Even if the premise of the op-ed is true (that people invest more care in what they eat than in who they have sexual relations with - I would dispute that most people today care at all about what they eat, outside an elite cadre), I am puzzled to find that George Will is puzzled by that result. People necessarily care about their physical aspect, and part of the taboo against sexual relations outside of marriage was precisely that. Fear of disease, and above all, pregnancy for women and unplanned fatherhood for men.
Technology has rendered moot most of that concern - the careful, prudent elite that Will (and Eberstadt's underlying article) describes can prevent pregnancy (or, more troublingly, terminate it), and disease can be both prevented and cured.
There is yet no answer to the twin physical dangers presented by food, which I will broadly term fat and cancer. There is no "pill" that governs weight the way the birth control pill governs fertility. Every day, it becomes more evident that bad food (though which bad food precisely, we don't know) causes or exacerbates the dread diseases that end so many of our lives. It is entirely rational when presented with this situation that the elite neurotic will expend his or her energy on food safety rather than sexual safety. Sex outside marriage was the corn finished beef of times past.
Instead, we get this prudish morality play from Will and Eberstadt. Odd.
EDIT: Eberstadt's article is more nuanced than Will's, I now think, and acknowledges some of the above.
2/26/2009
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The basic problem I see in both Will's and Eberstadt's articles is that they don't distinguish clearly between quantity of sex and number of partners. I don't know of anyone who thinks that lots of sex in a marriage is a bad thing (as I recall, JPII even tried giving advice on how husbands could make their wives enjoy sex more), and now that there is reliable birth control (despite JPII's disapproval of same), there's not much moral reason for a husband and wife to avoid sex at any time. You even have pastors challenging their flocks to have sex every day for a week. On the other hand, even people who are highly secular generally adhere to the idea that sexual promiscuity, particularly after marriage, is morally bad and physically hazardous due to risks of disease.
In contrast, while one aspect of the sin of gluttony is demanding a gourmet variety in one's eating, it's most often associated with large quantities of food. Certainly to the extent that gluttony is bad for you, it's due to quantity more than quality; preferring a wide variety of foods ranging across the Pyramid is good for your health.
In this respect, food and sex desires actually seem very different as to why they're categorized as bad.
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