1.....America is high-energy, high-drive, obsessed with sex and notoriety, and therefore spectacularly obsessed with sex scandals. This junior-high-level voyeurism is sad, stupid, sick, sidelining, and sinful.

2.....What gets our attention gets us, and what holds our attention is our god. Since the human orgasmic potential is continuous rather than (as is the case with other animals) seasonal, internal or external stimuli may at any moment draw our attention to our genitals. And since sex (in this instinctual sense, lust) is our hottest button, marketers push it to get our attention for the goods and services they seek to sell us, expanding our wants far beyond our needs. Results: (1) Overstimulated, loose, wandering genitals; (2) Consumerism (lust + greed = a religion, with the shopping malls as temples).

3.....We human beings have two transcendence-potentials. The orgasmic potential realizes itself in everything we mean by “sex” (with orgasm as the “high”). The numinous potential realizes itself in religion (with spiritual experience as the “high”). Not infrequently, a leader in religion will be highly endowed with both potentials; sex scandals involving such leaders titillate and disgust the public and delight the media.

Now for the interrogation’s three questions:

1.....“Is sex outside of marriage a sin?” It would be for me, a virgin except for sex inside of marriage. The least painful-disruptive and most satisfying-constructive sex life is virginal marriage + marital faithfulness, and it’s the Christian ideal. All God’s good gifts have their place, and the place for sex as a servant and expression of love and hope is in marriage. “Sin” is the reverse of love. Jesus says we are to love God, others, and oneself. Sin is behavior disruptive of communion with God, with others, and with oneself. “Sex outside of marriage” fits this picture of sin.

2.....“Is sex outside of marriage a public matter?” Yes, even when—as in the case of President Kennedy’s promethean promiscuity—it’s kept private: its effects on marriage are commonly so disastrous as to have public effects. And sometimes—as in the case of President Clinton—falsely alleged sex can be publicly calamitous. He was not lying when he said, “I didn’t have sex with that woman” (in his correct Southern Baptist sense, “sex” meant heterosexual intercourse; that woman herself said, several times on the tapes, that she couldn’t get him to put it in). (This narrow, precise meaning of “sex” is implicit also in this second of the three “On Faith” questions.)

I said that in America, sexual scandals are “sidelining,” diverting attention from one’s responsibilities. The public, instead of focusing on Clinton’s present and future behavior in the public interest, focused on the recent past behavior of his genitals—necessarily also the focus of his defensive attention, to the neglect of the public interest. His dalliance was a betrayal of the public trust, but the public betrayed itself by its prurient, weeks-long sensationalist fascination with this sordid case. “Sad, stupid, sick, sidelining, sinful.”

3.....“Is sex outside of marriage forgivable?” As sex is humanity’s least confinable drive, genital wandering outside the box of society’s self-interested confines should be the most forgivable. But the damages from the wandering are often so horrendous that the offended find forgiving the wanderer almost impossible. The problem is compounded when the wanderer is a public servant whose public responsibilities are neglected while time and energy flow into personal defense.

As a Christian, I must add that the category of “the unforgivable” exists only in the event of the sinner’s refusal of repentance and persistence in sin. The attitude of forgivingness leans toward the act of forgiving. As in Jesus’ parable, the Father is so eager to forgive that he runs toward his prodigal son when first catching sight of him returning home.