The Chi-Trib has a sad piece (originally from the Boston Globe) on the views of black youth on marriage. The verdict: few desire it.
Family and Society: August 2006 Archives
As part of a larger look at the sin of lust, Beliefnet is rerunning a 2002 piece by Rabbi Shmuley Boteach (whom I disagreed with last week). The upshot is that lust is OK if it's directed towards your wife.
But there is no reason people should feel guilty if they focus their lust in the right direction. By restoring lust to the marriage bed, we can avoid adultery and broken marriages.
Now, if the rabbi is using "lust" merely as a synonym for "desire," then there's no problem with these words. Indeed, dictionary.com defines it as simply "Intense or unrestrained sexual craving." (Although even here we see a difference between "intense" and "unrestrained.")
However, we think of lust with a fairly negative connotation for reasons that are not puritanical. For although desire is perfectly normal and even necessary for a healthy marriage, it can be corrupted by selfishness to the point where a man no longer desires his wife as a person, but as an object.
Boteach's point is that the kind of desire that is sinful when directed outside the marriage isn't necessarily sinful if it's directed towards the spouse. That's all fine and good, but the seven deadly sins are not just external expressions, they are also internal dispositions, meaning they can corrupt the heart, even if not acted out. This is why the Rabbi Boteach's contrarian position does more harm than good.
Men should desire their wives, and surely many marriages flounder due to a loss of such desire. But in an age where utilitarian sex is the norm, we should be wary of giving the green light to all of man's sexual impulses.
There is much else that is wrong, or at the very least weird with Boteach's article, but alas, work calls.
WARNING: The following post is for mature audiences only.
Rabbi Shmuley Boteach (of Shalom in the Home fame) has lost his mind.
I want to say right off the bat that this is a sensible thesis. It's a legitimate question that I have no problem being raised, but the good Rabbi's take is, I believe, bass-ackwards.
Now, I am ordinarily loathe to throw this word around, but we have here is a plainly sexist argument. Here's why: