Audio only:
In this episode Trent breaks down a common “rule” given in Christian sexual morality.
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Trent Horn (00:00):
Many Christians have a sex problem. Now, it’s not the traditional opposition to evils like cornography or so- called free love and its disastrous consequences. Instead, it’s an attitude that’s told to millions of young people that leads them down one of two dangerous paths. Specifically, it’s this. It’s treating sex as a hazard to be avoided instead of as a gift to be joyfully cherished. When many Christians learn about sex, it sounds like the religious equivalent of the sex ed scene from mean girls.
(Mean Girls Movie Clip) (00:29):
Don’t have sex because you will get pregnant and die.
Trent Horn (00:33):
Now, it’s good to teach people to not fornicate, but if the only thing Christians are taught about sex is that it’s bad outside of marriage, but good in marriage, then sex becomes a meaningless taboo. The 18th century explorer, Captain Cook, discovered that Polynesian men and women were not allowed to eat together. When his sailors asked why the indigenous people weren’t allowed to do that, they said it was taboo, but even they couldn’t explain what the word taboo meant. It just meant don’t do it. And so it’s not surprising that when the taboo was later repealed, nobody cared. Deprive the taboo rules of their original context, and they at once are apt to appear as a set of arbitrary prohibitions. If they do not acquire some new status quickly, both their interpretation and their justification become debatable. We see this today when many people leave the Christian faith because they disagree with sexual ethics that to them seem arbitrary.
(01:27):
Or if they do stay, they might live within this taboo in a way that leads to bad outcomes. What I call the pervert and the Puritan. Let’s start with the pervert. I’m not the pervert. To pervert something means to distort its intended function. And so a sexual pervert is someone who uses sex in a distorted way. For example, I’ve addressed the perversion of bestiality in previous episodes because human sex is meant to only include humans in it, which can be easily discerned from the procreative elements built into human sex organs. However, some Christians think sex can never be perverted as long as it happens within marriage and only includes the spouses. But consider this February 2026 article from Protestia that describes how a Protestant pastor filmed over 50 sex tapes with his wife. The tapes were discovered when police investigated the pastor’s son for possessing violent torture child materials, and they found the videos of his parents on the boy’s hard drive.
(02:24):
The pastor and his wife said in a statement, “Within the covenant of our marriage, my wife and I created private, intimate photos and videos. Although those files were password protected, they were hacked and they were hacked from a device without our consent, without our knowledge, and that was done by our son, who was high at the time.” I’m sorry, and this is horrible, but I kind of laugh at the last part. Like, are you for real? The excuse, “because I got high,” has been used to downplay many mistakes, but no amount of marijuana should cause a regular person to want to see sex tapes of his own parents.
(02:56):
The only correct response to seeing that kind of material is to pour bleach into your eyes. Warning, do not pour bleach in eyes. Advice is not literal and only an excuse for yet another Simpsons reference. Protestia then hosted a poll that asked, Would you leave a church if you discovered your pastor and his wife were regularly making sex tapes of themselves for their own private use? Now, I just call my bishop if it turned out my priest in the Latin right had a wife at all, but I wouldn’t stop being Catholic. However, in this poll, which I assume involves mostly Protestants, 40% said they would stay in that church if the pastor and his wife made sex tapes for their own private use. But what exactly is this private use? If it’s just for posterity or personal study or personal arousal before the marital act, that might not be sinful, but it is colossally imprudent.
(03:48):
So much so that one should doubt this person has the qualities of being temperate, sensible, and above reproach that one Timothy three lays out for pastors. But if it’s for something else like arousable material to encourage masturbation or mutual masturbation, then that’s a grave misuse of sex within marriage. But while the catechism of the Catholic church clearly says acts of masturbation are immoral, many Protestants say this act cannot be immoral between spouses. They say the Bible doesn’t condemn the act of masturbation itself, only extramarital lust. You can see this in my previous conversation with Taco Talks who likened masturbation in marriage to a kind of long distance sex with your spouse. How about a husband who or a soldier travels a lot away from their wife for a very long time, they engage in acts of masturbation thinking about their spouse?
