Marriage in crisis

1. Marriage was never risk-free, but it's currently a high-stakes game in which the odds are heavily against men. If a man fathers a child, the mother has the unilateral right to abort the child even if he wants to keep and raise the child. It's usually the wife who initiates divorce. Usually the wife who's awarded custody. Plus taking half the man's income, even if she initiated the divorce. Thanks to feminism, we now have a system where wives have all the rights while husbands have all the responsibilities. If social trends continue, many men will remain bachelors, play video games, have buddies, and sexbots.

Evangelical leaders are failing men, both inside and outside the church. The failure of evangelical elites is driving disaffected men into the arms of Jordan Peterson. 

2. Perhaps common law marriage is a partial expedient at this time, unless and until the situation becomes more equitable. I do think one can argue that common law marriage is morally permissible in some situations. A wedding ceremony is not the essence of marriage, but lifelong commitment. Monogamous intent. 

3. According to 1 Cor 7:5, if a husband turns to porn in response to a frigid wife, is the wife to blame? 

Several issues:

i) 1 Cor 7:5 is about spouses in general, not wives in particular. For instance, we could reformulate the question: If a wife has an affair because her workaholic husband neglects the marriage, is the husband to blame? 

ii) All things being equal, a spouse is blameworthy for exposing the neglected husband or wife to gratuitous sexual temptation by failing to provide a sexual outlet. 

iii) All things considered, there are sometimes extenuating circumstances that mitigate or exculpate blame. If a wife marries a soldier who has a tour of duty, he's not to blame. She knew what she was getting into. 

Conversely, a wife might be frigid if she was a rape victim or molested as a girl. That's a mitigating factor. 

Some wives may simply be inhibited. The duty in that situation is a two-way street: the husband should be patient while the wife should work to overcome her inhibitions. 

iv) To say a spouse is blameworthy or shares the blame for exposing the husband or wife to gratuitous sexual temptation doesn't necessarily mean they're to blame for the particular reaction of the neglected husband or wife. They don't cause a particular course of action. At most, they might create a liability in that direction.

v) Even if we bracket the morality of porn and consider it from a pragmatic standpoint, I don't see how porn provides an outlet to release pent-up sexual tensions. It's like if you're already very hungry, and you go to a cafe, don't order anything but just sit there watching other diners eat, watching waiters bring out plates of delicious food, inhale the fragrances emanating from the kitchen. So pornography is counterproductive. 

(In that respect, porn differs from masturbation. Masturbation is like a safety value that does provide some temporary relief for pent-up sexual tension. While not a solution, it lessens some of the pressure that builds up.) 

vi) In addition, pornography is psychologically damaging to women in the sex trade. However, we now have the further complication of virtual porn–not to mention sexbots. 

4. But suppose the offending party refuses to honor their marital vows? What's the fallback, if any? Is the offended party stuck in that sham marriage for life? 

i) The NT has two specific grounds for divorce: adultery and desertion. Traditionally, many Protestants regard those as the only permissible grounds. But I think it's unrealistic to suppose the NT addresses every conceivable justification for divorce. The example from Jesus is occasioned by a particular question, while the example from Paul is occasioned by a specific pastoral issue in religiously mixed marriages. And it may be noteworthy that 1 Cor 7:15 occur in the same general discussion as 7:5. 

ii) There's also the distinction between lawful and unlawful vows. In the nature of the case, there can be no moral obligation to keep an immoral vow. Unethical duties are self-contradictory. Jephthah's vow is the classic example.

In biblical ethics, vows (oaths, pledges, promises) aren't absolute. Consider Num 30:3-5, where a father can annul a minor's pledge.

Other considerations that are typically thought to invalidate a contract are coercion (e.g. signing a contract at gunpoint) and entering into an agreement under false pretenses.

Spouses are obligated to make a good faith-effort to perform their marital duties. If a spouse has no intention of honoring marital duties, no commitment to uphold their end of the bargain, then arguably, their willful noncompliance or nonperformance is grounds for divorce.

That's the general argument. It is, of course, possible to abuse that principle, and I have no specific biblical warrant for my particular application. But then, Judges is silent on the validity/invalidity of Jephthah's vow. Readers are expected to understand that the biblical prohibition against murder overrides a vow.

5. Dominic Foo considers premarital sex to be a morally licit option:

https://rationalityofaith.wordpress.com/2014/04/25/some-unconventional-and-disjointed-opinions-on-pre-marital-sex-porn-moral-luck-suicide-and-shame-why-pre-marital-sex-is-not-a-sin/

I don't object to iconoclastic interpretations, per se. It can be good to scrutinize traditional positions and interpretations. That said:

i) Foo's position on premarital sex is very facile. To begin with, appealing to OT law requires some finesse. The Mosaic law was in large part a civil and criminal law code, but there's a distinction between sins and crimes. Not all sins are crimes, not all crimes are sins. 

ii) The Mosaic law sets minimal standards of social conduct. It's not meant to be an ethical ideal. It's more concerned with public policy than individual behavior (social ethics rather than personal ethics), since law is primarily about regulating social life. Making social life possible. Setting a low bar for what's tolerable. 

iii) The fact that the law prescribes a shotgun marriage for fornicators suggests that premarital sex was wrong, but not as wrong as adultery. 

iv) If premarital sex isn't sinful, then it's hard to see how sexual promiscuity is sinful, but in that event, why is adultery wrong? Why the emphasis on monogamy?

v) If premarital sex isn't sinful, what's the incentive to get married? Why take the risk given limited options for licit divorce?

vi) If it's for the sake of a stable child-rearing environment, then that applies to premarital sex inasmuch as children would be the inevitable result of fertile couples engaging in fornication. There were no reliable contraceptive methods back then. 

vii) If fornication isn't sinful, then it's hard to see how prostitution is sinful, yet Paul treats prostitution as a grave sin (1 Cor 6:15-16). 

You also have the warnings about prostitution in Proverbs, although that's prudential. 

viii) Surely the regulation of sexuality in Scripture reflects the social chaos that unrestricted sexual license in pagan culture wreaked. 

ix) Promiscuity produces many children by different sexual partners. That contributed to abortion, infanticide, and street children. 

x) Not to mention STDs. 

6. We can't pray the sex drive away. The sex drive is meant to be irrepressible. Very insistent. Hard to ignore. That's what keeps the human race going. At least it used to, before the prevalence of contraception and abortion. Nowadays, many western countries have fallen below the replacement rate. 

7. But while it's possible to underestimate the power of the sex drive, it's possible to overestimate the power of the sex drive. Although the lack of a normal family life (sex, kids, companionship) is hard to live without, Paul was a bachelor or widower, Ezekiel was a widower, while Jeremiah was a childless bachelor by divine command. John Stott was a childless bachelor. He didn't plan it that way. But that's how his life worked out. Missionary Eric Liddell died in Japanese POW camp, separated from his wife, where he ministered to inmates. Sometimes God requires heroic sacrifice from his people. Except for Paul, they didn't have a gift for celibacy. They just had to tough it out.

On the one hand there are men who struggle without any wife while, on the other hand, there are promiscuous men who run through women like disposable beer cans. Never satisfied. One is not enough. Ten is not enough. Or fifty. Or hundreds. Sometimes sex isn't the solution. Sometimes sex camouflages an insatiable appetite for something else, where sex is just a handy temporary substitute.