by Elizabeth Bjorkman
The Institute on Religion in an Age of Science (IRAS) held its 46th Annual Star Island Conference July 31 to Aug 7, 1999. This year's topic, "Sexuality and Human Nature: A Scientific, Religious and Moral Exploration" both informed and amused conferees and probably raised as many questions as it answered. Conference lead organizer, Ted Laurenson, a lawyer and lay Unitarian leader in sex education for teenagers, led off Sat. evening with some "Abstract Insights on Carnal Ecstasy". Laurenson argued that there was no morality intrinsic in sex as such and objected to definitions of "plain sex". He sees sex as morally neutral between consenting adults, consequently we should be free to practice without fear of legal recriminations. A liberal use of poetry helped support his assertion that sex is a basic aspect of our identity and all sex has meaning. Sex has the force of the universe behind it and colors all aspects of our relationships.
Scientific explorations began with biopsychologist/bioanthropologist Barbara Smuts showing wonderful slides from her field work with baboons, chimpanzees and pygmy chimps (or bonobos), the latter two being our closest relatives in the animal world. Social relationships and social bonds affect sex. Most animals don't have social relationships. They meet, copulate and leave. In the social primates, though, there are variations among non-human species just as there are variations between human societies. Baboons have a matrilineal social system, i.e. women stay within the family they are born into and the males wander. Dominance is passed from mother to daughter. Severe aggression is uncommon and there is a strong mutual interest in infants. Male baboons are very flirtatious and cultivate long term bonds with females and babies. Chimpanzees are dramatically different. Where baboons have coherent societies, chimps have "division/fusion" societies, i.e. they exist in small ephemeral groups called parties which are constantly changing. These parties are patrilocal, i.e. the males stay and females leave and tend to be quite solitary. Between, but not within, parties there is much male-male competition. When females ovulate, aggression is also high between males and females.
Bonobos, closely related to chimps and equally related to us, have societies where the strongest bonds are between unrelated females and bonobo sexuality infiltrates all aspects of female life. Male dominance is not permitted. These dramatic contrasts between baboons, chimps and bonobos disrupt any idea of a linear trajectory from primates to humans.
Helen Fisher from Rutgers University and a member of the Center for Human Evolutionary Studies spoke on "Lust, Attraction, Attachment: The Evolution and Future of Human Sexuality, Romance and Family Life". Her thesis on the most powerful and primitive human emotion posits three underlying emotional systems: sex drive, which is physical lust; attraction, which is the romantic aspect of sexuality; and attachment, which fosters close social contact and builds emotional security. Fisher proposed that sex drive evolved so we can mate with anybody. In order to conserve energy, i.e. so we do not have to mate with everybody, attraction evolved to allow us to have an individual, romantic sexual focus. Attachment allows us to tolerate and emotionally sustain our romantically selected sexual partners. As we saw with primates, these three systems vary from society (or species) to society and also from individual to individual. Variation can continue through life's course. Some systems act in isolation, e.g. sex drive and rape, but more often in concert with each other. Hormones, brain chemicals and brain systems function in different ways to enhance different emotion systems and produce the differences between sexes and individuals. Research is just beginning to yield some interesting insights such as how levels of seratonin are associated with the constant obsessive thinking which characterizes attraction.
Fisher also maintains that between the ages of five and eight we build a "map" of what we are looking for in a partner and this explains why some people make the same mistake over and over. Ninety-seven percent of mammals do not have attachment in their emotional make-up. For Fisher, this is a distinguishing characteristic of what it means to be human. In the evening Question and Answer (Q & A) session, Barbara Smuts further distinguished humans from other mammals through their maintaining monogamous relationships in a heterosexual environment. We find monogamous relationships in the animal world but the couples separate themselves from the social group. Fisher predicted that the next millenium would see increases in freedom of expression of our sexuality. She set up the next lecture perfectly with her assertion that the more we understand the brain, the more we will appreciate culture.
Don Pfaff a professor at the Rockefeller University in NYC and Head of the Laboratory of Neurobiology and Behavior there gave a guided tour through the neural circuitry and physiology as well as genetic mechanisms underlying animal sexual behaviors. The fundamentals in lordosis (standing posture) behavior by females are well understood. Likewise specific sex behavior can be understood as the result of estrogen turning on a series of genes in the brain. Each gene product has its own biological role. We also know that there is massive conservation from animals to humans of endocrine hormonal systems and neural mechanisms, i.e. sex hormones, receptor genes, protein chemistry and sex hormone receptor neuroanatomy. "These very concrete neural and genetic explanations play into more abstract considerations of sexual motivation and arousal. In particular, they contribute to an understanding of the physiological aspects of human libido," a Freudian, psychological concept. We are beginning to build bridges between the biological and psychological.
