Goldman’s definition of sexual desire:
“a desire for contact with another person’s body and with the pleasure such contact produces”.
Goldman argues that his “plain sex” definition is better than so-called
“means-ends” definitions. What these definitions have in common is that they consider sex as a means to an end, not as an activity that is an end in itself. The two most important versions of this view are:
1) The view that the purpose of sex is reproduction. Obviously reproduction is the biological purpose of sex, but should it be the sole purpose? Goldman doesn’t think so. He claims that with the introduction of effective contraceptives sex has de facto been divorced from reproduction. One consequence of this view is that any sexual activity that is not undertaken for the purpose of reproduction is deemed perverted, sinful, or at least morally wrong.
2) The view that the purpose of sex is the expression of love or affection between partners. Goldman doesn’t deny that this can be an important part of a sexual relationship, but he argues that a) sex doesn’t have to involve the expression of love, and b) love can be expressed in many different non-sexual ways. One way
Goldman thinks the difference can be brought out is by considering the difference between fleeting sexual attraction and love. For him love is a more or less permanent deep emotional relationship that is typically exclusive. Fleeting sexual desire on the other hand is not exclusive in this sense. So if people choose to live in monogamous relationship this often involves suppressing such fleeting sexual desires.
Again there is a connection between the love model and repressive sexual morality; if you argue that only among married couples can sex express the right kind of enduring love and friendship that is its true purpose, then any kind of extramarital sex can be condemned.
The Christian-Platonic Tradition.
Goldman argues that both models fall short of accounting for sexual practices. The reproductive model will ban oral sex as perverted, but doesn’t recognize holding hands or kissing as sexual activities. The love model seems to characterize much sexual activity as wrong or degrading because it is not accompanied by the right emotions. Furthermore the conflation with love and sex can work in the other way as well. You might get the idea that love is nothing more than sex.
Goldman identifies both means-end models as coming from a Platonic-Christian moral tradition that regards the purely physical and animal aspect of being human as something

base and a source for immorality. Plain sexual desire is seen as an expression of our
“lower self” or vulgar animal nature.
Goldman’s position is that there is nothing moral or immoral about sex as such. Moral considerations only apply to sex as they do to other activities. For example, if sexual activity somehow does harm to others, then it’s wrong, not because sex is involved, but because harm to others is involved. Rape is wrong because it involves coercion and harm, adultery is wrong because it involves lying and deception, not because it has to do with sexual activity per se.
Goldman has a strictly “statistical” view of perverted sex. Perverted sex is whatever deviates from the norm. Perverted sex is basically sex that is abnormal or unusual because the sexual desire involved deviates from the normal. It follows from Goldman’s view of the relationship between morality and sex that just as there is nothing immoral about normal sex as such, then there is nothing immoral about abnormal sex; it’s just different from the norm.
Goldman points out that even though his definition of sexual desire brings out the pleasure the individual gets from sex, and that this is important to many people, that the satisfaction of this desire should have its proper place in a rational life-plan. The intense pleasure derived from the satisfaction of sexual desire is brief and repetitive, it’s not cumulative. In this sense you have to find a balance between other desires and interest to live a fulfilling life, for example the kind of permanence and interest in another person’s well-being that love sustains.

i.
It will pave the way for other unconventional forms of marital arrangements, it’s going to be a free for all, because we then no longer have a principled ground to prohibit such arrangements. So, if somebody’s sexual preference leans towards a harem of hermaphrodites, this person could demand to be married to his/her harem. ii.
If you start to recognize sexual orientation as the legal criterion for who you want to marry, then you endorse sexual relativism as a criterion for marriage. iii.
Promiscuity is part of the homosexual lifestyle and is incompatible with traditional marriage. iv.
Marriage is not an arbitrary arrangement; it is based on natural teleology. Its primary purpose is procreation and child rearing.
Anything that threatens the institution that protects these vital functions in society should be rejected.
i.
There is a difference between sexual orientation as a state and polygamy as an activity. Same sex marriage stays within the confines of marriage between two unrelated adults. ii.
Marriage will serve to curb promiscuity by allowing homosexuals to live in monogamous relationships.

iii.
Marriage is an institution that has changed radically through history, so there isn’t anything strange about expanding it to include same sex couples. iv.
Denying this right to homosexuals is a kind of discrimination.

Wasserstrom wants to examine why most people consider adultery to be immoral. On the face of it an extramarital relationship involves two consenting adults having sex with each other, but one or both happen to be married to somebody else. Why is it immoral?
First Wasserstrom considers moral reasons; secondly he considers non-moral reasons that might be used independently of moral concerns.
1) i) Adultery involves breaking a promise. When you get married you promise to remain faithful to your spouse; so sexual intimacy is limited to your spouse and exclusive of all others. Having extramarital sex breaks this promise. Furthermore, there seems to be aggravating circumstances: a) The non-adulterous spouse might have showed a great deal of self-restraint in order to stay faithful, this is then for naught; b) the non-adulterous spouse might feel a powerful sense of rejection and betrayal (How could you do this to me!). This feeling is partly caused by the idea that the cheating spouse knows full well how devastating the actions are for the spouse, but goes ahead anyway. Furthermore, cheating also implies that the adulterer no longer has the same affection for the non-adulterous spouse but has affection for somebody else. So, cheating involves the intentional infliction of substantial psychological pain on the person they are married to. ii) Adultery involves deceit. Even if the adulterous act doesn’t involve lying directly, at least it involves deceiving the other spouse about the state of their marital relationship, and as such it breaks the trust between spouses. Adultery might also involve deception at a deeper level. While it is true that sexual desire or arousal isn’t exclusive in the same sense that being deeply in love with somebody is exclusive of others, and while it is also true that love can be expressed in many ways other than sexual intimacy, it could be that cheating is widely considered to negate or question both the commitment and the feeling in a truly loving relationship (if you really loved me you wouldn’t do this!). So, in this sense the adulterer is being deceitful in a way that goes to the core of the bond between married people, maybe even to the point of deceiving him or herself.
Wasserstrom argues that the tighter the connection is between sexual intimacy and the expression of love and affection, and the tighter the connection is between love and exclusivity, the more objectionable cheating seems to be. However, he also admits that if you have people that marry without having these expectations, i.e. it’s agreed between the spouses that you can be promiscuous, then the elements of deception and promise breaking are eliminated right away and then it seems doubtful that extramarital sex is morally wrong.
2)

Finally Wasserstrom considers arguments to the effect that a prohibition on any kind of non-marital sex, including extramarital sex, will strengthen the institution of marriage. He calls such considerations “instrumental” because they are means to an end, i.e. ways to promote and safeguard the institution of marriage. He doubts that such considerations should count as moral considerations, because they seem to hinge on whether there are moral reasons to defend the institution of marriage in this way
(we don’t normally consider it immoral if people remain unmarried for example).