Christ-Admirers: The Category Error of Pleasure-Based Sexual Ethics
Author’s Note
This paper will be read by some as an attack on gay people. It is not.
It is an examination of a framework, one that has gained traction in progressive Christian circles but whose logic extends far beyond the question of homosexuality. That framework treats pleasure and bonding as sufficient criteria for legitimate sexual expression. I argue that this framework is incompatible with following Christ, regardless of where it is applied.
I write as someone who has used versions of this framework to justify my own failures. I am not pointing fingers from a position of moral superiority. I am identifying a pattern of reasoning I have had to confront in myself and continue to confront. The Christian life is not a state of achieved righteousness but an ongoing process of examination, repentance, and realignment with Christ and His Word.
My concern is not with people who experience same-sex attraction. Many such people are faithful Christians who acknowledge the biblical sexual ethic and pursue obedience at great personal cost. They deserve the church’s respect, support, and fellowship. They are not the subject of this paper.
My concern is with a theological move: the construction of frameworks designed to make Scripture say the opposite of what it says, in order to align God’s will with contemporary sexual preferences. This move is not limited to the question of homosexuality, but the homosexual question has become the place where the framework is most explicitly articulated and defended.
If the argument of this paper is correct, the stakes are high. Not because sexual sin is uniquely damning, but because the systematic suppression of biblical truth in order to justify sin is a different kind of problem than sin itself. We all sin. Not all of us build theologies to rename our sin as faithfulness.
I offer this paper in the hope that it will be received as it is intended: not as condemnation but as a call to examine our frameworks, including mine, against the pattern Christ established.
Abstract
A increasingly common argument defends homosexual acts by appealing to God’s design: since God created anatomical structures capable of producing intense pleasure, pursuing that pleasure must align with divine intention. This paper demonstrates that such reasoning depends on a hidden hedonist premise that historic Christianity has never held and cannot hold without abandoning its central commitments. The argument proves too much: applied consistently, it would vindicate gluttony, addiction, adultery, and any pleasurable use of any capacity. Christianity has always treated pleasure as a secondary good accompanying rightly ordered acts, not as the criterion defining which acts are rightly ordered. More fundamentally, the pleasure-bonding framework cannot be reconciled with Christ’s pattern of self-denial, costly obedience, and submission to the Father’s purposes. Those who adopt “pleasure and bonding suffice” as their operative sexual ethic while claiming Christian identity have not merely made a moral error; they have committed a category error. They may admire Christ, but they have not submitted to the pattern of discipleship He established. The distinction between Christ-admirer and Christian is not rhetorical sharpness but definitional precision.
Keywords: sexual ethics, hedonism, natural law, discipleship, homosexuality, moral theology
1. Introduction: A Clever Argument and Its Hidden Foundation
The argument appears on social media, in progressive Christian spaces, and occasionally in more sophisticated theological discussions. It runs roughly as follows:
God designed the male prostate as a powerful pleasure center. This organ can be most directly stimulated through the rectum. Pleasure, we are told, serves bonding, and bonding serves relational goods that God values. Therefore, condemning anal penetration between men is inconsistent with affirming God’s design. Either the prohibition is merely human tradition, or the Designer is incoherent.
The argument has rhetorical force because it appears to turn conservative premises against conservative conclusions. If you affirm that God designed human bodies, and if you affirm that God’s designs are good, then you seem committed to affirming that what God designed for pleasure should be pursued.
This paper argues that the inference is fallacious. Not because the anatomical claims are false, but because the argument depends on a premise that sits outside any serious Christian account of sex, the body, and the moral life. That premise is hedonism: the view that pleasure is the criterion by which we discern what is good. Christianity has never held this view. It cannot hold this view without abandoning its central commitments. And those who operate from this premise while claiming Christian identity have not made a minor interpretive error but a fundamental category mistake about what it means to follow Christ.
2. The Argument Stated Fairly
Before critique, fairness requires stating the strongest version of the position.
Premise 1: God designed human bodies, including anatomical structures capable of producing pleasure.
Premise 2: The prostate gland, located in a position accessible through the rectum, functions as a powerful pleasure center when stimulated.
