"Disorder" in the Court

Recently, it was announced that a well-known former pitchman for an American chain restaurant, famous for its sandwiches, would be pleading guilty to possessing child pornography and, worse, even engaging in sexual contact with minors (teenagers). According to reports by network news, in addition to a prison sentence and other penalties, he will agree with the court to “undergo treatment for sexual disorder.”

That catches my attention: “sexual disorder.” I thought identifying a person’s sexual appetites as a “disorder” was considered bigoted, hateful, and unenlightened. How can we “judge” anyone, right?

What does it mean for something to be “disordered”? It means something is not as it should be, in accord with the purpose of something. Bulimia is a recognized eating disorder. The purpose of eating—of masticating, tasting, and swallowing food—is to provide nourishment to the body. Eating is ordered to a person’s nourishment, not just to delight his palate. So we understand that a bulimic, who habitually induces vomiting after eating, has an eating disorder.

Now, what is sex ordered to? It is ordered to the emotional and spiritual bonding of two people, and it opens the door for reproduction to occur.

The celebrity defendant’s stash of porn (whether or not it involves minors) reveals a disorder: He is not bonding with a real person, and the door for reproduction is not just closed, but nonexistent. Using his eyes, he is captivated by electronic pulsating blips on a computer monitor. Meanwhile. children are obscenely exploited.

The defendant’s sexual encounters with minors is disordered for several reasons. It destroys the bond he had with his wife, who reports she will be filing for divorce (they have children together, too). Even without being married, he did not intend a lifelong bond with any of the young people he coerced and violated, and any resulting offspring from such encounters would have been undesired (“accidents”). Finally, paying money for sexual acts turns a woman’s body into a commodity, a far cry from personal intimacy.

Most of this should make sense to nearly everyone, but in our society moral judgment somehow suddenly gets cloudy when we apply these same standards to “regular” pornography, homosexual activity, contraception, and other moral issues.

If it is politically incorrect to “judge” an act of sodomy, for example, by one who is attracted to someone of the same sex, then how can we judge an act of a person who is attracted to a teenager? There is a double standard.

Sexual morality is not hard to figure out once we understand what it is designed for, what it is ordered to. We have to look honestly through the lenses of science and Natural Law, which are too easily smudged by the fingerprints of entertainment and popular culture. Not to mention the court system.