Faith Integration and the Outrageous Ethic of Sex Only in Male-Female Marriage: Towards an Anthropology of Sex and Marriage for the Christian Community

This article identifies two competing paradigms of sexual ethics in the student handbooks and codes of conduct at American residential colleges and universities. Sexual misconduct is either defined exclusively in terms of consent violation or, regardless of consent, as any sex outside of male-female marriage—the latter found solely in faith communities. Based on survey results, this article examines faculty convictions related to the above two paradigms at religiously affiliated universities. It finds strong support for both paradigms. Among faculty who reject the “sex only in male-female marriage” paradigm, many consider the paradigm “outrageous” (irrational, extremist, motivated by malice, and productive of human harm)—meriting government sanctions. However, this article suggests that the most repudiated portion of the Christian sexual and marital ethic, its cross-sex nature, turns out to be in the mainstream of marriage cultures around the world— as studied by anthropologists. In world history, it is the ethic of mere consent that is the extremist outlier. Marriage, as studied by anthropologists, constitutes both a conjugal bond and a biparental bond—attaching men to the social reproduction project, and giving each child a father as well as a mother. The article ends by inviting a comparison of the two paradigms in terms of harms being guarded against, and in terms of the extent to which they are morally oriented towards the good of the next generation. Only in Marriage Priest, Faith Integration and the Outrageous Ethic of Sex Only in Male-Female Marriage Sex in Marriage

Evangelical colleges, nearly all of which emphasize faith integration, usually articulate this same paradigm. Of the 114 U. S. "governing members" of the evangelical Council for Christian Colleges and Universities (CCCU), only four institutions 9 frame sexual misconduct exclusively in terms of consent. For another five, consensual sex outside of marriage was also deemed misconduct, although marriage itself was undefined. However, 105 out of 114 unambiguously define male-female marriage as the touchstone of sexual ethics, affirming that all consensual sex outside such marriage is disapproved (see Appendix). For example: The God-ordained context for virtuous sexual expression and procreation is marriage, a sacred covenant between one man and one woman. . . . All premarital and extra-marital sexual activity . . . is immoral. 10 (Taylor University,IN) Sexual union is intended by God to take place only within the marriage covenant between a man and a woman. 11 (Azusa Pacific University, CA) All forms of sexual intimacy that occur outside the covenant of heterosexual marriage, even when consensual, are distortions of the holiness and beauty God intended for it. 12 (Charleston Southern University, SC) For most evangelical colleges, such a stance is not merely theoretical. Thus scholars report that while hookup culture is hegemonic at both secular and religious American residential colleges, evangelical schools are the exception (Kelly 2012, 43;Freitas 2015;Dunn and Hendershott 2011). Donna Freitas (2015, 67-68) attributes the absence of hookup culture on evangelical campuses to their "faith-integrated 12 https://www.charlestonsouthern.edu/about/what-we-believe/ (Accessed April 7, 2021).
13 This includes the Catholic "University of Notre Dame," the Southern Baptist "Anderson University" (SC), the Baptist but not denominationally affiliated "Campbellsville University," the Christian Churches and Churches of Christ "Lipscomb University" and "Bushnel University," and the Church of God "Anderson University" (IN). The preceding is based on student handbook wording, or in the case of Notre Dame, in a formal statement on marriage, https://dulac.nd.edu/community-standards/standards/sexual-activity/ (Accessed April 7, 2021). learning atmosphere," which she reports was lacking in other religious traditions. As other researchers report, "the idea of delaying sex until marriage . . . has become an untenable narrative in all but evangelical colleges" (Monto and Carey 2014, 614).
This overstates the case. While published research on hookup culture at Mormon institutions is lacking (Wade 2021), Mormon universities are likely similar to evangelical ones. Most researchers report that Catholic universities are as dominated by hookup culture as secular or non-evangelical Protestant ones (Freitas 2015;Dunn and Hendershott 2011;Beste 2019). However, Jason King (2017) demonstrated that a subset of "very Catholic campuses" actively promote a "no sex before marriage" script, with most of their students committed to orthodoxy, religiously active, and enthusiastic about the church and its teaching. They help create an anti-hookup "no sex before marriage" college culture. In short, some colleges exemplify what, for today, are sexual counter-cultural moral communities.
A very few universities profess an "only-in-marriage ethic" without explicitly defining "marriage." 13 Some of these may be older formulations not updated for clarity after the US Supreme Court, in Obergefell v. Hodges (2015), legally redefined marriage. In other cases, universities likely intend to express Christian disapproval of pre-marital sex in wording that tactically avoids publicly naming that male-female portion of the Christian ethic widely seen as "outrageous." I could find no university that espoused an "only-in-marriage" ethic while explicitly defining marriage to affirm the full legitimacy of same-sex marital unions. Thus, this article will consider primarily the two paradigms that are clearly present in University student handbooks and codes of conduct-one that makes consent the touchstone of sexual ethics and the other that makes While most American universities signal disapproval only for sexual acts that violate consent, a minority of universities also signal disapproval for any consensual sexual act not within the context of covenant marriage between a male and female. These latter universities nearly always have Christian identities and stated commitments to faith-learning integration.
Most American universities with a religious identity or affiliation are either Roman Catholic, Evangelical Protestant, or Mainline Protestant. And while there have been initiatives within each tradition towards faith-learning integration, 16 the three higher education communities represent distinct cultures, not least in their integration commitments and in the outworking of those commitments in the arena of the sexual-as evidenced in written university statements and the empirical literature on college hookup culture. And yet, arguably, the nexus of faith-learning integration lies less with Board of Trustee approved policies enforced by administrators and staff than with faculty-those centrally responsible for learning (Hamilton 2005, 34-35).
So to what extent do scholars at such Christian institutions themselves affirm an ethic of sex only in male-female marriage? And how does 1.) commitment to "faith-learning integration," 2.) Christian church attendance, and 3.) views on biblical authority influence scholars towards such an ethic? Alternatively, 'to what extent do faculty at Christian institutions view such an ethic as "outrageous" (deficient in motivation and outcome) and deserving of being sanctioned by the government?' To what extent do Christian scholars affirm a third hybrid ethic which retains the traditional Christian commitment to sex only in marriage-but with marriage redefined to include same-sex marriage?

The Sexual Ethics of Scholars at Christian Universities
In this section of the article, I draw from my "Christianity, Sex, and Higher Education Faculty Survey" to explore answers to the above questions. Survey results are from a stratified convenience sample of undergraduate faculty at three categories of religiously affiliated or identified universities in the U. S.: Evangelical Protestant,Mainline Protestant,and Roman Catholic. 17 Survey Sample Email contact information was secured online for faculty at 85 Roman Catholic Universities (RCU), 85 Evangelical Protestant Universities (EPU), and 100 Mainline Protestant Universities (MPU). 18 In April of 2017, I sent a single invitation to 23,333 19 faculty from these schools, of whom 9793 opened the email, and 1916 completed the survey-giving a response rate of 8.2% (19.6% of those who opened the email invitation). 20 A third of respondents (33.3%) reported teaching at a university with an Evangelical Protestant religious affiliation or identity. Just over a quarter (27.8%) reported teaching at a Catholic University, and 38.9% reported teaching at a university with a Mainline Protestant affiliation or identity. 21 Demographic information on respondents is provided in Table 1 below. 17 The sample is stratified in that it is drawn intentionally from three different categories of institution. It is convenient, in that it surveyed faculty only at schools which posted online faculty contact information and at schools where contact information was most accessible. The sample focused on undergraduate faculty, meaning that if a school had a separate graduate faculty of theology, law, or medicine, for example, these faculty were not included. Religiously affiliated universities vary widely in whether faith activities and viewpoints appear in the formal and intellectual life of the school. One indicator that a university values faith integration is that it provides and encourages attendance at schoolsponsored religious assemblies, chapels, or masses. Another is that it values Christian faith in its faculty, as evidenced in recruitment and promotion practices.
Finally, those universities that most aspire to faithlearning integration value a culture where faculty bring prayer into the classroom, where classroom appeals to religious authorities (such as Scripture or the Magisterium) occur, and where faculty encourage students toward faith-learning integration. In Table 2, five items, each scored from 1 to 5, provide a measure of university-based faith integration. Such events are provided, and student attendance is required.
Such events are provided, and students are strongly encouraged (voluntarily) to attend.

