Lesson video

Hello learners and welcome to this lesson on Sex Outside Marriage.

It promises to be a really interesting lesson as we delve into different viewpoints on sex and how and when it should be practised.

Interesting fact before we begin, did you know that there is something called sacred sex? Actually, historically religions have always had different viewpoints and practises of sex.

In ancient Sumeria for example, they had a god called Ishtar and she was the god of sex and sexuality.

And for many adherens to that religion often practise and saw sex as a act of worship.

As a result of this sex was sometimes involved in their religious ceremony.

And this practise with called sacred sex or sacred sexual rites.

In this lesson, we're going to be exploring continued and different religious viewpoints about sex and sex outside of marriage.

And we're going to see in fact even today, sex and religion continues to be really, really connected.

So when you're ready, let's begin.

Okay, before we begin, you will need a pen or pencil.

That is something to write with.

You may also want an additional pen of a different colour to do corrections.

You need paper or an exercise book to write on and you'll need to make sure that you are in a quiet space as far as possible.

Then of course you're going to bring with you that curious brain as we delve into these really, really interesting different views.

Please remove any distractions.

So if you've got a TV that on or you've got music plan, please turn that off.

And that will help you to concentrate and it will ensure that there are no disruptions to your lesson.

If you are using a mobile device, please make sure your mobile notifications are turned off and you ended your current conversations.

If you're using a desktop for this, please make sure you close any other desktop application so that you are able to concentrate and focus in this lesson again, without any disruption.

This lesson talks about sex outside marriage.

If this is a sensitive topic to you, we recommend checking with a trusted adult before starting or doing the lesson with a trusted adult nearby.

Speak with parents if anything in this lesson affects you or carers.

And please remember that you can contact Young Minds if you need for that support.

So just to make sure that you are ready to learn I'm going to ask to pause a bit here with this point and make sure you've got your pen or pencil, your paper, your exercise book and that you are in a quiet environment and that you're ready to think and you are ready to learn.

So pause the video at this point and make sure you are ready.

Good, welcome back, let's begin our lesson.

So in this lesson we are going to be looking at sex outside of marriage.

So we'll talk about different views on sex outside of marriage, including Islamic, Christian and secular views.

Let's begin then by looking at some key terms that we need for this lesson.

So what I'm going to ask you is to pause your video and you're going to match the terms and the definitions.

So you've got some really, really important words in this task so make sure you understand and learn these definitions before we continue.

So pause the video at this point and match the terms and the definitions.

Brilliant, welcome back.

I trust you've done a really, really good job with this activity.

You've matched your terms and definitions.

Let's see if you've got them correct.

You can correct them with a different colour pen as we go through them together.

So the first keyword was fornication an important word for this lesson.

The fornication means sex before marriage or between two single unmarried people.

The second definition adultery.

Adultery is a married person having sex with someone other than their spouse.

The third word sexual immorality refers to sex outside of marriage and that includes fornication and adultery.

Both of which are considered forms of sexual immorality.

We also have celibacy that's our fourth term and celibacy is the state of abstaining from marriage and sexual relations.

A fifth word is chastity and chastity is a state of practise of refraining from sexual intercourse before or outside of marriage.

Take note here the difference between chastity and celibacy.

One chastity is about restraining or abstaining from sex before and after or whilst you're not married.

Whereas celibacy is a decision not to engage in a relationship or marriage or in sexual intercourse.

Our sixth word is cohabitation and that is when a couple who are involved romantically or sexually are living together before they are married.

Word number seven is marriage.

And you will have looked at this definition before when we did our lesson on marriage and marriage is defined as a legally or formally recognised union of two people as partners in a personal relationship.

You notice that that puts a bracket to historically and in some jurisdictions even today, this is a specifically union between a man and a woman but that's not always the case.

We'll talk about when we look at same sex marriage.

