
Mobile view
Wikimedia Foundation
Powered by MediaWiki
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Divine_judgment
Divine judgment
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Jump to: navigation, search
See also: Divine command theory
Question book-new.svg
This article relies largely or entirely upon a single source. Relevant discussion may be found on the talk page. Please help improve this article by introducing citations to additional sources. (April 2010)
Unbalanced scales.svg
This article may be unbalanced towards certain viewpoints. Please improve the article by adding information on neglected viewpoints, or discuss the issue on the talk page. (April 2010)
Part of a series on
Salvation
Michelangelo's "The Creation of Adam"
General concepts
Conditional salvation
Divine judgment
Eschatology
Immortality
Last Judgment
Particular judgment
Resurrection (of the dead)
Soteriology
Special salvation
Transcendence
Universal reconciliation
Particular concepts
Conditionalism
Entering heaven alive
Intermediate state
One true faith
Soul sleep
Punishment
Hell (Christian views)
Purgatory
Soul death
Reward
Heaven in Christianity
World to come
v ·
t ·
e
Divine judgment means the judgment of God or other supreme beings within a religion. The concept is prominent in Abrahamic religions, most significantly in the Last judgment.
Contents [hide]
1 Objective and subjective judgment
2 Ancient beliefs 2.1 Greco-Roman beliefs
3 See also
4 References
5 External links
Objective and subjective judgment[edit]
In Catholic doctrine, divine judgment (Latin judicium divinum), as an imminent act of God, denotes the action of God's retributive justice by which the destiny of rational creatures is decided according to their merits and demerits. This includes:
God's knowledge of the moral worth of the acts of free creatures (scientia approbationis et reprobationis), and His decree determining the just consequences of such acts;
the Divine verdict upon a creature amenable to the moral law, and the execution of this sentence by way of reward and punishment.
The judgment, as it is in God, cannot be a process of distinct and successive acts; it is a single eternal act identical with the Divine Essence. But the effects of the judgment, since they take place in creatures, follow the sequence of time. The Divine judgment is manifested and fulfilled at the beginning, during the progress and at the end of time.
In the beginning, God pronounced judgment upon the whole race, as a consequence of the fall of its representatives, the first parents (Genesis 3). Death and the infirmities and miseries of this were the consequences of that original sentence. Besides this common judgment there have been special judgments on particular individuals and peoples. Such great catastrophes as Noah's flood (Genesis 6:5), the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah (Genesis 28:20), the earthquake that swallowed up Korah and his followers (Numbers 16:30), the plagues of Egypt (Exodus 6:6; 12:12) and the evil that came upon other oppressors of Israel (Ezekiel 25:11; 28:22) are represented in the Bible as Divine judgments. The fear of God is such a fundamental idea in the Old Testament that it insists mainly on the punitive aspect of the judgment (cf. Proverbs 11:31; Ezekiel 14:21). These truths led many of the rabbis to teach that all the evil which befalls humanity is a special chastisement from on high, a doctrine based on an understanding that God has all power, and must give it unto creatures first, before they can use it, as the Book of Job shows.
There is also a judgment of God in the world that is subjective. By their acts a person adheres to or deviates from the law of God, and thereby places themselves within the sphere of approval or condemnation. In a sense then, each individual exercises judgment on themselves. Hence it is declared that Christ came not to judge but to save (John 3:17; 8:15; 12:47). The internal judgment proceeds according to a person's attitude: towards Christ (John 3:18). Though all the happenings of life cannot be interpreted as the outcome of Divine judgment, whose external manifestation is therefore intermittent, the subjective judgment is coextensive with the life of the individual and of the race.
The judgment at the end of time will complement the previous visitations of Divine retribution and will manifest the final result of the daily secret judgment[clarification needed]. By its sentence the eternal destiny of creatures will be decided. As there is a twofold end of time, so there is likewise a twofold eternal judgment: the particular judgment, at the hour of death, which is the end of time for the individual, and the general judgment, at the final epoch of the world's existence, which is the end of time for the human race.
Ancient beliefs[edit]
This section does not cite any references or sources. Please help improve this section by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. (April 2010)
See also: Ancient Egyptian religion: Afterlife and Book of the Dead.
Anubis conducts Hunefer to judgment, where his heart will be weighed against the feather of truth; the fourteen gods above sit in order of judgment, with the underworld ruler Osiris, flanked by Isis and Nephthys, to the right, and the monstrous Ammit waiting next to the scales to devour the souls of those whose hearts are heavier than the feather
The idea of a final readjustment beyond the grave, which would rectify the sharp contrast so often observed between the conduct and the fortune of men, was prevalent among all nations in pre-Christian times. Such was the doctrine of metempsychosis or the transmigration of souls, as a justification of the ways of God to man, prevailing among the Hindus of all classes and sects, the Pythagoreans, the Orphic mystics and the Druids among the Celts. The doctrine of a forensic judgment in the unseen world, by which the eternal lot of departed souls is determined, was also widely prevalent in pre-Christian times.
The Pharaonic Egyptian idea of the judgment is set forth with great precision of detail in the "Book of the Dead", a collection of formulas designed to aid the dead in their passage through the underworld.
The Babylonians and the Assyrians made no distinction between the good and the bad so far as the future habitation is concerned. In the Gilgames epic the hero is marked as judge of the dead, but whether his rule was the moral value of their actions is not clear.
With the Jews, the judgment of the living was a far more prominent idea than the judgment of the dead. The Pentateuch contains no express mention of remuneration in the future life, and only at a comparatively late period, under the influence of a fuller revelation, the belief in resurrection and judgment began to play a capital part in the faith of Judaism. The traces of this theological development are plainly visible in the Machabean era. Then arose the two great opposing parties, the Pharisees and the Sadducees, whose different interpretations of Scripture led to heated controversies, especially regarding the future life.
The Sadducees denied all reward and penalty in the hereafter, while their opponents encumbered the truth with many details. Thus some of the rabbis asserted that the trumpet which would summon the world to judgment would be one of the horns of the ram which Abraham offered up instead of his son Isaac. Again they said: "When God judges the Israelites, He will stand, and make the judgment brief and mild; when He judges the Gentiles, he will sit and make it long and severe." Apart from such rabbinical fables, the current belief reflected in the writings of the rabbis and the pseudographs at the beginning of the Christian Era was that of a preliminary judgment and of a final judgment to occur at the consummation of the world, the former to be executed against the wicked by the personal prowess of the Messiah and of the saints of Israel, the latter to be pronounced as an eternal sentence by God or the Messiah. The particular judgment of the individual person is lost sight of in the universal judgment by which the Messiah vindicate the wrongs endured by Israel.
With Alexandrian Judaism, on the contrary, with that at least of which Philo is the exponent, the dominant idea was that of an immediate retribution after death. The two dissenting sects of Israel, the Essenes and the Samaritans, were in agreement with the majority of Jews as to the existence of a discriminating retribution in the life to come. The Essenes believed in the preexistence of souls, but taught that the after-existence was an unchanging state of bliss or woe according to the deeds done in the body. The eschatological tenets of the Samaritans were at first few and vague. Their doctrine of the resurrection and of the day of vengeance and recompense was a theology patterned after the model of Judaism, and first formulated for the sect by its greatest theologian, Marka (A.D. fourth century).
Greco-Roman beliefs[edit]
Hermes as Guide of Souls prepares to lead a woman to the afterlife (5th century BC lekythos)
The so-called "Book of the Dead" (Nekyia) in the Odyssey depicts judgment in the afterlife by Minos, the "radiant son of Zeus" who in his mortal life had been king of Crete.[1] Three egregious sinners are singled out for eternal punishment, but the theological implications of the scene are unclear. Plato elaborates on the concept in the myth of Er at the end of the Republic. Each misdeed receives a tenfold penalty, with rewards also proportional. Elsewhere,[2] Plato names the judges as Minos and Rhadamanthys, but he also draws on the tenets of Orphic religion. A third judge was Aeacus; all three were once mortal kings whose excellence as rulers among the living was transferred to the dead.[3] Vergil's depiction of the afterlife in the Aeneid[4] is consonant with the Homeric view as well as that of Plato, and he makes it clear that everyone faces judgment.
The mystery religions of the Hellenistic era offered initiates the hope of salvation through confession, judgment, and forgiveness, as well as ritual purity. The Isaic mysteries were influenced by the traditional religion of ancient Egypt, which had symbolized the judgment of the soul through its weight on the scale of truth.[5] Orphic initiates were buried with devotional texts that provided instructions for navigating the hazards of the underworld and addressing the judges; the soul who speaks correctly will be given a drink from the pool of Memory before joining the heroes who have gone before.[6]
See also[edit]
Divine retribution
General judgment
Particular judgment
Last judgment
References[edit]
1.Jump up ^ Odyssey 11.568–71.
2.Jump up ^ Plato, Apologia 41 A.
3.Jump up ^ Radcliffe Guest Edmonds, Myths of the Underworld Journey: Plato, Aristophanes, and the 'Orphic' Gold Tablets (Cambridge University Press, 2004), p. 148.
4.Jump up ^ Vergil, Aeneid Book 6.
5.Jump up ^ J. Gwyn Griffiths, The Divine Verdict: A Study of Divine Judgement in the Ancient Religions (Brill, 1991), passim, especially pp. 294–295 on Homeric, Platonic, and Vergilian views; pp. 313–322 online on confession, judgment, and forgiveness. Citations of ancient sources are those of Griffiths.
6.Jump up ^ Richard Janko, “Forgetfulness in the Golden Tablets of Memory,” Classical Quarterly 34 (1984) 89–100; W.K.C. Guthrie, "The Future Life as Seen by Orpheus," in Orpheus and Greek Religion: A Study of the Orphic Movement (New York: Norton, 1966, revised edition), pp. 148–191 online.
This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Herbermann, Charles, ed. (1913). Catholic Encyclopedia. Robert Appleton Company.
External links[edit]
PD-icon.svg "Divine Judgment". Catholic Encyclopedia. New York: Robert Appleton Company. 1913.
Jewish Encyclopedia: Judgment, Divine
[hide]
v ·
t ·
e
Types of justice
In philosophy
Commutative ·
Distributive ·
Divine ·
Interactional ·
Global ·
Natural ·
Organizational ·
Procedural ·
Restorative ·
Retributive ·
Social ·
Transformative ·
Victor's
Substantive areas
Climate ·
Criminal ·
Environmental ·
Gender ·
Military ·
Racial ·
Sexual ·
Spatial ·
Trade
Other
Frontier ·
Poetic
Categories: Judgment in Islam
Judgment in Christianity
Navigation menu
Create account
Log in
Article
Talk
Read
Edit
View history
Main page
Contents
Featured content
Current events
Random article
Donate to Wikipedia
Wikipedia store
Interaction
Help
About Wikipedia
Community portal
Recent changes
Contact page
Tools
What links here
Related changes
Upload file
Special pages
Permanent link
Page information
Wikidata item
Cite this page
Print/export
Create a book
Download as PDF
Printable version
Languages
Ελληνικά
Edit links
This page was last modified on 6 October 2014, at 21:16.
Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License; additional terms may apply. By using this site, you agree to the Terms of Use and Privacy Policy. Wikipedia® is a registered trademark of the Wikimedia Foundation, Inc., a non-profit organization.
Privacy policy
About Wikipedia
Disclaimers
Contact Wikipedia
Developers
Mobile view
Wikimedia Foundation
Powered by MediaWiki
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Divine_judgment
This is a good article. Click here for more information.
Divine command theory
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Jump to: navigation, search
This article is about the meta-ethical theory. For the divine command theory of happiness, see Positive psychology.
See also: Divine judgment
Part of a series on the
Philosophy of religion
Religious concepts[show]
Challenges[show]
God[show]
Theories of religion[hide]
Acosmism ·
Agnosticism ·
Animism ·
Antireligion ·
Atheism ·
Dharmism ·
Deism ·
Divine command theory ·
Dualism ·
Esotericism ·
Exclusivism ·
Existentialism (agnostic ·
atheist ·
Christian) ·
Feminist ·
Fundamentalism ·
Gnosticism ·
Henotheism ·
Humanism (Christian ·
religious ·
secular) ·
Inclusivism ·
Monism ·
Monotheism ·
Mysticism ·
Naturalism (humanistic ·
metaphysical ·
religious) ·
New Age ·
Nondualism ·
Nontheism ·
Pandeism ·
Panentheism ·
Pantheism ·
Perennialism ·
Polytheism ·
Process ·
Spiritualism ·
Shamanism ·
Taoic ·
Theism ·
Transcendentalism
Philosophers of religion[show]
Related topics[show]
Philosophy of religion article index
v ·
t ·
e
Divine command theory is a meta-ethical theory which proposes that an action's status as morally good is equivalent to whether it is commanded by God. The theory asserts that what is moral is determined by what God commands, and that to be moral is to follow his commands. Followers of both monotheistic and polytheistic religions in ancient and modern times have often accepted the importance of God's commands in establishing morality. Numerous variants of the theory have been presented: historically, figures including Saint Augustine, Duns Scotus, and Thomas Aquinas have presented various versions of divine command theory; more recently, Robert Merrihew Adams has proposed a "modified divine command theory" based on the omnibenevolence of God in which morality is linked to human conceptions of right and wrong. Paul Copan has argued in favour of the theory from a Christian viewpoint, and Linda Zagzebski's divine motivation theory proposes that God's motivations, rather than commands, are the source of morality.
Semantic challenges to divine command theory have been proposed; the philosopher William Wainwright argued that to be commanded by God and to be morally obligatory do not have an identical meaning, which he believed would make defining obligation difficult. He also contended that, as knowledge of God is required for morality by divine command theory, atheists and agnostics could not be moral; he saw this as a weakness of the theory. Others have challenged the theory on modal grounds by arguing that, even if God's command and morality correlate in this world, they may not do so in other possible worlds. In addition, the Euthyphro dilemma, first proposed by Plato, presented a dilemma which threatened either to leave morality subject to the whims of God, or challenge his omnipotence. Divine command theory has also been criticised for its apparent incompatibility with the omnibenevolence of God, moral autonomy and religious pluralism, although some scholars have attempted to defend the theory from these challenges.
Contents [hide]
1 General form 1.1 Augustine
1.2 Scholasticism
1.3 Immanuel Kant
1.4 Robert Adams
1.5 Alternative theories
2 Objections 2.1 Semantic objections
2.2 Moral motivation
2.3 Euthyphro dilemma
2.4 Omnibenevolence
2.5 Autonomy
2.6 Pluralism
3 Divine command theory in religion
4 References
5 Bibliography
6 External links
General form[edit]
Various forms of divine command theory have been presented in the past by philosophers including William of Ockham, St Augustine, Duns Scotus, and John Calvin. The theory generally teaches that moral truth does not exist independently of God and that morality is determined by divine commands. Stronger versions of the theory assert that God's command is the only reason that a good action is moral, while weaker variations cast divine command as a vital component within a greater reason.[1] The theory asserts that good actions are morally good as a result of their being commanded by God, and many religious believers subscribe to some form of divine command theory.[2] Because of these premises, adherents believe that moral obligation is obedience to God's commands; what is morally right is what God desires.[3]
Augustine[edit]
Saint Augustine offered a version of divine command theory that began by casting ethics as the pursuit of the supreme good, which delivers human happiness. He argued that to achieve this happiness, humans must love objects that are worthy of human love in the correct manner; this requires humans to love God, which then allows them to correctly love everything else. Augustine's ethics proposed that the act of loving God enables humans to properly orient their loves, leading to human happiness and fulfilment.[4] Augustine supported Plato's view that a well-ordered soul is a desirable consequence of morality; unlike Plato, he believed that achieving a well-ordered soul had a higher purpose: living in accordance with God's commands. His view of morality was thus heteronomous, as he believed in deference to a higher authority (God), rather than acting autonomously.[5]
Scholasticism[edit]
John Duns Scotus, who proposed a variant of divine command theory
Scholastic philosopher John Duns Scotus argued that the only moral obligations that God could not take away from humans are to love one another and love God. He proposed that some commandments are moral because God commands them, and some are moral irrespective of his command.[6] Duns Scotus argued that the natural law contains only what is self-evidently analytically true and that God could not make these statements false. This means that the commands of natural law do not depend on God's will; these commands were those found on the first tablet of the Ten Commandments – the first three, which consist of obligations to God. He suggested that the rest of the Ten Commandments, and any other commandments God makes, are morally obligatory because God commands them.[7]
Kelly James Clark and Anne Poortenga have presented a defence of divine command theory based on Aquinas' moral theory. Aquinas proposed a theory of natural law which asserted that something is moral if it works towards the purpose of human existence, and so human nature can determine what is moral. Clark and Poortenga argued that God created human nature and thus commanded a certain morality; hence he cannot arbitrarily change what is right or wrong for humans.[8]
Immanuel Kant[edit]
The deontological ethics of Immanuel Kant has been cast as rejecting divine command theory by several figures, among whom is ethicist R. M. Hare. Kant's view that morality should be determined by the categorical imperative – duty to the moral law, rather than acting for a specific end – has been viewed as incompatible with divine command theory. Philosopher and theologian John E. Hare has noted that some philosophers see divine command theory as an example of Kant's heteronomous will – motives besides the moral law, which Kant regarded as non-moral.[9] American philosopher Lewis White Beck takes Kant's argument to be a refutation of the theory that morality depends of divine authority.[10] John E. Hare challenges this view, arguing that Kantian ethics should be seen as compatible with divine command theory.[9]
Robert Adams[edit]
Robert Merrihew Adams proposes what he calls a "modified divine command theory"
American philosopher Robert Merrihew Adams proposes what he calls a "modified divine command theory".[11] Adams presents the basic form of his theory by asserting that two statements are equivalent:
1.It is wrong to do X.
2.It is contrary to God's commands to do X.[11]
He proposes that God's commands precurse moral truths and must be explained in terms of moral truths, not the other way around. Adams writes that his theory is an attempt to define what being ethically 'wrong' consists of and accepts that it is only useful to those within a Judeo-Christian context. In dealing with the criticism that a seemingly immoral act would be obligatory if God commanded it, he proposes that God does not command cruelty for its own sake. Adams does not propose that it would be logically impossible for God to command cruelty, rather that it would be unthinkable for him to do so because of his nature. Adams emphasises the importance of faith in God, specifically faith in God's goodness, as well as his existence.[12]
Adams proposes that an action is morally wrong if and only if it defies the commands of a loving God. If cruelty was commanded, he would not be loving; Adams argued that, in this instance, God's commands would not have to be obeyed and also that his theory of ethical wrongness would break down. He proposed that divine command morality assumes that human concepts of right and wrong are met by God's commands and that the theory can only be applied if this is the case.[13] Adams' theory attempts to counter the challenge that morality might be arbitrary, as moral commands are not based solely on the commands of God, but are founded on his omnibenevolence. It attempts to challenge the claim that an external standard of morality prevents God from being sovereign by making him the source of morality and his character the moral law.[14]
Adams proposes that in many Judeo-Christian contexts, the term 'wrong' is used to mean being contrary to God's commands. In ethical contexts, he believes that 'wrong' entails an emotional attitude against an action and that these two uses of wrongness usually correlate.[15] Adams suggests that a believer's concept of morality is founded in their religious belief and that right and wrong are tied to their belief in God; this works because God always commands what believers accept to be right. If God commanded what a believer perceived as wrong, the believer would not say it is right or wrong to disobey him; rather their concept of morality would break down.[16]
Michael Austin writes that an implication of this modified divine command theory is that God cannot command cruelty for its own sake; this could be argued to be inconsistent with God's omnipotence. Thomas Aquinas argued that God's omnipotence should be understood as the ability to do all things that are possible: he attempted to refute the idea that God's inability to perform illogical actions challenges his omnipotence. Austin contends that commanding cruelty for its own sake is not illogical, so is not covered by Aquinas' defence, although Aquinas had argued that sin is the falling short of a perfect action and thus not compatible with omnipotence.[14]
Alternative theories[edit]
Paul Copan argues from a Christian viewpoint that man, made in God's image, conforms to God's sense of morality. The description of actions as right or wrong are therefore relevant to God; a person's sense of what is right or wrong corresponds to God's.[17]
We would not know goodness without God's endowing us with a moral constitution. We have rights, dignity, freedom, and responsibility because God has designed us this way. In this, we reflect God's moral goodness as His image-bearers.
—Paul Copan, Passionate Conviction: Contemporary Discourses on Christian Apologetics[17]
As an alternative to divine command theory, Linda Zagzebski has proposed divine motivation theory, which stills fits into a monotheistic framework. According to this theory, goodness is determined by God's motives, rather than by what he commands. Divine motivation theory is similar to virtue ethics because it considers the character of an agent, and whether they are in accordance with God's, as the standard for moral value.[18] Zagzebski argues that things in the world have objective moral properties, such as being lovable, which are given to them through God's perception of them. God's attitude towards something is cast as a morally good attitude.[19] The theory casts God as a good example for morality, and humans should imitate his virtues as much as is possible for finite, imperfect beings.[20]
Objections[edit]
Semantic objections[edit]
Philosopher William Wainwright considered a challenge to the theory on semantic grounds, arguing that "being commanded by God" and "being obligatory" do not mean the same thing, contrary to what the theory suggests. He used the example of water not having an identical meaning to H2O to propose that "being commanded by God" does not have an identical meaning to "being obligatory". This was not an objection to the truth of divine command theory, but Wainwright believed it demonstrated that the theory should not be used to formulate assertions about the meaning of obligation.[21] Wainwright also noted that divine command theory might imply that one can only have moral knowledge if one has knowledge of God; Edward Wierenga argued that, if this is the case, the theory seems to deny atheists and agnostics moral knowledge.[22] Hugh Storer Chandler has challenged the theory based on modal ideas of what might exist in different worlds. He suggested that, even if one accepts that being commanded by God and being morally right are the same, they may not be synonyms because they might be different in other possible worlds.[23]
Moral motivation[edit]
Michael Austin has noted that divine command theory could be criticised for prompting people to be moral with impure motivations. He writes of the objection that a moral life should be sought because morality is valued, rather than to avoid punishment or receive a reward. This punishment and reward system of motivation could be seen as inadequate.[4]
Euthyphro dilemma[edit]
Plato presents the Euthyphro dilemma in one of his dialogues.
Main article: Euthyphro dilemma
The Euthyphro dilemma was proposed in Plato's dialogue between Socrates and Euthyphro. In the scene, Socrates and Euthyphro are discussing the nature of piety when Socrates presents the dilemma, which can be presented as the question 'Is X good because God commands it, or does God command X because it is good?'[24]
Is the pious loved by the gods because it is pious, or is it pious because it is loved by the gods?
—Plato, Euthyphro[24]
The Euthyphro dilemma can elicit the response that an action is good because God commands the action, or that God commands an action because it is good. If the first is chosen, it would imply that whatever God commands must be good: even if he commanded someone to inflict suffering, then inflicting suffering must be moral. If the latter is chosen, then morality is no longer dependent on God, defeating the divine command theory. Additionally, if God is subject to an external law, he is not sovereign or omnipotent, which would challenge the orthodox conception of God. Proponents of the Euthyphro dilemma might claim that divine command theory is obviously wrong because either answer challenges the ability of God to give moral laws.[24]
William of Ockham responded to the Euthyphro Dilemma by 'biting the bullet'. He argued that, if God did command people to be cruel, then that would be morally obligatory, proposing that the only limitation to what God can make obligatory is the principle of non-contradiction.[25] Robert Adams defended Ockham's view, noting that it is only a logical possibility that God would command what we consider to be immoral, not an actuality. Even if God could logically command these actions, he would not because that is not his character.[8] Eleonore Stump and Norman Kretzmann have responded to the Euthyphro dilemma by appealing to the doctrine of divine simplicity, a concept associated with Aquinas and Aristotle which suggests that the substance and attributes of God are identical. They propose that God and goodness are identical and that this is what makes his commands good.[26]
American philosopher William Alston responded to the Euthyphro dilemma by considering what it means for God to be morally good. If divine command theory is accepted, it implies that God is good because he obeys his own commands; Alston argued that this is not the case and that God's goodness is distinct from abiding by moral obligations. He suggested that a moral obligation implies that there is some possibility that the agent may not honour their obligation; Alston argued that this possibility does not exist for God, so his morality must be distinct from simply obeying his own commands. Alston contended that God is the supreme standard of morality and acts according to his character, which is necessarily good. There is no more arbitrariness in this view than accepting another moral standard.[8]
Omnibenevolence[edit]
Leibniz, and some more recent philosophers, challenged the theory because it seems to entail that God's goodness consists of his following his own commands. It is argued that, if divine command theory is accepted, God's obligations would be what he commanded himself to do; the concept of God commanding himself is seen as incoherent. Neither could God hold any virtues, as a virtue would be the disposition to follow his own commands – if he cannot logically command himself, then he cannot logically have any virtues. Edward Wierenga counters this by claiming that whatever God chooses to do is good, but that his nature means that his actions would always be praiseworthy. William Wainwright argues that, although God does not act because of his commands, it is still logical to say that God has reasons for his actions. He proposes that God is motivated by what is morally good and, when he commands what is morally good, it becomes morally obligatory.[27]
Autonomy[edit]
Michael Austin draws attention to an objection from autonomy, which argues that morality requires an agent to freely choose which principles they live by. This challenges the view of divine command theory that God's will determines what is good because humans are no longer autonomous, but followers of an imposed moral law, making autonomy incompatible with divine command theory. Robert Adams challenges this criticism, arguing that humans must still choose to accept or reject God's commands and rely on their independent judgement about whether or not to follow them.[28]
Pluralism[edit]
Austin considers the view that, in a world of religious pluralism, it is impossible to know which god's or religion's commands should be followed, especially because some religions contradict others, leaving it impossible to accept all of them. Within religions there are also various interpretations of what is commanded. Austin notes that some of the responses to the autonomy objection may be relevant, as an agent must choose whichever religion and morality they judge to be correct. He argues that divine command theory is also consistent with the view that moral truths can be found in all religions and that moral revelation can be found apart from religion.[29] Heimir Geirsson and Margaret Holmgren argue against the view that different religions can lead to the same God because some religions are incompatible with each other (monotheistic and polytheistic religions have contrasting views of divinity, for example, and some Greek or Nordic gods magnified human weaknesses). They argue that determining which god should be listened to remains a problem and that, even within a religion, contrasting views of God exist – the commands of God in the Old and New Testaments could seem to contradict each other.[30]
Divine command theory in religion[edit]
Divine command theory features in the ethics of many modern religions, including Judaism, Islam, the Bahá'í Faith, and Christianity, as well as being a part of numerous older polytheistic religions.[31] In ancient Athens, it was commonly held that moral truth was tied directly to divine commands, and religious piety was almost equivalent to morality.[32] Although Christianity does not entail divine command theory, it is commonly associated with it. It can be a plausible theory to Christians because the traditional conception of God as the creator of the universe supports the idea that he created moral truths. The theory is supported by the Christian view that God is all-powerful because this implies that God creates moral truths, rather than moral truths existing independently of him, which seems inconsistent with his omnipotence.[1]
References[edit]
1.^ Jump up to: a b Martin 1993, p. 229
2.Jump up ^ Geirsson, Holmgren 2010, p. 37
3.Jump up ^ Austin, Michael (21 August 2006). "Divine Command Theory". Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Retrieved 3 April 2012.
4.^ Jump up to: a b Austin, Michael W. (21 August 2006). "Divine Command Theory". Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Retrieved 15 August 2012.
5.Jump up ^ Connolly, Keller, Leever & White 2009, p. 24
6.Jump up ^ Swinburne, Richard (2007). Revelation: From Metaphor to Analogy. Oxford University Press. pp. 358–359. ISBN 978-0-19-921246-0.
7.Jump up ^ Williams, Thomas (31 May 2001; substantive revision 23 December 2009). "John Duns Scotus". Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Retrieved 6 April 2012. Check date values in: |date= (help)
8.^ Jump up to: a b c Austin, Michael (21 August 2006). "Divine Command Theory". Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Retrieved 3 April 2012.
9.^ Jump up to: a b Phillips & Tessin 2000, p. 263
10.Jump up ^ Phillips & Tessin 2000, p. 264
11.^ Jump up to: a b Pojman & Rea 2008, p. 558
12.Jump up ^ Pojman & Rea 2008, p. 558-9
13.Jump up ^ Harris 2003, pp. 32–33
14.^ Jump up to: a b Austin, Michael W. (21 August 2006). "Divine Command Theory". Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Retrieved 18 August 2012.
15.Jump up ^ Pojman & Rea 2008, p. 561-2
16.Jump up ^ Pojman & Rea 2008, p. 559
17.^ Jump up to: a b Copan, Paul, and William Lane Craig. Passionate Conviction: Contemporary Discourses on Christian Apologetics. Nashville, Tennessee: B&H Publishing Group, 2007. 91.
18.Jump up ^ Baggett & Walls 2011, p. 258
19.Jump up ^ Toner, Christopher (1 September 2010). "Zagzebski, Linda Trinkaus. Divine Motivation Theory.(Book review)". The Review of Metaphysics. Retrieved 25 August 2012 – via HighBeam. (subscription required (help)).
20.Jump up ^ Langermann 2011, p. 54
21.Jump up ^ Wainwright 2005, p. 106
22.Jump up ^ Wainwright 2005, p. 106-107
23.Jump up ^ Chandler 2007, p. 185
24.^ Jump up to: a b c Austin, Michael (21 August 2006). "Divine Command Theory". Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Retrieved 3 April 2012.
