My former professor, David Gelernter, has a piece in the Weekly Standard attacking sexual freedom on the grounds that premarital sex destroys a young man or woman's ability to feel romantic love (defined, in Gelernter's inimitably circular way, as excluding any bond between two people who don't wait to have sex). Kevin Drum and Britt Peterson are competing to find the most cringe-inducing riff. They've each found some doozies.
First Britt, noting Gelernter's exception to the no-sex-before-marriage rule exclusive to men: "Experience suggests … that a few casual, premature sexual encounters at the whorehouse level, with persons you couldn’t possibly love and never count on meeting again, can’t do much damage to your capacity for romantic love." Experience suggests? Whose experience, precisely? Persons you couldn't possibly love? Never mind, let's move on.
Here's Kevin, noting that for all his misguided literary flourishes, Gelernter thinks of love as the output of a computer-scientific operation: "Keeping steady company with a person you adore plus not sleeping with her (or him) yields "being in love," which is a new state of mind that is more than the sum of its parts." You heard right, it's really just that simple.
I think I've found a strophe to top the ones Britt and Kevin cited:
Premarital, premature sex drains the power reserve that would have propelled them into emotional (versus mere physical) adulthood.
I'm certain I've heard that before, but where? Ah, yes:
Group Capt. Lionel Mandrake: Uh, Jack, Jack, listen, tell me, tell me, Jack. When did you first… become… well, develop this theory? General Jack D. Ripper: Well, I, uh… I… I… first became aware of it, Mandrake, during the physical act of love. Group Capt. Lionel Mandrake: Hmm. General Jack D. Ripper: Yes, a uh, a profound sense of fatigue… a feeling of emptiness followed. Luckily I… I was able to interpret these feelings correctly. Loss of essence. Group Capt. Lionel Mandrake: Hmm. General Jack D. Ripper: I can assure you it has not recurred, Mandrake. Women uh… women sense my power and they seek the life essence. I, uh… I do not avoid women, Mandrake. Group Capt. Lionel Mandrake: No. General Jack D. Ripper: But I… I do deny them my essence.
Frankly, Sterling Hayden is a lot more convincing than Gelernter.
Just for the sake of practice in conceptual analysis if for no other reason, let's take Gelernter and his formulation seriously for a moment. Recall:
Keeping steady company with a person you adore plus not sleeping with her (or him) yields "being in love," which is a new state of mind that is more than the sum of its parts.
Okay, let's give Gelernter the term "being in love," and the (extraordinarily idiosyncratic) concept to which it refers. I'm going to define a new term, call it being in love' (read "being in love prime"). To be in love' is to be in a state qualitatively identical to being in love, except that abstaining from sex features nowhere in its causal history. So apparently, many of the people I thought are or have been in love never actually were. But they didn't miss out on anything — they were or are in love'. Which feels exactly the same.
Being in love' is clearly logically and metaphysically possible; there's nothing contradictory about it. It's nomologically possible; no physical law precludes it. Gelernter would deny that it's psychologically possible. The empirical data (which Gelernter never even nods towards) show otherwise. My experience, if not Gelernter's shows otherwise too. Gelernter falls back on The Classics to make his case.* Except that, as Britt Peterson shows, Gelernter doesn't even understand the literature he's citing. So being in love' turns out to be a viable, extant state of being. And (to make a point Gelernter ought to appreciate), from a game-theoretic perspective, it's the rational choice for a young man or woman to make: all the benefits of being in love Gelernter's way, plus a lot more fun getting there.
*Slight aside, has anyone else noticed the tendency of some conservatives to use The Classics as a wedge to be driven between themselves and reality? I recall a debate between Paul Kennedy and Charles Hill on American imperialism, in which Hill argued that we should base our foreign policy on Dante's advice. Really, he did.
UPDATE: Tamar seems to agree with me, although I don't agree with her about halacha being important.