Taco Talks (04:43):
I think that that would be morally acceptable for God. Yeah.
Trent Horn (04:47):
Okay. So they can engage in acts of masturbation as long as they’re thinking about their spouse?
Taco Talks (04:52):
Yeah. I think that them doing that would still be in a weird way, them having sex with each other, just not actually with each other.
Trent Horn (05:03):
And it’s not just Taco. Here’s Sean McDowell, who I previously chatted with on the channel, offering his take on the question.
Sean McDowell (05:08):
So I think we can all agree that lust in masturbation is wrong, but let’s look at a few more particular scenarios. What about with spouses? I think most Christians would say masturbation in a marriage, if there’s a loving commitment between them and no pressure between spouses doesn’t involve a third party, would be fine.
Trent Horn (05:29):
And here’s Judah Smith, a well-known Protestant pastor being candid in an Instagram livestream.
Judah Smith (05:34):
It can be very much a productive tool. And I’ll just be very candid. And when I’m traveling away from Chelsea, when I can fantasize about Chelsea and use masturbation as a gift to keep myself focused.
Trent Horn (05:49):
And these aren’t extreme hypotheticals that only apply to traveling husbands. Couples that have children experience a period of six to eight weeks after childbirth where doctors recommend against sexual intercourse to prevent infection. And for many couples, this can be a trial and they might seek masturbation or other acts to alleviate that burden. But Hebrews 13: four says, let marriage be held in honor among all and let the marriage bed be undefiled, for God will judge the immoral and adulterous. The author of Hebrews uses the specific Greek word for adultery moikea, but also pornea, the Greek word for general sexual immorality. This means something beyond adultery could defile the marriage bed, like sexual immorality between a husband and wife. But if you say the only rule about sex is that it’s bad outside of marriage and good inside of marriage, then it’s easy to think only adultery or extramarital lust could defile marriage.
(06:46):
Now, some Protestants might just bite the bullet on this and say, “I’m being a guilt-riddled Catholic and marital masturbation isn’t sinful.” But I hope these critics will follow this line of thinking to its logical conclusion and then rethink it. If a husband can release his seed basically anywhere in private, as long as he’s thinking about his wife, then is it immoral for him to do this in his wife’s mouth, i.e., One prominent type of oral sex? Focus on the family says, couples must use their own judgment regarding oral sex. And godquestions.org says-
Got Questions (07:18):
Within the confines of marriage, oral sex is free of sin if it is God honoring, exclusive, loving, other oriented, unifying, and mutually agreed upon.
Trent Horn (07:28):
Evangelical YouTuber Alan Parr says
Alan Parr (07:31):
This. Either way you slice it, there is no scripture that you can look at that says you should not do this. It’s a sin or you should, you should go ahead and feel free to do that. I think this is something that you need to leave up to the actual couple in terms of their comfort level. But if you do feel comfortable with it, then move forward with it because you don’t need to feel guilty for something that God has not clearly said is a sin. The
Trent Horn (07:58):
Protestant Pastor John Piper says oral sex isn’t unnatural as long as it’s sexually desired because, and yes, this is his argument. Female breasts aren’t naturally designed to nourish husbands, but husbands can still morally enjoy this part of their wife’s body. Therefore, even if a wife’s mouth was not designed to receive his seed, if everyone enjoys it, it’s still morally permissible.
John Piper (08:20):
Even though there is very little anatomical correlation between a man’s hands or his lips and his wife’s breasts, it surely seems to be quote natural in another way, namely a built-in delight and desire that God in his word seems to commend for our marital enjoyment. So I ask, well, might there be similar desires for oral sex or other kinds of sex? So I doubt that we should put a limit on a married couple based on the claim of it being unnatural.