25.Jump up ^ Dougherty, M. V. (2011). Moral Dilemmas in Medieval Thought: From Gratian to Aquinas. Cambridge University Press. pp. 163–164. ISBN 978-1-107-00707-9.
26.Jump up ^ Harris, Harriet (2011). God, Goodness and Philosophy. Ashgate Publishing. p. 101. ISBN 978-1-4094-2852-7.
27.Jump up ^ Austin, Michael W. (21 August 2006). "Divine Command Theory". Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Retrieved 18 August 2012.
28.Jump up ^ Austin, Michael W. (21 August 2006). "Divine Command Theory". Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Retrieved 18 August 2012.
29.Jump up ^ Austin, Michael W. (21 August 2006). "Divine Command Theory". Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Retrieved 18 August 2012.
30.Jump up ^ Geirsson & Holmgren 2010, pp. 37–38
31.Jump up ^ Rae 2009, ch. 2
32.Jump up ^ Kowalski 2011, p. 98
Bibliography[edit]
Adams, Robert Merrihew (2002). Finite and Infinite Goods: A Framework for Ethics. Oxford University Press. ISBN 0-19-515371-5.
Baggett, David; Walls, Jerry (2011). Good God:The Theistic Foundations of Morality: The Theistic Foundations of Morality. Oxford University Press. ISBN 9780199751808.
Chandler, Hugh (2007). Platonistic And Disenchanting Theories of Ethics. Peter Lang. ISBN 978-0-8204-8858-5.
Connolly, Peggy; Keller, David; Leever, Martin; White, Becky Cox (2009). Ethics In Action: A Case-Based Approach. John Wiley & Sons. ISBN 978-1-40517-098-7.
Evans, C. Stephen (2004). Kierkegaard's Ethic of Love: Divine Commands and Moral Obligations. Oxford University Press. ISBN 0-19-927217-4.
Greirsson, Heimir; Holmgren, Maragaret (2010). Ethical Theory: A Concise Anthology. Broadview Press. ISBN 978-1-55481-015-4.
Harris, Michael (2003). Divine Command Ethics: Jewish and Christian Perspectives. Psychology Press. ISBN 978-0-415-29769-1.
Helm, Paul (1981). Divine Commands and Morality. Oxford University Press. ISBN 0-19-875049-8.
Kowalski, Dean (2011). Moral Theory at the Movies: An Introduction to Ethics. Rowman & Littlefield. ISBN 978-1-44221-455-2.
Langermann, Tzvi (2011). Monotheism & Ethics: Historical and Contemporary Intersections among Judaism, Christianity and Islam. BRILL. ISBN 9789004194298.
Martin, Michael (1993). The Case Against Christianity. Temple University Press. ISBN 978-1-56639-081-1.
Phillips, D. Z.; Tessin, Timothy (2000). Kant and Kierkegaard on Religion. Palgrave Macmillan. ISBN 978-0-31223-234-4.
Rae, Scott (2009). Moral Choices: An Introduction to Ethics. Zondervan. ISBN 978-0-31032-323-5.
Shermer, Michael (2005). Why People Believe Weird Things. Henry Hold & Company. ISBN 0-8050-7769-3.
Morris, Thomas (1988). Divine & Human Action. Cornell University Press. Being and goodness. ISBN 0-8014-9517-2.
Pojman, Louis; Rea, Michael (2008). Philosophy of Religion: An Anthology. Cengage Learning. ISBN 978-0-495-09504-0.
Quinn, Philip (2000). The Blackwell Guide to Ethical Theory. Blackwell Publishers. Divine command theory.
Swinbure, Richard (1977). The Coherence of Theism. Clarendon Press. ISBN 0-19-824410-X.
Wainwright, Williams (2005). Religion and morality. Ashgate Publishing. ISBN 978-0-7546-1632-0.
External links[edit]
Divine Command Theory Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy
God and Morality — a defence of the Divine Command theory.
Moral Argument and Divine Command Theory — links to relevant on-line resources from Internet Infidels
Theological Voluntarism Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
[show]
v ·
t ·
e
Philosophy of religion
Portal
Category
[show]
v ·
t ·
e
Ethics
Categories: Meta-ethics
Philosophy of religion
Religious ethics
Theories of truth
Divine command theory
Ethical theories
Navigation menu
Create account
Log in
Article
Talk
Read
Edit
View history
Main page
Contents
Featured content
Current events
Random article
Donate to Wikipedia
Wikipedia store
Interaction
Help
About Wikipedia
Community portal
Recent changes
Contact page
Tools
What links here
Related changes
Upload file
Special pages
Permanent link
Page information
Wikidata item
Cite this page
Print/export
Create a book
Download as PDF
Printable version
Languages
فارسی
Français
한국어
Edit links
This page was last modified on 22 April 2015, at 21:06.
Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License; additional terms may apply. By using this site, you agree to the Terms of Use and Privacy Policy. Wikipedia® is a registered trademark of the Wikimedia Foundation, Inc., a non-profit organization.
Privacy policy
About Wikipedia
Disclaimers
Contact Wikipedia
Developers
Mobile view
Wikimedia Foundation
Powered by MediaWiki
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Divine_command_theory
This is a good article. Click here for more information.
Divine command theory
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Jump to: navigation, search
This article is about the meta-ethical theory. For the divine command theory of happiness, see Positive psychology.
See also: Divine judgment
Part of a series on the
Philosophy of religion
Religious concepts[show]
Challenges[show]
God[show]
Theories of religion[hide]
Acosmism ·
Agnosticism ·
Animism ·
Antireligion ·
Atheism ·
Dharmism ·
Deism ·
Divine command theory ·
Dualism ·
Esotericism ·
Exclusivism ·
Existentialism (agnostic ·
atheist ·
Christian) ·
Feminist ·
Fundamentalism ·
Gnosticism ·
Henotheism ·
Humanism (Christian ·
religious ·
secular) ·
Inclusivism ·
Monism ·
Monotheism ·
Mysticism ·
Naturalism (humanistic ·
metaphysical ·
religious) ·
New Age ·
Nondualism ·
Nontheism ·
Pandeism ·
Panentheism ·
Pantheism ·
Perennialism ·
Polytheism ·
Process ·
Spiritualism ·
Shamanism ·
Taoic ·
Theism ·
Transcendentalism
Philosophers of religion[show]
Related topics[show]
Philosophy of religion article index
v ·
t ·
e
Divine command theory is a meta-ethical theory which proposes that an action's status as morally good is equivalent to whether it is commanded by God. The theory asserts that what is moral is determined by what God commands, and that to be moral is to follow his commands. Followers of both monotheistic and polytheistic religions in ancient and modern times have often accepted the importance of God's commands in establishing morality. Numerous variants of the theory have been presented: historically, figures including Saint Augustine, Duns Scotus, and Thomas Aquinas have presented various versions of divine command theory; more recently, Robert Merrihew Adams has proposed a "modified divine command theory" based on the omnibenevolence of God in which morality is linked to human conceptions of right and wrong. Paul Copan has argued in favour of the theory from a Christian viewpoint, and Linda Zagzebski's divine motivation theory proposes that God's motivations, rather than commands, are the source of morality.
Semantic challenges to divine command theory have been proposed; the philosopher William Wainwright argued that to be commanded by God and to be morally obligatory do not have an identical meaning, which he believed would make defining obligation difficult. He also contended that, as knowledge of God is required for morality by divine command theory, atheists and agnostics could not be moral; he saw this as a weakness of the theory. Others have challenged the theory on modal grounds by arguing that, even if God's command and morality correlate in this world, they may not do so in other possible worlds. In addition, the Euthyphro dilemma, first proposed by Plato, presented a dilemma which threatened either to leave morality subject to the whims of God, or challenge his omnipotence. Divine command theory has also been criticised for its apparent incompatibility with the omnibenevolence of God, moral autonomy and religious pluralism, although some scholars have attempted to defend the theory from these challenges.
Contents [hide]
1 General form 1.1 Augustine
1.2 Scholasticism
1.3 Immanuel Kant
1.4 Robert Adams
1.5 Alternative theories
2 Objections 2.1 Semantic objections
2.2 Moral motivation
2.3 Euthyphro dilemma
2.4 Omnibenevolence
2.5 Autonomy
2.6 Pluralism
3 Divine command theory in religion
4 References
5 Bibliography
6 External links
General form[edit]
Various forms of divine command theory have been presented in the past by philosophers including William of Ockham, St Augustine, Duns Scotus, and John Calvin. The theory generally teaches that moral truth does not exist independently of God and that morality is determined by divine commands. Stronger versions of the theory assert that God's command is the only reason that a good action is moral, while weaker variations cast divine command as a vital component within a greater reason.[1] The theory asserts that good actions are morally good as a result of their being commanded by God, and many religious believers subscribe to some form of divine command theory.[2] Because of these premises, adherents believe that moral obligation is obedience to God's commands; what is morally right is what God desires.[3]
Augustine[edit]
Saint Augustine offered a version of divine command theory that began by casting ethics as the pursuit of the supreme good, which delivers human happiness. He argued that to achieve this happiness, humans must love objects that are worthy of human love in the correct manner; this requires humans to love God, which then allows them to correctly love everything else. Augustine's ethics proposed that the act of loving God enables humans to properly orient their loves, leading to human happiness and fulfilment.[4] Augustine supported Plato's view that a well-ordered soul is a desirable consequence of morality; unlike Plato, he believed that achieving a well-ordered soul had a higher purpose: living in accordance with God's commands. His view of morality was thus heteronomous, as he believed in deference to a higher authority (God), rather than acting autonomously.[5]
Scholasticism[edit]
John Duns Scotus, who proposed a variant of divine command theory
Scholastic philosopher John Duns Scotus argued that the only moral obligations that God could not take away from humans are to love one another and love God. He proposed that some commandments are moral because God commands them, and some are moral irrespective of his command.[6] Duns Scotus argued that the natural law contains only what is self-evidently analytically true and that God could not make these statements false. This means that the commands of natural law do not depend on God's will; these commands were those found on the first tablet of the Ten Commandments – the first three, which consist of obligations to God. He suggested that the rest of the Ten Commandments, and any other commandments God makes, are morally obligatory because God commands them.[7]
Kelly James Clark and Anne Poortenga have presented a defence of divine command theory based on Aquinas' moral theory. Aquinas proposed a theory of natural law which asserted that something is moral if it works towards the purpose of human existence, and so human nature can determine what is moral. Clark and Poortenga argued that God created human nature and thus commanded a certain morality; hence he cannot arbitrarily change what is right or wrong for humans.[8]
Immanuel Kant[edit]
The deontological ethics of Immanuel Kant has been cast as rejecting divine command theory by several figures, among whom is ethicist R. M. Hare. Kant's view that morality should be determined by the categorical imperative – duty to the moral law, rather than acting for a specific end – has been viewed as incompatible with divine command theory. Philosopher and theologian John E. Hare has noted that some philosophers see divine command theory as an example of Kant's heteronomous will – motives besides the moral law, which Kant regarded as non-moral.[9] American philosopher Lewis White Beck takes Kant's argument to be a refutation of the theory that morality depends of divine authority.[10] John E. Hare challenges this view, arguing that Kantian ethics should be seen as compatible with divine command theory.[9]
Robert Adams[edit]
Robert Merrihew Adams proposes what he calls a "modified divine command theory"
American philosopher Robert Merrihew Adams proposes what he calls a "modified divine command theory".[11] Adams presents the basic form of his theory by asserting that two statements are equivalent:
1.It is wrong to do X.
2.It is contrary to God's commands to do X.[11]
He proposes that God's commands precurse moral truths and must be explained in terms of moral truths, not the other way around. Adams writes that his theory is an attempt to define what being ethically 'wrong' consists of and accepts that it is only useful to those within a Judeo-Christian context. In dealing with the criticism that a seemingly immoral act would be obligatory if God commanded it, he proposes that God does not command cruelty for its own sake. Adams does not propose that it would be logically impossible for God to command cruelty, rather that it would be unthinkable for him to do so because of his nature. Adams emphasises the importance of faith in God, specifically faith in God's goodness, as well as his existence.[12]
Adams proposes that an action is morally wrong if and only if it defies the commands of a loving God. If cruelty was commanded, he would not be loving; Adams argued that, in this instance, God's commands would not have to be obeyed and also that his theory of ethical wrongness would break down. He proposed that divine command morality assumes that human concepts of right and wrong are met by God's commands and that the theory can only be applied if this is the case.[13] Adams' theory attempts to counter the challenge that morality might be arbitrary, as moral commands are not based solely on the commands of God, but are founded on his omnibenevolence. It attempts to challenge the claim that an external standard of morality prevents God from being sovereign by making him the source of morality and his character the moral law.[14]
Adams proposes that in many Judeo-Christian contexts, the term 'wrong' is used to mean being contrary to God's commands. In ethical contexts, he believes that 'wrong' entails an emotional attitude against an action and that these two uses of wrongness usually correlate.[15] Adams suggests that a believer's concept of morality is founded in their religious belief and that right and wrong are tied to their belief in God; this works because God always commands what believers accept to be right. If God commanded what a believer perceived as wrong, the believer would not say it is right or wrong to disobey him; rather their concept of morality would break down.[16]
Michael Austin writes that an implication of this modified divine command theory is that God cannot command cruelty for its own sake; this could be argued to be inconsistent with God's omnipotence. Thomas Aquinas argued that God's omnipotence should be understood as the ability to do all things that are possible: he attempted to refute the idea that God's inability to perform illogical actions challenges his omnipotence. Austin contends that commanding cruelty for its own sake is not illogical, so is not covered by Aquinas' defence, although Aquinas had argued that sin is the falling short of a perfect action and thus not compatible with omnipotence.[14]
Alternative theories[edit]
Paul Copan argues from a Christian viewpoint that man, made in God's image, conforms to God's sense of morality. The description of actions as right or wrong are therefore relevant to God; a person's sense of what is right or wrong corresponds to God's.[17]
We would not know goodness without God's endowing us with a moral constitution. We have rights, dignity, freedom, and responsibility because God has designed us this way. In this, we reflect God's moral goodness as His image-bearers.
—Paul Copan, Passionate Conviction: Contemporary Discourses on Christian Apologetics[17]
As an alternative to divine command theory, Linda Zagzebski has proposed divine motivation theory, which stills fits into a monotheistic framework. According to this theory, goodness is determined by God's motives, rather than by what he commands. Divine motivation theory is similar to virtue ethics because it considers the character of an agent, and whether they are in accordance with God's, as the standard for moral value.[18] Zagzebski argues that things in the world have objective moral properties, such as being lovable, which are given to them through God's perception of them. God's attitude towards something is cast as a morally good attitude.[19] The theory casts God as a good example for morality, and humans should imitate his virtues as much as is possible for finite, imperfect beings.[20]
Objections[edit]
Semantic objections[edit]
Philosopher William Wainwright considered a challenge to the theory on semantic grounds, arguing that "being commanded by God" and "being obligatory" do not mean the same thing, contrary to what the theory suggests. He used the example of water not having an identical meaning to H2O to propose that "being commanded by God" does not have an identical meaning to "being obligatory". This was not an objection to the truth of divine command theory, but Wainwright believed it demonstrated that the theory should not be used to formulate assertions about the meaning of obligation.[21] Wainwright also noted that divine command theory might imply that one can only have moral knowledge if one has knowledge of God; Edward Wierenga argued that, if this is the case, the theory seems to deny atheists and agnostics moral knowledge.[22] Hugh Storer Chandler has challenged the theory based on modal ideas of what might exist in different worlds. He suggested that, even if one accepts that being commanded by God and being morally right are the same, they may not be synonyms because they might be different in other possible worlds.[23]
Moral motivation[edit]
Michael Austin has noted that divine command theory could be criticised for prompting people to be moral with impure motivations. He writes of the objection that a moral life should be sought because morality is valued, rather than to avoid punishment or receive a reward. This punishment and reward system of motivation could be seen as inadequate.[4]
Euthyphro dilemma[edit]
Plato presents the Euthyphro dilemma in one of his dialogues.
Main article: Euthyphro dilemma
The Euthyphro dilemma was proposed in Plato's dialogue between Socrates and Euthyphro. In the scene, Socrates and Euthyphro are discussing the nature of piety when Socrates presents the dilemma, which can be presented as the question 'Is X good because God commands it, or does God command X because it is good?'[24]
Is the pious loved by the gods because it is pious, or is it pious because it is loved by the gods?
—Plato, Euthyphro[24]
The Euthyphro dilemma can elicit the response that an action is good because God commands the action, or that God commands an action because it is good. If the first is chosen, it would imply that whatever God commands must be good: even if he commanded someone to inflict suffering, then inflicting suffering must be moral. If the latter is chosen, then morality is no longer dependent on God, defeating the divine command theory. Additionally, if God is subject to an external law, he is not sovereign or omnipotent, which would challenge the orthodox conception of God. Proponents of the Euthyphro dilemma might claim that divine command theory is obviously wrong because either answer challenges the ability of God to give moral laws.[24]
William of Ockham responded to the Euthyphro Dilemma by 'biting the bullet'. He argued that, if God did command people to be cruel, then that would be morally obligatory, proposing that the only limitation to what God can make obligatory is the principle of non-contradiction.[25] Robert Adams defended Ockham's view, noting that it is only a logical possibility that God would command what we consider to be immoral, not an actuality. Even if God could logically command these actions, he would not because that is not his character.[8] Eleonore Stump and Norman Kretzmann have responded to the Euthyphro dilemma by appealing to the doctrine of divine simplicity, a concept associated with Aquinas and Aristotle which suggests that the substance and attributes of God are identical. They propose that God and goodness are identical and that this is what makes his commands good.[26]
American philosopher William Alston responded to the Euthyphro dilemma by considering what it means for God to be morally good. If divine command theory is accepted, it implies that God is good because he obeys his own commands; Alston argued that this is not the case and that God's goodness is distinct from abiding by moral obligations. He suggested that a moral obligation implies that there is some possibility that the agent may not honour their obligation; Alston argued that this possibility does not exist for God, so his morality must be distinct from simply obeying his own commands. Alston contended that God is the supreme standard of morality and acts according to his character, which is necessarily good. There is no more arbitrariness in this view than accepting another moral standard.[8]
Omnibenevolence[edit]
Leibniz, and some more recent philosophers, challenged the theory because it seems to entail that God's goodness consists of his following his own commands. It is argued that, if divine command theory is accepted, God's obligations would be what he commanded himself to do; the concept of God commanding himself is seen as incoherent. Neither could God hold any virtues, as a virtue would be the disposition to follow his own commands – if he cannot logically command himself, then he cannot logically have any virtues. Edward Wierenga counters this by claiming that whatever God chooses to do is good, but that his nature means that his actions would always be praiseworthy. William Wainwright argues that, although God does not act because of his commands, it is still logical to say that God has reasons for his actions. He proposes that God is motivated by what is morally good and, when he commands what is morally good, it becomes morally obligatory.[27]
Autonomy[edit]
Michael Austin draws attention to an objection from autonomy, which argues that morality requires an agent to freely choose which principles they live by. This challenges the view of divine command theory that God's will determines what is good because humans are no longer autonomous, but followers of an imposed moral law, making autonomy incompatible with divine command theory. Robert Adams challenges this criticism, arguing that humans must still choose to accept or reject God's commands and rely on their independent judgement about whether or not to follow them.[28]
Pluralism[edit]
Austin considers the view that, in a world of religious pluralism, it is impossible to know which god's or religion's commands should be followed, especially because some religions contradict others, leaving it impossible to accept all of them. Within religions there are also various interpretations of what is commanded. Austin notes that some of the responses to the autonomy objection may be relevant, as an agent must choose whichever religion and morality they judge to be correct. He argues that divine command theory is also consistent with the view that moral truths can be found in all religions and that moral revelation can be found apart from religion.[29] Heimir Geirsson and Margaret Holmgren argue against the view that different religions can lead to the same God because some religions are incompatible with each other (monotheistic and polytheistic religions have contrasting views of divinity, for example, and some Greek or Nordic gods magnified human weaknesses). They argue that determining which god should be listened to remains a problem and that, even within a religion, contrasting views of God exist – the commands of God in the Old and New Testaments could seem to contradict each other.[30]
Divine command theory in religion[edit]
Divine command theory features in the ethics of many modern religions, including Judaism, Islam, the Bahá'í Faith, and Christianity, as well as being a part of numerous older polytheistic religions.[31] In ancient Athens, it was commonly held that moral truth was tied directly to divine commands, and religious piety was almost equivalent to morality.[32] Although Christianity does not entail divine command theory, it is commonly associated with it. It can be a plausible theory to Christians because the traditional conception of God as the creator of the universe supports the idea that he created moral truths. The theory is supported by the Christian view that God is all-powerful because this implies that God creates moral truths, rather than moral truths existing independently of him, which seems inconsistent with his omnipotence.[1]
References[edit]
1.^ Jump up to: a b Martin 1993, p. 229
2.Jump up ^ Geirsson, Holmgren 2010, p. 37
3.Jump up ^ Austin, Michael (21 August 2006). "Divine Command Theory". Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Retrieved 3 April 2012.
4.^ Jump up to: a b Austin, Michael W. (21 August 2006). "Divine Command Theory". Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Retrieved 15 August 2012.
5.Jump up ^ Connolly, Keller, Leever & White 2009, p. 24
6.Jump up ^ Swinburne, Richard (2007). Revelation: From Metaphor to Analogy. Oxford University Press. pp. 358–359. ISBN 978-0-19-921246-0.
7.Jump up ^ Williams, Thomas (31 May 2001; substantive revision 23 December 2009). "John Duns Scotus". Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Retrieved 6 April 2012. Check date values in: |date= (help)
8.^ Jump up to: a b c Austin, Michael (21 August 2006). "Divine Command Theory". Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Retrieved 3 April 2012.
9.^ Jump up to: a b Phillips & Tessin 2000, p. 263
10.Jump up ^ Phillips & Tessin 2000, p. 264
11.^ Jump up to: a b Pojman & Rea 2008, p. 558
12.Jump up ^ Pojman & Rea 2008, p. 558-9
13.Jump up ^ Harris 2003, pp. 32–33
14.^ Jump up to: a b Austin, Michael W. (21 August 2006). "Divine Command Theory". Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Retrieved 18 August 2012.
15.Jump up ^ Pojman & Rea 2008, p. 561-2
16.Jump up ^ Pojman & Rea 2008, p. 559
17.^ Jump up to: a b Copan, Paul, and William Lane Craig. Passionate Conviction: Contemporary Discourses on Christian Apologetics. Nashville, Tennessee: B&H Publishing Group, 2007. 91.
18.Jump up ^ Baggett & Walls 2011, p. 258
19.Jump up ^ Toner, Christopher (1 September 2010). "Zagzebski, Linda Trinkaus. Divine Motivation Theory.(Book review)". The Review of Metaphysics. Retrieved 25 August 2012 – via HighBeam. (subscription required (help)).
20.Jump up ^ Langermann 2011, p. 54
21.Jump up ^ Wainwright 2005, p. 106
22.Jump up ^ Wainwright 2005, p. 106-107
23.Jump up ^ Chandler 2007, p. 185
24.^ Jump up to: a b c Austin, Michael (21 August 2006). "Divine Command Theory". Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Retrieved 3 April 2012.
25.Jump up ^ Dougherty, M. V. (2011). Moral Dilemmas in Medieval Thought: From Gratian to Aquinas. Cambridge University Press. pp. 163–164. ISBN 978-1-107-00707-9.
26.Jump up ^ Harris, Harriet (2011). God, Goodness and Philosophy. Ashgate Publishing. p. 101. ISBN 978-1-4094-2852-7.
27.Jump up ^ Austin, Michael W. (21 August 2006). "Divine Command Theory". Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Retrieved 18 August 2012.
28.Jump up ^ Austin, Michael W. (21 August 2006). "Divine Command Theory". Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Retrieved 18 August 2012.
29.Jump up ^ Austin, Michael W. (21 August 2006). "Divine Command Theory". Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Retrieved 18 August 2012.
30.Jump up ^ Geirsson & Holmgren 2010, pp. 37–38
31.Jump up ^ Rae 2009, ch. 2
32.Jump up ^ Kowalski 2011, p. 98
Bibliography[edit]
Adams, Robert Merrihew (2002). Finite and Infinite Goods: A Framework for Ethics. Oxford University Press. ISBN 0-19-515371-5.
Baggett, David; Walls, Jerry (2011). Good God:The Theistic Foundations of Morality: The Theistic Foundations of Morality. Oxford University Press. ISBN 9780199751808.
Chandler, Hugh (2007). Platonistic And Disenchanting Theories of Ethics. Peter Lang. ISBN 978-0-8204-8858-5.
Connolly, Peggy; Keller, David; Leever, Martin; White, Becky Cox (2009). Ethics In Action: A Case-Based Approach. John Wiley & Sons. ISBN 978-1-40517-098-7.
Evans, C. Stephen (2004). Kierkegaard's Ethic of Love: Divine Commands and Moral Obligations. Oxford University Press. ISBN 0-19-927217-4.
Greirsson, Heimir; Holmgren, Maragaret (2010). Ethical Theory: A Concise Anthology. Broadview Press. ISBN 978-1-55481-015-4.
Harris, Michael (2003). Divine Command Ethics: Jewish and Christian Perspectives. Psychology Press. ISBN 978-0-415-29769-1.
Helm, Paul (1981). Divine Commands and Morality. Oxford University Press. ISBN 0-19-875049-8.
Kowalski, Dean (2011). Moral Theory at the Movies: An Introduction to Ethics. Rowman & Littlefield. ISBN 978-1-44221-455-2.
Langermann, Tzvi (2011). Monotheism & Ethics: Historical and Contemporary Intersections among Judaism, Christianity and Islam. BRILL. ISBN 9789004194298.
Martin, Michael (1993). The Case Against Christianity. Temple University Press. ISBN 978-1-56639-081-1.
Phillips, D. Z.; Tessin, Timothy (2000). Kant and Kierkegaard on Religion. Palgrave Macmillan. ISBN 978-0-31223-234-4.
Rae, Scott (2009). Moral Choices: An Introduction to Ethics. Zondervan. ISBN 978-0-31032-323-5.
Shermer, Michael (2005). Why People Believe Weird Things. Henry Hold & Company. ISBN 0-8050-7769-3.
Morris, Thomas (1988). Divine & Human Action. Cornell University Press. Being and goodness. ISBN 0-8014-9517-2.
Pojman, Louis; Rea, Michael (2008). Philosophy of Religion: An Anthology. Cengage Learning. ISBN 978-0-495-09504-0.
Quinn, Philip (2000). The Blackwell Guide to Ethical Theory. Blackwell Publishers. Divine command theory.
Swinbure, Richard (1977). The Coherence of Theism. Clarendon Press. ISBN 0-19-824410-X.
Wainwright, Williams (2005). Religion and morality. Ashgate Publishing. ISBN 978-0-7546-1632-0.
External links[edit]
Divine Command Theory Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy
God and Morality — a defence of the Divine Command theory.
Moral Argument and Divine Command Theory — links to relevant on-line resources from Internet Infidels
Theological Voluntarism Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
[show]
v ·
t ·
e
Philosophy of religion
Portal
Category
[show]
v ·
t ·
e
Ethics
Categories: Meta-ethics
Philosophy of religion
Religious ethics
Theories of truth
Divine command theory
Ethical theories
Navigation menu
Create account
Log in
Article
Talk
Read
Edit
View history
Main page
Contents
Featured content
Current events
Random article
Donate to Wikipedia
Wikipedia store
Interaction
Help
About Wikipedia
Community portal
Recent changes
Contact page
Tools
What links here
Related changes
Upload file
Special pages
Permanent link
Page information
Wikidata item
Cite this page
Print/export
Create a book
Download as PDF
Printable version
Languages
فارسی
Français
한국어
Edit links
This page was last modified on 22 April 2015, at 21:06.
Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License; additional terms may apply. By using this site, you agree to the Terms of Use and Privacy Policy. Wikipedia® is a registered trademark of the Wikimedia Foundation, Inc., a non-profit organization.
Privacy policy
About Wikipedia
Disclaimers
Contact Wikipedia
Developers
Mobile view
Wikimedia Foundation
Powered by MediaWiki
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Divine_command_theory
Page semi-protected
Pornography
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Jump to: navigation, search
For other uses, see Pornography (disambiguation).
"Porn" redirects here. For other uses, see Porn (disambiguation).
"Sexually explicit" redirects here. For non-pornographic sexually explicit media, see erotica.
The XXX symbol used to designate pornographic material in the U.S. and other regions around the world
Pornography (often abbreviated as "porn" or "porno" in informal usage) is the portrayal of sexual subject matter for the purpose of sexual arousal. Pornography may be presented in a variety of media, including books, magazines, postcards, photographs, sculpture, drawing, painting, animation, sound recording, film, video, and video games. The term applies to the depiction of the act rather than the act itself, and so does not include live exhibitions like sex shows and striptease. The primary subjects of pornographic depictions are pornographic models, who pose for still photographs, and pornographic actors or porn stars, who perform in pornographic films. If dramatic skills are not involved, a performer in a porn film may also be called a model.