4
Such events are provided purely as a discretionary option for any who wish to attend. 2 Such school-sponsored religious events are not provided. 1 2.) What best describes your institution's approach to the religious faith of faculty?
All faculty are expected to affirm a religious faith congruent with that of the institution. 5 Faculty of other faiths or no faith may be hired and promoted, but with preference sometimes given to candidates whose religious faith is congruent with that of the institution. 3 The religious faith of faculty plays no formal role in faculty hires or promotions. Responses to each item listed in the above table correlated closely with responses to the other four items, forming a cluster, such that the average (the mean) of the five items combined provides a measure of "University Faith Integration" with a high level of 22 A Cronbach's Reliability Alpha of .915. If respondents failed to answer 1 or 2 of the 5 items, then the mean of the other items was calculated. If 3 or more items were unanswered, a scale mean was not calculated. The following illustrates the differences. Most faculty (94%) at Evangelical Protestant Universities (EPU) report that "regular school-sponsored religious assemblies, chapels, or masses are provided," with students either "required" or "strongly encouraged" to attend. This compares with 28% of faculty at Roman Catholic Universities (RCU) and 21% at Mainline Protestant Universities (MPU) reporting the same.
Most EPU faculty (95%) report that all faculty are expected to affirm a religious faith position congruent with that of the institution. By contrast, most RCU faculty (74%) and most MPU faculty (80%) report that the religious faith of faculty plays no role in faculty hires or promotions. There are many sexual behaviors that an ethic of consent would consider acceptable, but that would be unacceptable under the traditional Christian paradigm that affirms sex only within male-female marriage. For example, under an ethic of consent, most American universities do not consider consensual sexual hookups between unmarried people as misconduct. By contrast, some colleges consider all consensual sexual relations between unmarried students as misconduct. But rather than examine only formal university statements, we explore the extent to which faculty themselves align with "an ethic of sex only in male-female marriage" as against an ethic of mere consent. Respondents were asked about five actions likely to be differently assessed based on one's ethical paradigm. For each item, a score of 5 indicated complete alignment with an ethic of sex only in malefemale marriage. statistical reliability. 24 By this measure, MPU and RCU faculty did not differ statistically; but EPU faculty exhibited significantly higher scores than the other two.
The effect size was large. 25 The following illustrates the differences between traditions, but also variability within traditions. Most EPU faculty (87%) believe "hookup sex with strangers" is "always wrong," compared to 41% of RCU and 42% of MPU faculty. Similarly, most EPU faculty (80%) believe that "a married couple, by agreement, having sex with others" is always wrong, compared with 32% of RCU and 33% of MPU respondents. A majority of EPU faculty (60%) believe "consenting sexual relations between an unmarried man and an unmarried woman" is always wrong, compared to 14% of RCU and 17% of MPU faculty. A similar number of EPU faculty (63%) believe "consenting sexual relations between two adults of the same sex" is always wrong, compared with 17% for RCU and 21% for MPU faculty. Finally, two-thirds of EPU faculty (69%) disagree or strongly disagree with the view "it would be good if all churches endorsed same-sex marriage as having equal legitimacy with male-female marriage," as compared with 24% of RCU and 28% of MPU faculty. 25  Since there is variability within traditions both for faith-learning integration and for adherence to an ethic of sex only in male-female marriage, a consideration of the relationship between the two variables is in order, irrespective of the categories EPU, RCU, and MPU. And indeed, faculty at universities that score high on "faith-learning integration" are far more likely to score high on agreement that sex belongs only in marriage between a man and a woman. The relationship remains strong even after controls. 26 Faculty who attend a Christian church (this includes 97% of EPU, 56% of RCU, and 54% of MPU faculty), even when controlling for the tradition of the employing university, are far more likely to affirm an ethic of "sex only within male-female marriage" than faculty who do not attend any religious services. Faculty-attenders of non-Christian faiths 27 score between the other two. The effect of Christian church attendance on sexual ethics is strong. 28 When Christians justify their sexual ethic, it is often Scripture to which they appeal. Indeed, the CCCU summarizes the commitment to faith integration of its member schools: We are committed to . . . promoting the value of integrating the Bible-divinely inspired, true, and authoritative-throughout all curricular and cocurricular aspects of the educational experience on our campuses, including teaching and research. 29 Given such an appeal, it makes sense that faculty views on the truth and authority of the Bible would affect their sexual ethics. Thus faculty who attended a Christian church were also asked to rate their level of agreement (on a 6-point Likert scale from "strongly disagree" to "strongly agree") with the statement: "The Bible is without error in what it affirms." 30 Eighty-four percent of EPU faculty who attend a Christian church affirmed some level of agreement with the statement, compared to 59% of MPU and 48% of RCU faculty who attend a Christian church. Among Christian church attendees, the belief that the Bible is "without error in what it affirms" was strongly correlated with affirming an ethic of sex only in male-female marriage. 31

An Outrageous Ethic
While an ethic of "sex only in life-long male-female marriage" implies judgment on many American patterns ranging from hookup culture to no-fault 29 https://www. cccu.org/about/. (Accessed August 6, 2020 divorce, the most persistent public objection to this ethic focuses on the "male-female" aspect of the ethic. Thus, two survey questions probed the extent to which faculty perceived an ethic of "sex only in male-female marriage" as outrageous in motivation and outcome. Faculty rated their agreement on a 6-point Likert scale from "Strongly Disagree" to "Strongly Agree" with the following: 1.) Those who defend male-female marriage as the only genuine marriage are motivated by irrational animus towards gays. 2.) Christians who disapprove of same-sex sexual behavior pose a serious danger to the well-being of gays and lesbians in society today.
Responses to the two items correlate closely, allowing for both to be combined in a statistically reliable measure of "The Outrageousness of an Ethic of Sex Only in Male-Female Marriage." 32 Faculty who do not attend any church or religious group scored highest on this variable, followed by faculty of "other" religions, with faculty who attend Christian churches least likely to affirm these statements. The relationship was strong, even after controls. 33 Of course, Christian churches themselves vary in the extent to which such an ethic is affirmed. Thus, the association of Christian church attenders' a.) views on whether "the Bible is without error in what it affirms" with b.) their agreement that this sexual ethic is outrageous in motivation and outcome was also considered. Church attenders who doubted the truthful authority of Scripture were more likely to believe such an ethic to be outrageous. The relationship was strong. 34 University religious tradition was also associated with how respondents answered these two questions. While 55% of RCU and 56% of MPU faculty agreed that "irrational animus towards gays" motivated such an ethic, only 21% of EPU faculty agreed. And while 68% of RCU and 64% of MPU faculty agreed that this ethic posed "a danger to the well-being of gays and lesbians in society today," only 31% of EPU faculty agreed. But while it is true that there were strong differences between different university traditions in the judgment that this ethic is outrageous (deficient in motivation and outcome), 35 it is also true that students in each university tradition have significant numbers of professors who deem this ethic outrageous.

Sympathy for Government Sanctions
When a given population widely believes that the historic Christian sexual ethic is outrageous-deficient in motivation and outcome, this contributes to widespread support for government action to actively sanction those wishing to live out such an ethic. There are various contexts-ranging from marriage-related businesses to religious education or adoption serviceswhere those wishing to integrate faith with vocation sometimes face the threat of punitive governmental sanctions. Thus, a wedding photographer who, out of faith convictions, declines to provide intimate boudoir 34 r(1243) = -.655, p < .001. Even controlling for sex, age, ethnicity/race, faculty rank, academic discipline, size of institution, and religious tradition of the university employer, the relationship was strong [r(1234) = -.630, p < .001].

University Tradition and Perceived Outrageousness of an Ethic of Sex Only in Male-Female Marriage
One- Way  photography will not be sanctioned by the government. But, should such a photographer decline to photograph "same-sex weddings," results may be otherwise. Faculty were thus asked to rate their agreement (on a 6-point Likert scale ranging from "Strongly Disagree" to "Strongly Agree") with three items intended to measure sympathy for government sanction of persons acting from within the male-female marriage ethical paradigm.

1.) Wedding photographers refusing to photograph
same-sex weddings should be prosecuted for civil rights violations.

2.) Colleges affiliated with denominations that
believe only male-female marriage is Godapproved should be sanctioned by the government if they deny employment to faculty in samesex marriages. 3.) Religious adoption agencies that refuse to place children in homes with same-sex parents should have their license to handle adoptions revoked by the government.
Responses to the three items correlated closely with each other, allowing for the three to be combined into a single statistically reliable measure of "Support for Government Punishment of Actions based on Adherence to the Male-Female Marriage Paradigm." 36 Not surprisingly, those who view the historic Christian sexual ethic as "outrageous" are also likely to support government sanctions of such an ethic. The relationship between the two variables is strong. 37 Christians historically have understood love as underpinning faithful Christian witness. The charge that the historic Christian view of man-woman marriage is motivated, not by love and concern for human flourishing, but by love's opposite, hate, is a charge which, if widely accepted (as it often is), poses a painful dilemma for Christians. No Christian wishes to commend a gospel of hate and human harm.

