SEXUALITY DEFINED: JUDEO-CHRISTIAN INFLUENCES - THE CHRISTIAN TRADITION THE IMPACT ON SEXUAL MORALITY IN THE UNITED STATES

Of more immediate impact on sexual morality in the United States, however, was the new European morality which came to be termed Victorianism. The central thesis of this code, so named because it characterized the behavior of a large segment of influential English society during the reign of Queen Victoria, was the denial of sexuality, especially where sex came into conflict with one's economic and social responsibilities. The ideal Victorian male was urged to postpone marriage (and, therefore, deny or repress his sexuality) until he had "established" himself. The ideal Victorian female was delicate, pure, and incapable of any sexual feelings.

These values were expressed and elaborated upon in a large number of marriage manuals which served as popular guides in directing the lives of the typical Victorian citizen. Many of these texts relied on the authority of William Acton, a prominent English physician who translated Victorian values into a psuedo-medical context. Where earlier societies had relied upon religion and the concept of eternal damnation for those who engaged in sexual misconduct, Acton and the other "sex experts" of the times substituted the concept of disease as punishment for those who violated sexual morality. In his widely read text, The Functions and Disorders of the Reproductive Organs, Acton outlined a whole catalogue of horrible consequences that resulted from sexual deviations. For example, any boy who masturbated could be easily identified, according to Acton, by the following characteristics:

The frame is stunted and weak, the muscles undeveloped the eye is sunken and heavy, the complexion is sallow, pasty, or covered with spots of acne, the hands are damp and cold, and the skin moist. The boy shuns the society of others creeps about alone, joins with repugnance in the amusements of his schoolfellows. He cannot look anyone in the face, and becomes careless in dress and uncleanly in person. His intellect has become sluggish and enfeebled, and if his evil habits are persisted in, he may end in becoming a drivelling idiot or a peevish valetudinarian.

The religious views which were responsible for such opinions are even more clearly reflected in Bostwick's very popular Treatise on the Nature and Treatment of Seminal Diseases, Impotency and Other Kindred Afflictions, which related anti-Victorian sexual behavior with disease and ended with the stern Biblical admonition: "The wages of sin is death."

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Men's Health-Erectile Dysfunction