Various groups within society have considered depictions of a sexual nature immoral and noxious, labeling them pornographic, and attempting to have them suppressed under obscenity and other laws, with varying degrees of success. Such works have also often been subject to censorship and other legal restraints to publication, display or possession. Such grounds and even the definition of pornography have differed in various historical, cultural, and national contexts.[1]
Social attitudes towards the discussion and presentation of sexuality have become more tolerant and legal definitions of obscenity have become more limited, leading to an industry for the production and consumption of pornography in the latter half of the 20th century. The introduction of the home video and Internet saw a boom in the worldwide porn industry that generates billions of dollars annually. Commercialized pornography accounts for over US$2.5 billion in the United States alone,[2] including the production of various media and associated products and services. This industry employs thousands of performers along with support and production staff. It is also followed by dedicated industry publications and trade groups as well as the mainstream press, private organizations (watchdog groups), government agencies, and political organizations.[3] More recently, sites such as pornhub.com, redtube.com and youporn.com, have served as repositories for home-made or semi-professional pornography, made available free by its creators (who could be called exhibitionists). It has presented a significant challenge to the commercial pornographic film industry.
Irrespective of the legal or social view of pornography, it has been used in a number of contexts. It is used, for example, at fertility clinics to stimulate sperm donors. Some couples use pornography at times for variety and to create a sexual interest or as part of foreplay. There is also some evidence that pornography can be used to treat voyeurism.[4][5]
Contents [hide]
1 Etymology
2 History
3 Classification 3.1 Subgenres
4 Commercialism 4.1 Economics 4.1.1 Non-commercial pornography
4.2 Technology 4.2.1 Advancement
4.2.2 Computer-generated images and manipulations
4.2.3 3D pornography
4.3 Production and distribution by region
5 Study and analysis 5.1 Effects
5.2 Statistics
6 Legal status 6.1 What is not pornography
6.2 Copyright status
7 Views on pornography 7.1 Feminist views
7.2 Religious views
8 See also 8.1 Government and legislation
8.2 Lists
9 References
10 Further reading 10.1 Advocacy
10.2 Opposition
10.3 Neutral or mixed
11 External links
Etymology
The word is similar to the modern Greek πορνογραφία (pornographia), which derives from the Greek words πόρνη (pornē "prostitute" and πορνεία porneia "prostitution"[6]), and γράφειν (graphein "to write or to record", derived meaning "illustration", cf. "graph"), and the suffix -ία (-ia, meaning "state of", "property of", or "place of"), thus meaning "a written description or illustration of prostitutes or prostitution". No date is known for the first use of the word in Greek; the earliest attested, most related word one could find in Greek, is πορνογράφος, pornographos, i.e. "someone writing of harlots", in the Deipnosophists of Athenaeus.[7][8]
"Pornographie" was in use in the French language during the 1800s. The word did not enter the English language as the familiar word until 1857[9] or as a French import in New Orleans in 1842.[10]
History
Oil lamp artifact depicting coitus more ferarum
For more details on this topic, see History of erotic depictions.
Depictions of a sexual nature are older than civilization as depictions such as the venus figurines and rock art have existed since prehistoric times.[11] However, the concept of pornography as understood today did not exist until the Victorian era. For example the French Impressionism painting by Édouard Manet titled Olympia was a nude picture of a French courtesan, literally a "prostitute picture". It was controversial at the time.
Nineteenth-century legislation eventually outlawed the publication, retail, and trafficking of certain writings and images regarded as pornographic and would order the destruction of shop and warehouse stock meant for sale; however, the private possession of and viewing of (some forms of) pornography was not made an offence until recent times.[12]
When large-scale excavations of Pompeii were undertaken in the 1860s, much of the erotic art of the Romans came to light, shocking the Victorians who saw themselves as the intellectual heirs of the Roman Empire. They did not know what to do with the frank depictions of sexuality and endeavored to hide them away from everyone but upper-class scholars. The moveable objects were locked away in the Secret Museum in Naples and what could not be removed was covered and cordoned off as to not corrupt the sensibilities of women, children, and the working classes.
Fanny Hill (1748) is considered "the first original English prose pornography, and the first pornography to use the form of the novel."[13] It is an erotic novel by John Cleland first published in England as Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure.[14][15] It is one of the most prosecuted and banned books in history.[16] The authors were charged with "corrupting the King's subjects."
The world's first law criminalizing pornography was the English Obscene Publications Act 1857 enacted at the urging of the Society for the Suppression of Vice. The Act, which applied to the United Kingdom and Ireland, made the sale of obscene material a statutory offence, giving the courts power to seize and destroy offending material. The American equivalent was the Comstock Act of 1873[17][18] which made it illegal to send any "obscene, lewd, and/or lascivious" materials through the mail. The English Act did not apply to Scotland, where the common law continued to apply. However, neither the English nor the United States Act defined what constituted "obscene", leaving this for the courts to determine. Prior to the English Act, the publication of obscene material was treated as a common law misdemeanour[19] and effectively prosecuting authors and publishers was difficult even in cases where the material was clearly intended as pornography.
The Victorian attitude that pornography was for a select few can be seen in the wording of the Hicklin test stemming from a court case in 1868 where it asks, "whether the tendency of the matter charged as obscenity is to deprave and corrupt those whose minds are open to such immoral influences." Despite the fact of their suppression, depictions of erotic imagery were common throughout history.[20]
Pornographic film production commenced almost immediately after the invention of the motion picture in 1895. Two of the earliest pioneers were Eugène Pirou and Albert Kirchner. Kirchner directed the earliest surviving pornographic film for Pirou under the trade name "Léar". The 1896 film, Le Coucher de la Mariée showed Louise Willy performing a striptease. Pirou's film inspired a genre of risqué French films showing women disrobing and other filmmakers realised profits could be made from such films.[21][22]
Sexually explicit films opened producers and distributors to prosecution. Those that were made were produced illicitly by amateurs starting in the 1920s, primarily in France and the United States. Processing the film was risky as was their distribution. Distribution was strictly private.[23][24] In 1969, Denmark became the first country to abolish censorship, thereby decriminalizing pornography, which led to an explosion in investment and of commercially produced pornography. However, it continued to be banned in other countries, and had to be smuggled in, where it was sold "under the counter" or (sometimes) shown in "members only" cinema clubs.[23]
The scholarly study of pornography, notably in cultural studies, is limited, perhaps due to the controversy about the topic in feminism. The first peer-reviewed academic journal about the study of pornography, Porn Studies, was published in 2014.[25]
Classification
Pornography is often distinguished from erotica, which consists of the portrayal of sexuality with high-art aspirations, focusing also on feelings and emotions, while pornography involves the depiction of acts in a sensational manner, with the entire focus on the physical act, so as to arouse quick intense reactions.[26][27]
Pornography is generally classified as either softcore or hardcore pornography. A pornographic work is characterized as hardcore if it has any hardcore content, no matter how small. Both forms of pornography generally contains nudity. Softcore pornography generally contains nudity or partial nudity in sexually suggestive situations, but without explicit sexual activity, sexual penetration or "extreme" fetishism,[28] while hardcore pornography may contain graphic sexual activity and visible penetration,[29] including unsimulated sex scenes.
Subgenres
Main article: List of pornographic subgenres
Former hardcore porn star Penny Flame in a cheesecake image
Pornography can be classified according to the physical characteristics of the participants, fetish, sexual orientation, etc., as well as the types of sexual activity featured. Reality and voyeur pornography, animated videos, and legally prohibited acts also influence the classification of pornography. Pornography may fall into more than one genre. The genres of pornography are based on the type of activity featured and the category of participants, for example:
Alt porn
Amateur pornography
Ethnic pornography
Fetish pornography
Group sex
Reality pornography
Sexual-orientation-based pornography Straight porn (unless otherwise stated this is assumed in this article)
Gay pornography
Lesbian pornography
Bisexual pornography
Commercialism
Economics
Main article: Sex industry
Revenues of the adult industry in the United States are difficult to determine. In 1970, a Federal study estimated that the total retail value of hardcore pornography in the United States was no more than $10 million.[30]
In 1998, Forrester Research published a report on the online "adult content" industry estimating $750 million to $1 billion in annual revenue. As an unsourced aside, the Forrester study speculated on an industry-wide aggregate figure of $8–10 billion, which was repeated out of context in many news stories,[31] after being published in Eric Schlosser's book on the American black market.[32] Studies in 2001 put the total (including video, pay-per-view, Internet and magazines) between $2.6 billion and $3.9 billion.[2]
As of 2014 the porn industry was believed to bring in more than $13 billion on a yearly basis in the United States.[33] The porn industry alone brings in more revenue than the combined industries: Netflix, Google, eBay, Yahoo, Amazon, Microsoft, and Apple.[33]
A significant amount of pornographic video is shot in the San Fernando Valley, which has been a pioneering region for producing adult films since the 1970s, and has since become home for various models, actors/actresses, production companies, and other assorted businesses involved in the production and distribution of pornography.
The pornography industry has been considered influential in deciding format wars in media, including being a factor in the VHS vs. Betamax format war (the videotape format war)[34][35] and in the Blu-ray vs. HD DVD format war (the high-def format war).[34][35][36]
Non-commercial pornography
In addition to the porn industry, there is a large amount of non-commercial pornography. This should be distinguished from commercial pornography falsely marketed as featuring "amateurs".
Technology
Advancement
Pornographers have taken advantage of each technological advance in the production and distribution of pornography. They have used lithographs, the printing press, and photography. Pornography is considered a driving force in the development of technologies from the printing press, through photography (still and motion), to satellite TV, other forms of video, and the Internet. With the invention of tiny cameras and wireless equipments voyeur pornography is gaining ground.[37][38] Mobile cameras are used to capture pornographic photos or videos, and forwarded as MMS, a practice known as sexting.
Computer-generated images and manipulations
Digital manipulation requires the use of source photographs, but some pornography is produced without human actors at all. The idea of completely computer-generated pornography was conceived very early as one of the most obvious areas of application for computer graphics and 3D rendering.
Until the late 1990s, digitally manipulated pornography could not be produced cost-effectively. In the early 2000s, it became a growing segment, as the modelling and animation software matured and the rendering capabilities of computers improved. As of 2004, computer-generated pornography depicting situations involving children and sex with fictional characters, such as Lara Croft, is already produced on a limited scale. The October 2004 issue of Playboy featured topless pictures of the title character from the BloodRayne video game.[39]
3D pornography
Due to the popularity of 3D blockbusters in theaters such as Avatar and How to Train Your Dragon, companies are now looking to shoot pornography movies in 3D. The first case of this occurred in Hong Kong, when a group of filmmakers filmed 3D Sex and Zen: Extreme Ecstasy released in April 2011.[40][41]
Production and distribution by region
Main article: Pornography by region
The production and distribution of pornography are economic activities of some importance. The exact size of the economy of pornography and the influence that it has in political circles are matters of controversy.
In the United States, the sex film industry is centered in the San Fernando Valley of Los Angeles. In Europe, Budapest is regarded as the industry center.[42][43][44]
Piracy, the illegal copying and distribution, of adult material is of great concern to the industry,[45] the subject of litigation, and formalized anti-piracy efforts.[46][47]
Study and analysis
Effects
Main article: Effects of pornography
Research concerning the effects of pornography is concerned with multiple outcomes.[48] Such research includes potential influences on rape, domestic violence, sexual dysfunction, difficulties with sexual relationships, and child sexual abuse. Viewers of novel and extreme pornographic images may become tolerant to such images, which may impact sexual response.[48] Currently, there is no evidence that visual images and films are addictive.[49] Several studies conclude the liberalization of porn in society may be associated with decreased rape and sexual violence rates, suggest no effect, or are inconclusive.[50][51][52][53][54][55][56]
A 2012 academic study surveyed 308 young adult college women in romantic heterosexual relationships, examining the degree of correlation between their psychological and relational well-being and their partners' use of pornography.[57] A negative correlation was found, which worsened for longer relationships in regard to the women's sexual satisfaction.
A following study examined the ways in which chronic porn use affects antecedents such as gender roles and levels of attachment among straight men in their romantic relationships.[33] The study went on to link this to lower sexual satisfaction as well as a deterioration in the quality of the relationship.[33] The point of pornographic content is to stimulate sexual desire which as a result presents potential problems among couples.[33] By porn affecting one’s gender roles, this enables problems that affect the viewers psychologically, their views of their own sexuality, how others view their sexuality, and can cause self-inflicted or outward violence.[33] An antecedent found to be affected by porn use by men was emotional attachment as well as attachment style in relationships, which can lead to physical and emotional issues among couples.[33] The men in this study tended to avoid intimacy with their partner, which then led to even more porn use.[33] This was also linked to heightened anxiety in the relationship.[33] Men with lower anxiety tend to have a more stable level of attachment, whereas those that are unstable are either overly or not at all attached.[33] Men that display less attachment and more avoidance also showed higher instances of casual sex and more frequent viewings of porn.[33] This also meant that these men tended to avoid romantic or serious relationships and the relationships they did engage in did not last long.[33] The consequences of higher porn use by men in relationships showed a lower quality in their relationships and reduced satisfaction sexually, including displeasure with a partner’s appearance, the act of sex, and intimacy.[33] This then led to emotional feelings of shame and sometimes resentment.[33]
Two psychotherapists operating EastWind Health Associates in Halifax reported their clinical experience that chronic viewing of pornography by adult men can lead to emotional estrangement from their partners, even though the men may desire emotional intimacy.[58] They also noted that men who watch large amounts of porn come to need more stimulation and aggressive porn in order to become aroused. Because of the increasing numbers of men presenting such problems, one therapist remarked “I think we’re at a tipping point with this phenomenon”.
Statistics
More than 70% of male internet users from 18 to 34 visit a pornographic site in a typical month.[59] A 2009 study published in the Journal of Economic Perspectives found that Utah was the largest consumer of paid internet pornography per capita in the United States.[60]
Legal status
Further information: Pornography by region and Laws regarding child pornography
Sex and the law
Scale of justice 2.svg
Social issues
Age of consent ·
Antisexualism ·
Censorship ·
Circumcision ·
Deviant sexual intercourse ·
Ethics ·
Homophobia ·
Intersex ·
Miscegenation (interracial relations) ·
Norms ·
Objectification ·
Pornography ·
Public morality ·
Red-light district ·
Reproductive rights ·
Same-sex marriage ·
Survival sex
Specific offences
(May vary according to jurisdiction)
Adultery ·
Bestiality ·
Buggery ·
Child grooming ·
Child pornography ·
Child prostitution ·
Criminal transmission of HIV ·
Female genital mutilation ·
Fornication ·
Incest ·
Pimping ·
Prostitution (forced)
·
Public indecency ·
Rape (statutory ·
marital)
·
Seduction ·
Sexting ·
Sexual abuse (child)
·
Sexual assault ·
Sexual harassment ·
Slavery ·
Sodomy ·
UK Section 63 (2008) ·
Violence
Portals
Sexuality ·
Criminal justice ·
Law
v ·
t ·
e
World map of pornography (18+) laws
Pornography legal
Pornography legal under some restrictions
Pornography illegal
Data unavailable
The legal status of pornography varies widely from country to country. Most countries allow at least some form of pornography. In some countries, softcore pornography is considered tame enough to be sold in general stores or to be shown on TV. Hardcore pornography, on the other hand, is usually regulated. The production and sale, and to a slightly lesser degree the possession, of child pornography is illegal in almost all countries, and some countries have restrictions on pornography depicting violence (see, for example, rape pornography) or animal pornography, or both.
Pornographic entertainment on display in a sex shop window. There is usually a minimum age to go into pornographic stores.
Most countries attempt to restrict minors' access to hardcore materials, limiting availability to sex shops, mail-order, and television channels that parents can restrict, among other means. There is usually an age minimum for entrance to pornographic stores, or the materials are displayed partly covered or not displayed at all. More generally, disseminating pornography to a minor is often illegal. Many of these efforts have been rendered practically irrelevant by widely available Internet pornography. A failed US law would have made these same restrictions apply to the internet.
In the United States, a person receiving unwanted commercial mail he or she deems pornographic (or otherwise offensive) may obtain a Prohibitory Order, either against all mail from a particular sender, or against all sexually explicit mail, by applying to the United States Postal Service. There are recurring urban legends of snuff movies, in which murders are filmed for pornographic purposes. Despite extensive work to ascertain the truth of these rumors, law enforcement officials have been unable to find any such works.
Some people, including pornography producer Larry Flynt and the writer Salman Rushdie,[61] have argued that pornography is vital to freedom and that a free and civilized society should be judged by its willingness to accept pornography.
The UK Government has criminalized possession of what it terms "extreme pornography" following the highly publicized murder of Jane Longhurst.
Child pornography is illegal in most countries, with a person most commonly being a child until the age of 18 (though the age does vary). In those countries, any film or photo with a child subject in a sexual act is considered pornography and illegal.
Pornography can infringe into basic human rights of those involved, especially when consent was not obtained. For example, Revenge Porn is a phenomenon where disgruntled sexual partners release images or video footage of intimate sexual activity, usually on the internet.[62] In many countries there has been a demand to make such activities specifically illegal carrying higher punishments than mere breach of privacy or image rights, or circulation of prurient material.[63][64] As a result, some jurisdictions have enacted specific laws against "revenge porn".[65]
What is not pornography
In the U.S., a July 2014 criminal case decision in Massachusetts (COMMONWEALTH v. John REX.)[66] made a legal determination of what was not to be considered "pornography" and in this particular case "child pornography".[67] It was determined that photographs of naked children that were from sources such as National Geographic magazine, a sociology textbook, and a nudist catalog were not considered pornography in Massachusetts even while in the possession of a convicted and (at the time) incarcerated sex offender.[67]
Copyright status
In the United States, some courts have applied US copyright protection to pornographic materials.[68][69] Although the first US copyright law specifically did not cover obscene materials, the provision was removed subsequently.[when?] Most pornographic works are theoretically work for hire meaning pornographic models do not receive statutory royalties for their performances. Of particular difficulty is the changing community attitudes of what is considered obscene, meaning that works could slip into and out of copyright protection based upon the prevailing standards of decency. This was not an issue with the copyright law up until 1972 when copyright protection required registration. When the law was changed to make copyright protection automatic, and for the life of the author.
Some courts have held that copyright protection effectively applies to works, whether it is obscene or not,[70] but not all courts have ruled the same way.[71] The copyright protection rights of pornography in the United States has again been challenged as late as February 2012.[68][72]
Views on pornography
[icon] This section requires expansion. (December 2014)
Main article: Opposition to pornography
A caricature on "the great epidemic of pornography, 19th-century French illustration."
Views and opinions of pornography come in a variety of forms and from a diversity of demographics and societal groups. Opposition of the subject generally, though not exclusively,[73] comes from three main sources: law, feminism and religion.
Feminist views
Main article: Feminist views of pornography
Feminists, including Andrea Dworkin and Catharine MacKinnon, argue that pornography is demeaning to women and/or that it contributes to violence against women, both in its production and in its consumption. The production of pornography, they argue, entails the physical, psychological, or economic coercion of the women who perform in it, and where they argue that the abuse and exploitation of women is rampant; in its consumption, they charge that pornography eroticizes the domination, humiliation and coercion of women, and reinforces sexual and cultural attitudes that are complicit in rape and sexual harassment.[74][75][76][77] They charge that pornography presents a severely distorted image of sexual relations, and reinforces sex myths; that it always shows women as readily available and desiring to engage in sex at any time, with any man, on men's terms, always responding positively to any advances men make.[78] They argue that because pornography often shows women enjoying and desiring to be violently attacked by men, saying "no" when they actually want sex, fighting back but then ending up enjoying the act – this can affect the public understanding of legal issues such as consent to sexual relations.[79]
In contrast to these objections, some scholars argue that the lesbian feminist movement in the 1980s was good for women in the porn industry.[80] As more women entered the developmental side of the industry, this allowed women to gear porn more towards women because they knew what women wanted, both for actresses and the audience.[80] This is believed to be a good thing because for such a long time, the porn industry has been directed by men for men.[80] This also sparked the arrival of making lesbian porn for lesbians instead of men.[80]
Religious views
Main article: Religious views on pornography
Religious organizations have been important in bringing about political action against pornography.[81] In the United States, religious beliefs affect the formation of political beliefs which concern pornography.[82]
See also
Portal icon Pornography portal
Adult movie theater
Adult video arcade
Cartoon pornography
Erotic literature
Erotica
Golden Age of Porn
History of erotic photography
Internet pornography
Sex in advertising
Sex-positive feminism
Sex worker Pornographic film actor
Women's erotica
X rating, sometimes referred to as "XXX"
Government and legislation
Meese Report, 1986 U.S. Attorney General's Commission on Pornography
President's Commission on Obscenity and Pornography, 1969, United States
Stanley v. Georgia, U.S. Supreme Court case that established a right to pornography
Williams Committee, 1979 U.K. Committee on Obscenity and Film Censorship
Lists
List of authors of erotic works
List of pornographic book publishers
List of pornographic film studios
List of pornographic magazines
List of porn stars
References
1.Jump up ^ H. Mongomery Hyde (1964) A History of Pornography: 1–26.
2.^ Jump up to: a b Ackman, Dan (25 May 2001). "How Big Is Porn?". Forbes.com. Forbes.com. Archived from the original on 9 June 2001. Retrieved 8 November 2007. "$2.6 billion to $3.9 billion. Sources: Adams Media Research, Forrester Research, Veronis Suhler Communications Industry Report, IVD"
3.Jump up ^ Staff. "The Truth About California's Adult Entertainment Industry White Paper 1999". Adult Video News. Retrieved 28 April 2014.
4.Jump up ^ Rincover, Arnold (1990). "Can Pornography Be Used as Treatment for Voyeurism?". Toronto Star.[page needed]
5.Jump up ^ Jackson, B (1969). "A case of voyeurism treated by counterconditioning". Behaviour Research and Therapy 7 (1): 133–4. doi:10.1016/0005-7967(69)90058-8. PMID 5767619.
6.Jump up ^ List of Greek words starting with πορν- (porn-) on Perseus.
7.Jump up ^ πορνογράφος. Liddell, Henry George; Scott, Robert; A Greek–English Lexicon at the Perseus Project.
8.Jump up ^ Athenaeus. "Book 13.567b". The Deipnosophists (in Greek). At the Perseus Project.
9.Jump up ^ Online Etymology Dictionary. Etymonline.com. Retrieved on 2011-04-21.
10.Jump up ^ history of the word pornography | podictionary – for word lovers – dictionary etymology, trivia & history. podictionary (2009-03-13). Retrieved on 2011-04-21. Archived from the original on 2011-05-11.
11.Jump up ^ Richard Rudgley (2000). The Lost Civilizations of the Stone Age. Simon and Schuster. pp. 195–. ISBN 978-0-684-86270-5. Retrieved 21 April 2011.
12.Jump up ^ H. Montgomery Hyde A History of Pornography. (1969) London, Heinemann; p. 14.
13.Jump up ^ Foxon, D. F. Libertine Literature in England, 1660–1745, 1965, p. 45.
14.Jump up ^ Wagner, "Introduction", in Cleland, Fanny Hill, 1985, p. 7.
15.Jump up ^ Lane, Obscene Profits: The Entrepreneurs of Pornography in the Cyber Age, 2000, p. 11.
16.Jump up ^ Browne, The Guide to United States Popular Culture, 2001, p. 273, ISBN 0-87972-821-3; Sutherland, Offensive Literature: Decensorship in Britain, 1960–1982, 1983, p. 32, ISBN 0-389-20354-8.
17.Jump up ^ The Comstock Act 17 Stat. 598
18.Jump up ^ Eskridge, William N. (2002). Gaylaw: challenging the apartheid of the closet. Harvard University Press. p. 392.
19.Jump up ^ From the precedent set by R. v. Curl (1729) following the publication of Venus in the Cloister.
20.Jump up ^ Beck, Marianna (May 2003). "The Roots of Western Pornography: Victorian Obsessions and Fin-de-Siècle Predilections". Libido, The Journal of Sex and Sensibility. Retrieved 22 August 2006.
21.Jump up ^ Bottomore, Stephen; Stephen Herbert and Luke McKernan, eds. (1996). "Léar (Albert Kirchner)". Who's Who of Victorian Cinema. British Film Institute. Retrieved 15 October 2006.
22.Jump up ^ Bottomore, Stephen; Stephen Herbert and Luke McKernan, eds. (1996). "Eugène Pirou". Who's Who of Victorian Cinema. British Film Institute. Retrieved 15 October 2006.
23.^ Jump up to: a b Chris Rodley, Dev Varma, Kate Williams III (Directors); Marilyn Milgrom, Grant Romer, Rolf Borowczak, Bob Guccione, Dean Kuipers (Cast) (7 March 2006). Pornography: The Secret History of Civilization (DVD). Port Washington, NY: Koch Vision. ISBN 1-4172-2885-7. Retrieved 21 October 2006.[dead link]
24.Jump up ^ Corliss, Richard (29 March 2005). "That Old Feeling: When Porno Was Chic". Time Magazine (Time inc). Retrieved 16 October 2006.
25.Jump up ^ Dugdale, John (2 May 2013). "Porn studies is the new discipline for academics". The Guardian. Retrieved 2 May 2013.
26.Jump up ^ William J. Gehrke (10 December 1996). "Erotica is Not Pornography". The Tech.
27.Jump up ^ "h2g2 – What is Erotic and What is Pornographic?". BBC.co.uk. 29 March 2004. Retrieved 14 January 2012.
28.Jump up ^ Martin Amis (17 March 2001). "A rough trade". Guardian.co.uk. Retrieved 29 February 2012.
29.Jump up ^ "P20th Century Nudes in Art". The Art History Archive. Retrieved 29 February 2012.
30.Jump up ^ President's Commission on Obscenity and Pornography. Report of The Commission on Obscenity and Pornography 1970, Washington, D.C.: U. S. Government Printing Office.
31.Jump up ^ Richard, Emmanuelle (23 May 2002). "The Naked Untruth". Alternet. Archived from the original on 28 September 2004. Retrieved 8 September 2006.
32.Jump up ^ Schlosser, Eric (8 May 2003). Reefer Madness: Sex, Drugs, and Cheap Labor in the American Black Market. Houghton Mifflin. ISBN 978-0-618-33466-7. Schlosser's book repeats the $10 billion figure without additional evidence
33.^ Jump up to: a b c d e f g h i j k l m n Szymanski, Dawn; Stewart-Richardson, Destin (2014). "Psychological, Relational, and Sexual Correlates of Pornography Use on Young Adult Heterosexual Men in Romantic Relationships". The Journal of Men's Studies 22: 64–82. doi:10.3149/jms.2201.6410.3149/jms.2201.64.
34.^ Jump up to: a b Mearian, Lucas (2 May 2006). "Porn industry may be decider in Blu-ray, HD-DVD battle". Macworld. Mac Publishing. Archived from the original on 12 July 2006. Retrieved 8 November 2007. Ron Wagner, Director of IT at a California porn studio: "If you look at the VHS vs. Beta standards, you see the much higher-quality standard dying because of [the porn industry's support of VHS] ... The mass volume of tapes in the porn market at the time went out on VHS."
35.^ Jump up to: a b Lynch, Martin (17 January 2007). "Blu-ray loves porn after all". The Inquirer. Incisive Media Investments. Archived from the original on 7 November 2007. Retrieved 8 November 2007. "By many accounts VHS would not have won its titanic struggle against Sony's Betamax video tape format if it had not been for porn. This might be over-stating its importance but it was an important factor. ... There is no way that Sony can ignore the boost that porn can give the Blu-ray format."
36.Jump up ^ Gardiner, Bryan (22 January 2007). "Porn Industry May Decide DVD Format War". FOXNews.com – Technology News (Ziff Davis Media). Archived from the original on 10 February 2007. Retrieved 8 November 2007. "As was expected, the 2007 Consumer Electronics Show saw even more posturing and politics between the Blu-ray Disc and HD DVD camps, with each side announcing a new set of alliances and predicting that the end of the war was imminent."
37.Jump up ^ Staff. "Magnet Media Holds Porn/Tech Event in NYC This Tuesday:". Adult Video News. Retrieved 11 March 2014.
38.Jump up ^ Staff. "How Porn Drives Mainstream Internet Technology Adoption Tuesday, Mar 11, 12:30 PM @ Rose Auditorium". Garys Guide. Retrieved 11 March 2014.
39.Jump up ^ "Playboy undressed video game women – Aug. 25, 2004". CNN. 25 August 2004. Retrieved 26 August 2006.
40.Jump up ^ "Hong Kong filmmakers shoot 'first' 3D porn film". Yahoo. 8 August 2010. Archived from the original on 15 August 2010. Retrieved 8 August 2010.
41.Jump up ^ "Hong Kong filmmakers shoot 'first' 3D porn film". Asian Sex Gazette. 17 January 2012. Retrieved 17 August 2010.
42.Jump up ^ “Strange and wonderful” Budapest — Where the living is increasingly pleasant...and still very cheap. Escapeartist.com (1989-09-11). Retrieved 2011-04-21.
43.Jump up ^ Sex trade moguls thrive by the Blue Danube – World, News. The Independent (1996-07-21). Retrieved 2011-04-21.
44.Jump up ^ The Art and Politics of Netporn » Abstract. Networkcultures.org. Retrieved 2011-04-21.
45.Jump up ^ Hymes, Tom. "Adult Tube Sites Now Spamming Through Google News". AVN.com. Adult Video News. Retrieved 20 August 2014.
46.Jump up ^ Kernes, Mark. "Nightline Takes a Look at Porn Piracy, and Targets MindGeek". AVN.com. Adult Video News. Retrieved 20 August 2014.
47.Jump up ^ Staff. "Takedown Piracy Celebrates Fifth Anniversary". AVN.com. Adult Video News. Retrieved 20 August 2014.
48.^ Jump up to: a b Segal, David (28 March 2014). "Does Porn Hurt Children?". New York Times. Retrieved 30 March 2014.