Trent Horn (09:08):
But one can make the case that the biological design of female breasts indicate that they do not have only one function or lactation because humans are the only mammals that have permanently enlarged breasts. In every other mammalian species, breasts first appear in pregnancy and markedly decrease after lactation, but in humans, they first appear in puberty and do not deflate like in other primates. Here’s a quote in a 2021 abstract and evolution in human behavior that I have to read in a bemused academic quasi-Morgan Freeman tone. Human breasts are larger and more enduring than reproductively necessary. Is thus unclear why this costly, yet conspicuous phenotype has been selected for, or what information they might convey about the underlying quality of the female. But if Protestants recognize that the emission of male seed into an organ like a male anus is disordered because this isn’t designed for procreative reception, then shouldn’t they say the same thing about either the male or female oral orifice or the female anus for that matter?
(10:10):
A lot of Protestants treat anal sex between spouses like an extreme sport. The only thing you should know is just to know the risks before you do it. Godquestions.org says this.
Got Questions (10:22):
The Bible does not explicitly speak for or against anal sex within marriage. The medical community, however, warns of the significantly increased risk of tissue damage and bacterial infection that accompanies anal sex. By following biblical principles and factoring in the medical risk, a couple can come to a God-honoring decision together.
Trent Horn (10:44):
And Alan Parr says this about marital anal intercourse.
Alan Parr (10:47):
If you are going to engage in that as a married couple, then just be aware of the risks, be aware of the consequences, being aware of the potential problems that could come as a result of this, and then make your decision from there, right? But make sure that you’re following some of the other guidelines that I mentioned here. Are you comfortable with this? Are both people on board with this? And if so, then you know what? Whatever you do behind closed doors is your business. I’m not going to say that it’s something that you should do, and I’m not going to say it’s something that you shouldn’t because I don’t have the right to speak on certain things that God and the scriptures have not clearly spoken on.
Trent Horn (11:25):
That’s why I’m grateful for Protestants who say that we need more than biblical proof text to determine the morality of sexual behavior. There are many Protestants who would disagree with these takes and say that we also need a robust theory of natural law and the witness of Christian history, which universally condemned this behavior, calling it sodomy until just very recently. But if you use that standard, then you absolutely have to reject forms of contraception that involve a man releasing his seed into something that is not his wife. This might be koidus interruptis, which Onan resorted to in Genesis 38 that resulted in a divine punishment, or it might be releasing into a condom or a female diaphragm during intercourse. And once you’ve done that, you’re not too far away from applying those standards to hormonal contraception as being wrong because it directly sterilizes what God gave to be life giving and is a part of a practice, contraception that was opposed by all Christians, Catholic Protestant and Orthodox until the year 1930 at the Anglican Lambeth Conference.
(12:27):
So I’m grateful as a Catholic that the church teaches that sex has two ends, unitive and procreative, and neither can be purposefully frustrated. For example, it’s wrong to create children in test tubes like in vitro fertilization because this separates the procreative end of sex from the unitive end. Likewise, it’s wrong to sterilize the sexual act so that procreation is impossible. Paragraph 23:66 of the Catechism says the following. “Facundity is a gift. An end of marriage for conjugal love naturally tends to be fruitful. A child does not come from outside as something added onto the mutual love of the spouses, but springs from the very heart of that mutual giving as its fruit and fulfillment. So the church, which is on the side of life, teaches that quote,” It is necessary that each and every marriage act remain ordered per se to the procreation of human life.
(13:22):
This particular doctrine expounded on numerous occasions by the magisterium is based on the inseparable connection established by God, which man on his own initiative may not break between the unitive significance and the procreative significance, which are both inherent to the marriage act. This means at a bare minimum, a husband may not purposely climax outside of his wife’s vagina. Now, if you’re a cunning linguist, you might point out that oral sex also encompasses behaviors that do not result in climax, but still involve husbands and wives sharing in sexual pleasure. That is a, let me choose my adjective carefully here, an important subject. And so I’m going to save that for a future episode. I do find Catholic therapists Greg Popchick’s book, Holy Sex, to be a good guide on navigating these issues and engaging in what we might call faithful foreplay. My main point is just that if your only rule for sex is good in marriage, bad outside of marriage, then you can end up with the perverted position that completed acts of sodomy, like oral and anal intercourse are good if they occur in marriage, which is a lie.
