Hypothesis: many of the sexual prohibitions in the Torah make sense if you view the purpose as increasing fertility, in a time when more children = more labor and larger fighting force.
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Replying to @s_r_constantin @Aella_Girl
1. The story of Onan, punished for masturbation, is about a man required by law to marry her brother’s widow (so she can still have children & financial support) who spitefully refuses to have babies with her & masturbates instead.
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Replying to @s_r_constantin @Aella_Girl
2. Many prohibited sexual acts (male homosexuality, bestiality, masturbation) do not produce offspring.
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Replying to @s_r_constantin @Aella_Girl
3. There are of course lots of reasons that people might make rules against sexual promiscuity but one that we easily forget is that, before antibiotics, STDs routinely made women sterile.
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Replying to @s_r_constantin @Aella_Girl
4. Forbidding having sex around a woman’s menstrual period has the effect of increasing fertility.
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Replying to @s_r_constantin @Aella_Girl
These are all consistent with the Catholic position that sexual pleasure is immoral unless used for procreation, and that *ideally* nobody would have sex at all but unfortunately we need reproduction. But this might be a later rationalization.
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Replying to @s_r_constantin @Aella_Girl
note that this is not the official catholic position, though it is a position that has been held by some catholics
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Replying to @halvorz @Aella_Girl
Oh? I thought there was something about “better to marry than to burn”?
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Replying to @s_r_constantin @Aella_Girl
the catholic position, based in part on this passage (as I understand it; IANC) is that celibacy is a higher, better calling than marriage, but that marriage and procreation is also very good
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Ok, thanks, my bad.
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