What Sex Really Entails

Sexual intercourse involves more than the body; it involves the whole person, or, more accurately, two whole persons.  Whether they give themselves wholly to one another is one thing, but that they are wholly involved is beyond doubt.  No act of sexual union may ever be regarded as recreational or as one person’s private business, for someone else is always profoundly implicated, and the participants will never be again be the same toward one another as they were before coming together.  Once done, the experience can never be undone, and its effect, though imperceptible, is indelible.  If they are husband and wife the embrace should be both source and symbol of the common life they re building together.  But if they are not husband and wife, the sexual act is of such inherency significance that its unitive power is frustrated.  Intercourse without obligation depersonalizes the parties involved, uniting them in an act of mutual exploitation.  It is not because it is temporary, but because, in a sense, casual sex always involves permanent consequences, that it is intrinsically wrong.  The playboy creed encourages fornication without involvement.

William S. Banowsky, It’s A Playboy World, p.80-81