(14:31):
Indeed, I prefer to talk about the wrongness of sodomy rather than the wrongness of homosexual conduct because numbers-wise, acts of sodomy are far more likely to be committed between opposite sex couples rather than same-sex couples. Let’s go back to where we started. There is a problem when Christians are told sex is bad and marriage magically transforms it into something good. You can end up with Christians thinking immoral sex is moral or the perversion problem, but you can also end up with Christians thinking moral sex is immoral, or what I call the Puritan problem. Now I need to add a historical caveat here. This is based on the stereotype of the Puritans hating sexual pleasure, because in reality, the Puritans just hated sexual sin like adultery and fornication, which is something that we should all hate. The Puritan author, William Gouge, wrote the following in his 1627 book, Domestical Duties.
(15:27):
“As the man must be satisfied at all times in his wife and even ravish with her love, so must the woman be satisfied at all times in her husband and even ravished with his love. But the pseudopuritan mentality that sex is bad and dirty even within marriage persists among some Christians. I mean, imagine you’re told all throughout child and young adulthood that sex is bad. Sex makes you impure. Sex needs to be avoided at all costs. Then one day, those same people tell you, ” Hey, you’re married now. Forget everything we told you and rejoice in each other. “For many people, it’s difficult to set those attitudes aside and they get carried into the marriage bed. Likewise, if you’re used to being in dating relationships where you have to slam on the breaks to stop sinful intimacy, that reflex can be hard to shake in marriage.
(16:16):
And if you were a victim of sexual abuse, which is not uncommon, that can further harm your ability to freely give yourself in the marital act. Also, a husband might think intercourse is just a duty each partner must fulfill, and he has no corresponding duty to make sure his wife is satisfied in intercourse or reaches sexual climax. That’s why I appreciate the teachings of Pope St. John Paul II in his Wednesday audiences that are now called Theology of the Body and the practical advice in his earlier work, love and responsibility, which he wrote when he was the auxiliary Bishop of Krakow. He said,” It is necessary to insist that intercourse must not serve merely as a means of allowing sexual excitement to reach its climax in one of the partners, i.e. The man alone, but that climax must be reached in harmony, not at the expense of one partner, but with both partners fully involved.
(17:06):
Now, there is a fine line between sinful mutual masturbation and illicit sexual stimulation within the context of the marital act that brings both partners to climax. I’m not going to get into where the line is drawn in this episode, but at the very least, we should agree that Christians have a sex problem if they think that the male climax through manual, oral, or even anal stimulation is okay as long as it’s within marriage. And they also have a problem if they think sex is dirty and impure or bad even in marriage. And so it’s not okay to even learn about how to make sex as enjoyable as it can be for your spouse. And frankly, this often happens when young people are not given education about the marital act beyond being told, don’t do it outside of marriage. One time when I was speaking at a Catholic homeschool co-op, and this has happened to other speakers I know, by the way, I was reprimanded for mentioning the word sex.
(18:04):
Not because I used graphic language. I spoke very abstractly. I was reprimanded because the co-op leader told me they still had some high school students who didn’t know what sex was, and so they weren’t okay with that word being mentioned. Keep in mind the youngest of those students would have been 14 years old, and I wouldn’t be surprised if their parents weren’t planning on telling them about sex anytime soon. Now, obviously we shouldn’t be graphic in our language or unduly stripped children of their innocence, but we also shouldn’t handicap teenagers who’ve reached the canonical age of marriage by keeping them hopelessly naive and ignorant about sex. Instead of keeping them safe, you’re more likely to put them in a position where they fall into fornication, or even a position where an adult with bad intentions can take advantage of their ignorance and sexually abuse them.
