Counterculture condemns copulation with contraception

In modern media, sex is often portrayed as a tool for pleasure. The cast of Jersey Shore doesn’t show love or commitment to each other, and Cosmopolitan only monetizes and sells sex as recreation. Instead of signifying a unique relationship, intercourse has been reduced to the simple sharing of a sensation. Even hundreds of years ago, philosopher Immanuel Kant recognized the negative ramifications of this most basic, hedonistic use of sex: “Sexual love makes of the loved person an Object of appetite; as soon as that appetite has been stilled, the person is cast aside as one casts away a lemon which has been sucked dry.” According to Kant, those who engage in casual sex are reduced to mere objects and insatiable animals.

Contraception serves as a vehicle to remove the procreative aspects of sex from its pleasure. Not only does it encourage meaningless sex, but it results in emotional and mental perversions that may cause people to lose sight of the inherent dignity in human life and sanctity in human sexuality.  Sex is the ultimate culmination of the exclusive love that married people share for each other. Within a marriage, contraception need not accompany this action.

Contraception removes the risk of pregnancy, enabling needless, spiritually harmful premarital sex. But what about a married couple that wants to respect that sanctity, but is not ready or able to embrace the responsibility of a child? In this case, even though the intent of intercourse transcends the most hedonistic level, sexuality that allows for unity and pleasure between a man and a woman but excludes the procreative aspect ignores the ultimate purpose of sexual acts. Pregnancy prevention attempts to establish the uniqueness of a relationship not through total devotion to one’s partner, but through simple sexual pleasure. To say that contraceptive intercourse within a marriage is completely hedonistic may not be entirely true, but nonetheless it loses sight of the true meaning of sexuality.

Procreation and union are inseparable aspects of intercourse—the removal of one inevitably causes the removal of the other. Hence, even if the intent is to strengthen a couple’s bond through sex, contraceptive intercourse threatens conjugal love. It logically instills a deep mental and emotional restlessness, since the ultimate goal of sexuality becomes confused. A couple can console this uneasiness by either committing themselves to the full conjugal act of sacred sexuality, or become so exhausted with their confusion that they stop caring for one another. Hence, the overall solutions to the uneasiness caused by casual sex are self-restraint and chastity until marriage.

The technological advance of birth control is a paradigm: it allows for dehumanization of women, men, and babies. Humans have a profound ability for continence, discipline, and chastity to respond to this problem. Yet in a society where the media propagates an idea of sex as a casual and acceptable activity, where condoms are freely distributed on campuses of Jesuit universities (albeit by unaffiliated groups) and where pornography has become increasingly brutal and violent yet at the same time becoming increasingly mainstream and accessible, chastity and continence seem to be treated like a counter-cultural movement of Bible-thumping traditionalists. Nonetheless, the virtue of respecting the personhood and sexuality of the body while using self-restraint encompasses the solution to the objectification of sexuality and humanity.