Premise 3: Sexual pleasure serves good purposes: bonding between partners, stress relief, relational intimacy, and (in procreative contexts) encouragement toward reproduction.
Premise 4: If God designed a capacity for pleasure and pleasure serves good purposes, then pursuing that pleasure through the most effective means aligns with God’s design.
Conclusion: Therefore, condemning homosexual acts that access this pleasure center is inconsistent with affirming God’s good design. The condemnation must originate from human tradition rather than divine intention.
The argument can be generalized beyond the prostate example. Any anatomical capacity for pleasure becomes evidence of divine endorsement. The clitoris exists primarily for pleasure rather than reproduction, so female sexual pleasure is God-designed and should be pursued. Nerve endings throughout the body respond pleasurably to touch, so physical intimacy in whatever configuration produces pleasure reflects God’s design.
The underlying logic: pleasure is the signal of design alignment. What feels good is what God made to feel good, and what God made to feel good should be pursued.
3. The Hidden Premise Exposed
The argument’s persuasive force depends entirely on Premise 4, and Premise 4 is not a Christian premise. It is hedonism wearing theological clothing.
The move from “God made this pleasurable” to “therefore pursuing this pleasure is good” requires an additional assumption: that pleasure-production is the criterion by which we discern whether an act aligns with God’s design. This assumption is not argued for; it is smuggled in. And it is precisely what historic Christianity has denied.
Consider the structure more carefully:
God designed X to produce pleasure.
[Hidden premise: Whatever God designed to produce pleasure should be pursued in whatever way produces that pleasure.]
Therefore, pursuing X in whatever way produces pleasure aligns with God’s design.
The hidden premise is doing all the work. Without it, the argument does not go through. With it, the argument proves far more than its proponents intend.
4. The Reductio: Pleasure-Design Logic Applied Consistently
If “God designed this for pleasure, therefore pursuing that pleasure is good” is a valid inference, it must be valid across all cases. Apply the logic consistently:
Opioid receptors. God designed the human brain with opioid receptors capable of producing profound euphoria. These receptors respond to both endogenous opioids (produced by the body) and exogenous opioids (heroin, fentanyl). The pleasure is real, intense, and God-designed. By the pleasure-design logic, opioid abuse aligns with God’s design since it accesses pleasure centers God created.
Taste receptors. God designed taste buds that respond pleasurably to sugar, fat, and salt without any built-in satiation limit for these substances. The pleasure of eating beyond nutritional need is real and God-designed. By the pleasure-design logic, gluttony aligns with God’s design since it pursues pleasure God made possible.
Dopamine and novelty. God designed the dopamine system to reward novelty, including sexual novelty. Pornography and promiscuity activate these reward circuits intensely. The pleasure is real and God-designed. By the pleasure-design logic, pornography use and sexual variety-seeking align with God’s design.
Aggression and dominance. God designed neurological systems that produce satisfaction from dominance, victory, and even aggression. The pleasure of defeating an enemy is real and God-designed. By the pleasure-design logic, violence that produces this pleasure aligns with God’s design.
Adultery. Extramarital affairs can produce intense pleasure and genuine bonding. The feelings are real: dopamine, oxytocin, the whole neurochemical cascade. By the pleasure-design logic, adultery aligns with God’s design when the pleasure and bonding are genuine.
Masturbation. If the goal is accessing designed pleasure through the most direct route, masturbation achieves orgasm more reliably than intercourse. It is the “most direct route” to sexual pleasure. By the pleasure-design logic, masturbation should be preferred over intercourse as more efficiently aligned with God’s design.
The reductio is not a slippery slope fallacy. It is an application of the same logic to other cases. If the logic is sound, these conclusions follow. If these conclusions are unacceptable, the logic is unsound. The prostate argument is not uniquely compelling; it simply applies a bad principle to a culturally favored conclusion.
5. The Christian Alternative: Ends, Not Sensations
Historic Christianity, drawing on both biblical revelation and natural law reasoning, has never treated pleasure as the criterion of right action. It has treated pleasure as a secondary good that accompanies rightly ordered acts.
