Recent news articles exploring the post-#MeToo world of ro­mance have noted the phenomenon of cell phone “consent apps,” al­lowing millennials to sign digital contracts before they have sex with their peers, sometimes strangers they have just met. Many of these apps are being refined to include a panic button that can be pressed at any time to withdraw any consent given. Lawyers reviewing the prac­tice, as might be anticipated, have urged caution, noting that consent apps are not able to provide defini­tive proof of consent, because feelings may “change throughout an evening, and even in the moments before an act.”

When we look at modern views about sex, it’s not a stretch to sum them up this way: as long as two consenting adults are involved, the bases are covered. When it comes to “sex in the moment,” consent is touted as key, allowing for almost all mutu­ally-agreed upon behaviors or prac­tices.

Yet this approach to sex is fundamentally flawed, and it’s often the woman who is the first to no­tice. Even when consenting unmar­ried couples scrupulously use con­traception, there remains an aware­ness, particularly on the part of the woman, that a pregnancy could follow, and a concern about who will be left holding the bag if that were to happen. Sex between men and women involves real asymmetries and vulnerabilities, with men oftentimes being, in the words of sociologist Mark Regne­rus, “less discriminating” in their sex drives than women, eager to forge ahead as long as there ap­pears to be some semblance of consent. Women often sense, rightly, that consent for a partic­ular sexual act ought to be part of something bigger, a wider scope of commitment. 

Consenting to sex, of course, signifies the surrendering of our self to another. Sex ulti­mately speaks of giving our self, and receiving another, in a total, rather than a fragmentary way. This is part of the reason why this unique human activity holds a perennial fascination for us; it goes far beyond other forms of communication, exchange, and bonding. To give our self fully to another, and to receive that per­son fully, forms a bond with them that extends beyond the morning dawn. Human sexual union is not a mere joining of bodies, but is preeminently a joining of human hearts. It is, at its core, consenting to share one of the deepest parts of our self with another. As Dr. An­gela Franks has perceptively noted: 

“Sexuality is not simply a matter of something that I have, as though my body is another pos­session just like my wallet or my car. If, as Gabriel Marcel said, I am my body, then sexuality has to do with my very person, which has a deep value. To use the language of Pope John Paul II, when a person is reduced to being merely an object for an­other’s desire, then the experi­ence violates the core of one’s sense of self.”

In casual sexual encounters, the consent we give each other may seem sincere and genuine, expressing our desires within the moment, but this kind of consent is largely transac­tional and temporary. By consenting to pre-marital or extra-marital sex, we declare, in effect, that we are giving ourselves, our bodies and our hearts to each other, although in truth, our giving remains partial and condi­tional, and we may be out the door the next morning or the next month. Our consent, limited and qualified as it is, amounts to little more than an agreement to use each other as long as it’s convenient, and when the break up occurs, we are hurt, because we thought we had something spe­cial, even though we didn’t really want to commit to anything special.

In the final analysis, human sex­ual activity calls for something much deeper and more abiding than mere transactional consent, namely, the ir­revocable and permanent consent of spouses. Professor William May de­scribes it this way: 

“In and through his act of marital consent… the man, forswearing all others, has given himself ir­revocably the identity of this particular woman’s husband, while the woman, in and through her self-determining act of marital consent, has given herself irrevocably the identity of this particular man’s wife, and together they have given them­selves the identity of spouses. …Husbands and wives, pre­cisely because they have given themselves irrevocably to each other in marriage, have estab­lished each other as irreplace­a­ble, non-substitutable, non-dis­posable persons and by doing so have capacitated themselves to do things that non-married indi­viduals simply cannot do, among them to ‘give’ themselves to one another in the act proper and exclusive to spouses—the marital act—and to receive the gift of life.”

Through the enduring commit­ment of marital consent, a man and a woman establish the foundation for personal sexual consent. In the ab­sence of that larger marital commit­ment, all other consents, even with legalized authorization or electronic notarization, ring hollow.

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