49.Jump up ^ Tamsin McMahon Will quitting porn improve your life? A growing ‘NoFap’ movement of young men are saying no to porn and masturbation Maclean's, January 20, 2014. Quote: "Kruger helped revise the sexual disorders section of the latest edition of the psychiatric bible, the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, which doesn’t include sex or porn addiction due to lack of academic evidence that they exist."
50.Jump up ^ Pornography, Sex Crime, and Public Policy by Berl Kutchinsky.
51.Jump up ^ Kutchinsky, Berl (Summer 1973). "The Effect of Easy Availability of Pornography on the Incidence of Sex Crimes: The Danish Experience". Journal of Social Issues 29 (3): 163–181. doi:10.1111/j.1540-4560.1973.tb00094.x. Retrieved 31 March 2014.
52.Jump up ^ Diamond, Milton (September–October 2009). "Pornography, public acceptance and sex related crime: A review". International Journal of Law and Psychiatry 32 (5): 304–314. doi:10.1016/j.ijlp.2009.06.004. Retrieved 31 March 2014.
53.Jump up ^ Pornography and Sexual Representation: A Reference Guide, Volume 3 (book) by Joseph W. Slade.
54.Jump up ^ Studies on Pornography and Sex Crimes in Denmark (1970) by Berl Kutchinsky.
55.Jump up ^ Kendall, Todd D. (July 2007). "Pornography, rape and the internet" (PDF). Retrieved 30 March 2014.
56.Jump up ^ D'Amato, Anthony (23 June 2006). "Porn Up, Rape Down". Retrieved 19 December 2006.
57.Jump up ^ Stewart, Destin; Szymanski, Dawn (2012). "Young Adult Women’s Reports of Their Male Romantic Partner’s Pornography Use as a Correlate of Their Self-Esteem, Relationship Quality, and Sexual Satisfaction". Sex Roles 67 (5-6): 257–271. doi:10.1007/s11199-012-0164-0.
58.Jump up ^ Cuthbertson, Richard (2 January 2015). "Internet porn 'rewiring' young brains, Halifax therapists say". CBC News (CBC News). Retrieved 30 March 2014.
59.Jump up ^ Statistics on Pornography, Sexual Addiction and Online Perpetrators and their Effects on Children, Pastors and Churches. Safefamilies.org. Retrieved 2011-04-21.
60.Jump up ^ Edelman, Benjamin. "Red Light States: Who Buys Online Adult Entertainment?" Journal of Economic Perspectives, Volume 23, Number 1 (Winter 2009), pages 209–220.
61.Jump up ^ Baxter, Sarah; Brooks, Richard (8 August 2004). "Porn is vital to freedom, says Rushdie". Times Online (London: Times Newspapers). Archived from the original on 8 November 2007. Retrieved 8 November 2007. "Pornography exists everywhere, of course, but when it comes into societies in which it’s difficult for young men and women to get together and do what young men and women often like doing, it satisfies a more general need.... While doing so, it sometimes becomes a kind of standard-bearer for freedom, even civilisation."
62.Jump up ^ Salter, M. (2013) ‘Responding to revenge porn: Gender, justice and online legal impunity’ http://www.academia.edu/4585975/Responding_to_revenge_porn_Gender_justice_and_online_legal_impunity
63.Jump up ^ Using Copyright to Combat Revenge Porn http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2374119
64.Jump up ^ Bhasin, P. (2014) 'Online Revenge Porn-Recourse for Victims under Cyber Laws' http://blog.ipleaders.in/online-revenge-porn-recourse-for-victims-under-cyber-laws/
65.Jump up ^ http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-30307657
66.Jump up ^ Staff. "Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts,Norfolk. COMMONWEALTH v. John REX. No. SJC–11480. Decided: July 9, 2014". findlaw.com. Retrieved 18 July 2014.
67.^ Jump up to: a b Kernes, Mark. "MA Supremes Rule National Geographic Photos Not Kid Porn". AVN.com. Adult Video News. Retrieved 18 July 2014.
68.^ Jump up to: a b Goussé, Caroline (2012-02-16). "No Copyright Protection for Pornography: A Daring Response to File-Sharing Litigation". Intellectual Property Brief. Retrieved 2012-03-01.
69.Jump up ^ Masnick, Mike (2011-11-04). "Court Wonders If Porn Can Even Be Covered By Copyright". Tech Dirt. Retrieved 2012-03-01.
70.Jump up ^ Mitchell Bros. Film Group v. Cinema Adult Theater, 604 F.2d 852 (5th Cir.1979) and Jartech v. Clancy, 666 F.2d 403 (9th Cir.1982) held that obscenity could not be a defense to copyright claims.
71.Jump up ^ Devils Films, Inc. v. Nectar Video Under, 29 F.Supp.2d 174, 175 (S.D.N.Y. 1998) refused to follow the Mitchell ruling and relied on the doctrine of “clean hands” to deny copyright protection to works seen as obscene.
72.Jump up ^ "You Can’t Copyright Porn, Harassed BitTorrent Defendant Insists", TorrentFreak, 6 February 2012. Retrieved 9 Augusti 2012.
73.Jump up ^ "2 male porn performers test positive for HIV". Retrieved 31 December 2014.
74.Jump up ^ Shrage, Laurie. (2007-07-13). "Feminist Perspectives on Sex Markets: Pornography". In: Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
75.Jump up ^ Mackinnon, Catherine A. (1984) "Not a moral issue". Yale Law and Policy Review 2:321–345. Reprinted in: Mackinnon (1989). Toward a Feminist Theory of the State Harvard University Press. ISBN 0-674-89645-9 (1st ed), ISBN 0-674-89646-7 (2nd ed). "Sex forced on real women so that it can be sold at a profit to be forced on other real women; women's bodies trussed and maimed and raped and made into things to be hurt and obtained and accessed, and this presented as the nature of women; the coercion that is visible and the coercion that has become invisible—this and more grounds the feminist concern with pornography".
76.Jump up ^ "A Conversation With Catherine MacKinnon (transcript)". Think Tank. 1995. PBS. Retrieved 1 September 2009.
77.Jump up ^ MacKinnon, Catharine (1987). Feminism Unmodified: Discourses on Life and Law Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. p. 147.
78.Jump up ^ Jeffries, Stuart (12 April 2006). "Stuart Jeffries talks to leading feminist Catharine MacKinnon". The Guardian (London).
79.Jump up ^ Catharine MacKinnon argues that: "Pornography affects people's belief in rape myths. So for example if a woman says 'I didn't consent' and people have been viewing pornography, they believe rape myths and believe the woman did consent no matter what she said. That when she said no, she meant yes. When she said she didn't want to, that meant more beer. When she said she would prefer to go home, that means she's a lesbian who needs to be given a good corrective experience. Pornography promotes these rape myths and desensitises people to violence against women so that you need more violence to become sexually aroused if you're a pornography consumer. This is very well documented."[1]
80.^ Jump up to: a b c d Ziv, Amalia (2014). "Girl meets boy: Cross-gender queer and the promise of pornography". Sexualities 17: 885–905. doi:10.1177/1363460714532937.
81.Jump up ^ Sherkat and Ellison, 1997, "The Cognitive Structure of a Moral Crusade", Social Forces 75(3), p. 958.
82.Jump up ^ Sherkat and Ellison, 1999, "Recent Developments and Current Controversies in the Sociology of Religion", Annual Review of Sociology 25, p. 370.
Further reading
Advocacy
Susie Bright. "Susie Sexpert's Lesbian Sex World and Susie Bright's Sexual Reality: A Virtual Sex World Reader", San Francisco, CA: Cleis Press, 1990 and 1992. Challenges any easy equation between feminism and anti-pornography positions.
Betty Dodson. "Feminism and Free speech: Pornography". Feminists for Free Expression 1993. May 8, 2002
Kate Ellis. Caught Looking: Feminism, Pornography, and Censorship. New York: Caught Looking Incorporated, 1986.
Susan Griffin. Pornography and Silence: Culture's Revenge Against Nature. New York: Harper, 1981.
Gever, Matthew (3 December 1998). "Pornography Helps Women, Society". UCLA Bruin. Retrieved 3 July 2011.
Gregory, Michele. "Pro-Sex Feminism: Redefining Pornography (or, a study in alliteration: the pro pornography position paper)". Witsendzine.com. Archived from the original on 9 August 2002. Retrieved 3 July 2011.
Andrea Juno and V. Vale. Angry Women, Re/Search # 12. San Francisco, CA: Re/Search Publications, 1991. Performance artists and literary theorists who challenge Dworkin and MacKinnon's claim to speak on behalf of all women.
McElroy, Wendy (29 June 2000). "You Are What You Read?". Lewrockwell.com. Retrieved 3 July 2011. Defends the availability of pornography, and condemns feminist anti-pornography campaigns.
McElroy, Wendy. "A Feminist Overview of Pornography, Ending in a Defense Thereof". Wendymcelroy.com. Retrieved 3 July 2011.
McElroy, Wendy. "A Feminist Defense of Pornography". Council for Secular Humanism. Archived from the original on 17 December 2013. Retrieved 3 July 2011.
Newitz, Annalee (8 May 2002). "Obscene Feminists: Why Women Are Leading the Battle Against Censorship". San Francisco Bay Guardian. Retrieved 3 July 2011.
Strossen, Nadine. Defending Pornography: Free Speech, Sex and the Fight for Women's Rights. ISBN 0-8147-8149-7.
Blumen, Jonathan (November 1995). "Nadine Strossen: Pornography Must Be Tolerated" 1 (11).
Tucker, Scott (1991). "Gender, Fucking, and Utopia: An Essay in Response to John Stoltenberg's Refusing to Be a Man". Social Text (27): 3–34. Critique of Stoltenberg and Dworkin's positions on pornography and power.
Opposition
Assiter, Alison (1989). Pornography, feminism, and the individual. London Winchester, Mass: Pluto Press. ISBN 9780745303192. Assiter advocates seeing pornography as epitomizing a wider problem of oppression, exploitation and inequality which needs to be better understood.
Carse, A., 1995, "Pornography: An Uncivil Liberty?", Hypatia 10(1): 155–182. An argument for approaches to end harm to women caused by pornography.
Hill, J. 1987, "Pornography and Degradation", Hypatia 2: 39–54. A critique of the pornographic industry within a Kantian ethical framework.
Michael Kimmel. "Men Confront Pornography". New York: Meridian—Random House, 1990. A variety of essays that try to assess ways that pornography may take advantage of men.
Secondary Negative Effects on Employees of the Pornographic Industry, by Shelley Lubben
MacKinnon, C., 1984, "Not a Moral Issue", Yale Law & Policy Review 2(2): 321–345. An argument that pornography is one element of an unjust institution of the subordination of women to men.
MacKinnon, C., 1989, "Sexuality, Pornography, and Method: 'Pleasure under Patriarchy'" Ethics 99(2): 314–346.
Vadas, M., 1987, "A First Look at the Pornography/Civil Rights Ordinance: Could Pornography be the Subordination of Women?", The Journal of Philosophy 84(9): 487–511. A defence of the Dworkin-MacKinnon definition and condemnation of pornography employing putatively relatively rigorous analysis. See (Parent, 1990) in the same publication for a criticism of this paper.
Vadas, M., 1992, "The Pornography / Civil Rights Ordinance v. The BOG: And the Winner Is...?", Hypatia 7(3): 94–109.]", Hypatia 84(9): 487–511. An argument that pornography increases women's vulnerability to rape.
Williams, B. (ed.), 1988, Pornography and Sexual Violence: Evidence of the Links, London: Everywoman. A representation of the causal connections between pornography and violence towards women.
Linda Williams: Hard Core: Power, Pleasure and the Frenzy of the Visible (University of California Press, 1989). Expanded Paperback Edition: University of California Press, 1999, ISBN 0-520-21943-0
Linda Williams (ed.): Porn Studies, B&T, 2004, ISBN 0-8223-3312-0
Neutral or mixed
Carole Vance, Editor. "Pleasure and Danger: Exploring Female Sexuality". Boston: Routledge, 1984. Collection of papers from 1982 conference; visible and divisive split between anti-pornography activists and lesbian S&M theorists.
External links
Wikimedia Commons has media related to Pornography.
Early silent pornographic film from 1925 available at Wikimedia Commons.
Look up pornography in Wiktionary, the free dictionary.
Commentary"American Porn". Frontline (PBS). Retrieved 2014-02-01. Interactive web site companion to a Frontline documentary exploring the pornography industry within the United States.
TechnologyFrom teledildonics to interactive porn: the future of sex in a digital age (2014-06-06), The Guardian
EconomicsSusannah Breslin, Contributor (2013-12-20). "LEADERSHIP: What Porn Stars Do When The Porn Industry Shuts Down". Forbes.
GovernmentKutchinsky, Berl, Professor of Criminology: The first law that legalized pornography (Denmark)
HistoryPatricia Davis, Ph.D., Simon Noble & Rebecca J. White (2010). The History of Modern Pornography. History.com.
SociologyDiamond, M. and Uchiyama, A. (1999). "Pornography, Rape and Sex Crimes in Japan". International Journal of Law and Psychiatry 22 (1): 1–22. doi:10.1016/s0160-2527(98)00035-1.
"Pornography and Censorship". Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
Nuvola apps kpdf2.png Topics related to Pornography
[show]
v ·
t ·
e
Pornography
PortalCommons pageWikiquote pageWiktionary page
Wikipedia page
[show]
v ·
t ·
e
Photography
Category
Portal
WikiProject
[show]
v ·
t ·
e
Outline of human sexuality
Portal
[show]
v ·
t ·
e
Sexual revolution
Categories: Pornography
Sexuality
Navigation menu
Create account
Log in
Article
Talk
Read
View source
View history
Main page
Contents
Featured content
Current events
Random article
Donate to Wikipedia
Wikipedia store
Interaction
Help
About Wikipedia
Community portal
Recent changes
Contact page
Tools
What links here
Related changes
Upload file
Special pages
Permanent link
Page information
Wikidata item
Cite this page
Print/export
Create a book
Download as PDF
Printable version
Languages
Afrikaans
العربية
Aragonés
Asturianu
Azərbaycanca
বাংলা
Беларуская
Беларуская (тарашкевіца)
Български
བོད་ཡིག
Bosanski
Brezhoneg
Català
Cebuano
Čeština
Cymraeg
Dansk
Deutsch
Eesti
Ελληνικά
Español
Esperanto
Estremeñu
Euskara
فارسی
Français
Frysk
Gaeilge
Galego
한국어
Հայերեն
Hornjoserbsce
Hrvatski
Bahasa Indonesia
Ирон
Íslenska
Italiano
עברית
ქართული
Қазақша
Kiswahili
Latina
Latviešu
Lëtzebuergesch
Lietuvių
Magyar
മലയാളം
Malti
मराठी
مصرى
Bahasa Melayu
Nederlands
日本語
Norsk bokmål
Norsk nynorsk
Occitan
Oʻzbekcha/ўзбекча
ਪੰਜਾਬੀ
Polski
Português
Română
Русский
Shqip
Sicilianu
Simple English
Slovenčina
Slovenščina
Српски / srpski
Srpskohrvatski / српскохрватски
Suomi
Svenska
Tagalog
தமிழ்
ไทย
Türkçe
Українська
اردو
Vepsän kel’
Tiếng Việt
ייִדיש
粵語
Zazaki
Žemaitėška
中文
Edit links
This page was last modified on 22 April 2015, at 08:12.
Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License; additional terms may apply. By using this site, you agree to the Terms of Use and Privacy Policy. Wikipedia® is a registered trademark of the Wikimedia Foundation, Inc., a non-profit organization.
Privacy policy
About Wikipedia
Disclaimers
Contact Wikipedia
Developers
Mobile view
Wikimedia Foundation
Powered by MediaWiki
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pornography
Page semi-protected
Pornography
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Jump to: navigation, search
For other uses, see Pornography (disambiguation).
"Porn" redirects here. For other uses, see Porn (disambiguation).
"Sexually explicit" redirects here. For non-pornographic sexually explicit media, see erotica.
The XXX symbol used to designate pornographic material in the U.S. and other regions around the world
Pornography (often abbreviated as "porn" or "porno" in informal usage) is the portrayal of sexual subject matter for the purpose of sexual arousal. Pornography may be presented in a variety of media, including books, magazines, postcards, photographs, sculpture, drawing, painting, animation, sound recording, film, video, and video games. The term applies to the depiction of the act rather than the act itself, and so does not include live exhibitions like sex shows and striptease. The primary subjects of pornographic depictions are pornographic models, who pose for still photographs, and pornographic actors or porn stars, who perform in pornographic films. If dramatic skills are not involved, a performer in a porn film may also be called a model.
Various groups within society have considered depictions of a sexual nature immoral and noxious, labeling them pornographic, and attempting to have them suppressed under obscenity and other laws, with varying degrees of success. Such works have also often been subject to censorship and other legal restraints to publication, display or possession. Such grounds and even the definition of pornography have differed in various historical, cultural, and national contexts.[1]
Social attitudes towards the discussion and presentation of sexuality have become more tolerant and legal definitions of obscenity have become more limited, leading to an industry for the production and consumption of pornography in the latter half of the 20th century. The introduction of the home video and Internet saw a boom in the worldwide porn industry that generates billions of dollars annually. Commercialized pornography accounts for over US$2.5 billion in the United States alone,[2] including the production of various media and associated products and services. This industry employs thousands of performers along with support and production staff. It is also followed by dedicated industry publications and trade groups as well as the mainstream press, private organizations (watchdog groups), government agencies, and political organizations.[3] More recently, sites such as pornhub.com, redtube.com and youporn.com, have served as repositories for home-made or semi-professional pornography, made available free by its creators (who could be called exhibitionists). It has presented a significant challenge to the commercial pornographic film industry.
Irrespective of the legal or social view of pornography, it has been used in a number of contexts. It is used, for example, at fertility clinics to stimulate sperm donors. Some couples use pornography at times for variety and to create a sexual interest or as part of foreplay. There is also some evidence that pornography can be used to treat voyeurism.[4][5]
Contents [hide]
1 Etymology
2 History
3 Classification 3.1 Subgenres
4 Commercialism 4.1 Economics 4.1.1 Non-commercial pornography
4.2 Technology 4.2.1 Advancement
4.2.2 Computer-generated images and manipulations
4.2.3 3D pornography
4.3 Production and distribution by region
5 Study and analysis 5.1 Effects
5.2 Statistics
6 Legal status 6.1 What is not pornography
6.2 Copyright status
7 Views on pornography 7.1 Feminist views
7.2 Religious views
8 See also 8.1 Government and legislation
8.2 Lists
9 References
10 Further reading 10.1 Advocacy
10.2 Opposition
10.3 Neutral or mixed
11 External links
Etymology
The word is similar to the modern Greek πορνογραφία (pornographia), which derives from the Greek words πόρνη (pornē "prostitute" and πορνεία porneia "prostitution"[6]), and γράφειν (graphein "to write or to record", derived meaning "illustration", cf. "graph"), and the suffix -ία (-ia, meaning "state of", "property of", or "place of"), thus meaning "a written description or illustration of prostitutes or prostitution". No date is known for the first use of the word in Greek; the earliest attested, most related word one could find in Greek, is πορνογράφος, pornographos, i.e. "someone writing of harlots", in the Deipnosophists of Athenaeus.[7][8]
"Pornographie" was in use in the French language during the 1800s. The word did not enter the English language as the familiar word until 1857[9] or as a French import in New Orleans in 1842.[10]
History
Oil lamp artifact depicting coitus more ferarum
For more details on this topic, see History of erotic depictions.
Depictions of a sexual nature are older than civilization as depictions such as the venus figurines and rock art have existed since prehistoric times.[11] However, the concept of pornography as understood today did not exist until the Victorian era. For example the French Impressionism painting by Édouard Manet titled Olympia was a nude picture of a French courtesan, literally a "prostitute picture". It was controversial at the time.
Nineteenth-century legislation eventually outlawed the publication, retail, and trafficking of certain writings and images regarded as pornographic and would order the destruction of shop and warehouse stock meant for sale; however, the private possession of and viewing of (some forms of) pornography was not made an offence until recent times.[12]
When large-scale excavations of Pompeii were undertaken in the 1860s, much of the erotic art of the Romans came to light, shocking the Victorians who saw themselves as the intellectual heirs of the Roman Empire. They did not know what to do with the frank depictions of sexuality and endeavored to hide them away from everyone but upper-class scholars. The moveable objects were locked away in the Secret Museum in Naples and what could not be removed was covered and cordoned off as to not corrupt the sensibilities of women, children, and the working classes.
Fanny Hill (1748) is considered "the first original English prose pornography, and the first pornography to use the form of the novel."[13] It is an erotic novel by John Cleland first published in England as Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure.[14][15] It is one of the most prosecuted and banned books in history.[16] The authors were charged with "corrupting the King's subjects."
The world's first law criminalizing pornography was the English Obscene Publications Act 1857 enacted at the urging of the Society for the Suppression of Vice. The Act, which applied to the United Kingdom and Ireland, made the sale of obscene material a statutory offence, giving the courts power to seize and destroy offending material. The American equivalent was the Comstock Act of 1873[17][18] which made it illegal to send any "obscene, lewd, and/or lascivious" materials through the mail. The English Act did not apply to Scotland, where the common law continued to apply. However, neither the English nor the United States Act defined what constituted "obscene", leaving this for the courts to determine. Prior to the English Act, the publication of obscene material was treated as a common law misdemeanour[19] and effectively prosecuting authors and publishers was difficult even in cases where the material was clearly intended as pornography.
The Victorian attitude that pornography was for a select few can be seen in the wording of the Hicklin test stemming from a court case in 1868 where it asks, "whether the tendency of the matter charged as obscenity is to deprave and corrupt those whose minds are open to such immoral influences." Despite the fact of their suppression, depictions of erotic imagery were common throughout history.[20]
Pornographic film production commenced almost immediately after the invention of the motion picture in 1895. Two of the earliest pioneers were Eugène Pirou and Albert Kirchner. Kirchner directed the earliest surviving pornographic film for Pirou under the trade name "Léar". The 1896 film, Le Coucher de la Mariée showed Louise Willy performing a striptease. Pirou's film inspired a genre of risqué French films showing women disrobing and other filmmakers realised profits could be made from such films.[21][22]
Sexually explicit films opened producers and distributors to prosecution. Those that were made were produced illicitly by amateurs starting in the 1920s, primarily in France and the United States. Processing the film was risky as was their distribution. Distribution was strictly private.[23][24] In 1969, Denmark became the first country to abolish censorship, thereby decriminalizing pornography, which led to an explosion in investment and of commercially produced pornography. However, it continued to be banned in other countries, and had to be smuggled in, where it was sold "under the counter" or (sometimes) shown in "members only" cinema clubs.[23]
The scholarly study of pornography, notably in cultural studies, is limited, perhaps due to the controversy about the topic in feminism. The first peer-reviewed academic journal about the study of pornography, Porn Studies, was published in 2014.[25]
Classification
Pornography is often distinguished from erotica, which consists of the portrayal of sexuality with high-art aspirations, focusing also on feelings and emotions, while pornography involves the depiction of acts in a sensational manner, with the entire focus on the physical act, so as to arouse quick intense reactions.[26][27]
Pornography is generally classified as either softcore or hardcore pornography. A pornographic work is characterized as hardcore if it has any hardcore content, no matter how small. Both forms of pornography generally contains nudity. Softcore pornography generally contains nudity or partial nudity in sexually suggestive situations, but without explicit sexual activity, sexual penetration or "extreme" fetishism,[28] while hardcore pornography may contain graphic sexual activity and visible penetration,[29] including unsimulated sex scenes.
Subgenres
Main article: List of pornographic subgenres
Former hardcore porn star Penny Flame in a cheesecake image
Pornography can be classified according to the physical characteristics of the participants, fetish, sexual orientation, etc., as well as the types of sexual activity featured. Reality and voyeur pornography, animated videos, and legally prohibited acts also influence the classification of pornography. Pornography may fall into more than one genre. The genres of pornography are based on the type of activity featured and the category of participants, for example:
Alt porn
Amateur pornography
Ethnic pornography
Fetish pornography
Group sex
Reality pornography
Sexual-orientation-based pornography Straight porn (unless otherwise stated this is assumed in this article)
Gay pornography
Lesbian pornography
Bisexual pornography
Commercialism
Economics
Main article: Sex industry
Revenues of the adult industry in the United States are difficult to determine. In 1970, a Federal study estimated that the total retail value of hardcore pornography in the United States was no more than $10 million.[30]
In 1998, Forrester Research published a report on the online "adult content" industry estimating $750 million to $1 billion in annual revenue. As an unsourced aside, the Forrester study speculated on an industry-wide aggregate figure of $8–10 billion, which was repeated out of context in many news stories,[31] after being published in Eric Schlosser's book on the American black market.[32] Studies in 2001 put the total (including video, pay-per-view, Internet and magazines) between $2.6 billion and $3.9 billion.[2]
As of 2014 the porn industry was believed to bring in more than $13 billion on a yearly basis in the United States.[33] The porn industry alone brings in more revenue than the combined industries: Netflix, Google, eBay, Yahoo, Amazon, Microsoft, and Apple.[33]
A significant amount of pornographic video is shot in the San Fernando Valley, which has been a pioneering region for producing adult films since the 1970s, and has since become home for various models, actors/actresses, production companies, and other assorted businesses involved in the production and distribution of pornography.
The pornography industry has been considered influential in deciding format wars in media, including being a factor in the VHS vs. Betamax format war (the videotape format war)[34][35] and in the Blu-ray vs. HD DVD format war (the high-def format war).[34][35][36]
Non-commercial pornography
In addition to the porn industry, there is a large amount of non-commercial pornography. This should be distinguished from commercial pornography falsely marketed as featuring "amateurs".
Technology
Advancement
Pornographers have taken advantage of each technological advance in the production and distribution of pornography. They have used lithographs, the printing press, and photography. Pornography is considered a driving force in the development of technologies from the printing press, through photography (still and motion), to satellite TV, other forms of video, and the Internet. With the invention of tiny cameras and wireless equipments voyeur pornography is gaining ground.[37][38] Mobile cameras are used to capture pornographic photos or videos, and forwarded as MMS, a practice known as sexting.
Computer-generated images and manipulations
Digital manipulation requires the use of source photographs, but some pornography is produced without human actors at all. The idea of completely computer-generated pornography was conceived very early as one of the most obvious areas of application for computer graphics and 3D rendering.
Until the late 1990s, digitally manipulated pornography could not be produced cost-effectively. In the early 2000s, it became a growing segment, as the modelling and animation software matured and the rendering capabilities of computers improved. As of 2004, computer-generated pornography depicting situations involving children and sex with fictional characters, such as Lara Croft, is already produced on a limited scale. The October 2004 issue of Playboy featured topless pictures of the title character from the BloodRayne video game.[39]
3D pornography
Due to the popularity of 3D blockbusters in theaters such as Avatar and How to Train Your Dragon, companies are now looking to shoot pornography movies in 3D. The first case of this occurred in Hong Kong, when a group of filmmakers filmed 3D Sex and Zen: Extreme Ecstasy released in April 2011.[40][41]
Production and distribution by region
Main article: Pornography by region
The production and distribution of pornography are economic activities of some importance. The exact size of the economy of pornography and the influence that it has in political circles are matters of controversy.
In the United States, the sex film industry is centered in the San Fernando Valley of Los Angeles. In Europe, Budapest is regarded as the industry center.[42][43][44]
Piracy, the illegal copying and distribution, of adult material is of great concern to the industry,[45] the subject of litigation, and formalized anti-piracy efforts.[46][47]
Study and analysis
Effects
Main article: Effects of pornography
Research concerning the effects of pornography is concerned with multiple outcomes.[48] Such research includes potential influences on rape, domestic violence, sexual dysfunction, difficulties with sexual relationships, and child sexual abuse. Viewers of novel and extreme pornographic images may become tolerant to such images, which may impact sexual response.[48] Currently, there is no evidence that visual images and films are addictive.[49] Several studies conclude the liberalization of porn in society may be associated with decreased rape and sexual violence rates, suggest no effect, or are inconclusive.[50][51][52][53][54][55][56]
A 2012 academic study surveyed 308 young adult college women in romantic heterosexual relationships, examining the degree of correlation between their psychological and relational well-being and their partners' use of pornography.[57] A negative correlation was found, which worsened for longer relationships in regard to the women's sexual satisfaction.
A following study examined the ways in which chronic porn use affects antecedents such as gender roles and levels of attachment among straight men in their romantic relationships.[33] The study went on to link this to lower sexual satisfaction as well as a deterioration in the quality of the relationship.[33] The point of pornographic content is to stimulate sexual desire which as a result presents potential problems among couples.[33] By porn affecting one’s gender roles, this enables problems that affect the viewers psychologically, their views of their own sexuality, how others view their sexuality, and can cause self-inflicted or outward violence.[33] An antecedent found to be affected by porn use by men was emotional attachment as well as attachment style in relationships, which can lead to physical and emotional issues among couples.[33] The men in this study tended to avoid intimacy with their partner, which then led to even more porn use.[33] This was also linked to heightened anxiety in the relationship.[33] Men with lower anxiety tend to have a more stable level of attachment, whereas those that are unstable are either overly or not at all attached.[33] Men that display less attachment and more avoidance also showed higher instances of casual sex and more frequent viewings of porn.[33] This also meant that these men tended to avoid romantic or serious relationships and the relationships they did engage in did not last long.[33] The consequences of higher porn use by men in relationships showed a lower quality in their relationships and reduced satisfaction sexually, including displeasure with a partner’s appearance, the act of sex, and intimacy.[33] This then led to emotional feelings of shame and sometimes resentment.[33]
Two psychotherapists operating EastWind Health Associates in Halifax reported their clinical experience that chronic viewing of pornography by adult men can lead to emotional estrangement from their partners, even though the men may desire emotional intimacy.[58] They also noted that men who watch large amounts of porn come to need more stimulation and aggressive porn in order to become aroused. Because of the increasing numbers of men presenting such problems, one therapist remarked “I think we’re at a tipping point with this phenomenon”.