Pfaff was followed by Jim Weinrich, Assistant Professor of Psychiatry at the U. of California, San Diego. His interest in the deeper reasons why people perform the particular sex acts they perform and why they experience the sexual fantasies they experience underlies his work. He used case studies to support insights from evolutionary biology that assert while day-to-day human sexual behavior is voluntary, in the long run it is much less so. Some of the rules for the unconscious mechanisms were discussed, e.g. the incest avoidance mechanism that prevents a person falling in love with someone he or she grew up with on a daily basis of domestic intimacy. Weinrich suggested that people really do not care that much about biology. They care what it means. He used a fact-value matrix to demonstrate that facts do not necessarily imply conclusions. All arrows in the matrix have arguments, which, in isolation, sounded good. He built a strong case for the subconscious starting with the conclusion and then going to science for facts to support it. When the subconscious gets blocked we often see behavior culture labels abnormal, not necessarily a categorization supported by evolutionary biology, which favors variability. Moral and ethical questions require consideration of many other factors for Weinrich.
The highlight of the week occurred for me on Tues. with back to back talks first by ordained Episcopal priest and professor of theology, Jay Johnson, and then by philosopher and professor of zoology at the University of Guelph in Ontario, Michael Ruse. Johnson, who did his PhD work in constructive theology, spoke on "From Prohibition to Spiritual Practice: Finding Sex in Christian Traditions". Johnson, as a practicing Christian and a gay man, is looking for a positive correlation between Christianity and sex. He finds at these cross roads a complexly, sexually charged religious tradition, e.g. images of Yahweh and Israel, and Christ and his bride, the church. Johnson asks does God really negate what God created? He then outlined problems with the way the Christian tradition has been received through century long filters. The Augustinian and Thomistic traditions circumscribe sex into a narrow restrictive sphere, which was culturally reinforced in the 18th century when modern science named sex organs for the first time and began its practice of categorization to facilitate observation and investigation. Restrictive and disembodied other worldly spiritual attitudes that lift up delayed gratification until heavenly attainment contradicts for Johnson Jesus' claim in the Gospel of John that he came so we would be able to live life abundantly. How can we feel at home in the world if we cannot feel at home in our sexual bodies and can we find this positive correlation without betraying our received traditions? Johnson proposes three steps to positively respond to these vexing questions. First, the rehabilitation of Eros will give a positive role for desire. Augustine's many warning betray the positive effects of our restless hearts and how desire takes us out of ourselves into union with the "other". The Song of Songs in the Old Testament exemplifies how only the language of Eros can capture human deep longing for God and God's deep longing for humanity. Second, a return to our physical bodies as primary location for the rehabilitation of our persons will restore and lift up the highly incarnational, materialistic nature of Christianity. Our particular physical bodies have spiritual relevance. They are the places where we are most vulnerable and where willingness to risk enables transformation. Lastly the relation of embodied desire brings esoteric Trinitarian doctrine "down to earth". As Johnson pointed out we have here much more than an "old man, his son and a bird." God in God's self relates. Shared love between the two opens up the third much as the sex shared between two selves enables the transcendence towards the other. Sex and spirit both spring from a common source and need a deeper integration. Johnson ended with the Eucharist as an example of spiritual practice, which affirms our embodied spiritual selves. Desire brings us together to share a common meal so we can be in union with each other and Christ. In the Eucharist we participate, not in the spirit of Christ, but in his body and in many traditions there is the erotic quality of feeding each other. And finally the embodied desire of this gathering generates relationship so we can experience God's giving of God's self for new life and our own possibilities for giving that can generate new life and love even in the form of an erotic abandonment to each other.