A Third Hybrid Ethic?
Since the central charge that the traditional Christian ethic is "outrageous" focuses on the "malefemale" portion of the marital ethic, with the central demand being "marriage-equality," one might naturally expect to find Christians adjusting that one element of their ethic, while otherwise retaining the core logic of "sex-only-in-marriage." And indeed, when some Christians affirm "marriage equality," they are often understood as doing precisely that. But, in an earlier research project, when I examined theological "marriage-equality" writings assigned in American seminary classes, insofar as such authors addressed sexual ethics more broadly, it was clear these authors were not affirming an "only-in-marriage" paradigm, but rather a paradigm where monogamous marriage was one discretionary option within a wide variety of other consensual sexual arrangements and practices that people should also ethically approve (Priest 2018, 20-21, 27). Similarly, in my review of university student handbooks, I could find no instance of a university espousing an "only-in-marriage" sexual ethic while simultaneously explicitly affirming same-sex marriage as fully-approved marriage.
Thus I was interested in whether respondents might themselves provide evidence of such a third hybrid ethic. And indeed, a small group of faculty does express such an ethic. While half (49.8%) of respondents-and just over a third (36.3%) of Christian church attenders-affirmed "marriage equality," 38 less than two percent (1.5%) of those endorsing "marriage equality" simultaneously affirm an ethic of sex only in marriage. And of the 14 respondents supporting both 38 As measured by agreement with: "In my view, it would be good if all churches endorsed same-sex marriage as having equal legitimacy with male-female marriage." 39 Seven of these were EPU faculty, 5 MPU, and 2 RCU.
40 By contrast, of same-sex attracted respondents attending Christian churches, 12.5% supported the "only in male-female marriage" sexual ethical paradigm. marriage equality and an ethic of sex-only-in-marriage, all identified as primarily or exclusively opposite-sex attracted (n=13) or bisexual (n=1). 39 Furthermore, of the 92 respondents who identified as primarily or exclusively same-sex attracted, 85% affirmed marriage equality, 36% attended Christian churches, and not one affirmed both marriage equality and an ethic of sex only in marriage. 40 In short, the few who profess such a hybrid ethic as their faith-integration stance do not represent the persons such an ethic is for. And those who are same-sex attracted seem uninclined to embrace such an ethic for themselves. Why, after all, should they selectively reject one portion of the biblical ethic and nonetheless feel obligated to accept another part of that same ethic as normative and binding? In short, this data does not provide strong evidentiary support for the functional existence of such a fully embraced hybrid ethical paradigm. Thus I return to a consideration of the only university-based alternative to the "consent" paradigm, the "sex-only-in-malefemale-marriage" paradigm.
To summarize, this article has demonstrated the existence of this alternative paradigm, and only this alternative paradigm, clearly and concisely articulated in scores of university student handbooks and codes of conduct. It has shown that many scholars situated at religiously affiliated institutions themselves affirm such an ethic. It demonstrated that factors influencing adherence to this ethic include 1.) the religious tradition of the university employer, 2.) the extent of "faithintegration" emphasis, 3.) whether faculty attend Christian churches, and 4.) whether they trust the Bible as true in what it affirms. But this article has also demonstrated the presence across religious traditions of other faculty who believe this ethic is "outrageous"irrational, motivated by hate, and productive of human harm. Among such faculty, there is strong support for the idea that government should intervene to sanction any institution attempting to live out this ethic.
But while these research results help us understand some of what is at stake for those espousing a historic Christian sexual ethic, they do little to chart a way forward in the current environment. If faith integration is a valued goal, then this article is incomplete if ended here.
Scores of Christian institutions expect their faculty to practice faith integration in their teaching and scholarship and explicitly affirm the historic Christian view that sex belongs only in covenant monogamous male-female marriage intended as life-long. Among these institutions are the two evangelical theological seminaries where I taught for twenty-nine years and the two undergraduate institutions where I taught for five. And many thousands of Christian scholars across disciplines, myself included, explicitly affirm the historic Christian ethic of sex-only-in-male-female marriage. Many such scholars say that they aspire to practice "faith-learning integration" in their teaching and scholarship, an "outrageous" vocational commitment according to George Marsden (1998), presumably requiring courage. But there is no topic on which the cultured of our society are more inclined to repudiate Christian wisdom as "outrageous" than sexuality, no understandings more likely to trigger shame-induction interventions towards any who would advocate such "wisdom." And while biblical treatments of sexuality are available, little of the faith-integration literature written by Christian scholars in other disciplines prioritizes disciplinary research and writing to develop publicly accessible understandings of sex and marriage congruent with, and supportive of, biblical teaching. Indeed, in the faith-integration literature, any defense of the historic Christian sexual paradigm appears to be the third rail few dare to touch, lest they suffer adverse consequences. 41 But it is not enough for Christian universities to draft statements on sex and marriage based on biblical teaching to which faculty are expected to assent, with lawyers and board members weighing in on how best to secure religious liberty protections. Christian scholars themselves, in each relevant discipline, should be doing the pre-political work of Christian faith integration in and through discipline-specific scholarship on sex and marriage. The downside of an appeal to religious liberty legal protections based purely on biblical expositions of Christian views on sex and marriage is that, for those who do not accept biblical authority, this contributes to the perception that there is no publicly accessible case to be made for such a viewpoint, and thus that the viewpoint is irrational and masks non-rational compulsions and 41 For examples of how aggressively such views can be sanctioned in the academy, see Smith 2014. hateful motivations. And when Christian scholars, across disciplines, fail to make a compelling public case for the positive nature of such a Christian ethicwhile others routinely promulgate the view that such an ethic is deeply harmful-it is not surprising that societywide sympathy for an appeal to religious liberty protections dissipates. Even the phrase "religious liberty" in American media increasingly appears only in scare quotes. In short, the freedom of Christians and Christian institutions to faithfully live out a biblical ethic and commend it to others-not least to our children-becomes increasingly curtailed by society.
Faith integration requires more than mere assent to biblical teaching. It requires, instead, scholars sufficiently convinced of the truth and goodness of what Scripture teaches that this informs research, writing, and teaching in our disciplines. And since realities related to sex and marriage are complex, only when scholars across disciplines courageously prioritize a sustained commitment to faith-informed research and writing on sex and marriage will adequate foundations be laid for wise and faithful engagement with our own children and the wider world.
Among the disciplines whose professional members have studied sex and marriage is anthropology, my own field. While anthropology is hardly a discipline that most people would think of as a sympathetic partner in defense of a Christian sexual ethic, it nonetheless has unprecedented strengths that allow us to reframe the issues raised in the preceding sections of this article in helpful ways. Other 'sciences of the human' selectively attend to some specified aspect of human realities (economic, political, psychological, demographic, geographic, linguistic, medical, biological, religious, etc.) while leaving other human dimensions to be treated by other disciplines. By contrast, anthropologists holistically incorporate physical, social, moral, psychological, religious, economic, political, legal, linguistic, historical, and cultural dimensions of human realities into whatever they study, including their treatment of sex and marriage. Furthermore, every other human science historically attempted to formulate generalizable understandings of human realities by paying research attention, at most, to a narrow subset of humanity. Anthropology, by contrast, intentionally included all of humankind as its object of study-and insisted that no human reality can be adequately understood by scholars who do not attend to that reality across cultures in space and time. And at the very core of the social order that anthropologists have devoted themselves to studying are kinship, gender, sex, and marriage.
Not all publishing venues lend themselves equally to faith-integration conversations. And when elite secular culture finds specific Christian views "outrageous," a dedicated space is needed for Christians to engage each other on the relevant issues from the vantage point both of shared faith and of shared disciplinary expertise. In anthropology, that publication is On Knowing Humanity Journal: Anthropological Ethnography and Analysis Through the Eyes of Christian Faith. This online journal provides generous space for integrative scholarship. This issue of the journal includes four articles by Christian anthropologists (Michael Rynkiewich, Vince Gil, Jenell Paris, and Robert Priest) on sex, gender, and marriage-and provides a platform for interaction between authors. Each author combines Christian faith and professional expertise in anthropology.
In this article, I reconsider the current reigning sexual consent paradigm and its critique of the only university-based alternative to it-the "sex only in malefemale marriage paradigm." Specifically, I invite us to review and assess the charge that the latter viewpoint is extremist, irrational, motivated by hate, and productive of human harm. I do so, not by an appeal to Scripture or by a philosophical appeal to natural law, but by examining my own discipline of anthropology as it encountered marriage worldwide.