The distinction is fundamental. Consider two different frameworks:
Hedonist framework: An act is good if it produces pleasure (and perhaps meets other conditions like consent). Pleasure is the measuring rod. We determine whether an act aligns with God’s design by asking whether it produces the pleasure God designed us to experience.
Teleological framework: An act is good if it is ordered toward its proper ends. Pleasure accompanies rightly ordered acts as a secondary good, but pleasure does not define which acts are rightly ordered. We determine whether an act aligns with God’s design by asking whether it fulfills the purposes for which the relevant capacities were given.
On the teleological framework, the question is not “does this produce pleasure?” but “does this fulfill the ends toward which this capacity is ordered?”
What are the ends of human sexuality? Historic Christianity has identified two: procreation and one-flesh union within covenant. These are not arbitrary impositions but readings of the creation narrative (Genesis 1:28, “be fruitful and multiply”; Genesis 2:24, “the two shall become one flesh”) confirmed throughout Scripture and reflected in the biological structure of human sexuality itself.
Pleasure accompanies the rightly ordered expression of sexuality. It is a genuine good. But it is not the criterion by which we determine whether an expression is rightly ordered. The form, fit, and function of sexual union is given by its telos, not by what produces the most intense sensation.
This is why the incapacity objection fails. When critics ask, “What about infertile couples? What about post-menopausal sex?” they assume the teleological framework is about guaranteed outcomes rather than act structure. But the distinction is between acts ordered toward their proper end (even when frustrated by incapacity) and acts whose structure is intrinsically closed to that end.
A post-menopausal couple engaged in marital union performs an act whose form remains procreative-type even when procreation is impossible. The act is rightly ordered. Infertility does not disorder the act any more than hunger disorders eating when food turns out to be non-nutritive. The capacity is exercised in its proper mode even when the outcome is frustrated.
Homosexual acts, by contrast, are not frustrated procreative acts. They are acts whose very structure excludes the procreative end entirely. There is no sense in which anal penetration between men is “procreative-type sex that happened not to result in procreation.” It is a different kind of act altogether. The parallel is not infertile intercourse but eating sand: a misuse of the capacity that is not even aimed at the proper end.
6. Christ as Exemplar: Self-Denial, Not Self-Fulfillment
The teleological framework is not merely philosophical preference. It coheres with the pattern of discipleship Christ established.
Consider Christ’s teaching on what it means to follow Him:
“If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me. For whoever would save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake and the gospel’s will save it.” (Mark 8:34-35, ESV)
The pattern is self-denial in service of the Father’s purposes, not self-fulfillment through maximizing subjective goods. The body is offered as a living sacrifice (Romans 12:1), brought under discipline (1 Corinthians 9:27), presented as a temple of the Holy Spirit (1 Corinthians 6:19-20). Nowhere does the New Testament treat bodily pleasure as a criterion for discerning God’s will. Nowhere does it suggest that the intensity of a pleasurable experience indicates divine endorsement.
Paul’s treatment of sexuality in 1 Corinthians 6-7 is instructive. The Corinthians apparently held something like the pleasure-design view: the body is for pleasure, so pursue pleasure. Paul’s response is categorical:
“The body is not meant for sexual immorality, but for the Lord, and the Lord for the body.” (1 Corinthians 6:13, ESV)
“Flee from sexual immorality. Every other sin a person commits is outside the body, but the sexually immoral person sins against his own body. Or do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you, whom you have from God? You are not your own, for you were bought with a price. So glorify God in your body.” (1 Corinthians 6:18-20, ESV)
The body belongs to the Lord. It is not a pleasure-maximizing instrument but a temple. The criterion for bodily conduct is not “what produces pleasure?” but “what glorifies God?” And glorifying God means ordering bodily acts toward their created ends within the boundaries God has established, not pursuing whatever configuration of bodies produces the most intense sensation.
Christ Himself exemplified this pattern. His life was not oriented toward maximizing His own pleasure or even His own flourishing in any immediate sense. He “emptied himself, by taking the form of a servant” (Philippians 2:7). He “learned obedience through what he suffered” (Hebrews 5:8). He set His face toward Jerusalem knowing what awaited Him. The pattern of Christ is costly obedience to the Father’s purposes, not self-actualization through the pursuit of subjective goods.
