Depersonalization of sex

While love is a human phenomenon by its very nature, the humanness of sex is only the result of a developmental process and progressive maturation. To a mature person the partner is not a "sex object" but another unique person. Sex is devalued as much inasmuch as it is dehumanized.

Within this same cultural climate, the body is no longer perceived as a properly personal reality, a sign and place of relations with others, with God and with the world. It is reduced to pure materiality: it is simply a complex of organs, functions and energies to be used according to the sole criteria of pleasure and efficiency. Consequently, sexuality too is depersonalized and exploited: from being the sign, place and language of love, that is, of the gift of self and acceptance of another, in all the other's richness as a person, it increasingly becomes the occasion and instrument for self-assertion and the selfish satisfaction of personal desires and instincts. Thus the original import of human sexuality is distorted and falsified, and the two meanings, unitive and procreative, inherent in the very nature of the conjugal act, are artificially separated: in this way the marriage union is betrayed and its fruitfulness is subjected to the caprice of the couple. Procreation then becomes the "enemy" to be avoided in sexual activity: if it is welcomed, this is only because it expresses a desire, or indeed the intention, to have a child "at all costs", and not because it signifies the complete acceptance of the other and therefore an openness to the richness of life which the child represents. (Papal Encyclical, Evangelium Vitae, 25 March 1995).

The goal of sex is to reduce sexual tensions. In a society where sex has lost its imperative of procreation, living a sexual life is healthy and does not demand monogamy or love.