(18:54):
That’s why in my episode on female corn addiction, I said women are much more likely to look at explicit materials as a kind of educational tool to help them learn things about their sexuality nobody else has ever felt comfortable telling them. So we need to create healthy spaces for adult Christians to learn about sex, especially if their families never taught them about it. In some cases though, the popularizers of material like theology of the body can treat sex too flippantly or use inappropriate descriptions and metaphors, which is Dawn Eden’s criticism of some of Christopher West’s material. But in other cases, the discussion about sex can be so mired in convoluted metaphors that the audience doesn’t even know what’s being discussed anymore. Like how in the 1950s, you couldn’t say the word pregnant on television, so all kinds of workarounds had to be used when Lucille Ball became with child, as they would say, on I Love Lucy.
(19:47):
So as in all things, there needs to be a balance, but even if you don’t think that the marital act is bad or dirty in and of itself, a puritanical attitude can manifest if you think sex is only for procreation or it’s only free of sin if it’s used explicitly for procreation. And this was an errant view in parts of church history, as can be seen in St. Augustine who criticize men for engaging in the marital act with their pregnant wives. In fact, I know some Catholics who claim natural family planning or NFP is the same as contraception because it’s sinful to have sex if you know that you can’t get pregnant, such as during a wife’s less fertile period of her cycle, or even when your wife is currently pregnant, but that’s a category error. I’m playing the game of baseball, even if I’m playing a team I can’t possibly beat, and so I don’t score a single run.
(20:40):
However, I’m not playing baseball if I just hit pop flies in a field and throw the ball around back and forth. I’m enjoying pleasures associated with baseball, but if I call that act a game of baseball, I’m just lying or hopelessly mistaken. Likewise, you are still using and not misusing the marital act, even if the odds of conception from a particular act are low or even zero, like if the woman’s ovaries and uterus have been removed due to cancer, but the same is not true of acts like sodomy that have a 0% chance of conception because they aren’t even ordered to that end. God gave married couples 365 days a year and an extra day every four years to come together as husband and wife. The probability of the wife becoming pregnant on any one of those days will vary between close to 100% and 0%, depending on age, points of recycle and health conditions, but it’s not sinful for a husband and wife to freely give themselves to one another on any one of those particular days instead of any other day.
(21:43):
Now, a lot of Catholics also think you can only use natural family planning to refrain from intimacy when the likelihood of pregnancy is high if you have a grave reason like that you’re going to die if you get pregnant or your children will starve to death, but that’s not what the church teaches. PopePaul the sixth said in Humana Vite that “If therefore there are well grounded reasons for spacing births arising from the physical or psychological condition of husband or wife or from external circumstances, the church teaches that married people may then take advantage of the natural cycles imminent in the reproductive system and engage in marital intercourse only during those times that are infertile, thus controlling birth in a way which does not in the least offend the moral principles which we have just explained.” Likewise, the catechism of the Catholic church says for just reasons spouses may wish to space the births of their children.
(22:36):
So to summarize, Christians should not treat sex as something bad that magically becomes good in marriage. Sex is a good thing in itself and a gift to human beings. While other animals engage in reproduction, only human beings engage in pro- creation, partnering with God to bring a new person with an immortal soul into existence through an act that bonds that child’s mother and father together in the one flesh bond of marriage. When we view sex in this way, we avoid using it just for pleasure, which can often lead to perverted ends, and we avoid thinking that sex has nothing to do with pleasure, which can lead to pseudo puritanical views that rob marriage of the joy that God intended for it. And in living out holy marriages, Christians serve as a witness of God’s love to the world. The second century writer, Mathates, talks about how Christians stood out in the pagan Roman world that was often riddled with sexual debauchery.
(23:34):
He writes, “Christians marry, as do all others. They beget children, but they do not destroy their offspring. They have a common table, but not a common bed. They are in the flesh, but they do not live after the flesh. They pass their days on earth, but they are citizens of heaven.” For more information on this, I’ll leave links to articles and books on this topic and the description below. If you liked today’s episode, then please consider supporting us at trrenhornpodcast.com so we can keep creating great content. Thank you guys so much for watching and I hope you have a very blessed day.