Anthropology of Marriage and Family
Consider three leading anthropologists from quite different schools of thought. In his controlled comparison of 250 societies studied by anthropologists, American anthropologist George Peter Murdock (1949, 1) identified the unit of "a married man and woman with their offspring" as the core building block of family and kinship in each of these 250 societies. He referred to this unit as the "nuclear family" but clarified that only in a minority of societies is the nuclear family a residentially separate entity. Instead, he says, the "nuclear family" is like an atom, sometimes alone, but often "combined, like atoms in a molecule, into larger aggregates" (2). He identifies two such larger social aggregates. The polygamous family consists of "two or more nuclear families affiliated by plural marriages. . . . Under polygyny, for instance, one man plays the role of husband and father in several nuclear families and thereby unites them in a larger familial group. An extended family consists of two or more nuclear families affiliated through an extension of the parent-child relationship rather than of the husband-wife relationship . . . [such as with a] patrilocal extended family [including] an older man, his wife or wives, his unmarried children, his married sons, and the wives and children of the latter" (1949,2). Murdock says that each child typically enters the world within one nuclear family (a family of orientation). But, because of "incest taboos which regularly prevail within the nuclear family" (1949, 16), each child eventually must "seek in another family for a spouse with whom to establish a marital relation," thus together with their own spouse forging a new nuclear family, a "family of procreation" (1949, 13).
"Husband and wife cannot both remain with their own families of orientation in founding a new family of procreation. One or the other, or both, must move" (16).
The British anthropologist Alfred Reginald Radcliffe-Brown likewise identified the "group consisting of a [married] father and a mother and their children" (Radcliffe-Brown 1950, 4) as cross-culturally a fundamental unit of society. He refers to this unit as the "elementary family" rather than the "nuclear family," as Murdock termed it. Radcliffe-Brown reports that marriage is what gives a child "a legitimate position in society" (5), with "social fatherhood" largely "determined by marriage" (4). He writes, "We may regard the elementary family as the basic unit of kinship structure. What is meant by this is that the relationships, of kinship or affinity, of any person are all connections that can be traced through his parents, his siblings, his spouse, or his children" (5). Like Murdock, Radcliffe-Brown also identifies "compound families" as comprised of combinations of more basic "elementary families." In a polygynous compound family, for example, each child has their own mother and father married to each other. But while all children in the same polygynous family share the same father, not all share the same mother.
The French anthropologist, Claude Levi-Strauss, posits as the "iron rule for the establishment of any society," the biblical requirement, "You will leave your father and mother" (1984, 61). Because of a "virtually universal prohibition on marriage" to someone in one's own family of origin, such as a brother or sister, "each family is formed from the union, and hence also the break-up of two other families: in order that a new family can be established, two other families have to each lose one of their members" (Levi-Strauss 1996, 3). "The family," Levi-Strauss argues, "originates in marriage [and] includes the husband, the wife, and the children born of their union" (1984,44). And it is this "nucleus" of married father, mother, and their children around which wider kinship links are established.
What is Marriage?
As missionaries and anthropologists discovered, marriage as a cultural institution existed in thousands of societies the world over-long before Christianity was present. The very existence of marriage as a worldwide institution would seem to imply that this institution served some universal and primordial purpose or function.
In modern Gesellschaft societies with market economies, bureaucracies, high mobility levels, and transient and impersonal relationships, marriage provides the only stable friendship that some people have. Thus, the idea of marriage as primordially a solution to adult loneliness, as five Supreme Court justices in Obergefell argued, 42 seems plausible. And of course, if having a close friend is truly the primary purpose of marriage, it would appear arbitrary, irrational, and prejudicial to define marriage as a crosssex union.
But as anthropologists studied marriage, the idea that marriage was founded to give each adult a singularly close friend was not a theory they adoptedfor rather basic reasons. In most societies, through history, people lived in village settings where they worked and socialized with neighbors and relatives with whom they had long and close interdependent relationships. Marriages were not unique outposts of close adult friendship against a broader backdrop of weak friendships. In fact, since activities and interests in such Gemeinschaft societies were typically genderdifferentiated, with women mostly spending time with women and men likewise with men-the closest friendships were often non-sexual same-sex friendships. Indeed, western missionaries were sometimes disturbed at how seldom marriage was understood as the deepest form of close friendship and took it as their task to advocate a new paradigm of marriagecompanionate marriage-understood as profoundly 42 Obergefell v. Hodges, 576 U. S. (2015), 14. deep friendship. Empirically, while marriage was present the world over, it did not usually provide a singular outpost of close friendship against a backdrop of social isolation. And while friendship existed the world over (Beer andGardner 2015, Bell andColeman 2020), most friendships did not exhibit the normative patterns characteristic of marriage (such as a cross-sex link, sex being core to the relationship, and sexual exclusivity). Thus, a presumed need for a best friend is likely not the most fundamental reason for the worldwide existence of marriage.
To infer a primordial function to a universal institution, one must attend to that institution's contours across societies and through time. Until recently, anthropologists in hundreds of societies encountered an institution involving male-female sexual union and joint responsibility for resulting offspring. Data on marital regimes in 1231 traditional societies in Murdock's Ethnographic Atlas Codebook, 1998 World Cultures (as reported in Bethmann and Kvasnicka 2007, 20) indicate that in 15.1% of these societies (N=186) only monogamous marriage (one man married to one woman) was found, with another 36.8% (N=453) having primarily monogamy, but also "occasional" polygyny (one man married to more than one wife). The boundary between these first two categories was sometimes slim. For example, of 666 married men sampled among Tukanoans of the Amazon, one was married to four wives, one to two, and the remaining 664 were married to one wife (Jackson 1984, 164). In another 47.8% of the 1231 societies (N=588), polygyny was "common," although more men were actually married monogamously than polygynously in most of these societies. Finally, polyandry was also found in 0.3% of societies (N=4), with one woman married to multiple men. In "all three marriage regimes" (monogamous, polygynous, polyandrous), "conjugal unions are intersexual in nature, i.e. they involve at least one member of each sex. This ubiquitous trait . . . underscores that reproduction must be of central importance for the institution of marriage." (Bethmann and Kvasnicka 2007, 20).
It is because of data collected by anthropologists, such as outlined above, that Oxford University Professor of Anthropology, Peter Rivière, in a publication primarily oriented to deconstructing prior anthropological ideas about kinship and marriage, nonetheless asserts, The constituent units of marriage are men and women, and this seems to be marriage's single, universal feature. Thus the study of marriage must in the first place concentrate on the categories of male and female and the relationship between them. This may seem so obvious as to be not worth saying, but in writing on marriage we seem to have constantly overlooked this obvious fact. (Rivière 1971, 63) Anthropologists develop their concepts and definitions inductively based on what they believe the worldwide cultural patterns exemplify. At the time he wrote, Rivière thought anthropologists would accept as an "obvious fact" his contention that the "constituent units of marriage are men and women." But today, in the midst of a cultural revolution related to sex and marriage, anthropologists inductively define marriage in ways often intended definitionally to include the new patterns related to gay marriage. Thus, for example, a recent leading anthropology textbook defines marriage simply as "a socially recognized relationship that may involve physical and emotional intimacy as well as legal rights to property and inheritance" (Guest 2020, A-52; for similar examples see Crapo 1993, 277 andHaines 2017, 277).
But suppose one wishes to consider marriage before recent developments. Anthropology is helpful both because it is the discipline that best understood worldwide ethnographic realities related to marriage and because anthropologists are dispositionally opposed to ethnocentric conservatism. As Adam Kuper (2000, 149) puts it, "anthropology teachers revel in the most exotic practices . . . [and] particularly relish those that affront Western assumptions about the nature of kinship, marriage, the family, and incest taboos." As such, they are not inclined to promote definitions and generalizations that are easily disconfirmed by cross-cultural realities. If we simply attend to how anthropologists and anthropology textbooks have defined marriage based on the state of worldwide knowledge in the 1970s, say, then we have an indicator of what the worldwide evidence would suggest. And what is central, as Rivière contended, is marriage as a cross-sex union.
The most widely quoted anthropological definition of marriage comes from the Royal Anthropological