A sexual ethic grounded in “bonding and pleasure suffice” cannot be reconciled with “deny yourself, take up your cross, and follow me.” These are not two emphases within the same framework. They are incompatible frameworks.
7. The Broader Implication: Hedonism as Framework Problem
The argument has focused on homosexual acts, but the underlying framework problem extends far beyond. Any sexual expression justified primarily by pleasure and bonding operates from the same incoherent foundation.
Consider the person who masturbates regularly to pornography, justifying it as “not hurting anyone” and “meeting legitimate needs for pleasure and release.” The framework is pleasure-bonding without the bonding: pleasure alone suffices when bonding is unavailable.
Consider the cohabiting couple who enjoy genuine intimacy, deep emotional bonding, and satisfying sexual pleasure, but who have not made covenant commitment. Their framework treats the goods of marriage (intimacy, bonding, pleasure) as separable from the structure of marriage (covenant before God and community).
Consider the person engaged in an adulterous affair who insists the love is “real” and the connection “genuine.” The pleasure and bonding are not fabricated. But the framework that treats these as sufficient justification has detached sexual expression from its covenantal structure.
In each case, the operative framework is the same: pleasure and bonding are the criteria of legitimate sexual expression. Covenant and conformity to created structure are optional additions rather than defining features.
Homosexual acts make this framework explicit in a way heterosexual deviations often obscure. A cohabiting couple can promise “we’ll get married eventually” while enjoying marital goods without marital structure. An adulterer can tell himself the affair will end and the marriage will be restored. But homosexual acts cannot even gesture toward the covenantal, procreative structure of marriage as God designed it. They make the pleasure-bonding framework undeniable.
This is why the homosexual question has become the flashpoint in contemporary Christian sexual ethics. It is not that homosexual acts are uniquely sinful; all sexual sin is serious. It is that affirming homosexual acts requires explicitly adopting the pleasure-bonding framework, while other sexual compromises can maintain plausible deniability.
The question “is homosexuality wrong?” is thus less important than the question it surfaces: “what is the criterion of legitimate sexual expression?” If the answer is “pleasure and bonding within consent,” then homosexual acts are legitimate, but so is much else that historic Christianity has rejected. If the answer is “conformity to created structure ordered toward covenantal union and procreation,” then homosexual acts are excluded along with fornication, adultery, pornography, and the broader commodification of sexuality.
8. Christ-Admirer vs. Christian: Definitional Precision
The conclusion is not merely that the pleasure-bonding framework produces wrong answers about specific sexual acts. The conclusion is that the pleasure-bonding framework is incompatible with following Christ.
Someone who operates from this framework may admire Christ. They may find His teachings inspiring. They may appreciate His compassion, His critique of hypocrisy, His welcome of the marginalized. They may adopt Christian vocabulary, attend Christian worship, and identify with Christian community.
But they have not submitted to the pattern of discipleship Christ established.
Jesus did not say, “If anyone would come after me, let him identify his deepest desires and pursue their fulfillment.” He said, “Let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me.”
Jesus did not say, “Your body is your own; use it for your pleasure and bonding.” Paul, representing Christ’s teaching, said, “You are not your own, for you were bought with a price. So glorify God in your body.”
Jesus did not say, “Whatever produces pleasure and intimacy is good.” He said, “If you love me, you will keep my commandments” (John 14:15).
The pattern of Christ is not self-fulfillment but self-denial. Not pursuing our desires but subordinating them. Not asking “what feels good and bonds us?” but “what does the Lord require?”
Someone who has adopted the pleasure-bonding framework as their operative criterion for sexual ethics has not rejected one rule among many. They have adopted an alternative framework, a different measuring rod, a competing vision of what the good life looks like. They admire certain things about Christ while declining the pattern of costly obedience that defines what it means to follow Him.
The distinction between Christ-admirer and Christian is not rhetorical sharpness or uncharitable labeling. It is definitional precision. A Christian is one who follows Christ, who submits to His pattern, who takes up the cross of self-denial. A Christ-admirer is one who appreciates Christ while following a different pattern. These are different things. Calling them by the same name does not make them the same thing.