Our final word is haram and this is a word some of you may have heard alongside halal.

and haram is a word, an Arabic term that means forbidden or proscribed by Islamic law.

So we've got some really, really key words, interesting terms that we are going to be able to use for this lesson.

So I hope you've done really, really well.

And you've understood these key terms. As always we're going to look at some quickfire questions.

And I want to see that you understand these terms. So the first true or false statement.

Adultery is the only form of sexual immorality.

Is that true or false? That is false.

Adultery is not the only form of sexual immorality.

There's also fornication that happens before marriage.

Haram means something that is not permitted by Islamic law, true or false? If you said false, you'd be correct because it's a true statement.

Haram is something that is not permitted by Islam.

Halal is something that is permitted by Islam.

Celibacy means to abstain from sex until marriage, true or false? I always like this one, it's really an interesting question.

If you said false, you were correct.

Celibacy does mean to abstain, does not mean rather to abstain from sex until marriage.

It means to abstain from sex completely after you not get married or not engaged in sexual intercourse or a relationship.

So it doesn't mean until marriage.

Chastity is the term to refer to abstaining from sex when you're not married.

So before or even after marriage.

Chastity is only practise when one has not been married, true or false? Hope you took a hint from earlier.

This is a false statement of course, chastity could also be practised after a divorce.

So it's not only before marriage.

It can also be practised after marriage.

Marriage is not only between a man and a woman.

If you said false, you would be incorrect.

Marriage is only between, is not only between a man and a woman.

So you have to remember here marriage is not only between a man and a woman.

It's can be between a man and a man.

It can be between a woman and a woman.

So it's not only between a man and a woman.

Cohabitation simply means living together.

If you said false, you're correct.

It doesn't simply mean living together.

Cohabitation also includes the idea that you are in a personal, sexual or romantic relationship with the person you're living together with.

So it's not just about living together.

Remember housemates may live together and not have a personal, sexual or romantic relationship.

Now we're going to look at different views on sex outside of marriage.

Of course, we're going to explore the Christian view, the secular view and the Muslim view on sex outside of marriage.

Let's begin therefore, by looking at Christianity and sex and what are Christian viewpoints on sex outside of marriage.

Well, Christians believe that sex outside of marriage is sexual immorality.

That means it's a practise that is not good.

And it's considered unethical therefore fornication which is sex that occurs before marriage, also fornication can occur after marriage after divorce or adultery what happens during marriage are both forms of sexual immorality.

And they're are both frowned upon by many Christians around the world.

Christians in fact, recommend chastity.

That is the abstinence from sexual intercourse or any sort of sexual behaviour before or even after a marriage.

Christians do not believe in living together before marriage even though there are many, there are some Christians who do so today.

They believe rather that you should get married and then live together.

And this is of course it's based on facts like what we find in Genesis, which suggests that a husband should leave his mother and father's house and cleave to his wife.

And as he's leaving one household and he's going to establish the new households with his wife.

So they don't believe in cohabitation, living together before marriage.

In fact in Hebrews 13:4 it says, God will judge those who are sexually immoral.

And those who commits adultery.

So fornication and adultery will be punished by God on the day of judgement.

I'm sure you learned about the day of judgement when he studied Christian beliefs at particularly the belief in eschatology.

So there are some Christians who disagree with the majority of Christianity, for example one denomination in Christianity, The Quakers believe that it's absolutely okay to have sex before marriage as long as you are in a loving, stable, committed long-term relationship.

So they don't all believe that sex should not happen before marriage.

There are also different views among Christians on celibacy.

All Christians allow celibacy.

Catholics practise it more so than other denomination because Catholic priests are celibates.

That's not the same for priesthood in other Christian denominations.

There are people in the Bible who were celibate for example, the apostle Paul practise celibacy.

He gave up sexual intercourse, relationships and marriage in order to fulfil his calling to proclaim rather the gospel.

All Christians, however do agree that cheating or adultery during marriage is an immoral practise and it's condemned widely in Christianity.