Institute's Notes and Queries in Anthropology:
Marriage is a union between a man and a woman such that the children born to the woman are recognized as legitimate offspring of both partners. (1951,111) Judith Shapiro, a leading feminist American anthropologist, after reviewing relevant worldwide anthropology research, defined marriage to include: That the partners be a man and a woman (a crosssex conjugal bond); that sexual activity be a defining feature of the relationship; [and] that socially significant bonds be established between the partners and any offspring they may have. (Shapiro 1984, 20) Anthropology textbooks likewise provide definetions of marriage, such as the one found in Haviland (1981, 205): A transaction and resulting contract in which a woman and man establish a continuing claim to the right of sexual access to one another, and in which the woman involved is eligible to bear children.
Or in Ferraro (1998, 193): Marriage is a socially approved union between a man and a woman that regulates the sexual and economic rights and obligations between them.
Or in Kottak (2000, 508): Socially approved relationship between a socially recognized male (the husband) and a socially recognized female (the wife) such that the children born to the wife are accepted as the offspring of both husband and wife.
Or again in Schultz and Lavenda (2018, 272 & 420): An institution that prototypically involves a man and a woman, transforms the status of the participants, carries implications about sexual access, gives offspring a position in society, and establishes connections between the kin of the husband and the kin of the wife.
While the above definitions feature marriage as a male-female union, there is one well-known cultural institution in Africa that has been carefully studied by anthropologists and that does not seem to fit the above definitions (see Herskovits 1937;Bohannan 1949;Evans-Pritchard 1951;Huber 1968;Krige 1974;Oboler 1980;Amadiume 1987;Greene 1998;Njambi and O'Brien 2005).
In much of Africa, a man pays cattle in bride price, and in exchange, he gains not only a wife but her labor and her children as his own. Such marital arrangements are often utilized strategically to gain economic and political power. In many African societies, older, wealthy, and often childless women, either still married to a husband or widowed, can adopt the male identity and role of "husband." To do so, they employ their own cattle as bride price to gain wives for themselves. This gives them control over the labor and offspring of such wives, whose children now belong to the lineage of the female husband (or alternatively to the lineage of the female husband's own male husband). The female husband does not have sex with these women but instead exercises the right to assign them a male consort (perhaps one of her poorer nephews), and everyone refers to her as a "husband." As honorary males and husbands, such women often achieve great economic and political power.
Since the above anthropologists were perfectly aware of this institution, why did they define marriage as male-female unions? Several considerations seem to have informed their assessment. For example, Peter Rivière stresses that only when biological women are defined as men do such marriages occur. That is, he suggests these do not violate the core logic that marriage happens between males and females. And the fact that this form of marriage does not involve sex between "husband" and wife, something typically core to understandings of marriage, suggests this is a partial metaphoric extension of the logic of marriage to achieve selective outcomes. Anthropologists are quite aware that kinship and marriage have their own existence but get metaphorically and creatively adapted and extended in all sorts of ways. If a medieval Catholic nun was "married" to Christ, with a marital dowry provided by her father to the church, and with symbols of marriage accompanying her vows-should we allow this unusual "marriage" to require a redefinition of marriage? Or do we simply agree that cultures sometimes extend the logic of marriage metaphorically in innovative ways? When Kottak says marriage is between "a socially recognized male (the husband) and a socially recognized female (the wife)," he is doubtless choosing wording that accommodates this welldocumented institution-but signals marriage's underlying male-female logic. When Schultz and Lavenda say that marriage "prototypically involves a man and a woman," they again accommodate this exceptional pattern while nonetheless pointing to the fact that marriage historically was uniformly understood as a male-female union.
The above anthropology definitions point to the existence worldwide of marriage as an institution for approved sexual activity historically and prototypically built around the male-female binary. This naturally suggests that marriage serves some social good achievable only through male-female collaborative action. And clearly, the one good achievable exclusively by male and female in sexual partnership is procreation. That is, the function of marriage that earlier anthropologists identified was the need of every society to reproduce itself. As individuals, we all die. Thus, procreation and social reproduction are critical to any society's future. And while individuals can achieve many things, the most amazing power given to humans, the ability to bring into existence another human being, is a power the individual cannot exercise alone, but only with a partner-specifically, an opposite-sex partner.
Humans are reproductively dimorphic. While each of us has entire circulatory, respiratory, digestive, skeletal, muscular, and nervous systems, we each have only half of a reproductive system. Only when two individuals, male and female, unite their reproductive halves into a reproductive whole does procreation occur. Just as various parts of a human body (eyes, hands, mouth, throat, digestive tract) collaborate to feed the body and keep it nourished, so two individuals, representing the two reproductive halves of humankind, male and female, must collaborate to contribute to the procreative goal of perpetuating humankind.
"A woman needs a man like a fish needs a bicycle," Gloria Steinem reportedly said. And indeed, in most settings, it is reasonable to emphasize that each person is complete in himself or herself. Biologically, however, each is complete in all respects save one. For purposes of procreation, each of us has only half of what is needed for the singular act of procreation. This requires both a male and female body to function in sexual and procreative complementarity.
But why marriage? Why don't humans procreate like dogs do? Here, anthropologists focused not merely on the biology of procreation but also on social reproduction. Humans are born in an unfinished state that requires long-term biological dependency for food, protection, and care. Lacking hard-wired instincts for adult success, humans are also born in an unfinished state with reference to language, morality, and culture and are only completed through socialization. Human offspring require remarkable investments of long-term care and socialization for societies successfully to reproduce themselves over time. From a functional standpoint, whatever else marriage does, it provides the institution for approved procreation and in which social reproduction responsibilities and tasks are prescribed and carried out.
Marriage traditionally gives each child a father and mother and bifilial kin ties to both father's and mother's relatives (Chapais 2008, 57-59). While such ties function asymmetrically in cultures with unilineal descent, even then, children find valued ties with recognized kin on both father's and mother's sides. As the great kinship scholar Harold Scheffler (1973, 758) affirms, kinship everywhere is reckoned through both parents-that is bilaterally. For example, even in kinship systems stressing patrilineal descent-where one might naturally expect ties only with father's relatives, young males nonetheless often capitalize on their significant kin links with their mother's brothers, a cross-cultural pattern so prevalent that anthropologists have come to name this relationship "the avunculate" (Chapais 2008, 59).
Male and female bodies are not mirror images of one another. While every conception requires the union of a male and female body, purely as a biological matter, female bodies are far more invested in procreation than male bodies. Each conception takes mere minutes of a man's time, who can produce millions more sperm within hours, theoretically free, if so inclined and opportunities avail, to daily initiate other conceptions with other available women. By contrast, women have only a few hundred eggs total, eggs that are enormous compared with sperm and normally released once a month, except when pregnant and lactating, until menopause. Each conception and birth requires nine months of a woman's body in pregnancy, followed historically by a sustained period of two or more years for lactation (Dettwyler 2004), usually followed by years of postweaning provision and care. Historically, irrespective of variability in cultural ideology related to conception or maternity, each child that a woman births, nurses, and provides post-weaning care for rather naturally acquires deep social ties to its mother.
The link between babies and mothers at a natural level is clear. At birth, it is obvious who the mother is. But who the father is, is another matter. I tell my students, "I have four children . . . I think! I've never tested them genetically to see if they are mine. I know who their mother is. I watched each child emerge from her body. But only by faith do I claim to be the father. I trust the marital commitments my wife and I made to sexual exclusivity. I trust my wife when she tells me these children are mine." Paternity involves quite different issues from maternity.
What would societies have looked like if people behaved purely as biological creatures acting on every sexual impulse? In such a promiscuous world, children would only have an obvious, natural, and organic link to their mothers. But societies comprised of women with dependent children and unattached males would be societies of deep vulnerabilities for women and children, poorly designed for social reproduction. Female pregnant and lactating bodies, linked to dependent children, have vulnerabilities and constraints that male bodies do not. And by comparison with other species, including non-human primates, "the costs of maternity are disproportionately high in our species" (Chapais 2008, 165). Energy costs of pregnancy and especially milk production are high for all mammals-with pregnant or nursing women dealing with these costs either by working harder in food acquisition and eating more (as with non-human primates), or by "reducing their levels of physical activity and resting more" which human females usually do, but which only works well if others are partially provisioning them (Chapais 2008, 165). Chimpanzees typically nurse offspring for four years, nearly twice as long as most humans do. But "weaned chimpanzees are largely self-sufficient in food acquisition" (Chapais 2008, 164). Upon weaning, a chimpanzee mother's provisioning role is mostly finished. But while human babies are typically weaned "at an earlier age, human mothers must start provisioning them with solid food," with the "bulk of mothering costs in humans incurred well after weaning" (164). "The cost of provisioning is the difference between the quantity of food a child produces and the quantity it consumes," which for post-weaning chimpanzees "is practically nil" (164). But human offspring rely on their mothers far longer. In most traditional societies, "children eat more than they gather until they reach their mid to late teens" (164). And while birth intervals for chimpanzees are five or six years, human birth intervals are more commonly two or three years (Chapais 213). Thus provisioning of chimpanzee young occurs sequentially. New offspring do not require care until prior offspring no longer need care. By contrast, "human mothers must feed more than one child at a time. For example, they may be suckling an infant while provisioning two or three other children" (164). In societies without stable support from men, women and children experience high levels of poverty and vulnerability to the predations of asocial men.
In short, the challenge in any society is not how to attach women to their children. That happens irrespective of marriage. The challenge, rather, is how to attach men to their children-how to get men to contribute their fair share of the social reproduction project.
According to anthropologists (Cai 1995, Shih 2009) who studied the culture, at least one society (variably called the Na, the Moso, or the Mosuo) traditionally had neither marriage nor institutionally recognized fatherhood and thus did not expect fathers to support their own children. 43 In this culture, kinship rested exclusively on mother-ties, with adult brothers and sisters of a single mother comprising the domestic unit. Males provided support to sisters and their children, not to a wife and their own children. But this society, as described, represents an extreme outlier. The more common and virtually universal cultural pattern involved marriage and the accompanying expectation that fathers would support their own children, just as mothers do. Marriage is what connects fathers to their children through a connection with their children's mother-and by extension, connects children to father's relatives as well as mother's.

