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See that title?

If you let your emotions rule you, to override your faculties of reason, then stop reading. Go do something else. This post is not for you. You’ve been warned.

In the comment section under “More on Biblical Marriage” a commenter objected to the idea that sex is always marital, that is, it always produces a lifelong one-flesh marital bond.

(This is, of course, why sexual purity is so fundamentally important and why sexual deviance is so deeply destructive.)

To someone who is not married, they are married when they have sex even when that sex is illicit. It’s a matter of cause-and-effect, not a matter of human will. It is soley a matter of the divine will. God, by his will, set up all sorts of similar rules.

For example, if you kill someone, they are dead. Similarly, if you have sex with someone, you are married to them. These are both examples of automatic, existential cause-and-effect: the effect is an obligatory consequence of the cause.

There are many reasons to kill someone, including self-defense or (a good reason), an accident (a neutral reason), and hatred (a bad reason), but the effect is obligatory in all cases: the person is dead. So too with sex. There are many reasons to have sex. Some are good (e.g. marriage) and some are bad (e.g. adultery), but the effect is obligatory in all cases: a one-flesh marital bond.

There are no logically or actually possible exceptions.

What this demonstrates is that the right or wrongness of the cause and the effect are not, of necessity, linked. For example, (1) killing in self-defense is good even when the death outcome is bad.  The converse is also true: (2) a death can be a good thing even if the killing is not. There is a famous case of this in the New Testament (hint: the crucifixion). It is also trivial to demonstrate the other two—(3) a bad killing and a bad death; and (4) a good killing and a good death—fully demonstrating the moral independence of the cause from the effect.

So let’s talk about rape and abortion. Should a woman who is raped and becomes pregnant be allowed to abort her child?

The answer is clearly “No.” This is never justified. It is, in fact, murder. Specifically, it is the case where the killing and the death are both bad. That’s the one labeled as “(3)” above.

In modern society, people’s moral compasses are so broken by secular humanism and materalism that they do not find this clear and obvious at all. They see a chain of casuality “Rape → Pregnancy → Baby” and conclude that because the cause (“Rape”) is bad that the effects (“Pregnancy” and “Baby”) must also be bad. This is logically fallacious. It is an example of the “Argument from Consequences.”

But what if we apply this to marriage? Here is a chain of causality: “Rape → Marriage.” Do you conclude that because the cause “Rape” is bad that the effect “Marriage” must also be bad? If so, then you’ll probably be fine with murdering babies. You might even write something like this:

Notice that this—screaming—is all about emotions. There is nothing rational about aborting babies conceived through an act of rape. The baby did nothing to deserve a death sentence. It committed no crime. It is, in fact, completely innocent and deserving of life. The fact that one of his parents was a monster is irrelevant.

But, my, oh my, do modern feminists get all emotional over the right to murder babies conceived through acts of rape. Even though there is no logical reason why being raped (a crime) should necessitate another act of violence (the crime of murdering your own baby), they let their emotions rule the day.

Almost every Christian woman believes that aborting a baby who was conceived through a rape is morally justified. Go ask them to explain themselves and they’ll give you an irrational emotional response, devoid of reason.

The same is true of God’s standards on sexuality. When God says that sex produces a one-flesh bond, he’s completely serious and you should be taking it seriously too. But almost no one, including Christians, takes this seriously for emotional reasons. There exists no rational argument against this statement:

When a man visits a prostitute, he has no intention of being (or staying) married to her and she has no intention of being (or staying) married to him. But in the eyes of God, they are one flesh. Their marriage is as real as if they were two virgins newly consumating their union after a wedding ceremony.

So too when a man rapes a woman, neither of them have any intention of being (or staying) married. But they are married, whether they desire it or not.

So too, a person is currently married to every single person they have ever had sex with (presuming their partners are still alive), even if they never had any intention of being (or staying) married.

Paul makes unabiguously clear that the marriage of Genesis 2:24 applies to “non-marital” sex, not just fully consensual, intentionally marital sex between formally married husbands and wives. These are simple realities, a bit like how anyone that produces sperm is male and anyone who produces eggs is female. You can try to deny it and try to “transform” into something else, but the reality is still the reality regardless of what your feelings tell you.

A male can no more choose to “transform” into a female by warrant of their feelings than a raped woman can choose to be unmarried by warrant of her feelings. Why? Because that’s the way God set it up. You don’t have to like it. You just have to accept it, at least if you want to follow God in more than name only.

Now, before the emotional people in the audience bring out their pitchforks and torches, just because two people are married does not mean they live together. I know that it can be difficult for people who are overwhelmed by their emotions to think rationally, so there is a very good chance that overly emotional people wouldn’t pick up on this rather obvious fact: where you live and who you are married to are not inherently equivalent concepts. After all, if you have an N-count greater than 1, there is a very good chance you are already quite skilled at not living with your spouse(s). So don’t give me ridiculous sob stories like this:

No high N-count woman ever needed to be instructed on how not to live with their husbands, so a raped women won’t have any difficulty figuring out how not to live with her rapist.

I can only imagine that people bring this up this obvious red-herring in order to ad hominem and slur people like me. It’s such a non-issue. No raped woman is ever going to be forced to live with her husband. At the very worst, she’s going to be asked by the church to remain unmarried for life because that’s what the Bible teaches she should do. There are many worse things than dedicating your life to the service of God instead of a husband.

What I do know is that when someone brings up an emotionally-laden red-herring into an argument, it isn’t because they want to engage rationally with the ideas. They want to control the narrative through emotional manipulation. Sorry, that won’t work on this blog.