There are different views of course between Anglicans and Catholics on sex before marriage.

So Catholics and Anglicans agree that sex before marriage is wrong, fornication is wrong but adultery, and they agree adultery rather is also wrong during marriage but there are slight differences between Anglicans and Catholics because of their differences with regards to divorce and remarriage.

Because Catholic will consider adultery to be taking place even after divorce and remarriage.

Whereas an Anglican may not believe that that's considered adultery and they may permit people to remarry.

And that would not be an adulterous relationship.

So slightly different views here between the Anglican communion and the Roman Catholic Church.

So we've seen the influence of Christianity, for example in the US and this is a particular case study of the True Love Waits Campaign which was a campaign in the US set up in 1992.

And it was where young people, lots of young people signed the contract and began wearing promise rings.

As you can see in the image on the screen.

And they promised themselves and God and their families that they would preserve themselves.

They would not have sex before marriage.

And it was out of self-respect.

It was out of respect for God and respect for their future spouse and children.

It also enabled them to avoid pregnancy and sexually transmitted infections and the pledge went something like this, believing that true love waits.

I make a commitment to God, myself and my family, those I date, my future children to be sexually pure until the day I enter a covenant marriage relationship.

Now, remember in Christianity marriage is often seen as a covenant that is a binding agreement between two people, two parties.

So have you learned a lot about Christian views on sex before marriage? Let's practise and let's see how much we've learned and how much we.

But again, some quickfire questions.

Firstly, true or false, all Protestants agree with sex before marriage but not adultery, true or false.

All Protestants agree with sex before marriage, but not adultery.

If you said false, you are absolutely right.

That is incorrect all Protestants do not agree with sex before marriage, including for example the Anglican communion and the Roman Catholic Church, even though there are some Christian denominations like Quakers who do allow sex before marriage.

The True Love Waits campaign was set up in 1999.

Is that true or false? That is true, It was it's false, sorry it was set up in 1992, not 1999.

Forgive me for that error.

So it's a false statement.

All Christians are against adultery true or false? That is true, all Christians are against adultery.

They all condemn it.

Paul was chaste, he did not have sex before his marriage.

If you said false, you are correct.

I'm sorry, false you're correct.

That is because Paul was not just chaste, he was celibate.

He did not marry and he did not have a sexual relationship before marriage.

Let's look there for now at some views in Islam.

What do Muslims say about sex outside of marriage? Well, for Muslims, sex is an act of worship.

And you would have noticed that at the beginning of this lesson, I said that historically there has been a relation between sex and religion and many, many people, ancient religion in the past believed that sex was an act of worship.

And this is one of the religions, Islam and Christianity continue to believe that sex is an act of worship.

Muslims belief that sex and cohabitation should be something that is left for a marital relationship.

Therefore, a man and a woman should not live together before they are married and they should not be engaging in sexual intercourse.

Because of this Muslims believe they should protect each other from temptation and therefore Muslims will dress modestly.

Again you'll see women wearing a hijab or a burka.

And Muslim men will wear garments down to the knees, covering their bodies in order to prevent themselves from temptation.

Also men and women will not be permitted to be in the same room alone.

That should not happen because they may be tempted to have sexual intercourse.

So sex is not permitted outside marriage.

It's forbidden in Islam and there's actually a term for this.

And it's called zinah, an Arabic term for fornication and adultery outside of marriage.

It's also referred to a sexual immorality and that's the same word reference for zinah.

Muslims also believe in chastity that is preserve themselves for marriage.

And also after marriage, until they get remarried they will not have sexual intercourse with someone.

Therefore they are chaste even after a divorce.

However Muslims, unlike Christians, particularly Catholic Christians do not promote or even like the idea of celibacy.

In fact, it is expected that all Muslims will get married and have children.

You remember that I said in one of our earlier lessons, and in the it says, a Muslim has fulfilled 50% of their responsibility once they had got married and have children.