The Challenge of Paternity
Social reproduction works best when men are attached and invested in that work, which is what the institution of marriage historically demanded. And since biologically, every conception and birth requires a male as well as a female contributor, socially it made sense in societies the world over that both parties be attached to their children in service of social reproduction. Marital bonds "are, in effect, parental partnerships" (Chapais 2008, 168). As one 43 Some scholars (Godelier 2011, 364 andCrapo 1993, 175) also include the Nayar of southern India here, arguing that their marriage ritual affirmed a fiction, and that what they had did not constitute marriage.
44 That each can rightfully expect of the other, as seen in Scripture (I Corinthians 7), but also in other cultures (e.g. Abu-Lughod, 2016, 145). anthropology textbook states, "Almost every society recognizes the difference between mating and marriage. Mating implies sex with no further obligations or permanent responsibilities on the part of the male. Marriage, almost everywhere, implies a man's contractual commitment to a mother and her child" (van der Elst 2003, 84).
Male commitment is, however, more tenuous, with uncertain paternity a profoundly destabilizing issue. Societies find it easier to require men to partner in the care, provision, and socialization of a child that they believe to be theirs than in a child conceived by some other male competitor for the sexual favors of the child's mother. The cultural institution of marriage, prototypically involving an expectation of sexual exclusivity, allows men to presume that a child is indeed their own. And from the woman's side, if sex gives women babies that need care for years to come, it should not surprise if "all the single ladies" sing with Beyoncé, "if you like it . . . put a ring on it." That is, it should not surprise that women historically showed more interest in someone with a permanent commitment to them and any resulting children, rather than merely a casual fling. Marriage enables women to secure paternal investment in their offspring.
The females of most mammalian species are sexually unresponsive except for brief windows of time during estrus-which itself "triggers rut" in nearby males (van der Elst 2003, 82). By contrast, women's ovulation is concealed from men (van der Elst 79; Chapais 169-70), and females are not seasonally limited in sexual responsiveness. This means that both husband and wife can have a socially approved partner for ongoing and mutually pleasurable sexual relations, 44 an exclusive marital relation not threatened by temporary swarms of other men seasonally enticed by a wife's estrus. And this contributes to marital attachment and stability. When a male and a female are invested mutually in each other and in the children their sexual activities produce, this creates an optimum institution for social reproduction.
But while anthropologists identify "paternity recognition" as a "uniquely human" trait (Chapais 2008, 128;van der Elst 2003, 76), we must distinguish between two possible meanings of "paternity recognition": 1.) the recognition that procreation requires (and results from) male-female sexual union, and 2.) people's actual ability to know with certainty which male contributed to the procreation of which baby. While arguably the former is present in all human societies, 45 the latter is virtually never fully present. And yet paternity confidence matters. It matters because, as has been documented in a wide variety of cultural contexts, the higher the paternity uncertainty, the less willing a man and his own relatives are, on average, to invest in a man's alleged progeny (Anderson 1974;Anderson, Kaplan, and Lancaster 2007;Bethmann and Kvasnicka 2007;Fox and Bruce 2001;Anderson 2006;Cashdan 1996).
Marriage, with its publicly endorsed and enforced demand for sexual fidelity, and its universal condemnation of adultery, is an institution uniquely designed to foster paternal confidence and, thus, to allow a man to effectively invest in a marital biparental partnership focused on known children (Winking, Kaplan, Gurven, andRusas 2007, 1644). In her crosscultural survey of sexuality, Frazer (1985, 20) reports that extra-marital affairs are ranked just below incest "as the most strictly prohibited type of sexual relationship." And in their study of 66 societies with anthropological descriptions of spousal responses to adultery, Jankowiak, Nell, and Buckmaster (2002) report that husbands and wives are equally likely to object to their spouses' adultery as a violation of their marital rights and equally likely to engage in mateguarding behavior, though often with divergent tacticsand with divergent feared outcomes from spousal adultery.
If a husband commits adultery, his wife fears the loss of emotional, relational, and economic support for herself and her children. But she does not fear being duped "into investing parentally in another woman's offspring" (Barkow 1989, 315). By contrast, a single act of secret adultery by a wife can result in nine months of pregnancy, a couple of years nursing, and many more years of needed care for this child of another man. Whether a husband is confident of paternity impacts his investment (and that of his relatives) in his marital and parental partnership. Indeed, in Betzig's (1989) survey of marital dissolution in 160 societies studied by anthropologists, adultery was the leading cause of divorce, especially the wife's infidelity. 45 While Malinowski claimed the Trobrianders lacked any recognition of the biological role of paternity, and David Schneider likewise made that claim for Yapese, there are reasons to believe both were in error. See Shapiro 2018;Kuper 2000, 151-157. 46 This is also referred to as "partible paternity." See, for example, Beckerman and Valentine 2002, Shapiro 2009. "Compromising a man's certainty in paternity (cuckoldry) is apparently seen worldwide as a breach so great that it often causes the irrevocable termination of the long-term marital bond" (Buss 2006, 246). By contrast, marriages with multiple children under conditions of high paternity confidence were unusually stable (Betzig 1989).
Under polyandry, with multiple husbands married to a single wife, it might appear that paternity concerns are ignored. But the fact that co-husbands are nearly always brothers (Low 2007) minimally ensures that each child is biologically related to each household "father." And even here, mechanisms are often in place to certify one true father. For example, the Tibetan Nyimba (of Nepal) place great emphasis on the paternity of children; one brother is identified as the "real" (ngothog) father, that is, the man believed to be responsible for the child's conception. The mother [indicates who the father is in accord with a theory of conception which holds] that women are likeliest to become pregnant in the second week of their menstrual cycles. A woman's certainty about the paternity of her children is enhanced by the fact that husbands often are away from home for lengthy periods of time. (Levine and Silk 1997, 379) Polyandry occasionally appears in Amazonia (e.g., Peters 1982). Here, one encounters belief in what Philippe Erikson (2002, 126) calls "polyandrous conception," the idea that conception occurs through multiple acts of sexual intercourse. On this understanding, more than one husband can contribute to the conception of a child and can thus be a child's biological father. 46 Nonetheless, polyandry is rare, largely present only under unusual demographic and material conditions (Goldstein 1987;Peters 1982;Levine and Silk 1997). As a marriage form, it is "fragile" (Peters 1982, 93), or as expressed by Prince Peter, it is "a recessive cultural trait" (1963,570). When material and demographic conditions change, younger brothers often move quickly into monogamous marriages (Peters 1982). In short, the rarity of polyandry across societies, as well as its fragility, in comparison with monogamy and polygyny, is an indicator of preference for marriage regimes where paternity confidence is more easily achievable (Bethmann and Kvasnicka 2007).
Anthropologists have analyzed a variety of cultural practices as reflective of a concern to enhance paternity confidence. These include cultural rites involving menstrual huts (Small 1999), claustration/'Purdah' (Dickemann 1981), and couvade-a ritual complex found throughout native South America (Metraux 1949) and elsewhere which occurs during the perinatal period surrounding childbirth. In the institution of couvade, for example, both mother and father participate in dietary and behavioral avoidances designed to guard against adverse impacts on the child's well-being (based on a logic of sympathetic magic) and where a father's somatic symptoms often mirror those of his wife-including in some cases, her birth pangs. Fathers avoid their normal violent or dangerous activities of killing (fishing, hunting, and warfare) and cutting (felling the forest for a garden) and typically rest in bed. This ritual establishes a mystical/magical triangular union of solidarity between mother, father, and child-with mother's and child's well-being understood as directly impacted by precautions taken by both parents. This ritual celebrates the biparental creation of a child and makes the "social unit of parents-and-child visible" (Rival 1998;Doja 2005). But while the ritual involves both parents, it is not the mother's relationship with the child which requires special social recognition but the father's. Thus, anthropologists have widely understood this rite as a dramaturgical "affirmation of paternity" by the husband and father (Malinowski 1937, 215;Doja 2005, 945). And when a husband's couvade restrictions result in mother and child successfully surviving the dangerous period, and perhaps also when a husband experiences psychosomatic symptoms mirroring those of his wife, this lends subjective confidence to the husband and everyone around that he is indeed the father. 47 Couvade provides, to use Mary Douglas's wording, "primitive proof of paternity" (2002,65).