Statistics
More than 70% of male internet users from 18 to 34 visit a pornographic site in a typical month.[59] A 2009 study published in the Journal of Economic Perspectives found that Utah was the largest consumer of paid internet pornography per capita in the United States.[60]
Legal status
Further information: Pornography by region and Laws regarding child pornography
Sex and the law
Scale of justice 2.svg
Social issues
Age of consent ·
Antisexualism ·
Censorship ·
Circumcision ·
Deviant sexual intercourse ·
Ethics ·
Homophobia ·
Intersex ·
Miscegenation (interracial relations) ·
Norms ·
Objectification ·
Pornography ·
Public morality ·
Red-light district ·
Reproductive rights ·
Same-sex marriage ·
Survival sex
Specific offences
(May vary according to jurisdiction)
Adultery ·
Bestiality ·
Buggery ·
Child grooming ·
Child pornography ·
Child prostitution ·
Criminal transmission of HIV ·
Female genital mutilation ·
Fornication ·
Incest ·
Pimping ·
Prostitution (forced)
·
Public indecency ·
Rape (statutory ·
marital)
·
Seduction ·
Sexting ·
Sexual abuse (child)
·
Sexual assault ·
Sexual harassment ·
Slavery ·
Sodomy ·
UK Section 63 (2008) ·
Violence
Portals
Sexuality ·
Criminal justice ·
Law
v ·
t ·
e
World map of pornography (18+) laws
Pornography legal
Pornography legal under some restrictions
Pornography illegal
Data unavailable
The legal status of pornography varies widely from country to country. Most countries allow at least some form of pornography. In some countries, softcore pornography is considered tame enough to be sold in general stores or to be shown on TV. Hardcore pornography, on the other hand, is usually regulated. The production and sale, and to a slightly lesser degree the possession, of child pornography is illegal in almost all countries, and some countries have restrictions on pornography depicting violence (see, for example, rape pornography) or animal pornography, or both.
Pornographic entertainment on display in a sex shop window. There is usually a minimum age to go into pornographic stores.
Most countries attempt to restrict minors' access to hardcore materials, limiting availability to sex shops, mail-order, and television channels that parents can restrict, among other means. There is usually an age minimum for entrance to pornographic stores, or the materials are displayed partly covered or not displayed at all. More generally, disseminating pornography to a minor is often illegal. Many of these efforts have been rendered practically irrelevant by widely available Internet pornography. A failed US law would have made these same restrictions apply to the internet.
In the United States, a person receiving unwanted commercial mail he or she deems pornographic (or otherwise offensive) may obtain a Prohibitory Order, either against all mail from a particular sender, or against all sexually explicit mail, by applying to the United States Postal Service. There are recurring urban legends of snuff movies, in which murders are filmed for pornographic purposes. Despite extensive work to ascertain the truth of these rumors, law enforcement officials have been unable to find any such works.
Some people, including pornography producer Larry Flynt and the writer Salman Rushdie,[61] have argued that pornography is vital to freedom and that a free and civilized society should be judged by its willingness to accept pornography.
The UK Government has criminalized possession of what it terms "extreme pornography" following the highly publicized murder of Jane Longhurst.
Child pornography is illegal in most countries, with a person most commonly being a child until the age of 18 (though the age does vary). In those countries, any film or photo with a child subject in a sexual act is considered pornography and illegal.
Pornography can infringe into basic human rights of those involved, especially when consent was not obtained. For example, Revenge Porn is a phenomenon where disgruntled sexual partners release images or video footage of intimate sexual activity, usually on the internet.[62] In many countries there has been a demand to make such activities specifically illegal carrying higher punishments than mere breach of privacy or image rights, or circulation of prurient material.[63][64] As a result, some jurisdictions have enacted specific laws against "revenge porn".[65]
What is not pornography
In the U.S., a July 2014 criminal case decision in Massachusetts (COMMONWEALTH v. John REX.)[66] made a legal determination of what was not to be considered "pornography" and in this particular case "child pornography".[67] It was determined that photographs of naked children that were from sources such as National Geographic magazine, a sociology textbook, and a nudist catalog were not considered pornography in Massachusetts even while in the possession of a convicted and (at the time) incarcerated sex offender.[67]
Copyright status
In the United States, some courts have applied US copyright protection to pornographic materials.[68][69] Although the first US copyright law specifically did not cover obscene materials, the provision was removed subsequently.[when?] Most pornographic works are theoretically work for hire meaning pornographic models do not receive statutory royalties for their performances. Of particular difficulty is the changing community attitudes of what is considered obscene, meaning that works could slip into and out of copyright protection based upon the prevailing standards of decency. This was not an issue with the copyright law up until 1972 when copyright protection required registration. When the law was changed to make copyright protection automatic, and for the life of the author.
Some courts have held that copyright protection effectively applies to works, whether it is obscene or not,[70] but not all courts have ruled the same way.[71] The copyright protection rights of pornography in the United States has again been challenged as late as February 2012.[68][72]
Views on pornography
[icon] This section requires expansion. (December 2014)
Main article: Opposition to pornography
A caricature on "the great epidemic of pornography, 19th-century French illustration."
Views and opinions of pornography come in a variety of forms and from a diversity of demographics and societal groups. Opposition of the subject generally, though not exclusively,[73] comes from three main sources: law, feminism and religion.
Feminist views
Main article: Feminist views of pornography
Feminists, including Andrea Dworkin and Catharine MacKinnon, argue that pornography is demeaning to women and/or that it contributes to violence against women, both in its production and in its consumption. The production of pornography, they argue, entails the physical, psychological, or economic coercion of the women who perform in it, and where they argue that the abuse and exploitation of women is rampant; in its consumption, they charge that pornography eroticizes the domination, humiliation and coercion of women, and reinforces sexual and cultural attitudes that are complicit in rape and sexual harassment.[74][75][76][77] They charge that pornography presents a severely distorted image of sexual relations, and reinforces sex myths; that it always shows women as readily available and desiring to engage in sex at any time, with any man, on men's terms, always responding positively to any advances men make.[78] They argue that because pornography often shows women enjoying and desiring to be violently attacked by men, saying "no" when they actually want sex, fighting back but then ending up enjoying the act – this can affect the public understanding of legal issues such as consent to sexual relations.[79]
In contrast to these objections, some scholars argue that the lesbian feminist movement in the 1980s was good for women in the porn industry.[80] As more women entered the developmental side of the industry, this allowed women to gear porn more towards women because they knew what women wanted, both for actresses and the audience.[80] This is believed to be a good thing because for such a long time, the porn industry has been directed by men for men.[80] This also sparked the arrival of making lesbian porn for lesbians instead of men.[80]
Religious views
Main article: Religious views on pornography
Religious organizations have been important in bringing about political action against pornography.[81] In the United States, religious beliefs affect the formation of political beliefs which concern pornography.[82]
See also
Portal icon Pornography portal
Adult movie theater
Adult video arcade
Cartoon pornography
Erotic literature
Erotica
Golden Age of Porn
History of erotic photography
Internet pornography
Sex in advertising
Sex-positive feminism
Sex worker Pornographic film actor
Women's erotica
X rating, sometimes referred to as "XXX"
Government and legislation
Meese Report, 1986 U.S. Attorney General's Commission on Pornography
President's Commission on Obscenity and Pornography, 1969, United States
Stanley v. Georgia, U.S. Supreme Court case that established a right to pornography
Williams Committee, 1979 U.K. Committee on Obscenity and Film Censorship
Lists
List of authors of erotic works
List of pornographic book publishers
List of pornographic film studios
List of pornographic magazines
List of porn stars
References
1.Jump up ^ H. Mongomery Hyde (1964) A History of Pornography: 1–26.
2.^ Jump up to: a b Ackman, Dan (25 May 2001). "How Big Is Porn?". Forbes.com. Forbes.com. Archived from the original on 9 June 2001. Retrieved 8 November 2007. "$2.6 billion to $3.9 billion. Sources: Adams Media Research, Forrester Research, Veronis Suhler Communications Industry Report, IVD"
3.Jump up ^ Staff. "The Truth About California's Adult Entertainment Industry White Paper 1999". Adult Video News. Retrieved 28 April 2014.
4.Jump up ^ Rincover, Arnold (1990). "Can Pornography Be Used as Treatment for Voyeurism?". Toronto Star.[page needed]
5.Jump up ^ Jackson, B (1969). "A case of voyeurism treated by counterconditioning". Behaviour Research and Therapy 7 (1): 133–4. doi:10.1016/0005-7967(69)90058-8. PMID 5767619.
6.Jump up ^ List of Greek words starting with πορν- (porn-) on Perseus.
7.Jump up ^ πορνογράφος. Liddell, Henry George; Scott, Robert; A Greek–English Lexicon at the Perseus Project.
8.Jump up ^ Athenaeus. "Book 13.567b". The Deipnosophists (in Greek). At the Perseus Project.
9.Jump up ^ Online Etymology Dictionary. Etymonline.com. Retrieved on 2011-04-21.
10.Jump up ^ history of the word pornography | podictionary – for word lovers – dictionary etymology, trivia & history. podictionary (2009-03-13). Retrieved on 2011-04-21. Archived from the original on 2011-05-11.
11.Jump up ^ Richard Rudgley (2000). The Lost Civilizations of the Stone Age. Simon and Schuster. pp. 195–. ISBN 978-0-684-86270-5. Retrieved 21 April 2011.
12.Jump up ^ H. Montgomery Hyde A History of Pornography. (1969) London, Heinemann; p. 14.
13.Jump up ^ Foxon, D. F. Libertine Literature in England, 1660–1745, 1965, p. 45.
14.Jump up ^ Wagner, "Introduction", in Cleland, Fanny Hill, 1985, p. 7.
15.Jump up ^ Lane, Obscene Profits: The Entrepreneurs of Pornography in the Cyber Age, 2000, p. 11.
16.Jump up ^ Browne, The Guide to United States Popular Culture, 2001, p. 273, ISBN 0-87972-821-3; Sutherland, Offensive Literature: Decensorship in Britain, 1960–1982, 1983, p. 32, ISBN 0-389-20354-8.
17.Jump up ^ The Comstock Act 17 Stat. 598
18.Jump up ^ Eskridge, William N. (2002). Gaylaw: challenging the apartheid of the closet. Harvard University Press. p. 392.
19.Jump up ^ From the precedent set by R. v. Curl (1729) following the publication of Venus in the Cloister.
20.Jump up ^ Beck, Marianna (May 2003). "The Roots of Western Pornography: Victorian Obsessions and Fin-de-Siècle Predilections". Libido, The Journal of Sex and Sensibility. Retrieved 22 August 2006.
21.Jump up ^ Bottomore, Stephen; Stephen Herbert and Luke McKernan, eds. (1996). "Léar (Albert Kirchner)". Who's Who of Victorian Cinema. British Film Institute. Retrieved 15 October 2006.
22.Jump up ^ Bottomore, Stephen; Stephen Herbert and Luke McKernan, eds. (1996). "Eugène Pirou". Who's Who of Victorian Cinema. British Film Institute. Retrieved 15 October 2006.
23.^ Jump up to: a b Chris Rodley, Dev Varma, Kate Williams III (Directors); Marilyn Milgrom, Grant Romer, Rolf Borowczak, Bob Guccione, Dean Kuipers (Cast) (7 March 2006). Pornography: The Secret History of Civilization (DVD). Port Washington, NY: Koch Vision. ISBN 1-4172-2885-7. Retrieved 21 October 2006.[dead link]
24.Jump up ^ Corliss, Richard (29 March 2005). "That Old Feeling: When Porno Was Chic". Time Magazine (Time inc). Retrieved 16 October 2006.
25.Jump up ^ Dugdale, John (2 May 2013). "Porn studies is the new discipline for academics". The Guardian. Retrieved 2 May 2013.
26.Jump up ^ William J. Gehrke (10 December 1996). "Erotica is Not Pornography". The Tech.
27.Jump up ^ "h2g2 – What is Erotic and What is Pornographic?". BBC.co.uk. 29 March 2004. Retrieved 14 January 2012.
28.Jump up ^ Martin Amis (17 March 2001). "A rough trade". Guardian.co.uk. Retrieved 29 February 2012.
29.Jump up ^ "P20th Century Nudes in Art". The Art History Archive. Retrieved 29 February 2012.
30.Jump up ^ President's Commission on Obscenity and Pornography. Report of The Commission on Obscenity and Pornography 1970, Washington, D.C.: U. S. Government Printing Office.
31.Jump up ^ Richard, Emmanuelle (23 May 2002). "The Naked Untruth". Alternet. Archived from the original on 28 September 2004. Retrieved 8 September 2006.
32.Jump up ^ Schlosser, Eric (8 May 2003). Reefer Madness: Sex, Drugs, and Cheap Labor in the American Black Market. Houghton Mifflin. ISBN 978-0-618-33466-7. Schlosser's book repeats the $10 billion figure without additional evidence
33.^ Jump up to: a b c d e f g h i j k l m n Szymanski, Dawn; Stewart-Richardson, Destin (2014). "Psychological, Relational, and Sexual Correlates of Pornography Use on Young Adult Heterosexual Men in Romantic Relationships". The Journal of Men's Studies 22: 64–82. doi:10.3149/jms.2201.6410.3149/jms.2201.64.
34.^ Jump up to: a b Mearian, Lucas (2 May 2006). "Porn industry may be decider in Blu-ray, HD-DVD battle". Macworld. Mac Publishing. Archived from the original on 12 July 2006. Retrieved 8 November 2007. Ron Wagner, Director of IT at a California porn studio: "If you look at the VHS vs. Beta standards, you see the much higher-quality standard dying because of [the porn industry's support of VHS] ... The mass volume of tapes in the porn market at the time went out on VHS."
35.^ Jump up to: a b Lynch, Martin (17 January 2007). "Blu-ray loves porn after all". The Inquirer. Incisive Media Investments. Archived from the original on 7 November 2007. Retrieved 8 November 2007. "By many accounts VHS would not have won its titanic struggle against Sony's Betamax video tape format if it had not been for porn. This might be over-stating its importance but it was an important factor. ... There is no way that Sony can ignore the boost that porn can give the Blu-ray format."
36.Jump up ^ Gardiner, Bryan (22 January 2007). "Porn Industry May Decide DVD Format War". FOXNews.com – Technology News (Ziff Davis Media). Archived from the original on 10 February 2007. Retrieved 8 November 2007. "As was expected, the 2007 Consumer Electronics Show saw even more posturing and politics between the Blu-ray Disc and HD DVD camps, with each side announcing a new set of alliances and predicting that the end of the war was imminent."
37.Jump up ^ Staff. "Magnet Media Holds Porn/Tech Event in NYC This Tuesday:". Adult Video News. Retrieved 11 March 2014.
38.Jump up ^ Staff. "How Porn Drives Mainstream Internet Technology Adoption Tuesday, Mar 11, 12:30 PM @ Rose Auditorium". Garys Guide. Retrieved 11 March 2014.
39.Jump up ^ "Playboy undressed video game women – Aug. 25, 2004". CNN. 25 August 2004. Retrieved 26 August 2006.
40.Jump up ^ "Hong Kong filmmakers shoot 'first' 3D porn film". Yahoo. 8 August 2010. Archived from the original on 15 August 2010. Retrieved 8 August 2010.
41.Jump up ^ "Hong Kong filmmakers shoot 'first' 3D porn film". Asian Sex Gazette. 17 January 2012. Retrieved 17 August 2010.
42.Jump up ^ “Strange and wonderful” Budapest — Where the living is increasingly pleasant...and still very cheap. Escapeartist.com (1989-09-11). Retrieved 2011-04-21.
43.Jump up ^ Sex trade moguls thrive by the Blue Danube – World, News. The Independent (1996-07-21). Retrieved 2011-04-21.
44.Jump up ^ The Art and Politics of Netporn » Abstract. Networkcultures.org. Retrieved 2011-04-21.
45.Jump up ^ Hymes, Tom. "Adult Tube Sites Now Spamming Through Google News". AVN.com. Adult Video News. Retrieved 20 August 2014.
46.Jump up ^ Kernes, Mark. "Nightline Takes a Look at Porn Piracy, and Targets MindGeek". AVN.com. Adult Video News. Retrieved 20 August 2014.
47.Jump up ^ Staff. "Takedown Piracy Celebrates Fifth Anniversary". AVN.com. Adult Video News. Retrieved 20 August 2014.
48.^ Jump up to: a b Segal, David (28 March 2014). "Does Porn Hurt Children?". New York Times. Retrieved 30 March 2014.
49.Jump up ^ Tamsin McMahon Will quitting porn improve your life? A growing ‘NoFap’ movement of young men are saying no to porn and masturbation Maclean's, January 20, 2014. Quote: "Kruger helped revise the sexual disorders section of the latest edition of the psychiatric bible, the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, which doesn’t include sex or porn addiction due to lack of academic evidence that they exist."
50.Jump up ^ Pornography, Sex Crime, and Public Policy by Berl Kutchinsky.
51.Jump up ^ Kutchinsky, Berl (Summer 1973). "The Effect of Easy Availability of Pornography on the Incidence of Sex Crimes: The Danish Experience". Journal of Social Issues 29 (3): 163–181. doi:10.1111/j.1540-4560.1973.tb00094.x. Retrieved 31 March 2014.
52.Jump up ^ Diamond, Milton (September–October 2009). "Pornography, public acceptance and sex related crime: A review". International Journal of Law and Psychiatry 32 (5): 304–314. doi:10.1016/j.ijlp.2009.06.004. Retrieved 31 March 2014.
53.Jump up ^ Pornography and Sexual Representation: A Reference Guide, Volume 3 (book) by Joseph W. Slade.
54.Jump up ^ Studies on Pornography and Sex Crimes in Denmark (1970) by Berl Kutchinsky.
55.Jump up ^ Kendall, Todd D. (July 2007). "Pornography, rape and the internet" (PDF). Retrieved 30 March 2014.
56.Jump up ^ D'Amato, Anthony (23 June 2006). "Porn Up, Rape Down". Retrieved 19 December 2006.
57.Jump up ^ Stewart, Destin; Szymanski, Dawn (2012). "Young Adult Women’s Reports of Their Male Romantic Partner’s Pornography Use as a Correlate of Their Self-Esteem, Relationship Quality, and Sexual Satisfaction". Sex Roles 67 (5-6): 257–271. doi:10.1007/s11199-012-0164-0.
58.Jump up ^ Cuthbertson, Richard (2 January 2015). "Internet porn 'rewiring' young brains, Halifax therapists say". CBC News (CBC News). Retrieved 30 March 2014.
59.Jump up ^ Statistics on Pornography, Sexual Addiction and Online Perpetrators and their Effects on Children, Pastors and Churches. Safefamilies.org. Retrieved 2011-04-21.
60.Jump up ^ Edelman, Benjamin. "Red Light States: Who Buys Online Adult Entertainment?" Journal of Economic Perspectives, Volume 23, Number 1 (Winter 2009), pages 209–220.
61.Jump up ^ Baxter, Sarah; Brooks, Richard (8 August 2004). "Porn is vital to freedom, says Rushdie". Times Online (London: Times Newspapers). Archived from the original on 8 November 2007. Retrieved 8 November 2007. "Pornography exists everywhere, of course, but when it comes into societies in which it’s difficult for young men and women to get together and do what young men and women often like doing, it satisfies a more general need.... While doing so, it sometimes becomes a kind of standard-bearer for freedom, even civilisation."
62.Jump up ^ Salter, M. (2013) ‘Responding to revenge porn: Gender, justice and online legal impunity’ http://www.academia.edu/4585975/Responding_to_revenge_porn_Gender_justice_and_online_legal_impunity
63.Jump up ^ Using Copyright to Combat Revenge Porn http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2374119
64.Jump up ^ Bhasin, P. (2014) 'Online Revenge Porn-Recourse for Victims under Cyber Laws' http://blog.ipleaders.in/online-revenge-porn-recourse-for-victims-under-cyber-laws/
65.Jump up ^ http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-30307657
66.Jump up ^ Staff. "Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts,Norfolk. COMMONWEALTH v. John REX. No. SJC–11480. Decided: July 9, 2014". findlaw.com. Retrieved 18 July 2014.
67.^ Jump up to: a b Kernes, Mark. "MA Supremes Rule National Geographic Photos Not Kid Porn". AVN.com. Adult Video News. Retrieved 18 July 2014.
68.^ Jump up to: a b Goussé, Caroline (2012-02-16). "No Copyright Protection for Pornography: A Daring Response to File-Sharing Litigation". Intellectual Property Brief. Retrieved 2012-03-01.
69.Jump up ^ Masnick, Mike (2011-11-04). "Court Wonders If Porn Can Even Be Covered By Copyright". Tech Dirt. Retrieved 2012-03-01.
70.Jump up ^ Mitchell Bros. Film Group v. Cinema Adult Theater, 604 F.2d 852 (5th Cir.1979) and Jartech v. Clancy, 666 F.2d 403 (9th Cir.1982) held that obscenity could not be a defense to copyright claims.
71.Jump up ^ Devils Films, Inc. v. Nectar Video Under, 29 F.Supp.2d 174, 175 (S.D.N.Y. 1998) refused to follow the Mitchell ruling and relied on the doctrine of “clean hands” to deny copyright protection to works seen as obscene.
72.Jump up ^ "You Can’t Copyright Porn, Harassed BitTorrent Defendant Insists", TorrentFreak, 6 February 2012. Retrieved 9 Augusti 2012.
73.Jump up ^ "2 male porn performers test positive for HIV". Retrieved 31 December 2014.
74.Jump up ^ Shrage, Laurie. (2007-07-13). "Feminist Perspectives on Sex Markets: Pornography". In: Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
75.Jump up ^ Mackinnon, Catherine A. (1984) "Not a moral issue". Yale Law and Policy Review 2:321–345. Reprinted in: Mackinnon (1989). Toward a Feminist Theory of the State Harvard University Press. ISBN 0-674-89645-9 (1st ed), ISBN 0-674-89646-7 (2nd ed). "Sex forced on real women so that it can be sold at a profit to be forced on other real women; women's bodies trussed and maimed and raped and made into things to be hurt and obtained and accessed, and this presented as the nature of women; the coercion that is visible and the coercion that has become invisible—this and more grounds the feminist concern with pornography".
76.Jump up ^ "A Conversation With Catherine MacKinnon (transcript)". Think Tank. 1995. PBS. Retrieved 1 September 2009.
77.Jump up ^ MacKinnon, Catharine (1987). Feminism Unmodified: Discourses on Life and Law Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. p. 147.
78.Jump up ^ Jeffries, Stuart (12 April 2006). "Stuart Jeffries talks to leading feminist Catharine MacKinnon". The Guardian (London).
79.Jump up ^ Catharine MacKinnon argues that: "Pornography affects people's belief in rape myths. So for example if a woman says 'I didn't consent' and people have been viewing pornography, they believe rape myths and believe the woman did consent no matter what she said. That when she said no, she meant yes. When she said she didn't want to, that meant more beer. When she said she would prefer to go home, that means she's a lesbian who needs to be given a good corrective experience. Pornography promotes these rape myths and desensitises people to violence against women so that you need more violence to become sexually aroused if you're a pornography consumer. This is very well documented."[1]
80.^ Jump up to: a b c d Ziv, Amalia (2014). "Girl meets boy: Cross-gender queer and the promise of pornography". Sexualities 17: 885–905. doi:10.1177/1363460714532937.
81.Jump up ^ Sherkat and Ellison, 1997, "The Cognitive Structure of a Moral Crusade", Social Forces 75(3), p. 958.
82.Jump up ^ Sherkat and Ellison, 1999, "Recent Developments and Current Controversies in the Sociology of Religion", Annual Review of Sociology 25, p. 370.
Further reading
Advocacy
Susie Bright. "Susie Sexpert's Lesbian Sex World and Susie Bright's Sexual Reality: A Virtual Sex World Reader", San Francisco, CA: Cleis Press, 1990 and 1992. Challenges any easy equation between feminism and anti-pornography positions.
Betty Dodson. "Feminism and Free speech: Pornography". Feminists for Free Expression 1993. May 8, 2002
Kate Ellis. Caught Looking: Feminism, Pornography, and Censorship. New York: Caught Looking Incorporated, 1986.
Susan Griffin. Pornography and Silence: Culture's Revenge Against Nature. New York: Harper, 1981.
Gever, Matthew (3 December 1998). "Pornography Helps Women, Society". UCLA Bruin. Retrieved 3 July 2011.
Gregory, Michele. "Pro-Sex Feminism: Redefining Pornography (or, a study in alliteration: the pro pornography position paper)". Witsendzine.com. Archived from the original on 9 August 2002. Retrieved 3 July 2011.
Andrea Juno and V. Vale. Angry Women, Re/Search # 12. San Francisco, CA: Re/Search Publications, 1991. Performance artists and literary theorists who challenge Dworkin and MacKinnon's claim to speak on behalf of all women.
McElroy, Wendy (29 June 2000). "You Are What You Read?". Lewrockwell.com. Retrieved 3 July 2011. Defends the availability of pornography, and condemns feminist anti-pornography campaigns.
McElroy, Wendy. "A Feminist Overview of Pornography, Ending in a Defense Thereof". Wendymcelroy.com. Retrieved 3 July 2011.
McElroy, Wendy. "A Feminist Defense of Pornography". Council for Secular Humanism. Archived from the original on 17 December 2013. Retrieved 3 July 2011.
Newitz, Annalee (8 May 2002). "Obscene Feminists: Why Women Are Leading the Battle Against Censorship". San Francisco Bay Guardian. Retrieved 3 July 2011.
Strossen, Nadine. Defending Pornography: Free Speech, Sex and the Fight for Women's Rights. ISBN 0-8147-8149-7.
Blumen, Jonathan (November 1995). "Nadine Strossen: Pornography Must Be Tolerated" 1 (11).
Tucker, Scott (1991). "Gender, Fucking, and Utopia: An Essay in Response to John Stoltenberg's Refusing to Be a Man". Social Text (27): 3–34. Critique of Stoltenberg and Dworkin's positions on pornography and power.
Opposition
Assiter, Alison (1989). Pornography, feminism, and the individual. London Winchester, Mass: Pluto Press. ISBN 9780745303192. Assiter advocates seeing pornography as epitomizing a wider problem of oppression, exploitation and inequality which needs to be better understood.
Carse, A., 1995, "Pornography: An Uncivil Liberty?", Hypatia 10(1): 155–182. An argument for approaches to end harm to women caused by pornography.
Hill, J. 1987, "Pornography and Degradation", Hypatia 2: 39–54. A critique of the pornographic industry within a Kantian ethical framework.
Michael Kimmel. "Men Confront Pornography". New York: Meridian—Random House, 1990. A variety of essays that try to assess ways that pornography may take advantage of men.
Secondary Negative Effects on Employees of the Pornographic Industry, by Shelley Lubben
MacKinnon, C., 1984, "Not a Moral Issue", Yale Law & Policy Review 2(2): 321–345. An argument that pornography is one element of an unjust institution of the subordination of women to men.
MacKinnon, C., 1989, "Sexuality, Pornography, and Method: 'Pleasure under Patriarchy'" Ethics 99(2): 314–346.
Vadas, M., 1987, "A First Look at the Pornography/Civil Rights Ordinance: Could Pornography be the Subordination of Women?", The Journal of Philosophy 84(9): 487–511. A defence of the Dworkin-MacKinnon definition and condemnation of pornography employing putatively relatively rigorous analysis. See (Parent, 1990) in the same publication for a criticism of this paper.
Vadas, M., 1992, "The Pornography / Civil Rights Ordinance v. The BOG: And the Winner Is...?", Hypatia 7(3): 94–109.]", Hypatia 84(9): 487–511. An argument that pornography increases women's vulnerability to rape.
Williams, B. (ed.), 1988, Pornography and Sexual Violence: Evidence of the Links, London: Everywoman. A representation of the causal connections between pornography and violence towards women.
Linda Williams: Hard Core: Power, Pleasure and the Frenzy of the Visible (University of California Press, 1989). Expanded Paperback Edition: University of California Press, 1999, ISBN 0-520-21943-0
Linda Williams (ed.): Porn Studies, B&T, 2004, ISBN 0-8223-3312-0
Neutral or mixed
Carole Vance, Editor. "Pleasure and Danger: Exploring Female Sexuality". Boston: Routledge, 1984. Collection of papers from 1982 conference; visible and divisive split between anti-pornography activists and lesbian S&M theorists.
External links
Wikimedia Commons has media related to Pornography.
Early silent pornographic film from 1925 available at Wikimedia Commons.
Look up pornography in Wiktionary, the free dictionary.
Commentary"American Porn". Frontline (PBS). Retrieved 2014-02-01. Interactive web site companion to a Frontline documentary exploring the pornography industry within the United States.