9. Objections and Responses
9.1 “You’re reducing Christianity to sexual ethics.”
The objection misreads the argument. I am not claiming that sexual ethics is the whole of Christianity or even its most important component. I am claiming that one’s sexual ethic reveals one’s operative framework for the Christian life. Someone who has adopted the pleasure-bonding framework for sexuality has adopted a framework incompatible with Christ’s pattern of self-denial. The sexuality question is diagnostic, not exhaustive.
9.2 “Jesus welcomed sinners and outcasts. You’re excluding people.”
Jesus welcomed sinners by calling them to repentance, not by affirming their sin. “Go, and from now on sin no more” (John 8:11). The woman at the well was not told her five husbands and current non-husband were fine; she was offered living water that would transform her life. Zacchaeus responded to Jesus’s welcome by making restitution for his fraud.
Welcome and affirmation are different things. The church should welcome anyone, including those struggling with same-sex attraction or any other sexual temptation. Welcome means belonging, compassion, and community. It does not mean pretending that sin is not sin or that the pleasure-bonding framework is compatible with following Christ.
9.3 “Love is the center of Christian ethics, and committed same-sex relationships are loving.”
The word “love” is doing heavy lifting in this objection. In the New Testament, love is not a feeling that validates whatever it attaches to. Love is defined by its object and its form. “This is the love of God, that we keep his commandments” (1 John 5:3). “If you love me, you will keep my commandments” (John 14:15).
Love in the Christian sense is willing the good of the other, and “the good” is defined by God’s design, not by our preferences. A parent who lets a child eat only candy because the child desires it is not loving the child. Love requires directing desire toward genuine good, which requires knowing what genuine good is, which requires submission to the One who defines it.
9.4 “The passages about homosexuality are disputed. Scholars disagree about what they mean.”
Some scholars dispute them. The disputes are not as strong as often presented. But more fundamentally, the argument of this paper does not rest primarily on the exegesis of Leviticus 18 or Romans 1 or 1 Corinthians 6. It rests on the framework question: what is the criterion of legitimate sexual expression?
Even if every text mentioning homosexual acts were removed from Scripture, the pleasure-bonding framework would still be incompatible with Christ’s pattern of self-denial and the teleological structure of sexual ethics grounded in creation. The disputed texts are confirming evidence of a framework that stands on broader foundations.
9.5 “You’re being uncharitable. Many gay Christians sincerely love Jesus.”
I do not doubt sincerity. Sincerity is not the issue. Someone can sincerely love a vision of Jesus that differs from the Jesus revealed in Scripture. Someone can sincerely adopt a framework incompatible with Christ’s actual teaching while believing they are following Him.
The question is not whether someone is sincere but whether their operative framework is compatible with what Christ actually taught and modeled. Charity does not require pretending that incompatible frameworks are compatible. Charity requires telling the truth in love, which sometimes means identifying category errors even when the person making them is sincere.
10. A Personal Note: The Difference Between Failure and Suppression
I write this as someone who has struggled with justifying acts that do not align with the framework I have articulated. I am not throwing stones from a position of achieved righteousness. I am constantly examining my own thinking and rationale, seeking greater alignment with Christ and the Word. The Christian life is not a state of arrival but a process of continual repentance and reformation.
This is precisely why the distinction matters.
There is a difference between failing to live up to what we know is true and systematically suppressing what we know is true in order to justify our failures. The first is the ordinary Christian struggle. We stumble. We fall short. We confess and return. “If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness” (1 John 1:9). The path of discipleship is not sinlessness but directionality: we are being conformed to Christ’s image, however slowly and imperfectly.
The second is something different in kind. To take the clear teaching of Scripture and systematically reinterpret it to mean its opposite, to construct theological frameworks designed to permit what the Word prohibits, to call evil good and good evil, this is not failure but rebellion. It is not weakness but willful suppression.
Paul describes this pattern in Romans 1: those who “by their unrighteousness suppress the truth” (Romans 1:18), who “exchanged the truth about God for a lie” (Romans 1:25), who not only practice what God forbids but “give approval to those who practice them” (Romans 1:32). The progression is not from innocence to sin but from truth known to truth suppressed to truth inverted.
