Religious Right Attacks New Culture War Enemy: Asexual Marriage
After decades of purity culture, now Evangelicals have a problem with sexless marriages?
After decades of purity culture, now Evangelicals have a problem with sexless marriages?
Originally published at Prism & Pen.
Republicans have been on culture-war rampage for years. From drag queen story hours, to Dr. Seuss, to Disney movies about a girl turning into a red panda, Republicans are addicted to creating and then fighting cultural enemies.
Now, Republicans’ incessant love for war has found a new target: asexual marriages.
They’re literally waging war against platonic marriages. I’m not lying.
Some 83 groups on the religious right sent a letter on July 26 imploring Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell to block the Respect for Marriage Act, because marriage equality would somehow open the door to “immorality” like platonic marriages.
The leading group behind the statement was Alliance Defending Freedom, an anti-LGBTQ+ hate group currently run by Christian homeschool movement leader and child abuse advocate Michael Farris.
Christian Nationalists Exporting Child Abuse Through Homeschooling
Because nothing says freedom like beating your kidmedium.com
The excerpt taken from page two of the letter lists a number of “non-traditional” marriages that they don’t want to be legal:
Plural marriages
Time-bound marriages
Open marriages
Marriages involving a minor or relative
Platonic marriages
Therein lies the religious right’s new culture war, written in plain text. Republicans are coming after platonic, asexual marriages!
This is a unique culture war panic created by religious nationalists.
I grew up in church, so I’m used to a regular playlist of culture war panics like gay marriage, Dungeons & Dragons, and rock music. I’ve never heard a pastor or religious official say that asexual marriage is a problem… until now.
The Kansas Family Voice and the Witherspoon Institute make clear they want all married couples to have sex even if they don’t wish to.
The Heritage Foundation claims married couples are obligated to have sex, and that it’s selfish not to do so. —
I guess I’ll give these religious groups points for originality, even though I find this new panic lunacy, as one who’s asexual.
What is the rationale behind the religious right’s hate for asexual marriages?
Well, if you take a look at the 83 groups mentioned in the letter and research their stances, it becomes clear that in their eyes, platonic, asexual marriages are antithetical to “God’s plan,” his “design” for marriage — for couples to have sex and procreate no matter what.
My friends @The_Ace_Couple on Twitter posted an excerpt from Kansas Family Voice, one of the 83 religious right groups that signed onto the letter to Senator McConnell—an affiliate of the Alliance Defending Freedom.
In a portion of their web site titled Sexuality, Kansas Family Voice declares that sex is written in every cell of our body as a “gift from God” and that sex should be expressed in marriage.
In the eyes of Kansas Family Voice, asexual marriages go against Christian dogma, since no sex is occuring.
Other members of the religious right make clear they would love to mandate sex within marriage, even for people who don’t wish to have sex.
The Witherspoon Institute is a right-wing think tank founded by Robert P. George, who created the anti-LGBTQ+ hate group American Principles Project. The American Principles Project & its current president Terry Schilling was the group behind multi-million dollar ads targeting Democrats with anti-trans libel in Michigan & Pennsylvania, including faking texts from a Democratic volunteer.
The Witherspoon Institute has strong ties to the Family Research Council, an anti-LGBTQ hate group founded by James Dobson of Focus on the Family.
In 2021, the Witherspoon Institute published a response to a New York Times article on asexual, platonic marriages, calling on the religious right to push back against them.
The author, Alan J. Hawkins, lamented that allowing platonic marriages removes or modifies “elements that once were pillars supporting the meaning of marriage.”
Hawkins claims without evidence that asexual, platonic marriage, “lacks the richness and color that sexual union bestows on relationships.” He urges that marriage be defined as sexual unions, saying marriages without sex bring “the continual pruning of marriage” that “reduces its core purpose to something that does not really set it apart from other committed relationship possibilities.”
What’s strange about the commentary is that Hawkins even admits that subtracting sex from the equation as a means of compatibility removes one potential element of disagreement and discord. Yet, he and the Witherspoon Institute still insist sex should be mandated.
The Kansas Family Voice and the Witherspoon Institute make clear they want all married couples to have sex even if they don’t wish to.
The Heritage Foundation claims married couples are obligated to have sex, and that it’s selfish not to do so.