TechnologyFrom teledildonics to interactive porn: the future of sex in a digital age (2014-06-06), The Guardian
EconomicsSusannah Breslin, Contributor (2013-12-20). "LEADERSHIP: What Porn Stars Do When The Porn Industry Shuts Down". Forbes.
GovernmentKutchinsky, Berl, Professor of Criminology: The first law that legalized pornography (Denmark)
HistoryPatricia Davis, Ph.D., Simon Noble & Rebecca J. White (2010). The History of Modern Pornography. History.com.
SociologyDiamond, M. and Uchiyama, A. (1999). "Pornography, Rape and Sex Crimes in Japan". International Journal of Law and Psychiatry 22 (1): 1–22. doi:10.1016/s0160-2527(98)00035-1.
"Pornography and Censorship". Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
Nuvola apps kpdf2.png Topics related to Pornography
[show]
v ·
t ·
e
Pornography
PortalCommons pageWikiquote pageWiktionary page
Wikipedia page
[show]
v ·
t ·
e
Photography
Category
Portal
WikiProject
[show]
v ·
t ·
e
Outline of human sexuality
Portal
[show]
v ·
t ·
e
Sexual revolution
Categories: Pornography
Sexuality
Navigation menu
Create account
Log in
Article
Talk
Read
View source
View history
Main page
Contents
Featured content
Current events
Random article
Donate to Wikipedia
Wikipedia store
Interaction
Help
About Wikipedia
Community portal
Recent changes
Contact page
Tools
What links here
Related changes
Upload file
Special pages
Permanent link
Page information
Wikidata item
Cite this page
Print/export
Create a book
Download as PDF
Printable version
Languages
Afrikaans
العربية
Aragonés
Asturianu
Azərbaycanca
বাংলা
Беларуская
Беларуская (тарашкевіца)
Български
བོད་ཡིག
Bosanski
Brezhoneg
Català
Cebuano
Čeština
Cymraeg
Dansk
Deutsch
Eesti
Ελληνικά
Español
Esperanto
Estremeñu
Euskara
فارسی
Français
Frysk
Gaeilge
Galego
한국어
Հայերեն
Hornjoserbsce
Hrvatski
Bahasa Indonesia
Ирон
Íslenska
Italiano
עברית
ქართული
Қазақша
Kiswahili
Latina
Latviešu
Lëtzebuergesch
Lietuvių
Magyar
മലയാളം
Malti
मराठी
مصرى
Bahasa Melayu
Nederlands
日本語
Norsk bokmål
Norsk nynorsk
Occitan
Oʻzbekcha/ўзбекча
ਪੰਜਾਬੀ
Polski
Português
Română
Русский
Shqip
Sicilianu
Simple English
Slovenčina
Slovenščina
Српски / srpski
Srpskohrvatski / српскохрватски
Suomi
Svenska
Tagalog
தமிழ்
ไทย
Türkçe
Українська
اردو
Vepsän kel’
Tiếng Việt
ייִדיש
粵語
Zazaki
Žemaitėška
中文
Edit links
This page was last modified on 22 April 2015, at 08:12.
Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License; additional terms may apply. By using this site, you agree to the Terms of Use and Privacy Policy. Wikipedia® is a registered trademark of the Wikimedia Foundation, Inc., a non-profit organization.
Privacy policy
About Wikipedia
Disclaimers
Contact Wikipedia
Developers
Mobile view
Wikimedia Foundation
Powered by MediaWiki
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pornography
Sexual norm
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
(Redirected from Sexual freedom)
Jump to: navigation, search
This article needs additional citations for verification. Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. (January 2008)
A sexual norm can refer to a personal or a social norm. Most cultures have social norms regarding sexuality, and define normal sexuality to consist only of certain sex acts between individuals who meet specific criteria of age, consanguinity (e.g. incest), race/ethnicity (e.g. miscegenation), and/or social role and socioeconomic status.
In most societies, the term 'normal' identifies a range or spectrum of behaviors. Rather than each act being simply classified as "acceptable" or "not acceptable", many acts are viewed as "more or less accepted" by different people, and the opinion on how normal or acceptable they are greatly depends on the individual making the opinion as well as the culture itself. Based on information gained from sexological studies, a great many ordinary people's sex lives are very often quite different from popular beliefs about normal, in private.
If non-restrictive sexual norms are regarded positively, they may be called "sexual freedom", "sexual liberation" or "free love". If they are regarded negatively, they may be called "sexual licence" or "licentiousness". Restrictive social norms, if judged negatively, are called sexual oppression. If the restrictive norms are judged positively, they may be regarded as encouraging chastity, "sexual self-restraint" or "sexual decency", and negative terms are used for the targeted sexuality, e.g. sexual abuse and perversion.
Contents [hide]
1 Sexual norms and sexual practice
2 Social attitudes
3 See also
4 References
5 External links
Sexual norms and sexual practice[edit]
It is unknown if child abuse is higher in sexual permissive or non-permissive cultures.[1]
Social attitudes[edit]
In the West, some people have relaxed the traditional definitions of normality, choosing instead to define normal sexuality as any sexual practice which does not involve what are regarded as sexual perversions. However, using this definition makes use of a long list of sexual perversions which themselves show up hidden assumptions about cultural norms. Recently, in Western society, consensual paraphilias are becoming more acceptable, in particular "any activity, not otherwise illegal, performed between consenting adults in private."
This liberalization of attitudes has resulted in the legalization of homosexuality in many countries, following the ground-breaking Wolfenden report in the UK.
There is a tendency in Western countries towards serial monogamy as a normal heterosexual lifestyle. There is also a movement towards recognizing long-term homosexual relationships (see same-sex marriage).
There is also greater acceptance of sexual relationships (partnerships) without requiring the sanction of a form of marriage recognised by the church, state or legal system.
These liberalizing trends can be contrasted with conservative social trends that seek to reverse these patterns of behaviour, with encouragement for young people to choose traditionally accepted roles, beliefs and behaviors, and to exercise sexual abstinence or non-promiscuous lifestyles before marriage.
There is an opposing trend in reaction, that views such changes as a socially destructive force, and is opposed to them. It is often, though not exclusively, associated with people who have religious feelings, and is prevalent in much of Christianity in America, as well as Islam in the Middle East and Asia, and other devout religious groups such as Haredi Jews in Israel. In such countries there is often strong criticism of non-traditional sexualities and sexual liberation.
Some social unrest in both Eastern and Western cultures is due to this conflict between these two trends, and views upon acceptability and control of social and sexual norms.
See also[edit]
##Religion and sexuality
##Same-sex marriage
##Sex-positive feminism
##Catholic teachings on sexual morality
##Reproductive rights
References[edit]
1.Jump up ^ Andrey Korotayev & Alexander Kazankov. Factors of Sexual Freedom among Hunter-Gatherers in Cross-Cultural Perspective // Cross-Cultural Research. The Journal of Comparative Social Science. 37/1 (2003). P. 28–60
External links[edit]
##Investigative Reports Focused on Sexual Freedom
##Sexual Freedom Why It Is Feared
##Lil Wayne and Baby Sitting in a Tree
##Factors of Sexual Freedom among Hunter-Gatherers in Cross-Cultural Perspective
Categories: Sexuality and society
History of human sexuality
Sociological terminology
Navigation menu
Create account
Log in
Article
Talk
Read
Edit
View history
Main page
Contents
Featured content
Current events
Random article
Donate to Wikipedia
Wikipedia store
Interaction
Help
About Wikipedia
Community portal
Recent changes
Contact page
Tools
What links here
Related changes
Upload file
Special pages
Permanent link
Page information
Wikidata item
Cite this page
Print/export
Create a book
Download as PDF
Printable version
Languages
Polski
Русский
Tagalog
Edit links
This page was last modified on 9 June 2014, at 15:04.
Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License; additional terms may apply. By using this site, you agree to the Terms of Use and Privacy Policy. Wikipedia® is a registered trademark of the Wikimedia Foundation, Inc., a non-profit organization.
Privacy policy
About Wikipedia
Disclaimers
Contact Wikipedia
Developers
Mobile view
Wikimedia Foundation
Powered by MediaWiki
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sexual_norm
Sexual norm
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
(Redirected from Sexual freedom)
Jump to: navigation, search
This article needs additional citations for verification. Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. (January 2008)
A sexual norm can refer to a personal or a social norm. Most cultures have social norms regarding sexuality, and define normal sexuality to consist only of certain sex acts between individuals who meet specific criteria of age, consanguinity (e.g. incest), race/ethnicity (e.g. miscegenation), and/or social role and socioeconomic status.
In most societies, the term 'normal' identifies a range or spectrum of behaviors. Rather than each act being simply classified as "acceptable" or "not acceptable", many acts are viewed as "more or less accepted" by different people, and the opinion on how normal or acceptable they are greatly depends on the individual making the opinion as well as the culture itself. Based on information gained from sexological studies, a great many ordinary people's sex lives are very often quite different from popular beliefs about normal, in private.
If non-restrictive sexual norms are regarded positively, they may be called "sexual freedom", "sexual liberation" or "free love". If they are regarded negatively, they may be called "sexual licence" or "licentiousness". Restrictive social norms, if judged negatively, are called sexual oppression. If the restrictive norms are judged positively, they may be regarded as encouraging chastity, "sexual self-restraint" or "sexual decency", and negative terms are used for the targeted sexuality, e.g. sexual abuse and perversion.
Contents [hide]
1 Sexual norms and sexual practice
2 Social attitudes
3 See also
4 References
5 External links
Sexual norms and sexual practice[edit]
It is unknown if child abuse is higher in sexual permissive or non-permissive cultures.[1]
Social attitudes[edit]
In the West, some people have relaxed the traditional definitions of normality, choosing instead to define normal sexuality as any sexual practice which does not involve what are regarded as sexual perversions. However, using this definition makes use of a long list of sexual perversions which themselves show up hidden assumptions about cultural norms. Recently, in Western society, consensual paraphilias are becoming more acceptable, in particular "any activity, not otherwise illegal, performed between consenting adults in private."
This liberalization of attitudes has resulted in the legalization of homosexuality in many countries, following the ground-breaking Wolfenden report in the UK.
There is a tendency in Western countries towards serial monogamy as a normal heterosexual lifestyle. There is also a movement towards recognizing long-term homosexual relationships (see same-sex marriage).
There is also greater acceptance of sexual relationships (partnerships) without requiring the sanction of a form of marriage recognised by the church, state or legal system.
These liberalizing trends can be contrasted with conservative social trends that seek to reverse these patterns of behaviour, with encouragement for young people to choose traditionally accepted roles, beliefs and behaviors, and to exercise sexual abstinence or non-promiscuous lifestyles before marriage.
There is an opposing trend in reaction, that views such changes as a socially destructive force, and is opposed to them. It is often, though not exclusively, associated with people who have religious feelings, and is prevalent in much of Christianity in America, as well as Islam in the Middle East and Asia, and other devout religious groups such as Haredi Jews in Israel. In such countries there is often strong criticism of non-traditional sexualities and sexual liberation.
Some social unrest in both Eastern and Western cultures is due to this conflict between these two trends, and views upon acceptability and control of social and sexual norms.
See also[edit]
##Religion and sexuality
##Same-sex marriage
##Sex-positive feminism
##Catholic teachings on sexual morality
##Reproductive rights
References[edit]
1.Jump up ^ Andrey Korotayev & Alexander Kazankov. Factors of Sexual Freedom among Hunter-Gatherers in Cross-Cultural Perspective // Cross-Cultural Research. The Journal of Comparative Social Science. 37/1 (2003). P. 28–60
External links[edit]
##Investigative Reports Focused on Sexual Freedom
##Sexual Freedom Why It Is Feared
##Lil Wayne and Baby Sitting in a Tree
##Factors of Sexual Freedom among Hunter-Gatherers in Cross-Cultural Perspective
Categories: Sexuality and society
History of human sexuality
Sociological terminology
Navigation menu
Create account
Log in
Article
Talk
Read
Edit
View history
Main page
Contents
Featured content
Current events
Random article
Donate to Wikipedia
Wikipedia store
Interaction
Help
About Wikipedia
Community portal
Recent changes
Contact page
Tools
What links here
Related changes
Upload file
Special pages
Permanent link
Page information
Wikidata item
Cite this page
Print/export
Create a book
Download as PDF
Printable version
Languages
Polski
Русский
Tagalog
Edit links
This page was last modified on 9 June 2014, at 15:04.
Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License; additional terms may apply. By using this site, you agree to the Terms of Use and Privacy Policy. Wikipedia® is a registered trademark of the Wikimedia Foundation, Inc., a non-profit organization.
Privacy policy
About Wikipedia
Disclaimers
Contact Wikipedia
Developers
Mobile view
Wikimedia Foundation
Powered by MediaWiki
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sexual_norm
Sexual revolution
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
(Redirected from Sexual liberation)
Jump to: navigation, search
For other uses, see Sexual revolution (disambiguation).
[hide]This article has multiple issues. Please help improve it or discuss these issues on the talk page.
Ambox current red.svg
##This article is outdated. (January 2013)
##This article is written like a personal reflection or opinion essay that states the Wikipedia editor's particular feelings about a topic, rather than the opinions of experts. (January 2014)
The sexual revolution, also known as a time of sexual liberation, was a social movement that challenged traditional codes of behavior related to sexuality and interpersonal relationships throughout the Western world from the 1960s to the 1980s.[1] Sexual liberation included increased acceptance of sex outside of traditional heterosexual, monogamous relationships (primarily marriage).[2] Contraception and the pill, public nudity, the normalization of premarital sex, homosexuality and alternative forms of sexuality, and the legalization of abortion all followed.[3][4]
Contents [hide]
1 Overview
2 Historical development 2.1 Role of the mass media
3 Modern revolutions
4 Feminism and sexual liberation
5 Freudian school
6 Mead's Coming of Age in Samoa
7 Kinsey & Masters and Johnson
8 Erotic Novels 8.1 Lady Chatterley's Lover
8.2 Tropic of Cancer
8.3 Fanny Hill
9 Nonfiction sex manuals
10 Contraception
11 United Kingdom
12 Free love
13 Explicit sex on screen and stage
14 Normalization of pornography
15 Premarital sex
16 Politics of sex
17 Criticism
18 The end of the revolution
19 See also
20 Notes
21 References
Overview[edit]
The term "sexual revolution" has been used at least since the late 1910s.[5] Some early commentators believed the sexual revolution of 1960–1980 was in fact the second such revolution in America; they believe that the first revolution was during the Roaring Twenties after World War I and it included writers such as F. Scott Fitzgerald, Edna Saint Vincent Millay, and Ernest Hemingway. However, the age of changes in perception and practices of sexuality that developed from around 1960 was to reach mainstream, middle-class, even middle-aged America as well as most of western Europe. It brought about profound shifts in the attitudes to women’s sexuality, homosexuality, pre-marital sexuality and the freedom of sexual expression. Psychologists and Freudian theorists such as William Reich and Alfred Kinsey influenced the revolution, as well as literature and films, and the social movements of the period, including the counterculture movement, the women’s movement, and the gay rights movement.[6] The counterculture contributed to the awareness of radical cultural change that was the social matrix of the sexual revolution.,[6] contributed to the changes.
By the mid-1970s and through the 1980s, newly won sexual freedoms were being exploited by big businesses looking to capitalize on an increasingly permissive society, with the advent of public and hardcore pornography.[7] Historian David Allyn argues that the sexual revolution was a time of "coming-out": about premarital sex, masturbation, erotic fantasies, pornography use, and sexuality.[1]
Historical development[edit]
The sexual revolution can be seen as an outgrowth of a process. Though its roots may be traced back as far as the Enlightenment (Rousseau, Marquis de Sade) and the Victorian era (Algernon Charles Swinburne's scandalous Poems and Ballads of 1866), it was a development in the modern world which saw the significant loss of power by the values of a morality rooted in the Christian tradition and the rise of permissive societies, of attitudes that were accepting of greater sexual freedom and experimentation that spread all over the world and were captured in the concept of "free love". Modern medicine may also have played a role, penicillin was able to largely eradicate syphilis and this brought greater freedom.[8]
The sexual revolution was initiated by those who shared a belief in the detrimental impact of sexual repression, a view that had previously been argued by Wilhelm Reich and D. H. Lawrence, by Sigmund Freud and by the Surrealist movement. The counterculture wanted to explore the body and mind, and free the personal self from the moral and legal sexual confines of modern America, as well as from 1940s-50s morals in general.[9] The sexual revolution of the sixties was an uprising rooted in a conviction that the erotic should be celebrated as a normal part of life and not repressed by family, industrialized sexual morality, religion and the state.[10]
In 1953, Chicago resident Hugh Hefner founded Playboy, a magazine which aimed to target males between the ages of 21 and 45.[11] Featuring cartoons, interviews, short fiction, Hefner "Playboy Philosophy" and - most crucially - half-naked female "Playmates" posing provocatively, the magazine became immensely successful.[11] In 1960, Hefner decided to expand his enterprise and opened the first Playboy Club in Chicago.[11] The private clubs, which expanded in numbers throughout the 1960s, offered relaxation for its members, who were waited on by Playboy Bunnies.[11] Hefner's influence would represent a growing change in America's attitude towards sex.[11]
There was an increase of sexual encounters between unmarried adults. Divorce rates were dramatically increasing and marriage rates were significantly decreasing in this time period. The number of unmarried Americans aged twenty to twenty-four more than doubled from 4.3 million in 1960 to 9.7 million in 1976.[12] Men and women sought to reshape marriage by instilling new institutions of open marriage, mate swapping, and swinging, and communal sex.[6] There is an introduction of casual sex during the revolution to a level that was never seen or heard before. Americans were gaining a set of relaxed morals and with the contribution of premarital sex on the rise and the development of birth control, casual sex between adults was becoming very popular.
Role of the mass media[edit]
TV, the new mass communication device of the age, along with other media outlets such as radio and magazines, could broadcast information in a matter of seconds to millions of people, while only a few wealthy people would control what millions could watch. Some modern historians have theorized that these media outlets helped to spread new ideas, which were considered radical. The struggles, skirmishes and rhetorical confrontations happening in the course of these movements also became directly visible to ordinary people in a way they would never have been before; the sense of involvement in a social and sexual shift happening in the present could rapidly win new converts and spread discussions afield. The counterculture of the 1960s was becoming well known through radio, newspapers, TV, books, music and other media by the end of the 1960s.
One suggested cause of the 1960s sexual revolution was the development of the birth control pill in 1960, which gave women access to easy and reliable contraception. Another likely cause was a vast improvement in obstetrics, greatly reducing the number of women who died due to childbearing, thus increasing the life expectancy of women. A third, more indirect cause was the large number of children born in the 1940s and early 1950s all over the western world—the 'Baby Boom Generation'--many of whom would grow up in relatively prosperous and safe conditions, within a middle class on the rise and with better access to education and entertainment than ever before. By their demographic weight and their social and educational background they came to trigger a shift in society towards more permissive and informalized attitudes.
Other data suggest[weasel words] the "revolution" was more directly influenced by the financial independence gained by many women who entered the workforce during and after World War II, making the revolution more about individual equality rather than biological independence. Many historians,[quantify] however, feel that one specific cause cannot be selected for this large phenomenon.[13] French feminist writer Simone de Beauvoir was particularly adamant that economic equality greatly contributes to improved gender equality.
Modern revolutions[edit]
1997 in New York City
The Gay Rights Movement started because the Stonewall Riots of 1969 crystallized a broad grass-roots mobilization of the homosexual movement. New gay liberationist gave political meaning to “coming out” by extending the psychological-personal process into public life. During the 1950s the most feared thing of the homosexual culture was “coming out”, the homosexual culture of the 1950s did everything they could to help keep their sexuality a secret from the public and everyone else in their lives, but Alfred Kinsey's research on homosexuality proved that 39% of the unmarried male population had at least one homosexual experience to orgasm between adolescence and old age.[6] By the gay liberationist making “coming out” public they helped mobilize people to live full-time as a homosexual, they no longer had to live in secret. Homosexuals could now enjoy sexual relationships and encounters much more often than ever before. They no longer had to sneak around and occasionally receive the sexual attention that they desire or force themselves into a heterosexual relationship in which they had no interest, and was full of lies. The 1970 gay novelist, Brad Gooch, wrote the “Golden Age of Promiscuity” meaning that the gay male community finally had reached a rich culture of “easy sex”, “sex without” commitment, obligation or long-term relationships.[6] The gay rights movement was reclamation of cultural, social, and political citizenship through sex and decriminalized gay sex, by removing gay sex as a psychological sickness.
The Women’s Movement in the time of the Sexual Revolution helped contribute to redefining women’s sexuality, not in the terms of simply pleasing men any longer but instead there was recognition of women’s sexual satisfaction and sexual desire. Finally "The Myth of the Vaginal Orgasm" by Anne Koedt discovered an understanding of a women’s sexual anatomy. The female anatomy was now given some scientific fact and reasoning for how and why women orgasm the way they do instead of Freud’s basis of women’s vaginal orgasm which was not based on a women’s anatomy, but rather upon his “assumptions of women as inferior appendage to man, and her consequent social and psychological role.” [14] The women’s movement was able to develop lesbian feminism, freedom from heterosexual act, and freedom from reproduction as distillation of feminism during the time of the Sexual Revolution. Feminist Betty Friedan wrote the Feminine Mystique in 1963, concerning the many frustrations women had with their lives and with separate spheres, which established a pattern of inequality.
The Industrial Revolution during the nineteenth century and the growth of science and technology, medicine and health care, resulted in better contraceptives being manufactured. Advances in the manufacture and production of rubber made possible the design and production of condoms that could be used by hundreds of millions of men and women to prevent pregnancy at little cost.
Advances in chemistry, pharmacology, and biology, and human physiology led to the discovery and perfection of the first oral contraceptives also known as "the Pill". Purchasing an aphrodisiac and various sex toys became "normal". Sado-masochism ("S&M") gained popularity, and "no-fault" unilateral divorce became legal and easier to obtain in many countries during the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s.
Gay Pride in Rio de Janeiro
All these developments took place alongside and combined with an increase in world literacy and decline in religious observance. Old values such as the biblical notion of "be fruitful and multiply" were cast aside as people continued to feel alienated from the past and adopted the lifestyles of modernizing westernized cultures.
Another contribution that helped bring about this modern revolution of sexual freedom were the writings of Herbert Marcuse and Wilhelm Reich, who took the philosophy of Karl Marx and similar philosophers, and mixed together this chant for freedom of sexual rights in modern culture.
When speaking of sexual revolution, historians[citation needed] make a distinction between the first and the second sexual revolution. In the first sexual revolution (1870–1910), Victorian morality lost its universal appeal. However, it did not lead to the rise of a "permissive society". Exemplary for this period is the rise and differentiation in forms of regulating sexuality.
Feminism and sexual liberation[edit]
Coinciding with second-wave feminism and the women's liberation movement initiated in the early 1960s, the sexual liberation movement was aided by feminist ideologues in their mutual struggle to challenge traditional ideas regarding female sexuality and queer sexuality. Elimination of undue favorable bias towards men and objectification of women as well as support for women's right to choose her sexual partners free of outside interference or judgement were three of the main goals associated with sexual liberation from the feminist perspective. Since during the early stages of feminism, women's liberation was often equated with sexual liberation rather than associated with it. Many feminist thinkers believed that assertion of the primacy of sexuality would be a major step towards the ultimate goal of women's liberation, thus women were urged to initiate sexual advances, enjoy sex and experiment with new forms of sexuality.[15]
The feminist movements insisted and focused on the sexual liberation for women, both physical and psychological. The pursuit of sexual pleasure for women was the core ideology, which subsequently was to set the foundation for female independence. Although whether or not sexual freedom should be a feminist issue is currently a much-debated topic,[15] the feminist movement overtly defines itself as the movement for social, political, and economic equality of men and women.[16] Feminist movements are also involved the fight against sexism and since sexism is a highly complex notion,[17] it is difficult to separate the feminist critique toward sexism from its fight against sexual oppression.
The feminist movement has helped create a social climate in which LGBT people and women are increasingly able to be open and free with their sexuality,[15] which enabled a spiritual liberation of sorts with regards to sex. Rather than being forced to hide their sexual desires or feelings, women and LGBT people have gained and continue to gain increased freedom in this area. Consequently, the feminist movement to end sexual oppression has and continues to directly contribute to the sexual liberation movement.
Freudian school[edit]
Sigmund Freud of Vienna believed human behavior was motivated by unconscious drives, primarily by the libido or "Sexual Energy". Freud proposed to study how these unconscious drives were repressed and found expression through other cultural outlets. He called this therapy "psychoanalysis".
While Freud's ideas were sometimes ignored or provoked resistance within Viennese society, his ideas soon entered the discussions and working methods of anthropologists, artists and writers all over Europe, and from the 1920s in the United States. His conception of a primary sexual drive that would not be ultimately curbed by law, education or standards of decorum spelled a serious challenge to Victorian prudishness, and his theory of psychosexual development proposed a model for the development of sexual orientations and desires; children emerged from the Oedipus complex, a sexual desire towards their parent of the opposite sex. The idea of children having their parents as their early sexual targets was particularly shocking to Victorian and early 20th century society.
According to Freud's theory, in the earliest stage of a child's psychosexual development, the oral stage, the mother's breast became the formative source of all later erotic sensation. This new philosophy was the new intellectual and cultural underpinning ideology of the new age of sexual frankness. Much of his research remains widely contested by professionals in the field, though it is has spurred critical developments in the humanities.
Anarchist Freud scholars Otto Gross and Wilhelm Reich (who famously coined the phrase "Sexual Revolution") developed a sociology of sex in the 1910s to 1930s.
Mead's Coming of Age in Samoa[edit]
Main articles: Margaret Mead and Coming of Age in Samoa
The publication of renowned anthropologist and student of anthropologist Franz Boas, Margaret Mead's Coming of Age in Samoa brought the sexual revolution to the public scene, as her thoughts concerning sexual freedom pervaded academia. Published in 1928, Mead's ethnography focused on the psychosexual development of adolescent children on the island of Samoa. She recorded that their adolescence was not in fact a time of "storm and stress" as Erikson's stages of development suggest, but that the sexual freedom experienced by the adolescents actually permitted them an easy transition from childhood to adulthood.
Her findings were later criticized by anthropologist Derek Freeman who later investigated her claims of promiscuity and conducted his own ethnography of Samoan society. Mead called for a change in suppression of sexuality in America and her work directly resulted in the advancement of the sexual revolution in the 1930s.
Kinsey & Masters and Johnson[edit]
In the late 1940s and early 1950s, Alfred C. Kinsey published two surveys of modern sexual behaviour. In 1948 Alfred C. Kinsey and his co-workers, responding to a request by female students at Indiana University for more information on human sexual behavior, published the book Sexual behaviour in the Human Male. They followed this five years later with Sexual behaviour in the Human Female. These books began a revolution in social awareness of, and public attention given to, human sexuality.
It is said that at the time, public morality severely restricted open discussion of sexuality as a human characteristic, and specific sexual practices, especially sexual behaviours that did not lead to procreation. Kinsey's books contained studies about controversial topics such as the frequency of homosexuality, and the sexuality of minors aged two weeks to fourteen years. Scientists working for Kinsey reported data which led to the conclusion that people are capable of sexual stimulation from birth. Furthermore, Kinsey's method of researching sexuality differs significantly from today's methods. Kinsey would watch his research subjects engage in sexual intercourse, sometimes engaging with his subjects as well. He would also encourage his research team to do the same, and encouraged them to engage in intercourse with him, too.
These books laid the groundwork for Masters and Johnson's life work. A study called Human Sexual Response in 1966 revealed the nature and scope of the sexual practices of young Americans.
Erotic Novels[edit]
In the United States in the years 1959 through 1966, bans on three books with explicit erotic content were challenged and overturned. This also occurred in the United Kingdom starting with the 1959 Obscene Publications Act and reaching a peak with the LCL court case.
Prior to this time, a patchwork of regulations (as well as local customs and vigilante actions) governed what could and could not be published. For example, the United States Customs Service banned James Joyce's Ulysses by refusing to allow it to be imported into the United States. The Roman Catholic Church's Index Librorum Prohibitorum carried great weight among Catholics and amounted to an effective and instant boycott of any book appearing on it. Boston's Watch and Ward Society, a largely Protestant creation inspired by Anthony Comstock, made "banned in Boston" a national by-word.
Lady Chatterley's Lover[edit]
In 1959 Grove Press published an unexpurgated version of Lady Chatterley's Lover by D. H. Lawrence. The U.S. Post Office confiscated copies sent through the mail. Lawyer Charles Rembar sued the New York City Postmaster, and won in New York and then on federal appeal.
In 1965 Tom Lehrer was to celebrate the erotic appeal of the novel in his cheerfully satirical song "Smut" with the couplet "Who needs a hobby like tennis or philately? / I've got a hobby: rereading Lady Chatterley".
Tropic of Cancer[edit]
Henry Miller's 1934 novel, Tropic of Cancer, had explicit sexual passages and could not be published in the United States; an edition was printed by the Obelisk Press in Paris and copies were smuggled into the United States. (As of 2003, used book dealers asked $7,500 and more for copies of this edition.) In 1961 Grove Press issued a copy of the work, and dozens of booksellers were sued for selling it. The issue was ultimately settled by the U.S. Supreme Court's 1964 decision in Grove Press, Inc. v. Gerstein.
Fanny Hill[edit]
In 1965 Putnam published John Cleland's 1750 novel Fanny Hill. This was the turning point, because Charles Rembar appealed a restraining order against it all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court and won. In Memoirs v. Massachusetts, 383 U.S. 413, the court ruled that sex was "a great and mysterious motive force in human life", and that its expression in literature was protected by the First Amendment.