Philosopher and conference co-chair, Michael Ruse, true to the title of his talk "A Cook's Tour Through the Philosophy of Sexuality" put much of Johnson's background information into a more sweeping context. Ruse began with the acknowledgment that philosophers and sex have an unhappy and uncomfortable relationship. Philosophy is a subject which tries to be reasonable. Sex is the antithesis of reason so the awkwardness of the relationship for both philosophers and theologians seems to be a natural consequence. With that introduction Ruse began with Socrates and Plato, touched on the influence of Greek thought on Paul, and asserted that the Greeks set the pattern for modern attitudes toward sex. He ended with the 19th century Utilitarians, and briefly mentioned the rise of the more recent alternative positions of Marxism, Darwinism, and Freud, which all recognize the importance of sex in a climate of diminishing Christian influence. Modern rethinking of sex seems to start with the premise that sex is a good thing and works down from there rather than the reverse, which has been the tradition. While there has been a great change in philosophical thinking about sex in the last two centuries the discomfort (as exhibited in scheduling at philosophical meetings) of philosophers talking about sex persists. Emotional issues are deeply threatening to philosophers.
Sex was the platform that launched an exemplary religion-science give and take at Tuesday evening's Q & A session. Ruse got things started by asking Johnson about the question of interpretation. Where do you end peeling away interpretive layers, taking human values from the 20th century and reading them back into Christian texts? Johnson pointed out that the essence of a religious tradition is that it is a living tradition. Yes, one must be careful about reading one's experience into a tradition, but appropriating it in new ways is what makes it live. Theologian Phil Hefner lifted up the communitarian aspect of religious traditions. Christianity began as a social construction where decision making was a communal activity. Even at Christianity's beginning a collection of texts were canonized which provided a variety of different interpretations and meaning. It has always been open to multiple perspectives and constant development because it is more formative that normative, i.e. formed more by historical context and community than by what Jesus said. Philosopher and theologian, Karl Peters observed that religionists and scientists are playing with different rules that boil down to objectivity issues vs. subjectivity issues or social constructions. Or as James Carroll put it in a Sept. Boston Globe op-ed, the fact "that Biblical narratives always have to be interpreted (even by those who claim to read them literally)&ldots;inevitably moves one into the realm of the contingent."
Another topic of free flowing discussion rose around a question from Hefner to Johnson on the status of re-energizing Christianity and other religions. Johnson sees the current situation as one of conflict between those who interpret religion literally and those who interpret it symbolically. Ruse, raised a Quaker but presently a confessed Darwinian, pointed out that our U.S. culture is largely a literalist one. He outlined problems with both literal and symbolic grounds for truth seeking activities. Paul Ricoeur makes the case that contemporary language simply means what it can mean, which is not necessarily what it meant two thousand years ago. Rosemary Reuther feels that use of symbols gives voice to experience but over time they restrict experience. Ruse stated his preference for scientific theories since they are more often than not based on good answers that do not seem to shift around like Johnson's constructive theology, which counters such long-standing aspects of fundamental doctrine. At what point, he asked, do you cease to operate within the same tradition of your predecessors and launch something new? Hefner answered with the claim that religious traditions have a "deep structure" which guides interpretations as to what is and is not "fundamental". Johnson joined in, stressing the psychological importance for many to be able to embrace their religious roots.
Intellectual concerns gave way to practical dark realities Wed. when Ann Jennings, Director of the Office of Trauma Services with the Maine Dept. of Mental Health, Mental Retardation and Substance Abuse Services told the story of her daughter, Anna. Anna was diagnosed with a serious mental illness while her sexual abuse and traumatization as a small child were chronically unrecognized and untreated by helping professionals. Jennings cited research supporting her belief "that child abuse is at the root of the violence and dysfunction of our culture. Yet institutions and professionals continue to ignore its prevalence and unintentionally perpetuate the original violence through 're-traumatization (as in the rape like positions of 4 point restraint) or silence." Anna's art work gave an added dimension to this noxious problem and her tragic story.
Another very practical matter, sex and the law, was addressed Wed. evening by Seattle University law professor, David Skover. He argued that "(n)either the U.S. Constitution nor any of the fifty state constitutions explicitly guarantees a basic right to what is a part of our everyday lives - consensual adult sex. Although some sexual freedoms have been pulled into federal and state constitutions, by hook or by crook, these aspects of sexuality have had to be portrayed in a nonsexual fashion, and deflected or filtered through the lens of other rights&ldots;In our popular culture, sex is everywhere. In our constitutional culture, sex is nowhere."