A 2016 article by the Heritage Foundation titled The Obligations of Family Life: A Response to Modern Liberalism, the Heritage Foundation state how they are against the concept of autonomy, because in their words “the spirit of autonomy and the dependencies of marriage and family life are utter antagonisms”.
The Heritage Foundation states in their view that marriage and family life connect four core experiences that “set the stage for a specifically human thriving” and “create the most viable ground for a household living a common life, expressing and preparing for human virtues.”
These four experiences are:
Sex
Procreation
Enduring marriage between a man and a woman
Taking responsibility for children.
The Heritage Foundation claims autonomy ruins the concept of marriage, and is even a synonym selfishness:
Autonomy has within itself the seeds of ever-greater radicalism because coercion can be given an ever-broader definition, beginning with physical coercion but ending with any external or natural consideration shaping one’s “choice.” Truly autonomous choices, on this ever more radical understanding, must be made without the influence of imposed habits, human reason, education, social pressure, legal pressure, cultural expectations, or any other external demand. Autonomous choices spring from within the individual, lest they be traceable to something oppressive or alien to the individual. One wonders, therefore, whether such choices are made in consideration of anything but selfishness.
Therein lies the reason behind the religious right’s opposition to asexual marriage. In their view, asexual marriages are selfish, since they do not involve sex.
Groups like The Heritage Foundation state in no plain terms there is no love without sex, in their eyes. Even if a couple is deeply in love and committed to one another, it does not count in their world if sex is not a part of the relationship.
It sounds like the trope of love=sex and sex=love, which is a problematic trope in itself.
Even when both members of a married couple mutually agree they don’t want to have sex, groups like the Heritage Foundation find those marriages objectionable and call them selfish.
The religious right views exercising freedom of choice as nothing more than being selfish. They view choosing individual happiness as somehow wicked and evil, and they want to remove the right to choose from us all, forcing us into sex on their terms.
Does that not sound like rape culture when you break that down?
It’s weird to me seeing the religious right come right out and attack sexless marriages. Growing up in purity culture right in the heart of the Bible Belt, all I heard as a youth were messages about abstaining from sex, with pastors and Christian leaders imperatively saying “Don’t have sex! Don’t even think about it!”
Now, the commandment apparently is “Thou Shalt Have Sex! Deus Vult!”.
The religious right is stating in no uncertain terms that anyone not entering into a sexual, procreative relationship should not be allowed to marry.
It doesn’t matter if you’re gay, pan, bi, ace, or even just childfree.
If the religious right gets their way legally speaking, they are going to try to force every married couple into having sex, regardless of what the couple wants.
In the religious right’s worldview, it’s either get married and have sex or be forever single with no sex.
For myself as an aromantic asexual, I would be ecstatic to live a life without sex and single. I have no attraction and interest in sex, and I never cared to get married.
However, there are many aces who do wish to get married, not just for the legal benefits, but because they value companionship and experience romantic attraction.
I shudder as an asexual as to the implications behind this bizarre religious dogma.
How would a group like Alliance Defending Freedom police asexual marriages? Are they going to install cameras in everybody’s bedrooms so they can watch people have sex? Are they going to be in the room watching couples have sex?
That sounds a bit like voyeurism, wouldn’t you say?
These religious right groups remind me of my parents.
My mom and dad when I was a teenager were always saying to me “Don’t Have Sex!”
I’d come back with “OK. I don’t want to have sex!”
Then my parents would breathe a sigh of relief and say “Oh, thank goodness!”
Now that I’m 32, unmarried, childfree, and out as asexual, my parents are angry at me for not having sex.
Now, they are like “You’ve got to have sex so I can have grandchildren!”
You just can’t win with religious fundamentalism.
This is funny and sad at the same time.
When I came out to my family as asexual, they couldn’t understand it. It’s a foreign concept to them, seeing me be asexual and happy.
They can’t seem to grasp that I’m happy being my asexual self, living free of societal expectations.
All it is is me living my truth and being my authentic self.
I found them bizarre for not understanding me.
Now after seeing and reading the religious right’s stances against asexual marriage, I can see where their thinking comes from (though I still find it convoluted).
For years, religion told me abstinence and chastity were virtues. Knowing that, I thought they’d have no problem with asexual people like me.
I guess I was wrong for thinking that.
Stay fierce. Stay fly.
—Songbird ♠️💜🏹🂡
My article for LGBTQ Nation about the religious right’s attack on asexual marriages.