The United Nations’ Misguided Views of Sex, Health, and Happiness
by Gerard Migeon and Grace Emily Stark, Public Discourse:
For the United Nations Population Fund, a few key concepts—sex as integral to well-being, and the importance of caring for others, consent, and bodily autonomy—exhaust the moral significance of sex. Its recent statement implies that sex is nothing but a purely physical act between two bodies. But can sex be distilled so simply?
On World Sexual Health Day (September 4th), the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) made a statement that reads like the gospel of modern sexual ideology. In four hundred words, it captured all the mainstream instincts about sex: identity and sexual expression, self-care and self-actualization, bodily autonomy, and freedom from having unwanted children via access to birth control and abortion; all while decrying the twin bogeymen of “stigma” and “discrimination.”
People will have different reactions when reading the UNFPA statement. Those who lean right of center and/or those who are religious may be suspicious of UNFPA’s distillation of sex down to nothing more than autonomy, consent, and pleasure. But even those who reject the assertions made by UNFPA may not be able to use simple words to defend the truth and counter them. On the other hand, liberal thinkers and perhaps most young people probably won’t be fazed by the philosophy presented in it, or at least they will be unable to discern its fallacies.
In either case, for those who want to deepen their understanding of human sexuality, it is worthwhile first to highlight what the statement gets right about human sexuality—but also to refute its errors, which can lead to devastating harm.
UNFPA’s Claims
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