Jesus warned of a sin that cannot be forgiven: blasphemy against the Holy Spirit (Matthew 12:31-32). Theologians have long debated the precise nature of this sin, but its connection to the present discussion is not obscure. The Holy Spirit is the Steward of Truth, the one who “will guide you into all the truth” (John 16:13), who inspired the Scriptures (2 Peter 1:21), who convicts the world concerning sin and righteousness and judgment (John 16:8). To systematically suppress and invert the Spirit’s testimony through Scripture, to build elaborate frameworks for calling His “no” a “yes,” approaches the territory Jesus marked as beyond forgiveness.
I do not say this to condemn anyone. I say it because it should cause us all to examine ourselves. The question is not whether we have failed. We all have. The question is what we do with our failure. Do we confess it as failure, receive forgiveness, and press on toward obedience? Or do we construct theologies that redefine our failure as faithfulness?
The first path is hard. It requires ongoing repentance, often in areas where repentance is costly and culturally despised. It means acknowledging that our desires are not the measure of what is good, that pleasure and bonding do not justify what God has forbidden, that following Christ involves genuine self-denial and not merely self-expression with religious decoration.
The second path is easy in the short term. It promises peace with our desires and peace with the surrounding culture. But it purchases that peace by suppressing the truth, and the cost of that suppression is beyond calculation.
This is a hard teaching. It was hard when Jesus first gave it. “Many of his disciples turned back and no longer walked with him” (John 6:66). It remains hard now. But hardness is not an argument against truth. Sometimes the narrow way is narrow, and the gate is small, and few find it (Matthew 7:14).
The invitation is not to perfection but to honesty. Acknowledge the framework. Accept its authority. Confess where you fall short. Receive forgiveness. Press on. That is the Christian life. It is available to everyone, including those whose struggles are with same-sex attraction or any other form of disordered desire.
What is not available is a Christianity that has replaced Christ’s framework with the pleasure-bonding framework while retaining the Christian name. That is not a narrow path. That is a different road entirely.
11. Conclusion: The Question Behind the Question
The argument that began this paper, the prostate-pleasure argument for homosexual acts, turns out to be less interesting than what it reveals. It reveals an operative framework in which pleasure and bonding are the criteria of legitimate sexual expression.
This framework cannot be reconciled with historic Christian teaching about sexuality, which has always treated pleasure as a secondary good accompanying rightly ordered acts, not as the criterion defining them. It cannot be reconciled with natural law reasoning, which identifies the ends of human sexuality as procreation and one-flesh union within covenant. It cannot be reconciled with the pattern of discipleship Christ established, which is self-denial in service of the Father’s purposes rather than self-fulfillment through maximizing subjective goods.
Those who operate from the pleasure-bonding framework while claiming Christian identity have not made a minor interpretive error about a few disputed texts. They have adopted a different framework for understanding the body, desire, and the good life. They may admire Christ, but they are following a different path.
The distinction matters because clarity matters. Words mean things. “Christian” means one who follows Christ. Following Christ means submitting to His pattern, not selecting the parts we find congenial while substituting our own framework where His is costly.
The invitation remains open. Christ welcomes sinners. But He welcomes them to transformation, not affirmation. “Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me” (Matthew 11:28-29).
The yoke is real. It involves submission, obedience, and self-denial. It is also, Christ promises, easy and light compared to the burden of trying to find life on our own terms.
The question is not ultimately about homosexuality. The question is about lordship. Who defines the good? Who establishes the pattern? Whose framework governs?
The Christ-admirer answers: “I do, with input from Jesus where I find him helpful.”
The Christian answers: “Christ does, and I submit even where it costs me.”
The difference is everything.
References
Augustine of Hippo. Confessions. Translated by Henry Chadwick. Oxford University Press, 1991.
Aquinas, Thomas. Summa Theologica. Translated by Fathers of the English Dominican Province. Benziger Bros., 1947.
Bonhoeffer, Dietrich. The Cost of Discipleship. Translated by R.H. Fuller. Touchstone, 1995.
Lewis, C.S. Mere Christianity. HarperOne, 2001.
JD Longmire
(Soli Deo Gloria)