Sellick writes; "The purpose of sexual acts is to produce children:" He presents this as a statement of "fact" from Humanae Vitae. It is not disputed that the production of offspring is accomplished by sexual engagement. But is it the sole purpose of sex? To illustrate, one may equally ask; "What is the purpose of playing golf?" and answering that the purpose for playing is solely to finish with the lowest score. There may well be other concurrent reasons or the score may be totally irrelevant. Like golf, sex is a pleasant way of exercise and more than just pleasant many would argue. It seems to me that in a modern society any way of minimising or extirpating the tedium of exercise is to be welcomed. Erecting taboo and superstition around sex seems to spring from an attitude of deprivation, that dreadful stricture imposed on catholic clergy. In a pervasive atmosphere of reducing numbers of trainees in catholic theology a powerful case could be made against celibacy in the piesthood. Let those who preach the catholic dogma on sex practise what they preach.

Sellick's own words; "Nature is morally neutral and chaotic; there is no plan to it." Nature is far from chaotic and/or random. And attributing a moral position to nature is pure partisan contrariness. As I am an a-theist, nature is a-moral. As I have no god/deity, nature has no morality. Nature has no plan that could be attributed to a divine agency for we can identify its components, measure and weigh them using the sciences of physics, chemistry and mathematics. Nature is particularly susceptible to human involvement in all of nature's aspects from the quantum to the cosmos.

Hi Pogi,

Looking back over my own family tree, thanks to that accursed and wonderful Ancestry.com, apart from a fair sprinkling of convicts and other footpads and layabouts, I noticed the occasional marriage after the birth of a child and the occasion al placing of babies in work-houses if the mother couldn't look after it, i.e. couldn't get married and share the costs of raising a child with a male partner, ideally the father of the child. ie. the alternatives for a pregnant single women were pretty stark: get the bloke to marry you or stick the baby in a work-house (yes, it happened to my grandmother).

So it struck me that, until recently, marriage, to the extent that it was necessary at all, was a sort of insurance for young women, i.e. of child-bearing age, that if they could persuade the putative father to marry them, they could be more assured of being looked after and their child being raised in their joint care - after all, with so few types of jobs available to women until recently, there weren't many options for women apart from being a full-time housewife - certainly not from my socio-economic class and that of my ancestors.

I suppose that would represent a minimalist position on marriage, rather than the super-maximalist 'all-in' position being advocated these cays.

Just throwing it out there :)

Cheers,

Joe