Version 1.3
Author: Norman E. Anderson
Come take the sexual ethics test to see where you come out.
But don't think you will be able to dispatch it quickly.
It may take you the rest of your life!
Contents
This test is asking for your opinion about what should be considered morally right and wrong about human sexual behavior. This is a test about beliefs, not sexual preferences, and, in particular, about what you believe, not what others have said. The focus is on sexual behavior, not reproductive issues or abortion. The test is designed both to entice you to further thought on the issues and to help you discern clearly where you stand as an individual.
This test is not a survey. The testing procedure is hardly scientific; and the author is less interested in patterns of belief across populations than in what reflective individuals think and, then, only if they want to share their answers. But even that is not the point. The point, restated, is for you to know yourself better and to enrich your own thought on the issues.
For each question, mark as many answers as you think are appropriate if the context calls for it. If two or more options are not independently true in your opinion but must be combined for you to select them, then please choose "other," and say so.
When reading vague terms, such as "sexual relations," please understand them in a more rather than less inclusive sense. Another example of a vague term is "religious tradition." Please read it as including even atheism and secular humanism.
Asking questions in sexual ethics is particularly difficult, because moral issues frequently overlap. For instance, a person may accept sexual relations between singles, but only if no incest is involved and if certain types of sexual activity are avoided; or a person may eschew a married person having sex with someone other than the marital partner, unless one of their lives is on the line. So most of the questions should be understood this way: Leaving aside extreme circumstances and provided that other prohibitions do not apply, is such and such generally true?
Certain answer patterns indicate that you may have elements in your own beliefs that fall into one identifiable line of thought or another. Some of these patterns are described in the supplementary document, entitled Evaluating Answers to the Sexual Ethics Test. <Under construction>
A few warnings are in order.
First, some of the questions are sexually frank. In an era when a President's sex life is being discussed in intimate detail world-wide, I doubt that anything herein will be thought to cross current lines of public discourse; but some individuals may take offense; and youngsters should probably not take this test. I would expect youngsters to be discouraged anyway, since an adult-level vocabulary is used and since the test requires a certain amount of extended concentration.
Second, some of the scenarios described and some of the rationales given as options will be regarded by some as morally repugnant. For what it is worth, they are not meant to suggest that people should engage in such behavior or that people should hold such opinions. Frankly I hope that a moral distaste for such things will put few people off, for those with morally sensitive souls may be the ones who will benefit the most.
Third, this test is for you alone as an individual. Certainly other uses can be conceived, for example, in an ethics class. Certainly I will be glad to see your answers, should you choose to share them with me. But if you share your answers with people to whom you are known or insist that they share theirs with you, problems could result. Personally I would hope for enjoyable constructive conversation, but you have been fairly cautioned.
Fourth, let me warn with only the slightest hint of facetiousness and much more of hopefulness that you may be trying to answer some of these questions for the rest of your life. Being an ethics test, this is less about the what of sexual morality, as important as that is to ethics, than about the whys and wherefores; and the whys and wherefores require not only a considerable amount of thought, but also frequent revisiting of the issues, especially as new twists emerge.
I hope that you enjoy the challenge. Please jump in, and take your time.
Go to test instructions.
Go to cluster 1. (Next)
Go to cluster 2.
Go to cluster 3.
Go to cluster 4.
Go to cluster 5.
Go to cluster 6.
Go to cluster 7.
Go to cluster 8.
Go to cluster 9.
Go to cluster 10.
Go to personal information questionnaire.
Navigating the subject areas within the Sexual Ethics Test
Go to report: The Theory of Human Sexuality and Marriage.
Go to home page.
First draft completed, December 21, 1998; posted, December 21, 1998; new url, January 28, 2004; last modification, December 7, 2008
Copyright ©1998-2008 by Norman E. Anderson