Several studies have also documented the widespread tendency of mothers and mothers' relatives to emphasize to the husbands how much the child looks like them (Regalski and Gaulin 1993;Apicella and Marlowe 2004;Daly and Wilson 1982;McLain, Setters, Moulton, and Pratt 2000). 47 Rival (1998, 637) cites a case where a husband who scrupulously observed couvade interpreted the child's subsequent illness as evidence confirming his own doubts about being the father. Malinowski reported, for example, that among Trobrianders, it is "extremely bad form and a great offense" to suggest a child looks like its mother. Rather "every child looks like its father. Such similarity is always assumed and affirmed to exist" (1929,(174)(175). Naming patterns (such as the widespread use of paternal surnames and patronyms) often signal and publicly affirm links of offspring to their fathers. Even in some matrilineal systems, such as in the Trobriands, where formal names may pass along a mother's line, each child may also have a name bestowed by its father-a name signaling the paternity connection (Senft 2007).
Marriage traditionally is a cultural institution that prescribes sexual fidelity and supports paternity confidence as a contributor to robust male-female marital and parental partnerships. But sexual intercourse occurs in private-with procreative outcomes visible only in and through the body of a woman. No such natural disclosure marks the identity of the biological father (the genitor In one study, Gaulin and Schlegel (1980) sampled 135 societies using a standardized measure of female sexual promiscuity and found that in 55% of these societies, there were grounds for high paternity confidence-and also found that high paternity confidence was associated with higher investment and support for children by fathers and their relatives. In another study of extramarital sexual activity in 57 cultures, Huber, Linhartova, and Cope (2004) found comparable results. In both studies, a minority of cultures had comparatively low levels of paternity confidence. To explore how paternity confidence matches actual paternity, Anderson (2006) reviewed published reports on nonpaternity rates based on genetic testing. In the 30 studies where genetic data was collected under conditions of low paternity confidence, the median rate of nonpaternity was 29.8%. But in the 22 studies where data was collected in contexts of high paternity confidence, the nonpaternity rate was 1.7%.
An example of a high paternity culture with high father investment is the Dogon of Mali. The Dogon do not use birth control, and most (83%) Dogon women have high fertility ranging from seven to thirteen live births. In a genetic sample of Dogon father-son pairs (N=1,136) whose families had not converted to Islam or Christianity but whose women continued using the traditional menstrual hut (understood by anthropologists as promoting cuckoldry defense), the nonpaternity rate was 1.3% (Strassmann et al. 2012, 9781).
In short, there are reasons to believe that a high number of traditional cultures, and individual fathers within those cultures, do achieve relatively high levels of warranted paternity confidence. They do this, not by litigating at every birth who the biological father is, but by creating a marriage that publicly affirms who the father is supposed to be, and by creating a supportive marriage culture maximizing the likelihood that the husband is indeed the genitor, and then by insisting that this father (the pater) simply be presumed to be the father. In most cultures, even the actual genitor has no right to claim legal paternity of a child born to a woman married to another man. Marshall Sahlins (1960, 81) summarizes the core cross-cultural principle, "Almost all societies adhere, implicitly or explicitly, to the dictum of the Napoleonic code in this respect: the father of the child is the husband of the mother." Marriage enhances men's trust in their wives, and trust in their own paternity. It enhances women's trust that their marital partners are fully committed to them and to the flourishing of their offspring. It benefits children by giving them fathers, in addition to mothers, and a social identity linking them to a whole network of supportive kin.
That is, male-female marriage is a social and cultural formation grafted onto a biological reproductive template. Male-female sex makes babies. Babies need parents. Keeping male-female sex inside marriage gives babies both the parents they need-a father and a mother. Nature provides each child with a mother. 48 Culture-through the institution of marriage-works to ensure they have a father as well. That is, a marriage culture not only provides foundations for a man's confidence that he is the biological father of a child and publicly affirms the paternity relationship through symbolic markers, but it 48 Indeed, the offspring of all mammalian species have dependent relationships with their mothers.
insists that biological paternity is not enough. Men must be social fathers.
The reason cultures of marriage historically stigmatized adultery is because children deserve to know who their father is. They deserve a father who plays the role of father to them, which is best done if simultaneously playing the husband's role to their mother. You do not consistently get stable marriages and committed fatherhood unless a marital ethic of sexual exclusivity allows a man to presume with a degree of confidence that children are genuinely his own. So, what do we find anthropologically until recently? Marriage as a social institution historically present in societies the world over irrespective of whether Christianity is present or not-built up around two distinct and non-interchangeable "parts"-one part male and one part female, the twoness of marriage grounded in the twoness of sexual and procreative dimorphism. Since all societies need to ensure that the children who result from sexual relations between men and women are cared for and socialized into being competent and good moral adults, then we should not be surprised to discover marriage historically present in societies the world over-binding male and female parties together in service of biological procreation, social reproduction, and the flourishing of the next generation.
A view of marriage as a sexual union of male and female does not rest purely on a Christian or religious viewpoint, but until recently was the default understanding of marriage-even in societies that affirmed same-sex sexual activity (cf . Rynkiewich 2022), as in ancient Greece, New Guinea, or Tahiti. Long before the words of Jesus about the twoness of marriage being grounded in the twoness of God's creation of male and female (Mark 10:6-9), marriage as an institution binding together male and female partners in a functional complementarity in service of both biological procreation and social reproduction was present in societies the world over. And the motivating end of such a marital ethic: not irrational animus or psychopathology, but sacrificial care for a new generation brought into being by the necessarily joint activity of male with female, a new generation fully supported because of the partnering institution of marriage by fathers as well as by mothers.
The Relevance of the Anthropological View Today, when some Christian universities affirm what Christians have always affirmed, they do so against the backdrop of what has recently become a far more influential sexual paradigm whose spokespersons deem the historic Christian sexual ethic outrageous, extremist, and harmful. Anthropology helps reframe consideration of these competing paradigms.
Consider a biological metaphor. A biologist who encounters a self-contained cluster of unique tissues in a member of a newly discovered species, but not in other members of that species, would rightly infer this is more likely a cancerous tumor than a healthy organ. "Outliers" are less likely to represent primordial essential goods than are shared elements. Thus, the charge that the Christian male-female sexual marital ethic is "extremist" (that is, an outlier) rather naturally feeds into the suspicion that it is harmful, pathological. But the anthropological view invites us to reconsider "Which paradigm is the outlier?" and "What outcomes result from each paradigm?" Which Paradigm is the Outlier? Christians in diverse societies affirmed a marital ethic that, until recently, shared a great deal in common with surrounding cultures and religions, including a.) the assumption that marital partners should be a man and a woman (a cross-sex conjugal bond), b.) that socially approved sexual activity should be a defining feature of the marital relationship-as against non-marital male-female sexual relations which lacked parallel public moral approval, 49 and c.) that marriage provides the morally prescribed institution for procreation, where biological fathers (genitors) are expected to serve also as social fathers (paters), and where each child's father and mother-married to each other-partner in the joint project of social reproduction.
However, in contemporary American higher education, the only remaining representatives of such an earlier worldwide pattern are outliers. Today, when 49 And lacked a parallel concern to provide each child a father, and not just a mother.
50 This is not because older sexual ethics insisted that the only justified reason for any sexual act was procreative, as is often incorrectly attributed to them, but rather, that the only relational context in which sex should occur is in a marriage where father and mother are fully prepared to care for resultant offspring. That is, every child ought to be conceived only by parents actually prepared to function jointly-through marriageas mother and father to them.
Christian colleges affirm what Christians have always affirmed, they do so against the cultural backdrop of a revolutionary and imperialistic sexual paradigm with which they share little.
However, within the broader scope of human cultural history, the new paradigm is the outlier. Admittedly, there have always been (mostly) men furtively soliciting sex from others with no strings attached-with no primordial commitments to sexual partners and any resultant offspring. What is historically and culturally unprecedented is accredited moral authorities (the university sexual consent architects) actively instructing young people that they may solicit sex from others without the entailment of any specified relational commitments or larger normative meanings, without any procreation and social reproduction outcomes in view, 50 and without the need for consultation, approval, and support from parents and others.

