What Sexual Hedonism Is Not

A desire to avoid hedonism has led many Christians to abandon all outward indication of interest in pleasures of certain kinds, as if they would offend God or intelligent, non-legalistic Christians simply by expressing interest in sensual pleasure or admitting to appreciating it deeply.  This has particularly hindered many Christians from enjoying their own sexualities in ways that God does not oppose, yet these efforts are needless: sexual hedonism goes far beyond a craving or desire for sexual pleasure, stimulation, or release.  It is the prioritizing of sexual pleasure above reason, God, morality, and others.

A single or married person can regularly think about sexuality, and not only in an intellectual sense, to the point of looking forward to seeing members of the opposite gender to whom they are sexually attracted, masturbating multiple times a day, and looking at sensual images of the opposite gender with sexual intent (or masturbating to them) often without embracing sexual hedonism.  Even a man or woman who relentlessly dwells on sexual pleasure in the privacy of their own mind has not indulged in hedonistic ideology or practice.  There is a sharp difference between love of pleasure and slavery to pleasure!

Hedonism is not anything short of holding up pleasure, and sensory pleasures in particular, as the ultimate or only good.  In other words, actively pursuing nonsinful pleasures is not hedonistic, even if one devotes a large amount of time and thought to doing so.  It is possible to devote a great deal of effort towards having pleasurable experiences without ever sacrificing obligations to God or others in the process.  To do so would be to elevate pleasure above other things which are more important, but anything less is not a philosophical "deification" of pleasure.

Sexual hedonism is therefore not a deep appreciation of sexuality on an intellectual, personal, or spiritual level; similarly, it is not the same as engaging in Biblically permissible sexual acts such as masturbation, even to imagery of the opposite gender, as often as one can without neglecting any of one's moral obligations.  As such, it is erroneous and unjust to consider people who are merely open about their sexualities as slaves to pleasure when they are not imposing their desires on members of the opposite gender in nonconsensual or otherwise sinful ways.