Surah 24:33 also it reinforces to say they've not having sex before marriage.

It says, but let them who find not the means for marriage abstain from sexual relations until Allah enriches them from His bounty.

So men and women should not have sex before marriage.

In fact, there is a strict punishment for sexual immorality or zinah.

In fact, Surah 22, sorry Surah 24:2 it says, the unmarried man or woman found guilty of sexual intercourse, lash each of them with a hundred lashes.

So there is a punishment.

Then if you are living in an Islamic country or an Islamic state, you will receive a punishment if you have sex outside of marriage.

Quickfire questions.

How much do you remember? Let's go through some multiple choice questions this point and I want you to tell me which answer you think is correct.

It may be more than one answer.

Always be aware of that.

Which of the following is permitted in Islam, fornication, adultery, celibacy or chastity? Good if you said chastity, you would be correct.

Remember fornication and adultery, are zinah.

They are not permitted in this I mean, there is a punishment for it and Muslims frown upon celibacy.

They expect all Muslims to get married.

How many stripes was the fornicator or the adulterer be beaten with 40, 200, 100 or 39? If you said 100 you are correct, a man or woman who commit zinah will be beaten with a 100 stripes, a 100 lashes in an Islamic country.

What is the correct term for the offence against Sharia law by sex outside marriage? Is it hadith, zinah, tawhid or hadd? The correct term is zinah.

Hadith of course you will know is the sayings of the prophet Mohammed.

Tawhid is the belief and oneness of Allah and hadd is a type of punishment that is given when someone has a same-sex marriage but also engages in illicit sexual behaviour for example engaging in same-sex relations.

True or false, Muslims are not tempted to have sex outside of marriage.

That of course is false.

Muslims are tempted which is why they dress modestly and refrain from having being alone together, a man and a woman.

Muslim men and women are not allowed to be alone together, true or false? Of course, this is true.

They are not allowed to be alone together to prevent them from being tempted.

At this point I would like you to answer an exam-style question.

Now this type of question is best for AQA and Edexcel so you must speak to your teacher if you were doing a different example such as Eduqas or WJEC or OCR because there's slight differences between these examining bodies.

The exam question says, explain two religious beliefs about sex outside marriage.

And we've learned about Islamic or Muslim views.

And we've also learned about Christian views.

So I would like you to reference to both of those views and also to refer to a quotation from the Koran or from the Bible.

You may go back individually, if you need to refer to some of the texts that we had on the slides earlier.

So at this point, pause the video and I like it to complete the task by explaining two religious beliefs about sex outside of marriage and again, referring to scripture or sacred writings.

Remember point, evidence, explanation.

Those are the three steps for each point that you would like to make in this task.

So three points, point, evidence, explanation for the Muslim view.

Point, evidence, explanation for the Christian view.

Pause the video at this point and take a few minutes to complete this task and we'll resume once you have finished.

Welcome back, I trust you've answered this question.

I'm going to go through an example now.

You may have written a different response and that's absolutely fine.

But what we can do is go through a potential response to this sorts of exam-style question.

Of course, this one is asking for two different or two contrasting religious beliefs.

And so we're going to look at Christian and Islam in this particular example.

So you can make a point for example, many Christians believe that sex outside of marriage is immoral and sinful.

Forgive me for the error on the screen there.

Many Christians believe that sex outside marriage is immoral and sinful.

Let's evidence for this a second from Hebrews 13:4 which says, God will judge those who are sexually immoral or immoral and those who commit adultery.

And therefore we see here that as punishment for those who have sex outside of marriage.

For many Christians therefore this means that fornication and adultery will be punished by God because it is wrong.

There's something wrong with that practise.

A contrasting view is Muslims who believe adultery and fornication are grave sins and will be punished.

Evidenced for this this taken for in Surah 24:2 where it says, the unmarried woman or unmarried man found guilty of sexual intercourse, lash them up each with 100 lashes.