Which Paradigm is Most Productive of Harm?
By what criteria should we assess outcomes of competing ethics? Two options present themselves: outcomes related to consent and outcomes related to social reproduction.

Consent
On one paradigm, approved sex should exist only where consent and mutual commitment are publicly expressed in marriage, an institution oriented to ensuring any resulting children have both a father and mother in a single home committed to them and to each other. Sex here is a normatively meaningful act, hedged about with prescribed denial of consent for any offer of sexual relationship outside marital bonds.
On the alternate paradigm, the only normative barrier to sex with anyone is their individual lack of consent. No other parties (parents, the public) play prescribed supportive roles in identifying and rejecting improper solicitations. The transient will of the solitary individual being solicited-an often young, attractive, and naïve individual-is elevated to a transcendent status, the sole barrier to desired sex. The challenge, of course, is that this elevation of individual consent as the only barrier to sex with anyone is embedded in a cultural ideology that has first deconstructed the very norms and ideals by which denial of consent makes compelling sense.
Indeed, in the ideology of the new paradigm, offering to have sex with another is a generous and virtuous act of hospitality, with theologians of the new ethic explicitly framing "wanton" and "promiscuous" sex as exemplifying the virtues of "generosity" and "hospitality" (Stuart 1999;Goss 2004;Cheng 2011;Clark 1990;Haldeman 2007;Hunt 1991;Jennings 2013;McNeill 1988;Rudy 1997;Stuart 2003;Wilson 1995). Thus, offering to have sex with someone is like offering someone a cup of tea. The 2015 video "Consent-It's as simple as Tea" was an instant viral sensation. In a little over a year, this video was reportedly viewed 150 million times and translated into 25 languages (Heffernan 2016), quickly becoming a staple of sexual consent pedagogy in schools and colleges. It concludes, "Whether it's tea or sex, consent is everything." The hospitality metaphor frames (and rationalizes) sexual solicitation as generous concern for another's thirst, for their well-being, as against the more probable reality that it is the sexual thirst of the initiator that motivates the invitation to uncommitted sex. Ethics related to sharing sex, as against the ethics of sharing food or drink, diverge in traditional cultures. Likewise, in the Bible, while it is good promiscuously to share cups of cold water (and presumably hot tea) with all who thirst (Mathew 10:42), the man who himself thirsts for sex should "drink" from his own well. His "springs of water" should "never be shared with strangers," never "overflow in the streets." People should seek sexual satisfaction only with their spouse (Proverbs 5:15-21). Sharing food and drink (commensality) versus sharing sex are different realities with fundamentally different entailments.
Furthermore, in tea-drinking cultures, even the act of declining tea offered by a hospitable host is often extraordinarily difficult to accomplish without giving offense. It is not simple (Brady and Lowe 2020;Kerr 2019). 51 On what grounds does one justify the rejection of a generous offer of hospitality? And when the new sexual paradigm deconstructs and scorns older meanings related to sexual morality-the very meanings 51 When it comes to food or drink hospitality, even the Apostle Paul advised Jewish Christians to partake in the hospitality offered by Gentile hosts, "asking no questions for conscience sake" (I Cor. 10:27). by which refusals of transient uncommitted sex make good sense-it should not surprise that the denial of consent becomes more burdensome, more difficult, not less (Humphreys and Kennett 2010;Gamble 2019;Graybill 2017). And indeed, some scholars attribute elevated rates of sexual assault and rape on university campuses to a hookup culture (Gamble 2019) where sex is stripped of larger meanings, and only consent matters, with evidence suggesting that as many as 78% of college students' unwanted sexual experiences occur in the context of hookup culture (Flack et al. 2007). While one might easily imagine that a campus culture with "consent" as the solitary ruling center of sexual ethics would be the safest for vulnerable parties, female students in these universities report significantly higher rates of consent violation than do females in universities where male-female marriage is the touchstone of sexual ethics (Vanderwoerd and Cheng 2017;Best 2018, 109-110). In short, there are reasons to believe that the new sexual paradigm itself contributes to the pervasive presence of consent violation in the contemporary world.

Procreation and Social Reproduction
So if the worldwide institution of marriage existed historically, not primarily to serve adult friendship needs, but as an institution oriented towards procreation and social reproduction, then what? This should naturally press us to consider a whole range of additional goods and harms resulting from the diverging sexual ethics that members of our society live by-goods and harms related to the next generation. For example, if marriage historically existed to bind children to their fathers, and not only their mothers, to what extent are new norms undercutting this? And with what outcomes? A wide variety of research questions emerge from such a procreation/social reproduction starting point.
Suppose one begins with a concern for the experience and well-being of emerging generations. In that case, one notes that children enter a world of tertiary strangers, but with pre-established primary (non-tertiary) relationships with kindred-with mother and father, brother and sister, grandfather and grandmother, aunt and uncle, cousin, and so on. Not only do children learn kin terms for an extensive network of kin, but relatives acknowledge their relational commitments to the child through specified kin terms. Children with married parents acquire an optimal social capital network understood as kin, who remain kin across the life course.
And historically, it was the institution of marriage that not only built the primordial links between husband and wife, father and child, but that expanded the kin-based social capital resources that benefitted maturing children. That is, by enhancing paternity confidence, marriage multiplied each child's number of "blood" relatives (what anthropologists sometimes refer to as consanguineal relatives). In a marriage culture, each child has a father as well as a mother. And each child has four grandparents, not merely one (mother's mother). And the public institution of marriage underpins the additional category of affinal relatives-relatives by marriage, with affinal ties typically nourished by social norms involving gifts, rituals, and mutual obligations. The existence of marriage historically exponentially expanded the supporting cast of relatives for each child and across their life. When the child marries, in a marriage culture, he or she has "four parents' estates to draw from, and that of eight grandparents. [But] for single parents, perpetual impoverishment is their likely lot" (Murray 1994, 14). A culture of faithful covenant marriage, with accompanying kinship ties, benefits children in the contemporary world in many significant ways, as outlined by anthropologist David W. Murray (1994). And whether stable marriages are present or absent is enormously consequential for the flourishing of the next generation and the ongoing good of social reproduction.

Conclusion
This paper has retrospectively examined the anthropology of marriage as it traditionally existed around the world. Rather than the historic Christian view of sex and marriage being an extremist outlier, it argues that the current paradigm where consent is the solitary touchstone of sexual ethics represents the divergent and extremist model. Rather than the ethic of sex only in male-female marriage being primarily productive of harm, it suggests that such a marital ethic is designed to protect successfully against many likely harms. Even when the primary concern is with violations of consent, there are reasons to believe this ethic has great strengths. Rather than the ethic of malefemale marriage being motivated by irrational animus, the anthropology of marriage documents the paradigmatic nature of male-female marriage and suggests that it has the good of social reproduction and the flourishing of the next generation in view, something largely lost from view in the current paradigm of sexual ethics. We leave for another occasion a fuller anthropological examination of recent developments in all these areas. Priest

49.) John Brown University
John Brown University seeks to foster an environment of sexual purity and wholeness, which is based on a Biblical standard of fidelity in marriage between a man and a women, and chastity in singleness. Therefore, sexual intimacy is reserved for a man and a woman in a marriage relationship. (p 23). https://www.jbu.edu/assets/student-development/resource/file/2018/ JBU_StudentHandbook_2020.pdf [March 21, 2021 50.) Judson College, AL Sexual misconduct [includes] sexual relations outside of marriage. (p. 30). Judson College affirms the biblical teaching that God designed sexual activity to occur only within the context of marriage between a woman and a man. (p. 41) https://www. judson.edu/wpcontent/uploads/2020/08/Student-Handbook-2020-21.pdf [March 21, 2021

52.) Kentucky Christian University
Biblical guidelines should give us clear direction in the one man and one woman in marriage as our guide for sexual involvement. Visitation to dorms or dwellings of members of the same or opposite sex for sexual activity outside marriage is a serious violation of campus rules. http://www. kcuknights.com/Code_of_Conduct [March 22, 2021] Sexual immorality by any student that deviates from or goes beyond the one man, one woman relationship within the traditional bonds of marriage may result in expulsion or appropriate disciplinary action which conforms to the University's expectations.

53.) Lee University, TN
The university . . . stands firmly against those elements of society which condone premarital and extramarital sexual relations, same-sex sexual behavior, and other forms of sexual behavior which violate scripture. Engaging in any sexual acts expressly condemned in scripture (premarital sex, adultery, and same-sex sexual behavior, etc.) will result in disciplinary consequences (p 18

54.) Letourneau University
Based on biblical standards, we believe that God has created the institution of marriage to be between one man and one woman, and only within this institution does God bless intimate sexual expression; all other intimate sexual expression outside of marriage is considered immoral behavior. (p. 30) https://www. letu.edu/student-life/handbook.html [March 22, 2021] 55.) Lubbock Christian University LCU affirms that human sexuality is a gift from the creator God [to be present] . . . within the context of marriage between husband and wife. Sexual intimacy outside of a marriage is inconsistent with the teaching of scripture. https://lcu.edu/resources/student-handbook/code-of-community-standards/?L=0#c14462 [March 22, 2021].

56.) Malone University
Sex should be exclusively reserved for the marriage relationship, understood as a legal, lifelong commitment between a husband and wife. https://www.malone.edu/files/resources/student-handbook-2020- 21.pdf [March 22, 2021]

57.) Messiah College
Therefore, we affirm Christian marriage to be the union of one man and one woman and that human sexuality should be understood within this framework. Because of this affirmation, premarital and extra marital intercourse and forms of same-sex sexual expression fall outside of God's design for sexual expression. https://www.messiah.edu/download/downloads/id/531/sexual_behavior_and_harassment_policies_and_procedures.pdf

58.) MidAmerican Nazarene University
We hold that the full behavioral expression of sexuality is to take place within the context of a marriage covenant between one man and one woman and that individuals remain celibate outside of the bond of marriage . . . In this community, biblical standards of sexual behavior are upheld. (p. 14) https://www.mnu.edu/sites/default/files/uploads/about/disclosures/ MNU_Student_Handbook_Spring2021.pdf [March22, 2021

59.) Milligan College
The Bible portrays faithful monogamy as the model for marriage [understood as between] male and female . . . that . . . become "one flesh." [Marriage is to be] permanent [and] heterosexual. Both the Old and New Testaments prohibit homosexual activity.