Evolution and Traditional Sexual Morality
The moral values of a society must be regarded as evolutionary strategies. A society needs to devise and enforce moral standards which help it to survive. No society can survive unless it favours the reproductive success of its members. The foundation of morality has to be in the animal nature of man. So we find that the most fundamental human moral values are not exclusive to one human society or one religion. They are to be found in all but the most decadent societies. They may well be instinctive; perhaps at any rate they go back to the long period of human history before human societies in the modern sense existed at all. They have survived because they harmonise with the three fundamental biological needs of the human animal: to survive, to reproduce, to ensure as far as possible the survival and reproductive success of one's offspring.
Some of them may appear unfamiliar in the Western twenty-first century context; nevertheless they would have appeared normal to most human societies in the past and are typical of all those contemporary societies which are still expanding in population.
In traditional human morality as in nature, the purpose of sexual love is reproduction. Mistakes are often made, relationships do not always succeed, but the goal of sexual love has to be a fruitful long-term relationship. Sexual activity which by its nature cannot lead to this goal is excusable in the experimental period of adolescence but in the longer term cannot benefit the species. Abortion has almost always been regarded as wrong. Contraception was not usually socially acceptable until decreased infant mortality made it inescapable. Homosexuality has often been subject to severe penalties.
Human children need a long period of parental care. During this period they need love, guidance and discipline. In the early stages they need a very high level of input from the mother, in the later stages a lesser but still great input from both parents. Animals protect and care only for their own offspring. Therefore humanity has usually believed that the parental relationship should be a stable and permanent marriage.
Sexual activity outside the parental relationship has been regarded as dangerous if it damages the parental relationship (the "marriage") or the prospects of marriage and hence the lives of the next generation. But it has also been instinctively recognised that the "double standard" has a biological basis. A male may much increase his chances of reproductive success if he succeeds in mating with more than one partner; a female only does so in the exceptional case of an infertile or impotent one. So societies have often turned a blind eye to promiscuous males, whilst condemning their promiscuous female partners.
Infidelity in a woman has always attracted severe condemnation because it has harmful biological effects. What matters, from the biological point of view, is the care of the children; and a wife's infidelity or even suspected infidelity can damage their lives. Like other animals, human fathers cannot be trusted to care for children who do not (or perhaps may not) carry their genes. So there must be no question of a wife's infidelity, because a husband who doubts his wife's fidelity cannot be certain her children are his and may withhold the love and protection their children need.
By contrast a mother's love for her children is not affected by her husband's infidelity. A mother always knows who her children are and loves them; her husband's fidelity or infidelity make no difference to her parental love. So whatever the tensions and stresses caused to the parental relationship, male infidelity matters less.
Motherhood has high qualitative intensity; for a woman to give birth to a child is a turning point in her life, creating an inescapable long-term responsibility. So a young female must not allow herself to become pregnant without the assured support of the child's father. Parents therefore have always been believed to have a responsibility to guide their children in the direction of successful and fruitful marriages: in the case of daughters, this means that they must protect them from irresponsible relationships which may result in pregnancy. Female virginity has always been valued and the existence of the hymen may suggest that it has been valued since an early stage of human evolution.
In present-day Western society, most of these principles have been at least partially abandoned. Contemporary sexual values as presented in the Western media arouse horror in those who, like strict Christians or Muslims, still live according to traditional morality. Often outsiders do not realise how far the values suggested by the media still differ from our actual practice. Nevertheless there is no doubt of the direction of the trend.
If it continues, this trend is quite likely to result in extinction. Already, European birth rates are low and populations are being quite rapidly replaced in their homelands by incomers, mainly from Asia, who still in many cases adhere to more traditional values.
Of course, civilized moral issues are more complex than the simple code suggested above. Nevertheless the natural harmony between the traditional code and the requirements of animal survival - and the practical results of putting the code so completely aside - do suggest that we should not dismiss it as a quaint relic of the past.
The reader may feel (even if he or she follows the logic of this argument) that the traditional morality is stern and puritanical and hard to follow. But the communities of the past have treated it as at least an ideal, because it is in harmony with human reproductive psychology. Young women instinctively shy away from physical involvement until they feel sure of a man. Young men often feel desperate to achieve that involvement, at all costs and almost with any woman; but when the opportunity occurs, their bodies often fail to cooperate effectively if the relationship is not the right one.
The traditional morality may be hard to follow because it conflicts with values ceaselessly promulgated by our debased modern media and subsequently reinforced by peer-group pressure. There is a conflict; but it is not a conflict between promiscuous instinct and restraining morality. It is a conflict between the cautious morality of the body, in harmony with human reproductive needs, and the way that society now appears to expect us to behave. Society has got it wrong; there is no higher ideal and no greater source of human happiness, than a happy, faithful and fruitful marriage. And it's worth waiting for.