So you can see here that actually Muslims and Christians have a different views on terms of how they deal with sex outside of marriage.

Whereas God will be the one who punishes in Christianity, Muslims will take that into their own hand and Muslims will be punished with a hundred lashes.

You could also for a question like this give two contrasting viewpoints for example you could say many Christians or some Christians for example, the Quakers believe that sex outside of marriage is not immoral or sinful.

And because of this, they practise sex before marriage as long as they are in a long-term stable and committed relationship.

And that would be a contrasting viewpoints to what we have here with Muslims and Islam.

Let's have a look now at non-religious views on sex outside of marriage.

What to secular people say? Well, there are some contemporary attitudes that we can see in contemporary British society.

For example, things have changed a lot from the past.

Divorce is now common.

Cohabitation is also the norm.

And so many people in British society live together before they get married.

Promiscuity is ordinary, that is sex with multiple partners and sex before marriage is ordinary now.

Adultery is still frowned upon but it's common more so than it has been in the past.

There are numerous sex and genders, human sexualities are really diverse and religion specifically Christianity because this is a predominantly Christian country and still is classified as a Christian country, has actually lost its influence in the UK.

And so with their religious teachings are no longer as influential and laws have changed as a result of that, particularly because of the separation between religion and politics and a lot of course because of more equalities and rights that are being given by the Universal Declaration of Human Rights which should have across many different countries in the world.

So there are changing practises in British society but what do secular people say about sex outside of marriage? Well, again if you take it from a utilitarian perspective according to John Mill, you'll see that it's about the greatest happiness for the greatest number of people.

And therefore, generally non-religious people or secular people will say that as long as you're in a loving, committed relationship, sex before marriage is absolutely fine.

And cohabitation, living together before you might get married is also okay.

Because for non-religious people, sex is an expression of love.

As long as you are in love with the person they believe it's okay for you to then make that decision to have sex with that person.

But they don't agree with promiscuity.

They don't believe you should be having sex with lots of different people and lots of different times.

They believe that that's going to promote risks to your emotional and sexual health and therefore they don't promote that sort of behaviour.

And they recommend having a long-term committed relationship with someone if you are going to have sex even if it's outside of marriage.

They don't however belief that sex outside of marriage is immoral.

It's not a wrong practise.

Just believe that sex within the context of a long-term stable relationship or within marriage is safer for the emotional and sexual health of human beings.

Quickfire question, cohabitation is abnormal, true or false? That is false, cohabitation is not abnormal.

It's very common in contemporary British society.

Adultery is the new norm, true or false? If you said false, that is not true.

Adultery is not the new norm.

It's frowned upon, it's more common than it used to be but it's still not a regular or normal.

People don't go into marriage expecting to commit adultery.

Divorce is socially acceptable, true or false? That is actually true.

Divorce has become not only commonplace but many people accept that divorce is a legitimate option and that is not only non-religious people but also Muslims and Christians.

Non-religious people usually promote promiscuity.

That's false, they don't agree with having lots of sexual partners.

They believe that sex is best in a long-term committed relationship and even in marriage but it's not immoral to have sex.

We've talked about different views on sex outside of marriage.

And we learned some key words, such as chastity and celibacy, fornication, adultery and sexuality immorality.

We've learned a lot of key ideas and concepts and we've seen how Christians and Muslims and non-religious people view these ideas.

Remember it's important that you continue to review your learning at the end of this lesson make sure you go through your notes and consolidate the things that you've learned and from time to time revise your learning also.

So it moves from your working memory into the short-term memory and eventually your longterm memory.

Remember to complete your quiz at the end of this lesson, your exit quiz.

You've been absolutely fantastic.

And I'm looking forward to teaching you in our next lesson when we will look at attitudes towards sexuality.

It promises to be another interesting topic.

Another interesting lesson.

So I look forward to teaching you then.

Until then goodbye for now.