Only books primarily appealing to "prurient interest" could be banned. In a famous phrase, the court said that obscenity is "utterly without redeeming social importance"—meaning that, conversely, any work with redeeming social importance was not obscene, even if it contained isolated passages that could "deprave and corrupt" some readers. This decision was especially significant, because, of the three books mentioned, Fanny Hill has by far the largest measure of content that seems to appeal to prurient interest, and the smallest measures of literary merit and "redeeming social importance". Whereas an expurgated version of Lady Chatterley's Lover had actually once been published, no expurgated version of Fanny Hill had ever been. By permitting the publication of Fanny Hill, the U.S. Supreme Court set the bar for any ban so high that Rembar himself called the 1966 decision "the end of obscenity".
Nonfiction sex manuals[edit]
The court decisions that legalised the publication of Fanny Hill had an even more important effect: freed from fears of legal action, nonfiction works about sex and sexuality started to appear more often.
In 1962, Helen Gurley Brown published Sex and the Single Girl: The Unmarried Woman's Guide to Men, Careers, the Apartment, Diet, Fashion, Money and Men. The title itself would have been unthinkable a decade earlier. (In 1965 she went on to transform Cosmopolitan magazine into a life manual for young career women.[citation needed])
In 1969 Joan Garrity, identifying herself only as "J.", published The Way to Become the Sensuous Woman, with information on exercises to improve the dexterity of one's tongue and how to have anal sex.
The same year saw the appearance of Dr. David Reuben's book Everything You Always Wanted to Know About *Sex (*But Were Afraid to Ask). Despite the dignity of Reuben's medical credentials, this book was light-hearted in tone. For many readers, it delivered quite literally on its promise. Despite the book's one-sided and prejudiced statements about gay men, one middle-aged matron from a small town in Wisconsin was heard to say "Until I read this book, I never actually knew precisely what it was that homosexuals did".
In 1970 the Boston Women's Health Collective published Women and Their Bodies (which became far better known a year later under its subsequent title Our Bodies, Ourselves). Not an erotic treatise or sex manual, the book nevertheless included frank descriptions of sexuality, and contained illustrations that could have caused legal problems just a few years earlier.
Alex Comfort's The Joy of Sex: A Gourmet Guide to Love Making appeared in 1972. In later editions though, Comfort's libertinism was tamed as a response to AIDS.
In 1975 Will McBride's Zeig Mal! (Show Me!), written with psychologist Helga Fleichhauer-Hardt for children and their parents, appeared in bookstores on both sides of the Atlantic. Appreciated by many parents for its frank depiction of pre-adolescents discovering and exploring their sexuality, it scandalised others and eventually it was pulled from circulation in the United States and some other countries. It was followed up in 1989 by Zeig Mal Mehr! ("Show Me More!").
These books had a number of things in common. They were factual and, in fact, educational. They were available to a mainstream readership. They were stacked high on the tables of discount bookstores, they were book club selections, and their authors were guests on late-night talk shows. People were seen reading them in public.
In a respectable petty bourgeois middle-class home, Playboy magazine and Fanny Hill might be present but would usually be kept out of sight. But at least some of these books might well be on the coffee table. Most important, all of these books acknowledged and celebrated the conscious cultivation of erotic pleasure.
The contribution of such books to the sexual revolution cannot be overstated. Earlier books such as What Every Girl Should Know (Margaret Sanger, 1920) and A Marriage Manual (Hannah and Abraham Stone, 1939) had broken the silence in which many people, women in particular, had grown up in.
By the 1950s, in the United States, it had become rare for women to go into their wedding nights not knowing what to expect. But the open discussion of sex as pleasure, and descriptions of sexual practices and techniques, was revolutionary. There were practices which, perhaps, some had heard of. But many adults did not know for sure whether they were realities, or fantasies found only in pornographic books.
Were they "normal", or were they examples of psychopathology? (When we use words such as fellatio we are still using the terminology of Krafft-Ebing's Psychopathia Sexualis). Did married ladies do these things, or only prostitutes? The Kinsey report revealed that these practices were, at the very least, surprisingly frequent. These other books asserted, in the words of a 1980 book by Dr. Irene Kassorla, that Nice Girls Do — And Now You Can Too.[citation needed]
Contraception[edit]
As birth control became widely accessible, men and women began to have more choice in over the matter of having children than ever before. The 1916 invention of thin, disposable latex condoms for men led to widespread affordable condoms by the 1930s; the demise of the Comstock laws in 1936 set the stage for promotion of available effective contraceptives such as the diaphragm and cervical cap; the 1960s introduction of the IUD and oral contraceptives for women gave a sense of freedom from barrier contraception. The opposition of Churches (e.g. Humanae vitae) led to parallel movements of secularization and exile from religion.[18] Women gained much greater access to birth control in the “girls world” decision in 1965, in the 1960s and 1970s the birth control movement advocated for the legalization of abortion and large scale education campaigns about contraception by governments.
United Kingdom[edit]
In the United Kingdom, the new generation growing up after World War II had grown tired of the rationing and austerity of the 1940s and 1950s and the Victorian values of their elders, so the 1960s were a time of rebellion against the fashions and social mores of the previous generation.
An early inkling of changing attitudes came in 1960, when the government of the day tried unsuccessfully to prosecute Penguin Books for obscenity, for publishing the D. H. Lawrence novel Lady Chatterley's Lover, which had been banned since the 1920s for what was considered racy content. The prosecution counsel Mervyn Griffith-Jones famously stood in front of the jury and asked, in his closing statement: "Is it a book you would wish your wife or servants to read?" When the case collapsed, the novel went on to become a bestseller, selling two million copies.
The Pill became available free of charge on the National Health Service in the 1960s, at first restricted to married women, but early in the 1970s its availability was extended to all women.
In 1967, laws prohibiting abortion and male homosexuality were repealed, although the age of consent for homosexual men was set at 21, in contrast to the heterosexual age of consent of 16. This is how it stayed until 1994, when the male homosexual age of consent was lowered to 18, and then equalised at 16 in 2001. Also in 2001, lesbian sex was recognised in British law for the first time ever, with an age of consent of 16.
Free love[edit]
Main article: Free love
Lovers kissing on the street
Beginning in San Francisco in the mid-1960s, a new culture of "free love" emerged, with thousands of young people becoming "hippies" who preached the power of love and the beauty of sex as part of ordinary life. This is part of a counterculture that continues to exist. By the 1970s, it was socially acceptable for colleges to permit co-ed housing.
Free love continued in different forms throughout the 1970s and into the early 1980s, but its more assertive manifestations ended abruptly (or at least disappeared from public view) in the mid-1980s when the public first became aware of AIDS, a deadly sexually transmitted disease.
Explicit sex on screen and stage[edit]
Swedish filmmakers like Ingmar Bergman and Vilgot Sjöman contributed to sexual liberation with sexually themed films that challenged conservative international standards. The 1951 film Hon dansade en sommar (She Danced One Summer AKA One Summer of Happiness) (directed by Arne Mattsson) starring Ulla Jacobsson and Folke Sundquist was notable in this regard for depicting explicit nudity, including nude bathing in a lake. .
This film, as well as Bergman's Sommaren med Monika (The Summer with Monika, 1951) and Tystnaden (The Silence, 1963), caused an international uproar, not least in the United States, where the films were charged with violating standards of decency. Vilgot Sjöman's film I Am Curious (Yellow), also created waves of international outcry, but it was very popular in the United States. Another of his films, 491, highlighted homosexuality among other things. Kärlekens språk (The Language of Love) was an informative documentary about sex and sexual techniques that featured the first real act of sex in a mainstream film, and inevitably it caused intense debate around the world.
From these films the concept (or catchphrase) of "Swedish sin" (licentiousness and seductive nudity) developed, even though Swedish society in the 1950s was still fairly conservative regarding sex, and the international concept of Swedish sexuality was and is largely exaggerated. The image of "hot love and cold people" emerged. Sexual liberalism was seen as part of the modernization process that, by breaking down traditional borders, would lead to the emancipation of natural forces and desires.[19] These films caused debate there as well. The films eventually progressed the public's attitude toward sex, especially in Sweden and other northern European countries, which today tend to be more sexually liberal than others. In Sweden and nearby countries at the time, these films, by virtue of being made by directors who had established themselves as leading names in their generation, helped delegitimize the idea of habitually demanding that films should avoid overtly sexual subject matter. It proved hard to question the seriousness of purpose of Bergman, Sjöman and others, and in their wake a consciously permissive and questioning attitude to sex, nudity and "difficult" subject matter in film - and on TV - became the new standard framework.
Explicit sex on screen and frontal nudity of men and women on stage became acceptable in many Western countries, as the twentieth century drew towards its close. Special places of entertainment offering striptease and lap dancing proliferated, and limits to 'acceptable' dress in pop/rock music and at discotheques and live music festivals, especially open-air festivals ever since the flower-power generation and Woodstock (1969), became very vague, both among performers and in the audiences or attendee crowd. The rich use of crossdressing and androgynous attributes and clothes in rock and pop stage costumes and even references to this in song lyrics, to express sexual, fashion or literary themes is also notable, from the Velvet Underground (in Lou Reed's lyrics) and the glam rock wave and onward. All of this persists in the early 21st century.
The famous Playboy Bunnies set a trend. Men came to be entertained by topless women at night-clubs which also hosted "peep shows".
Normalization of pornography[edit]
Further information: History of pornography
Sexual character is closely linked with developments in technology, and the somewhat more open and commercial circulation of pornography was a new phenomenon at the time of the sexual revolution. Pornography operated as a form of “cultural critique” insofar as it transgresses societal conventions. Manuel Castells claims that the online communities, which emerged (from the 1980s) around early bulletin board systems originated from the ranks of those who had been part of the counterculture movements and alternative way of life emerging out of the sexual revolution.[20]
Lynn Hunt points out that early modern “pornography” (18th century) is marked by a “preponderance of female narrators”, that the women were portrayed as independent, determined, financially successful (though not always socially successful and recognized) and scornful of the new ideals of female virtue and domesticity, and not objectifications of women’s bodies as many view pornography today. The sexual revolution was not unprecedented in identifying sex as a site of political potential and social culture. It was suggested during the sexual revolution that the interchangeability of bodies within pornography had radical implications for gender differences and that they could lose their meaning or at least redefine the meaning of gender roles and norms.[20] Porn had portrayed sexual honesty and bluntly in fiction, on stage and in movies. It could reinforce the crudest stereotypes of sex roles, standards of beauty, and power dynamics or contribution in the education of desire.
In 1971 Playboy added pubic hair to its centerfold picture spreads; this new addition caused the magazine to hit its all-time peak circulation of more than seven million copies in 1972 and men started having more choices when it came to magazines.[12]
In 1972 Deep Throat became something of a date movie, being kind of a kinky-wink-wink-let’s-check-it-out entertainment for heterosexual couples. The movie played all over America and was the first porn movie to earn a gross of a million dollars.[12]
The fact that pornography was less stigmatised by the end of the 1980s, and more mainstream movies depicted sexual intercourse as entertainment, was indicative of how normalised sexual revolution had become in society. Magazines depicting nudity, such as the popular Playboy and Penthouse magazines, won some acceptance as mainstream journals, in which public figures felt safe expressing their fantasies.
Feminists have offered mixed responses to pornography. Some figures in the feminist movement, such as Andrea Dworkin, challenged the depiction of women as objects in these pornographic or "urban men's" magazines. Other feminists such as Betty Dodson went on to found the pro-sex feminist movement in response to anti-pornography campaigns.
Premarital sex[edit]
Premarital sex, which had been heavily stigmatised for some time became more widely accepted during the sexual revolution. The increased availability of birth control (and the quasi-legalisation of abortion in some places) helped reduce the chance that pre-marital sex would result in unwanted children. By the mid-1970s the majority of newly married American couples had experienced sex before marriage.
The central part of the sexual revolution was the development of relationships between unmarried adults, which resulted in earlier sexual experimentation reinforced by a later age of marriage. The counterculture and the new left was the source of this later age of marriage. Americans were attending colleges and rebelling against their parent’s ideals, which caused them to marry later in age if at all. Therefore meaning that Americans were becoming more sexually experienced before they entered into monogamous relationships. The increasing divorce rate and the decreasing stigma attached to divorce during this era also contributed to sexual experimentation.[6] By 1971, more than 75% of America thought that premarital sex was okay, a threefold increase from the 1950s, and the number of unmarried Americans aged twenty to twenty-four more than doubled from 1960 to 1976. Americans were becoming less and less interested in getting married and settling down; less interested in monogamous relationships, 35% of the country in 1971 thought marriage was obsolete.[12]
The idea of marriage being out-of-date came from the new development of casual sex between Americans. For those who were not there to experience it, it may be difficult to imagine how risk-free sex was during the 1960s and 1970s, casual sex could truly be casual. With the development of the birth control pill and the legalization of abortion in 1973, there was little threat of unwanted children out of wedlock. Also, during this time every sexually transmitted disease was treatable; there was no incurable STDs, no AIDS.[12]
Swinger clubs were organizing in places ranging from the informal suburban home to disco-sized emporiums that promised a smorgasbord of sexual possibilities and free mouthwash. In New York City in 1977, Larry Levenson opened Plato's Retreat it was probably the closest that heterosexual America has ever gotten to the sexual frenzy of gay bathhouses. The retreat was eventually shut down in 1985 because of the constant hassle from public health authorities.[12]
Politics of sex[edit]
Politics in the United States has become intertwined with sexually related issues, called the "politics of sex". A differing view of abortion pitted pro-life activists against pro-choice activists.
Women and men who lived with each other without marriage sought "palimony" equal to the alimony. Teenagers assumed their right to a sexual life with whomever they pleased, and bathers fought to be topless or nude at beaches.
Criticism[edit]
U.S. World War II anti-venereal disease poster.
Fraenkel (1992) believes that the "sexual revolution", that the West supposedly experienced in the late 1960s, is indeed a misconception and that sex is not actually enjoyed freely, it is just observed in all the fields of culture; that's a kind of taboo behavior technically called "repressive desublimation".[21]
The end of the revolution[edit]
The rise of right-wing politics in the early 1980s, the start of the AIDS epidemic, and the rise of megachurches and televangelists ended the revolution.[citation needed]
Although the rate of teenage sexual activity is hard to record, the prevalence of teenage pregnancy in developed nations such as Canada and the UK have seen a steady decline since the 1990s.[22][23] For example, in 1991 there were 61.8 children born per 1,000 teenage girls in the United States. By 2013, this number had declined to 26.6 births per 1,000 teenage girls. [24][dubious – discuss]
See also[edit]
Portal icon Sexuality portal
Birth control movement in the United States
Combined oral contraceptive pill
Feminist sex wars
Miscegenation
Reproductive rights
Open marriage
Sex in the American Civil War
Sex magic
Sex-positive movement
Sexual objectification
Sexual revolution in 1960s America
Social Darwinism
Notes[edit]
1.^ Jump up to: a b Allyn, 2000.
2.Jump up ^ Escoffier, 2003.
3.Jump up ^ Germaine Greer and The Female Eunuch
4.Jump up ^ "Abc-Clio". Greenwood.com. Retrieved 2011-11-05.
5.Jump up ^ The term appeared as early as 1929; the book Is Sex Necessary?, by Thurber & White, has a chapter titled The Sexual Revolution: Being a Rather Complete Survey of the Entire Sexual Scene.
6.^ Jump up to: a b c d e f "Sexual Revolution, 1960 - 1980". Retrieved 14 December 2012.
7.Jump up ^ Bannon, Ann. "Sexual Revolution (9781560255253): Jeffrey Escoffier, Fred W. McDarrah, Erica Jong: Books". Amazon.com. Retrieved 2011-11-05.
8.Jump up ^ http://www.popsci.com/science/article/2013-01/did-penicillin-kickstart-sexual-revolution
9.Jump up ^ Kevin Slack, "Liberalism Radicalized: The Sexual Revolution, Multiculturalism, and the Rise of Identity Politics," http://www.heritage.org/research/reports/2013/08/liberalism-radicalized-the-sexual-revolution-multiculturalism-and-the-rise-of-identity-politics
10.Jump up ^ Isserman, Maurice (2012). America Divided. New York, NY: Oxford University Press. pp. 138–140. ISBN 978-0-19-976506-5.
11.^ Jump up to: a b c d e Farber, David. The Sixties Chronicles. Legacy Publishing. p. 30. ISBN 141271009X.
12.^ Jump up to: a b c d e f Kahn, Ashley (1998). Rolling Stone: The Seventies. Boston: Little, Brown and Co. pp. 54–57.
13.Jump up ^ Alan Petigny, "Illegitimacy, Postwar Psychology, and the Reperiodisation of the Sexual Revolution" Journal of Social History, fall 2004
14.Jump up ^ Koedt, Anne. "The Myth of the Vaginal Orgasm". Retrieved 16 December 2012.
15.^ Jump up to: a b c Hooks, Bell (1984). Feminist Theory, From Margin To Centre. Cambridge, MA: South End Press classics. p. 149. ISBN 978-0-89608-613-5.
16.Jump up ^ Baumgardner and Richards. "What Is Feminism". Retrieved 27 March 2013.
17.Jump up ^ Cudd, Ann (2005). Feminist Theory A Philosophical Anthology. Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishing Ltd. p. 74. ISBN 978-1-4051-1660-2.
18.Jump up ^ "Fri, Jul 25, 2008 - 'Humanae Vitae' birth control ban set off a wave of dissent". The Irish Times. 2008-07-07. Retrieved 2011-11-05.
19.Jump up ^ Marklund, Carl (2009). "Hot Love and Cold People. Sexual Liberalism as Political Escapism in Radical Sweden". NORDEUROPAforum 19 (1): 83–101.
20.^ Jump up to: a b Garlick, Steve (August 2011). "A New Sexual Revolution? Critical Theory, Pornography, and the Internet". Canadian Review of Sociology 48 (3): 221–239. doi:10.1111/j.1755-618X.2011.01264.x. PMID 22214041. Retrieved 14 December 2012.
21.Jump up ^ Herbert Marcuse (1964) pp.59, 75–82
22.Jump up ^ http://www.sexualityandu.ca/resource-library/statistics/teen-pregnancy-rates
23.Jump up ^ Beckford, Martin (2011-02-23). "Teenage pregnancies at lowest level since 1980s". The Daily Telegraph (London).
24.Jump up ^ United Nations Statistics Division. (2014). Demographic Yearbook 2012: Live births by age of mother. New York, NY: United Nations. Retrieved January 15, 2015 from http://unstats.un.org/unsd/demographic/products/dyb/dyb2012/Table10.pdf
References[edit]
Allyn, David. (2000). Make Love, Not War: The Sexual Revolution: An Unfettered History. Little, Brown and Company. ISBN 0-316-03930-6.
Escoffier, Jeffrey. (Editor). (2003). Sexual Revolution. Running Press. ISBN 1-56025-525-0.
Fraenkel, Boris. (1936). Die Sexualität im Kulturkampf. Erre emme (pub).
Klepacki, Linda. (2008). A Look at the Sexual Revolution in the United States. Focus on the Family Action, Inc. Retrieved 2008-04-20.
Marcuse, Herbert. (1964). One-Dimensional Man. (pp. 59, 75–82). Routledge. ISBN 0-415-28977-7.
Richardson, Diane. (2000). Critical Social Policy, Vol. 20, No. 1, 105–135. Constructing sexual citizenship: theorizing sexual rights. Sage Journals Online. Retrieved 2008-04-20.
Time Magazine. (1967-07-07). The Hippies. Time Inc. Retrieved 2008-04-20.
[show]
v ·
t ·
e
Outline of human sexuality
Portal
Categories: Sexual revolution
Navigation menu
Create account
Log in
Article
Talk
Read
Edit
View history
Main page
Contents
Featured content
Current events
Random article
Donate to Wikipedia
Wikipedia store
Interaction
Help
About Wikipedia
Community portal
Recent changes
Contact page
Tools
What links here
Related changes
Upload file
Special pages
Permanent link
Page information
Wikidata item
Cite this page
Print/export
Create a book
Download as PDF
Printable version
Languages
العربية
Azərbaycanca
Български
Català
Čeština
Dansk
Deutsch
Eesti
Español
Euskara
فارسی
Français
한국어
Hrvatski
Interlingua
Italiano
Lietuvių
Magyar
Nederlands
日本語
Polski
Português
Русский
Simple English
Srpskohrvatski / српскохрватски
Suomi
Svenska
Tagalog
தமிழ்
Українська
Tiếng Việt
中文
Edit links
This page was last modified on 12 April 2015, at 20:08.
Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License; additional terms may apply. By using this site, you agree to the Terms of Use and Privacy Policy. Wikipedia® is a registered trademark of the Wikimedia Foundation, Inc., a non-profit organization.
Privacy policy
About Wikipedia
Disclaimers
Contact Wikipedia
Developers
Mobile view
Wikimedia Foundation
Powered by MediaWiki
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sexual_revolution
Sexual revolution
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
(Redirected from Sexual liberation)
Jump to: navigation, search
For other uses, see Sexual revolution (disambiguation).
[hide]This article has multiple issues. Please help improve it or discuss these issues on the talk page.
Ambox current red.svg
##This article is outdated. (January 2013)
##This article is written like a personal reflection or opinion essay that states the Wikipedia editor's particular feelings about a topic, rather than the opinions of experts. (January 2014)
The sexual revolution, also known as a time of sexual liberation, was a social movement that challenged traditional codes of behavior related to sexuality and interpersonal relationships throughout the Western world from the 1960s to the 1980s.[1] Sexual liberation included increased acceptance of sex outside of traditional heterosexual, monogamous relationships (primarily marriage).[2] Contraception and the pill, public nudity, the normalization of premarital sex, homosexuality and alternative forms of sexuality, and the legalization of abortion all followed.[3][4]
Contents [hide]
1 Overview
2 Historical development 2.1 Role of the mass media
3 Modern revolutions
4 Feminism and sexual liberation
5 Freudian school
6 Mead's Coming of Age in Samoa
7 Kinsey & Masters and Johnson
8 Erotic Novels 8.1 Lady Chatterley's Lover
8.2 Tropic of Cancer
8.3 Fanny Hill
9 Nonfiction sex manuals
10 Contraception
11 United Kingdom
12 Free love
13 Explicit sex on screen and stage
14 Normalization of pornography
15 Premarital sex
16 Politics of sex
17 Criticism
18 The end of the revolution
19 See also
20 Notes
21 References
Overview[edit]
The term "sexual revolution" has been used at least since the late 1910s.[5] Some early commentators believed the sexual revolution of 1960–1980 was in fact the second such revolution in America; they believe that the first revolution was during the Roaring Twenties after World War I and it included writers such as F. Scott Fitzgerald, Edna Saint Vincent Millay, and Ernest Hemingway. However, the age of changes in perception and practices of sexuality that developed from around 1960 was to reach mainstream, middle-class, even middle-aged America as well as most of western Europe. It brought about profound shifts in the attitudes to women’s sexuality, homosexuality, pre-marital sexuality and the freedom of sexual expression. Psychologists and Freudian theorists such as William Reich and Alfred Kinsey influenced the revolution, as well as literature and films, and the social movements of the period, including the counterculture movement, the women’s movement, and the gay rights movement.[6] The counterculture contributed to the awareness of radical cultural change that was the social matrix of the sexual revolution.,[6] contributed to the changes.
By the mid-1970s and through the 1980s, newly won sexual freedoms were being exploited by big businesses looking to capitalize on an increasingly permissive society, with the advent of public and hardcore pornography.[7] Historian David Allyn argues that the sexual revolution was a time of "coming-out": about premarital sex, masturbation, erotic fantasies, pornography use, and sexuality.[1]
Historical development[edit]
The sexual revolution can be seen as an outgrowth of a process. Though its roots may be traced back as far as the Enlightenment (Rousseau, Marquis de Sade) and the Victorian era (Algernon Charles Swinburne's scandalous Poems and Ballads of 1866), it was a development in the modern world which saw the significant loss of power by the values of a morality rooted in the Christian tradition and the rise of permissive societies, of attitudes that were accepting of greater sexual freedom and experimentation that spread all over the world and were captured in the concept of "free love". Modern medicine may also have played a role, penicillin was able to largely eradicate syphilis and this brought greater freedom.[8]
The sexual revolution was initiated by those who shared a belief in the detrimental impact of sexual repression, a view that had previously been argued by Wilhelm Reich and D. H. Lawrence, by Sigmund Freud and by the Surrealist movement. The counterculture wanted to explore the body and mind, and free the personal self from the moral and legal sexual confines of modern America, as well as from 1940s-50s morals in general.[9] The sexual revolution of the sixties was an uprising rooted in a conviction that the erotic should be celebrated as a normal part of life and not repressed by family, industrialized sexual morality, religion and the state.[10]
In 1953, Chicago resident Hugh Hefner founded Playboy, a magazine which aimed to target males between the ages of 21 and 45.[11] Featuring cartoons, interviews, short fiction, Hefner "Playboy Philosophy" and - most crucially - half-naked female "Playmates" posing provocatively, the magazine became immensely successful.[11] In 1960, Hefner decided to expand his enterprise and opened the first Playboy Club in Chicago.[11] The private clubs, which expanded in numbers throughout the 1960s, offered relaxation for its members, who were waited on by Playboy Bunnies.[11] Hefner's influence would represent a growing change in America's attitude towards sex.[11]
There was an increase of sexual encounters between unmarried adults. Divorce rates were dramatically increasing and marriage rates were significantly decreasing in this time period. The number of unmarried Americans aged twenty to twenty-four more than doubled from 4.3 million in 1960 to 9.7 million in 1976.[12] Men and women sought to reshape marriage by instilling new institutions of open marriage, mate swapping, and swinging, and communal sex.[6] There is an introduction of casual sex during the revolution to a level that was never seen or heard before. Americans were gaining a set of relaxed morals and with the contribution of premarital sex on the rise and the development of birth control, casual sex between adults was becoming very popular.
Role of the mass media[edit]
TV, the new mass communication device of the age, along with other media outlets such as radio and magazines, could broadcast information in a matter of seconds to millions of people, while only a few wealthy people would control what millions could watch. Some modern historians have theorized that these media outlets helped to spread new ideas, which were considered radical. The struggles, skirmishes and rhetorical confrontations happening in the course of these movements also became directly visible to ordinary people in a way they would never have been before; the sense of involvement in a social and sexual shift happening in the present could rapidly win new converts and spread discussions afield. The counterculture of the 1960s was becoming well known through radio, newspapers, TV, books, music and other media by the end of the 1960s.
One suggested cause of the 1960s sexual revolution was the development of the birth control pill in 1960, which gave women access to easy and reliable contraception. Another likely cause was a vast improvement in obstetrics, greatly reducing the number of women who died due to childbearing, thus increasing the life expectancy of women. A third, more indirect cause was the large number of children born in the 1940s and early 1950s all over the western world—the 'Baby Boom Generation'--many of whom would grow up in relatively prosperous and safe conditions, within a middle class on the rise and with better access to education and entertainment than ever before. By their demographic weight and their social and educational background they came to trigger a shift in society towards more permissive and informalized attitudes.
Other data suggest[weasel words] the "revolution" was more directly influenced by the financial independence gained by many women who entered the workforce during and after World War II, making the revolution more about individual equality rather than biological independence. Many historians,[quantify] however, feel that one specific cause cannot be selected for this large phenomenon.[13] French feminist writer Simone de Beauvoir was particularly adamant that economic equality greatly contributes to improved gender equality.
Modern revolutions[edit]
1997 in New York City
The Gay Rights Movement started because the Stonewall Riots of 1969 crystallized a broad grass-roots mobilization of the homosexual movement. New gay liberationist gave political meaning to “coming out” by extending the psychological-personal process into public life. During the 1950s the most feared thing of the homosexual culture was “coming out”, the homosexual culture of the 1950s did everything they could to help keep their sexuality a secret from the public and everyone else in their lives, but Alfred Kinsey's research on homosexuality proved that 39% of the unmarried male population had at least one homosexual experience to orgasm between adolescence and old age.[6] By the gay liberationist making “coming out” public they helped mobilize people to live full-time as a homosexual, they no longer had to live in secret. Homosexuals could now enjoy sexual relationships and encounters much more often than ever before. They no longer had to sneak around and occasionally receive the sexual attention that they desire or force themselves into a heterosexual relationship in which they had no interest, and was full of lies. The 1970 gay novelist, Brad Gooch, wrote the “Golden Age of Promiscuity” meaning that the gay male community finally had reached a rich culture of “easy sex”, “sex without” commitment, obligation or long-term relationships.[6] The gay rights movement was reclamation of cultural, social, and political citizenship through sex and decriminalized gay sex, by removing gay sex as a psychological sickness.
The Women’s Movement in the time of the Sexual Revolution helped contribute to redefining women’s sexuality, not in the terms of simply pleasing men any longer but instead there was recognition of women’s sexual satisfaction and sexual desire. Finally "The Myth of the Vaginal Orgasm" by Anne Koedt discovered an understanding of a women’s sexual anatomy. The female anatomy was now given some scientific fact and reasoning for how and why women orgasm the way they do instead of Freud’s basis of women’s vaginal orgasm which was not based on a women’s anatomy, but rather upon his “assumptions of women as inferior appendage to man, and her consequent social and psychological role.” [14] The women’s movement was able to develop lesbian feminism, freedom from heterosexual act, and freedom from reproduction as distillation of feminism during the time of the Sexual Revolution. Feminist Betty Friedan wrote the Feminine Mystique in 1963, concerning the many frustrations women had with their lives and with separate spheres, which established a pattern of inequality.