The first three mornings, co-chaplain Leslie Kawamura, a Buddhist and a professor in the Dept. of Religious Studies at the University of Calgary presented eastern religious attitudes towards human sexuality. The Chinese character for sexuality is heart and life and carries no stigma as in the west. That stigma, he feels, arose from the religious practice of celibacy. Hinduism, Buddhism, Taoism and Confucianism all recognize that desire tends to get us into trouble so restraints are useful for promoting personal and communal harmony. The eastern traditions stress the importance of participating in the now to our fullest and meditation practices are encouraged to help us learn to breathe correctly. All bodies need to breathe to be fit so they can balance spirituality, materiality and sensuality. These traditions recognize that the reason we have human existence is because of the sex act so it is not sinful but a wonderful condition of our presence; they view the body as a receptacle for receiving and executing love. Sex is a necessary component of humanity. Kawamura feels that eastern traditions can teach us to be more open and tolerant of sexuality by challenging old ways of our thinking. He described a Hindu temple in India filled with icons blatantly representing human sexuality, expressing and celebrating what is so very natural.
Formal presentations of Buddhist sexual ethics, and the trantric tradition and sexuality filled Thurs. sessions. Jose Ignacio Cabezon, Professor of Buddhism and Comparative Thought at the Iliff School of Theology in Denver spoke about the Buddha's teaching that "the fundamental goal of the human life was the eradication of suffering. The chief obstacle to achieving that goal was craving or desire. Desire is a hankering after what is pleasurable. Given that the greatest form of pleasure possible in the realm where human beings live&ldots;is orgasm, the control of sexual activity was, both in the lay and monastic spheres, an essential part of the Buddhist program of self-perfection. Cabezon focused on the exoteric (non-Tantric) sources and explored "the way in which sexual desire was thematized, and how it was sought to be controlled within Buddhist moral discipline." He concluded "with some remarks concerning the way in which some contemporary Western Buddhists are attempting to craft a sexual ethic relevant to contemporary life in the West, one that takes into account both the classical Buddhist sources and the current scientific and social scientific study of sexuality."
Associate Professor at Amherst College, Janet Gyatso presented an "overview of Buddhist personal values and the ritual and meditative traditions that have been developed to cultivate them." She summarized " Indian and Tibetan medical conceptions about the body and of health" so we could understand "sexual yoga in Buddhism. A historical and sociological survey of sexual yoga, especially as it has been written about and practiced in Tibet," led into her suggestions for what "we can possibly learn from tantric sexuality that would be applicable to our modern context and could enhance our life experience."
Friday morning's open forum with the week's speakers provided more opportunity to discuss issues raised in the religion-science free-for-all Tues. evening. Janet Gyatso noted that Ruses' difficulty discerning what is fundamental to a particular religious tradition also concerns those in the tradition and sometimes results in religious schisms. Thursday's presentations on the many different ways Buddhist traditions view and deal with sexuality while maintaining their common understandings of central Buddhist insights exemplified her observation. Law professor, Skover noted the similarities between the Constitution and the Bible. They both are intended to be living documents which makes literal interpretation or "original meaning" questionable approaches to these texts.
The final three morning chapel services were led by conference co-chair and UUA pastor, Barbara Whittaker-Johns. Each morning she presented "Stories to Hallow Human Sexuality". She showed us how grace and guidance inherent in spiritual practice of story-telling can help us "to embrace delight, wisdom and justice in our human sexuality."
I was surprised and disappointed that there was no discussion of either health threatening, sexually transmitted diseases or what their existence in the human population (and not in the animal world) might mean for human culture and ethics. Likewise moral explorations in general were scant. Fisher touched on her findings that if the strength of attachment vanishes, i.e. divorce occurs, it seems to take place most frequently four years after a marriage. A biological explanation could be that perhaps at this time a child from the union has been safely launched in life. The Rev. Whittaker-Johns told a humorous story about the wider emotional concerns for committed, sustained attachments that help contain impulses of desire. Otherwise, emphasis was on consensual sex without regard for the feelings of other involved adults and children. Finally, in spite of considerable mention of restraints concerning sexual behavior in both eastern and western religious traditions there was no mention of the practice of mild asceticism, which, both religious and non-religious people have discovered, enhances sensual pleasure. Asceticism, like meditation, is much easier to talk about in our culture of excess and general over stimulation than to practice. Extreme living seems to be necessary for feeling alive to a growing number in our culture. A week is never long enough at an IRAS conference.