Cross-Gender Friendship: Protection From Sexual Immorality

I've talked about how utterly illogical it is to believe that men and women cannot or should not be friends or that the Bible discourages such friendships [1].  I've talked about how intimacy between men and women and romantic or sexual feelings are not necessarily connected to each other conceptually [2].  I've talked about how even if a huge majority of the world's population neither knew this logically or had experiential verification of it, that would not demonstrate that men and women can't or shouldn't be friends [3].  Now I want to discuss how close cross-gender friendships can protect against the sexual immorality some churchgoers imagine wherever they see non-familial cross-gender intimacy.

Legalistic rules pertaining to interaction with the opposite gender do not actually prevent sinful actions when enforced on a widespread level.  I can sense in the actions of gender-interaction legalists (and complementarians!) in my life a seeming fear or discomfort with the thought of intimacy with the opposite gender apart from a familial or spousal relationship, a fear perhaps born out of sexual suspicion.  And yet I do not find any difficulty at all with sexual immorality in my nonromantic relationships with women.  Nor do I see any such difficulties at all in the nonromantic cross-gender relationships I observe others like me to have.

If you struggle with sexualizing or romanticizing most interactions between men and women, find a friend of the opposite gender and really get to know that person and become close to him or her.  Seriously.  Perhaps nothing besides logic will help expose the stupidity of the former mindset faster.

Indeed, I have never heard a single story about an adulterer or adulteress having a history of close, strong friendships with the opposite gender.  Likewise, I cannot recall ever hearing about any Christian who contributed to gender reconciliation by encouraging cross-gender friendships in any significant way complain about how sexual immorality just flooded the lives of the people in question.  Having close opposite gender friendships can make it far more likely that one can be trusted as a spouse.  Not that legitimate stories of sexual immorality would in any way disprove the possibility or actuality of cross-gender friendships--they don't and can't.

Me and my best friend Gabi (December 2016 and August
2017 respectively)!

It does not surprise me in any way that Christians I know who have one or more close friendships with members of the opposite gender are, out of all the people I know, the most at ease with their sexuality, dating, cross-gender collaboration, and friendship in general.  Acceptance of how cross-gender friendships are not sinful can liberate a person from awkwardness, false guilt, irrationality, susceptibility to poor advice, and can even start to weaken commitment to absurd complementarian beliefs.  There is a definite ideological connection between viewing people of the opposite gender as a true friends and having a far more relaxed and rational attitude about gender relations in general, a position which excludes the possibility of viewing someone from the opposite gender as little more than either a potential or actual spouse or a distracting temptation--and thus avoids a false dilemma that can make sexual immorality far likelier.

When a person views members of the opposite gender not as temptations, objects, or beings with alien natures, but as possible or actual friends, as fellow people, and as social and ontological equals, then that person will treat them accordingly--as companions, as allies, intellectually, socially, and spiritually.  Someone who views members of the opposite gender, with some possible exceptions like family members, as temptations or objects will also treat them accordingly--as things to fear, avoid, use, or condemn (views which in my recalled experience I find correlated in the lives of people with complementarian beliefs [4]).  A person who is close friends with a member of the opposite gender just as he or she might be with a member of the same gender is someone who is far less likely to succumb to the lies that both sexual immorality and Christian legalists may offer.

In actuality, it is people like me who have and delight in nonromantic relationships with the opposite gender that construct an atmosphere where Biblically-defined (God reveals morality; neither I nor any other human decides it) sexual immorality is not feared but rejected, despised for the oppressive thing it can be.  Sexual immorality can thrive as long as it is viewed as the only inevitable alternative to relational intimacy with a family member of the opposite gender.  False dilemmas, slippery slopes, and non sequitur fallacies abound in the minds and words of those who oppose these friendships!  And yet cross-gender friendships are actually often a sign of purity, not a beacon warning of sexual immorality.  It is not men and women who share emotional and relational intimacy that have need to fear sexual immorality, but people who practice sexual immorality that have need to fear nonromantic emotional and relational intimacy between unmarried men and women!


[1].  https://thechristianrationalist.blogspot.com/2016/08/opposite-gender-friendships-part-1.html

[2].  https://thechristianrationalist.blogspot.com/2016/09/opposite-gender-friendships-part-2.html

[3].  https://thechristianrationalist.blogspot.com/2017/01/an-observation-about-cross-gender.html

[4].  https://thechristianrationalist.blogspot.com/2017/05/fear-byproduct-of-complementarian.html