The Industrial Revolution during the nineteenth century and the growth of science and technology, medicine and health care, resulted in better contraceptives being manufactured. Advances in the manufacture and production of rubber made possible the design and production of condoms that could be used by hundreds of millions of men and women to prevent pregnancy at little cost.
Advances in chemistry, pharmacology, and biology, and human physiology led to the discovery and perfection of the first oral contraceptives also known as "the Pill". Purchasing an aphrodisiac and various sex toys became "normal". Sado-masochism ("S&M") gained popularity, and "no-fault" unilateral divorce became legal and easier to obtain in many countries during the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s.
Gay Pride in Rio de Janeiro
All these developments took place alongside and combined with an increase in world literacy and decline in religious observance. Old values such as the biblical notion of "be fruitful and multiply" were cast aside as people continued to feel alienated from the past and adopted the lifestyles of modernizing westernized cultures.
Another contribution that helped bring about this modern revolution of sexual freedom were the writings of Herbert Marcuse and Wilhelm Reich, who took the philosophy of Karl Marx and similar philosophers, and mixed together this chant for freedom of sexual rights in modern culture.
When speaking of sexual revolution, historians[citation needed] make a distinction between the first and the second sexual revolution. In the first sexual revolution (1870–1910), Victorian morality lost its universal appeal. However, it did not lead to the rise of a "permissive society". Exemplary for this period is the rise and differentiation in forms of regulating sexuality.
Feminism and sexual liberation[edit]
Coinciding with second-wave feminism and the women's liberation movement initiated in the early 1960s, the sexual liberation movement was aided by feminist ideologues in their mutual struggle to challenge traditional ideas regarding female sexuality and queer sexuality. Elimination of undue favorable bias towards men and objectification of women as well as support for women's right to choose her sexual partners free of outside interference or judgement were three of the main goals associated with sexual liberation from the feminist perspective. Since during the early stages of feminism, women's liberation was often equated with sexual liberation rather than associated with it. Many feminist thinkers believed that assertion of the primacy of sexuality would be a major step towards the ultimate goal of women's liberation, thus women were urged to initiate sexual advances, enjoy sex and experiment with new forms of sexuality.[15]
The feminist movements insisted and focused on the sexual liberation for women, both physical and psychological. The pursuit of sexual pleasure for women was the core ideology, which subsequently was to set the foundation for female independence. Although whether or not sexual freedom should be a feminist issue is currently a much-debated topic,[15] the feminist movement overtly defines itself as the movement for social, political, and economic equality of men and women.[16] Feminist movements are also involved the fight against sexism and since sexism is a highly complex notion,[17] it is difficult to separate the feminist critique toward sexism from its fight against sexual oppression.
The feminist movement has helped create a social climate in which LGBT people and women are increasingly able to be open and free with their sexuality,[15] which enabled a spiritual liberation of sorts with regards to sex. Rather than being forced to hide their sexual desires or feelings, women and LGBT people have gained and continue to gain increased freedom in this area. Consequently, the feminist movement to end sexual oppression has and continues to directly contribute to the sexual liberation movement.
Freudian school[edit]
Sigmund Freud of Vienna believed human behavior was motivated by unconscious drives, primarily by the libido or "Sexual Energy". Freud proposed to study how these unconscious drives were repressed and found expression through other cultural outlets. He called this therapy "psychoanalysis".
While Freud's ideas were sometimes ignored or provoked resistance within Viennese society, his ideas soon entered the discussions and working methods of anthropologists, artists and writers all over Europe, and from the 1920s in the United States. His conception of a primary sexual drive that would not be ultimately curbed by law, education or standards of decorum spelled a serious challenge to Victorian prudishness, and his theory of psychosexual development proposed a model for the development of sexual orientations and desires; children emerged from the Oedipus complex, a sexual desire towards their parent of the opposite sex. The idea of children having their parents as their early sexual targets was particularly shocking to Victorian and early 20th century society.
According to Freud's theory, in the earliest stage of a child's psychosexual development, the oral stage, the mother's breast became the formative source of all later erotic sensation. This new philosophy was the new intellectual and cultural underpinning ideology of the new age of sexual frankness. Much of his research remains widely contested by professionals in the field, though it is has spurred critical developments in the humanities.
Anarchist Freud scholars Otto Gross and Wilhelm Reich (who famously coined the phrase "Sexual Revolution") developed a sociology of sex in the 1910s to 1930s.
Mead's Coming of Age in Samoa[edit]
Main articles: Margaret Mead and Coming of Age in Samoa
The publication of renowned anthropologist and student of anthropologist Franz Boas, Margaret Mead's Coming of Age in Samoa brought the sexual revolution to the public scene, as her thoughts concerning sexual freedom pervaded academia. Published in 1928, Mead's ethnography focused on the psychosexual development of adolescent children on the island of Samoa. She recorded that their adolescence was not in fact a time of "storm and stress" as Erikson's stages of development suggest, but that the sexual freedom experienced by the adolescents actually permitted them an easy transition from childhood to adulthood.
Her findings were later criticized by anthropologist Derek Freeman who later investigated her claims of promiscuity and conducted his own ethnography of Samoan society. Mead called for a change in suppression of sexuality in America and her work directly resulted in the advancement of the sexual revolution in the 1930s.
Kinsey & Masters and Johnson[edit]
In the late 1940s and early 1950s, Alfred C. Kinsey published two surveys of modern sexual behaviour. In 1948 Alfred C. Kinsey and his co-workers, responding to a request by female students at Indiana University for more information on human sexual behavior, published the book Sexual behaviour in the Human Male. They followed this five years later with Sexual behaviour in the Human Female. These books began a revolution in social awareness of, and public attention given to, human sexuality.
It is said that at the time, public morality severely restricted open discussion of sexuality as a human characteristic, and specific sexual practices, especially sexual behaviours that did not lead to procreation. Kinsey's books contained studies about controversial topics such as the frequency of homosexuality, and the sexuality of minors aged two weeks to fourteen years. Scientists working for Kinsey reported data which led to the conclusion that people are capable of sexual stimulation from birth. Furthermore, Kinsey's method of researching sexuality differs significantly from today's methods. Kinsey would watch his research subjects engage in sexual intercourse, sometimes engaging with his subjects as well. He would also encourage his research team to do the same, and encouraged them to engage in intercourse with him, too.
These books laid the groundwork for Masters and Johnson's life work. A study called Human Sexual Response in 1966 revealed the nature and scope of the sexual practices of young Americans.
Erotic Novels[edit]
In the United States in the years 1959 through 1966, bans on three books with explicit erotic content were challenged and overturned. This also occurred in the United Kingdom starting with the 1959 Obscene Publications Act and reaching a peak with the LCL court case.
Prior to this time, a patchwork of regulations (as well as local customs and vigilante actions) governed what could and could not be published. For example, the United States Customs Service banned James Joyce's Ulysses by refusing to allow it to be imported into the United States. The Roman Catholic Church's Index Librorum Prohibitorum carried great weight among Catholics and amounted to an effective and instant boycott of any book appearing on it. Boston's Watch and Ward Society, a largely Protestant creation inspired by Anthony Comstock, made "banned in Boston" a national by-word.
Lady Chatterley's Lover[edit]
In 1959 Grove Press published an unexpurgated version of Lady Chatterley's Lover by D. H. Lawrence. The U.S. Post Office confiscated copies sent through the mail. Lawyer Charles Rembar sued the New York City Postmaster, and won in New York and then on federal appeal.
In 1965 Tom Lehrer was to celebrate the erotic appeal of the novel in his cheerfully satirical song "Smut" with the couplet "Who needs a hobby like tennis or philately? / I've got a hobby: rereading Lady Chatterley".
Tropic of Cancer[edit]
Henry Miller's 1934 novel, Tropic of Cancer, had explicit sexual passages and could not be published in the United States; an edition was printed by the Obelisk Press in Paris and copies were smuggled into the United States. (As of 2003, used book dealers asked $7,500 and more for copies of this edition.) In 1961 Grove Press issued a copy of the work, and dozens of booksellers were sued for selling it. The issue was ultimately settled by the U.S. Supreme Court's 1964 decision in Grove Press, Inc. v. Gerstein.
Fanny Hill[edit]
In 1965 Putnam published John Cleland's 1750 novel Fanny Hill. This was the turning point, because Charles Rembar appealed a restraining order against it all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court and won. In Memoirs v. Massachusetts, 383 U.S. 413, the court ruled that sex was "a great and mysterious motive force in human life", and that its expression in literature was protected by the First Amendment.
Only books primarily appealing to "prurient interest" could be banned. In a famous phrase, the court said that obscenity is "utterly without redeeming social importance"—meaning that, conversely, any work with redeeming social importance was not obscene, even if it contained isolated passages that could "deprave and corrupt" some readers. This decision was especially significant, because, of the three books mentioned, Fanny Hill has by far the largest measure of content that seems to appeal to prurient interest, and the smallest measures of literary merit and "redeeming social importance". Whereas an expurgated version of Lady Chatterley's Lover had actually once been published, no expurgated version of Fanny Hill had ever been. By permitting the publication of Fanny Hill, the U.S. Supreme Court set the bar for any ban so high that Rembar himself called the 1966 decision "the end of obscenity".
Nonfiction sex manuals[edit]
The court decisions that legalised the publication of Fanny Hill had an even more important effect: freed from fears of legal action, nonfiction works about sex and sexuality started to appear more often.
In 1962, Helen Gurley Brown published Sex and the Single Girl: The Unmarried Woman's Guide to Men, Careers, the Apartment, Diet, Fashion, Money and Men. The title itself would have been unthinkable a decade earlier. (In 1965 she went on to transform Cosmopolitan magazine into a life manual for young career women.[citation needed])
In 1969 Joan Garrity, identifying herself only as "J.", published The Way to Become the Sensuous Woman, with information on exercises to improve the dexterity of one's tongue and how to have anal sex.
The same year saw the appearance of Dr. David Reuben's book Everything You Always Wanted to Know About *Sex (*But Were Afraid to Ask). Despite the dignity of Reuben's medical credentials, this book was light-hearted in tone. For many readers, it delivered quite literally on its promise. Despite the book's one-sided and prejudiced statements about gay men, one middle-aged matron from a small town in Wisconsin was heard to say "Until I read this book, I never actually knew precisely what it was that homosexuals did".
In 1970 the Boston Women's Health Collective published Women and Their Bodies (which became far better known a year later under its subsequent title Our Bodies, Ourselves). Not an erotic treatise or sex manual, the book nevertheless included frank descriptions of sexuality, and contained illustrations that could have caused legal problems just a few years earlier.
Alex Comfort's The Joy of Sex: A Gourmet Guide to Love Making appeared in 1972. In later editions though, Comfort's libertinism was tamed as a response to AIDS.
In 1975 Will McBride's Zeig Mal! (Show Me!), written with psychologist Helga Fleichhauer-Hardt for children and their parents, appeared in bookstores on both sides of the Atlantic. Appreciated by many parents for its frank depiction of pre-adolescents discovering and exploring their sexuality, it scandalised others and eventually it was pulled from circulation in the United States and some other countries. It was followed up in 1989 by Zeig Mal Mehr! ("Show Me More!").
These books had a number of things in common. They were factual and, in fact, educational. They were available to a mainstream readership. They were stacked high on the tables of discount bookstores, they were book club selections, and their authors were guests on late-night talk shows. People were seen reading them in public.
In a respectable petty bourgeois middle-class home, Playboy magazine and Fanny Hill might be present but would usually be kept out of sight. But at least some of these books might well be on the coffee table. Most important, all of these books acknowledged and celebrated the conscious cultivation of erotic pleasure.
The contribution of such books to the sexual revolution cannot be overstated. Earlier books such as What Every Girl Should Know (Margaret Sanger, 1920) and A Marriage Manual (Hannah and Abraham Stone, 1939) had broken the silence in which many people, women in particular, had grown up in.
By the 1950s, in the United States, it had become rare for women to go into their wedding nights not knowing what to expect. But the open discussion of sex as pleasure, and descriptions of sexual practices and techniques, was revolutionary. There were practices which, perhaps, some had heard of. But many adults did not know for sure whether they were realities, or fantasies found only in pornographic books.
Were they "normal", or were they examples of psychopathology? (When we use words such as fellatio we are still using the terminology of Krafft-Ebing's Psychopathia Sexualis). Did married ladies do these things, or only prostitutes? The Kinsey report revealed that these practices were, at the very least, surprisingly frequent. These other books asserted, in the words of a 1980 book by Dr. Irene Kassorla, that Nice Girls Do — And Now You Can Too.[citation needed]
Contraception[edit]
As birth control became widely accessible, men and women began to have more choice in over the matter of having children than ever before. The 1916 invention of thin, disposable latex condoms for men led to widespread affordable condoms by the 1930s; the demise of the Comstock laws in 1936 set the stage for promotion of available effective contraceptives such as the diaphragm and cervical cap; the 1960s introduction of the IUD and oral contraceptives for women gave a sense of freedom from barrier contraception. The opposition of Churches (e.g. Humanae vitae) led to parallel movements of secularization and exile from religion.[18] Women gained much greater access to birth control in the “girls world” decision in 1965, in the 1960s and 1970s the birth control movement advocated for the legalization of abortion and large scale education campaigns about contraception by governments.
United Kingdom[edit]
In the United Kingdom, the new generation growing up after World War II had grown tired of the rationing and austerity of the 1940s and 1950s and the Victorian values of their elders, so the 1960s were a time of rebellion against the fashions and social mores of the previous generation.
An early inkling of changing attitudes came in 1960, when the government of the day tried unsuccessfully to prosecute Penguin Books for obscenity, for publishing the D. H. Lawrence novel Lady Chatterley's Lover, which had been banned since the 1920s for what was considered racy content. The prosecution counsel Mervyn Griffith-Jones famously stood in front of the jury and asked, in his closing statement: "Is it a book you would wish your wife or servants to read?" When the case collapsed, the novel went on to become a bestseller, selling two million copies.
The Pill became available free of charge on the National Health Service in the 1960s, at first restricted to married women, but early in the 1970s its availability was extended to all women.
In 1967, laws prohibiting abortion and male homosexuality were repealed, although the age of consent for homosexual men was set at 21, in contrast to the heterosexual age of consent of 16. This is how it stayed until 1994, when the male homosexual age of consent was lowered to 18, and then equalised at 16 in 2001. Also in 2001, lesbian sex was recognised in British law for the first time ever, with an age of consent of 16.
Free love[edit]
Main article: Free love
Lovers kissing on the street
Beginning in San Francisco in the mid-1960s, a new culture of "free love" emerged, with thousands of young people becoming "hippies" who preached the power of love and the beauty of sex as part of ordinary life. This is part of a counterculture that continues to exist. By the 1970s, it was socially acceptable for colleges to permit co-ed housing.
Free love continued in different forms throughout the 1970s and into the early 1980s, but its more assertive manifestations ended abruptly (or at least disappeared from public view) in the mid-1980s when the public first became aware of AIDS, a deadly sexually transmitted disease.
Explicit sex on screen and stage[edit]
Swedish filmmakers like Ingmar Bergman and Vilgot Sjöman contributed to sexual liberation with sexually themed films that challenged conservative international standards. The 1951 film Hon dansade en sommar (She Danced One Summer AKA One Summer of Happiness) (directed by Arne Mattsson) starring Ulla Jacobsson and Folke Sundquist was notable in this regard for depicting explicit nudity, including nude bathing in a lake. .
This film, as well as Bergman's Sommaren med Monika (The Summer with Monika, 1951) and Tystnaden (The Silence, 1963), caused an international uproar, not least in the United States, where the films were charged with violating standards of decency. Vilgot Sjöman's film I Am Curious (Yellow), also created waves of international outcry, but it was very popular in the United States. Another of his films, 491, highlighted homosexuality among other things. Kärlekens språk (The Language of Love) was an informative documentary about sex and sexual techniques that featured the first real act of sex in a mainstream film, and inevitably it caused intense debate around the world.
From these films the concept (or catchphrase) of "Swedish sin" (licentiousness and seductive nudity) developed, even though Swedish society in the 1950s was still fairly conservative regarding sex, and the international concept of Swedish sexuality was and is largely exaggerated. The image of "hot love and cold people" emerged. Sexual liberalism was seen as part of the modernization process that, by breaking down traditional borders, would lead to the emancipation of natural forces and desires.[19] These films caused debate there as well. The films eventually progressed the public's attitude toward sex, especially in Sweden and other northern European countries, which today tend to be more sexually liberal than others. In Sweden and nearby countries at the time, these films, by virtue of being made by directors who had established themselves as leading names in their generation, helped delegitimize the idea of habitually demanding that films should avoid overtly sexual subject matter. It proved hard to question the seriousness of purpose of Bergman, Sjöman and others, and in their wake a consciously permissive and questioning attitude to sex, nudity and "difficult" subject matter in film - and on TV - became the new standard framework.
Explicit sex on screen and frontal nudity of men and women on stage became acceptable in many Western countries, as the twentieth century drew towards its close. Special places of entertainment offering striptease and lap dancing proliferated, and limits to 'acceptable' dress in pop/rock music and at discotheques and live music festivals, especially open-air festivals ever since the flower-power generation and Woodstock (1969), became very vague, both among performers and in the audiences or attendee crowd. The rich use of crossdressing and androgynous attributes and clothes in rock and pop stage costumes and even references to this in song lyrics, to express sexual, fashion or literary themes is also notable, from the Velvet Underground (in Lou Reed's lyrics) and the glam rock wave and onward. All of this persists in the early 21st century.
The famous Playboy Bunnies set a trend. Men came to be entertained by topless women at night-clubs which also hosted "peep shows".
Normalization of pornography[edit]
Further information: History of pornography
Sexual character is closely linked with developments in technology, and the somewhat more open and commercial circulation of pornography was a new phenomenon at the time of the sexual revolution. Pornography operated as a form of “cultural critique” insofar as it transgresses societal conventions. Manuel Castells claims that the online communities, which emerged (from the 1980s) around early bulletin board systems originated from the ranks of those who had been part of the counterculture movements and alternative way of life emerging out of the sexual revolution.[20]
Lynn Hunt points out that early modern “pornography” (18th century) is marked by a “preponderance of female narrators”, that the women were portrayed as independent, determined, financially successful (though not always socially successful and recognized) and scornful of the new ideals of female virtue and domesticity, and not objectifications of women’s bodies as many view pornography today. The sexual revolution was not unprecedented in identifying sex as a site of political potential and social culture. It was suggested during the sexual revolution that the interchangeability of bodies within pornography had radical implications for gender differences and that they could lose their meaning or at least redefine the meaning of gender roles and norms.[20] Porn had portrayed sexual honesty and bluntly in fiction, on stage and in movies. It could reinforce the crudest stereotypes of sex roles, standards of beauty, and power dynamics or contribution in the education of desire.
In 1971 Playboy added pubic hair to its centerfold picture spreads; this new addition caused the magazine to hit its all-time peak circulation of more than seven million copies in 1972 and men started having more choices when it came to magazines.[12]
In 1972 Deep Throat became something of a date movie, being kind of a kinky-wink-wink-let’s-check-it-out entertainment for heterosexual couples. The movie played all over America and was the first porn movie to earn a gross of a million dollars.[12]
The fact that pornography was less stigmatised by the end of the 1980s, and more mainstream movies depicted sexual intercourse as entertainment, was indicative of how normalised sexual revolution had become in society. Magazines depicting nudity, such as the popular Playboy and Penthouse magazines, won some acceptance as mainstream journals, in which public figures felt safe expressing their fantasies.
Feminists have offered mixed responses to pornography. Some figures in the feminist movement, such as Andrea Dworkin, challenged the depiction of women as objects in these pornographic or "urban men's" magazines. Other feminists such as Betty Dodson went on to found the pro-sex feminist movement in response to anti-pornography campaigns.
Premarital sex[edit]
Premarital sex, which had been heavily stigmatised for some time became more widely accepted during the sexual revolution. The increased availability of birth control (and the quasi-legalisation of abortion in some places) helped reduce the chance that pre-marital sex would result in unwanted children. By the mid-1970s the majority of newly married American couples had experienced sex before marriage.
The central part of the sexual revolution was the development of relationships between unmarried adults, which resulted in earlier sexual experimentation reinforced by a later age of marriage. The counterculture and the new left was the source of this later age of marriage. Americans were attending colleges and rebelling against their parent’s ideals, which caused them to marry later in age if at all. Therefore meaning that Americans were becoming more sexually experienced before they entered into monogamous relationships. The increasing divorce rate and the decreasing stigma attached to divorce during this era also contributed to sexual experimentation.[6] By 1971, more than 75% of America thought that premarital sex was okay, a threefold increase from the 1950s, and the number of unmarried Americans aged twenty to twenty-four more than doubled from 1960 to 1976. Americans were becoming less and less interested in getting married and settling down; less interested in monogamous relationships, 35% of the country in 1971 thought marriage was obsolete.[12]
The idea of marriage being out-of-date came from the new development of casual sex between Americans. For those who were not there to experience it, it may be difficult to imagine how risk-free sex was during the 1960s and 1970s, casual sex could truly be casual. With the development of the birth control pill and the legalization of abortion in 1973, there was little threat of unwanted children out of wedlock. Also, during this time every sexually transmitted disease was treatable; there was no incurable STDs, no AIDS.[12]
Swinger clubs were organizing in places ranging from the informal suburban home to disco-sized emporiums that promised a smorgasbord of sexual possibilities and free mouthwash. In New York City in 1977, Larry Levenson opened Plato's Retreat it was probably the closest that heterosexual America has ever gotten to the sexual frenzy of gay bathhouses. The retreat was eventually shut down in 1985 because of the constant hassle from public health authorities.[12]
Politics of sex[edit]
Politics in the United States has become intertwined with sexually related issues, called the "politics of sex". A differing view of abortion pitted pro-life activists against pro-choice activists.
Women and men who lived with each other without marriage sought "palimony" equal to the alimony. Teenagers assumed their right to a sexual life with whomever they pleased, and bathers fought to be topless or nude at beaches.
Criticism[edit]
U.S. World War II anti-venereal disease poster.
Fraenkel (1992) believes that the "sexual revolution", that the West supposedly experienced in the late 1960s, is indeed a misconception and that sex is not actually enjoyed freely, it is just observed in all the fields of culture; that's a kind of taboo behavior technically called "repressive desublimation".[21]
The end of the revolution[edit]
The rise of right-wing politics in the early 1980s, the start of the AIDS epidemic, and the rise of megachurches and televangelists ended the revolution.[citation needed]
Although the rate of teenage sexual activity is hard to record, the prevalence of teenage pregnancy in developed nations such as Canada and the UK have seen a steady decline since the 1990s.[22][23] For example, in 1991 there were 61.8 children born per 1,000 teenage girls in the United States. By 2013, this number had declined to 26.6 births per 1,000 teenage girls. [24][dubious – discuss]
See also[edit]
Portal icon Sexuality portal
Birth control movement in the United States
Combined oral contraceptive pill
Feminist sex wars
Miscegenation
Reproductive rights
Open marriage
Sex in the American Civil War
Sex magic
Sex-positive movement
Sexual objectification
Sexual revolution in 1960s America
Social Darwinism
Notes[edit]
1.^ Jump up to: a b Allyn, 2000.
2.Jump up ^ Escoffier, 2003.
3.Jump up ^ Germaine Greer and The Female Eunuch
4.Jump up ^ "Abc-Clio". Greenwood.com. Retrieved 2011-11-05.
5.Jump up ^ The term appeared as early as 1929; the book Is Sex Necessary?, by Thurber & White, has a chapter titled The Sexual Revolution: Being a Rather Complete Survey of the Entire Sexual Scene.
6.^ Jump up to: a b c d e f "Sexual Revolution, 1960 - 1980". Retrieved 14 December 2012.
7.Jump up ^ Bannon, Ann. "Sexual Revolution (9781560255253): Jeffrey Escoffier, Fred W. McDarrah, Erica Jong: Books". Amazon.com. Retrieved 2011-11-05.
8.Jump up ^ http://www.popsci.com/science/article/2013-01/did-penicillin-kickstart-sexual-revolution
9.Jump up ^ Kevin Slack, "Liberalism Radicalized: The Sexual Revolution, Multiculturalism, and the Rise of Identity Politics," http://www.heritage.org/research/reports/2013/08/liberalism-radicalized-the-sexual-revolution-multiculturalism-and-the-rise-of-identity-politics
10.Jump up ^ Isserman, Maurice (2012). America Divided. New York, NY: Oxford University Press. pp. 138–140. ISBN 978-0-19-976506-5.
11.^ Jump up to: a b c d e Farber, David. The Sixties Chronicles. Legacy Publishing. p. 30. ISBN 141271009X.
12.^ Jump up to: a b c d e f Kahn, Ashley (1998). Rolling Stone: The Seventies. Boston: Little, Brown and Co. pp. 54–57.
13.Jump up ^ Alan Petigny, "Illegitimacy, Postwar Psychology, and the Reperiodisation of the Sexual Revolution" Journal of Social History, fall 2004
14.Jump up ^ Koedt, Anne. "The Myth of the Vaginal Orgasm". Retrieved 16 December 2012.
15.^ Jump up to: a b c Hooks, Bell (1984). Feminist Theory, From Margin To Centre. Cambridge, MA: South End Press classics. p. 149. ISBN 978-0-89608-613-5.
16.Jump up ^ Baumgardner and Richards. "What Is Feminism". Retrieved 27 March 2013.
17.Jump up ^ Cudd, Ann (2005). Feminist Theory A Philosophical Anthology. Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishing Ltd. p. 74. ISBN 978-1-4051-1660-2.
18.Jump up ^ "Fri, Jul 25, 2008 - 'Humanae Vitae' birth control ban set off a wave of dissent". The Irish Times. 2008-07-07. Retrieved 2011-11-05.
19.Jump up ^ Marklund, Carl (2009). "Hot Love and Cold People. Sexual Liberalism as Political Escapism in Radical Sweden". NORDEUROPAforum 19 (1): 83–101.
20.^ Jump up to: a b Garlick, Steve (August 2011). "A New Sexual Revolution? Critical Theory, Pornography, and the Internet". Canadian Review of Sociology 48 (3): 221–239. doi:10.1111/j.1755-618X.2011.01264.x. PMID 22214041. Retrieved 14 December 2012.
21.Jump up ^ Herbert Marcuse (1964) pp.59, 75–82
22.Jump up ^ http://www.sexualityandu.ca/resource-library/statistics/teen-pregnancy-rates
23.Jump up ^ Beckford, Martin (2011-02-23). "Teenage pregnancies at lowest level since 1980s". The Daily Telegraph (London).
24.Jump up ^ United Nations Statistics Division. (2014). Demographic Yearbook 2012: Live births by age of mother. New York, NY: United Nations. Retrieved January 15, 2015 from http://unstats.un.org/unsd/demographic/products/dyb/dyb2012/Table10.pdf
References[edit]
Allyn, David. (2000). Make Love, Not War: The Sexual Revolution: An Unfettered History. Little, Brown and Company. ISBN 0-316-03930-6.
Escoffier, Jeffrey. (Editor). (2003). Sexual Revolution. Running Press. ISBN 1-56025-525-0.
Fraenkel, Boris. (1936). Die Sexualität im Kulturkampf. Erre emme (pub).
Klepacki, Linda. (2008). A Look at the Sexual Revolution in the United States. Focus on the Family Action, Inc. Retrieved 2008-04-20.
Marcuse, Herbert. (1964). One-Dimensional Man. (pp. 59, 75–82). Routledge. ISBN 0-415-28977-7.
Richardson, Diane. (2000). Critical Social Policy, Vol. 20, No. 1, 105–135. Constructing sexual citizenship: theorizing sexual rights. Sage Journals Online. Retrieved 2008-04-20.
Time Magazine. (1967-07-07). The Hippies. Time Inc. Retrieved 2008-04-20.
[show]
v ·
t ·
e
Outline of human sexuality
Portal
Categories: Sexual revolution
Navigation menu
Create account
Log in
Article
Talk
Read
Edit
View history
Main page
Contents
Featured content
Current events
Random article
Donate to Wikipedia
Wikipedia store
Interaction
Help
About Wikipedia
Community portal
Recent changes
Contact page
Tools
What links here
Related changes
Upload file
Special pages
Permanent link
Page information
Wikidata item
Cite this page
Print/export
Create a book
Download as PDF
Printable version
Languages
العربية
Azərbaycanca
Български
Català
Čeština
Dansk
Deutsch
Eesti
Español
Euskara
فارسی
Français
한국어
Hrvatski
Interlingua
Italiano
Lietuvių
Magyar
Nederlands
日本語
Polski
Português
Русский
Simple English
Srpskohrvatski / српскохрватски
Suomi
Svenska
Tagalog
தமிழ்
Українська
Tiếng Việt
中文
Edit links
This page was last modified on 12 April 2015, at 20:08.
Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License; additional terms may apply. By using this site, you agree to the Terms of Use and Privacy Policy. Wikipedia® is a registered trademark of the Wikimedia Foundation, Inc., a non-profit organization.
Privacy policy
About Wikipedia
Disclaimers
Contact Wikipedia
Developers
Mobile view
Wikimedia Foundation
Powered by MediaWiki
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sexual_revolution
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment