If we have inalienable, even inherent, rights, wouldn't the violation of those rights also be necessarily inherent? The biblical analogy of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil is an excellent example, and in the process shows that the Bible does contain deep wisdom. When they ate of its fruit, Adam and Eve became self aware, which meant they understood the impact their actions had on others. We could then put ourselves in the shoes of others and understand how our own actions could cause pain, or pleasure in others. It also made us aware of our nakedness because the deep intimacy of sexual bonding cannot be physically endured indefinitely--making our clothes part of the mate selection ritual, a barrier the removal of which indicates acceptance.
So then, is sex a subject for morality? Yes and no. First we need to determine what our inherent rights are to begin with, and thus how they are violated--and to do that, we need to come up with what the objective of morality is. Assuming we're on our own and morality is not coming down to us from God, that's very simple, Good Order. 99% of us (there's always that 1% who want to use anarchy and chaos to their advantage even though it usually puts them at greater risk) want and desire good order so that we can make the most of our lives in peace. And the need of good order naturally leads us to the behavior we must observe amongst ourselves to achieve it. So what rule(s) should be followed to achieve this good order? It's incredibly simple, the Golden Rule is here stated as:
Morality is honoring the equal rights of all to their life, liberty and property, to be free from violation through force or fraud.
That's it, that's all there is to it. It covers all interactions between human (or sentients if we're ever faced with them from other worlds or from within our artificial intelligence). And here the other shoe is dropped--morality does not and should not deal with individual codes of behavior. For that we should apply the word "virtue" and use it strictly in that sense instead of melding them together, resulting in the "moral" confusion we've been experiencing since....the dawn of time.
Virtue is an individual code of behavior that is up to the individual to determine and follow, but is still subject to religious and other social pressures for non-mandatory conformity. Immorality, on the other hand, is the only behavior that should be legislated and governed against.
Morality is so simple that it has only one cause, ego; and only one label under which ALL immorality (evil) can be placed, and that label is a legal/moral double standard. When, we murder, rape, enslave or steal from others, we emote that our egos justify putting our rights above those of our victims. Again, morality is the equal rights of all. We are not all created equal, but we all have equal rights, otherwise good order is impossible.
Even though this site is very much anti-Paul (some considering him to be the beast of Revelation), Truth can come from any source--babes or the devil himself. In the following instance I think he gets it right. For the biblically minded (who are certainly not dismissed out of hand, re: the Tree of Knowledge above), see Romans 2:14, "Even Gentiles, who do not have God's written law, show that they know his law when they instinctively obey it, even without having heard it. 15 They demonstrate that God's law is written in their hearts, for their own conscience and thoughts either accuse them or tell them they are doing right." NLT
....written in their hearts at the moment of self-awareness. Truth must be accepted wherever it is found.
Finally, one can ask, what's to motivate us to follow this Golden Rule moral code? That's where enlightened self-interest comes in, which is accepting the fact that we and our families are most important to us. that enlightened selfishness isn't bad. Such morality promotes good order inherently, but we also increase that good order by the example we set in following it. Enlightened self-interest also compels us to risk ourselves to defend our own rights by defending the rights of others. In other words we are morally obligated to help others whose rights are being violated if it is within our power--and it's almost always within our power to do something. You defend your own rights by defending the rights of others.
Coming up next: What if whatever is "outside" our natural universe is not supernatural, that is, where natural law and rationality don't exist. Rather what if there is a reality of infinite dimensions which still follows a rational, natural law. You could call it the hyper-natural, or ultra-rational or even the uber-rational, but let us dub it here as the:
Ethernatural
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