ARTICLES
January 2001 ARTICLES
Contents © 2001
by Jim Holman.
All rights reserved.
No One Needs Sex
Orange County Doctor and Author Discusses Sexual Wisdom
By Christopher Zehnder
I thought he was equating sex with eating chocolate-covered raisins.
"Yes," said Doctor Wetzel to a question I posed, "we have a legitimate need to be sexual, or to be sexual in a general sense." But what about the "sex act," sexual intercourse? "That's not a legitimate need," said Doctor Wetzel.
How is not a legitimate need?
"If you don't have a need fulfilled, something truly bad happens," said Wetzel. If you continue to not have the need fulfilled, then something worse, even quite bad, happens. If you don't have sex you feel frustrated; but if you continue not to have sex, you ultimately get a life. You say, hey, I've got to go do something else; am I going to sit around and feel frustrated all day? It's the same thing if you think about chocolate covered raisins and you feel frustrated, and you say, well, maybe I'm not going to get any right now, and maybe they're not good for me, so I'll get over it, and so you do. Now that frustration may come back a month or a week or an hour from now, but it's not something that's a serious problem -- you don't end up less of a person if you don't have a desire fulfilled."
It was to answer just such questions as this that Doctor Richard Wetzel wrote his book, Sexual Wisdom, A Guide for Parents, Young Adults, Educators and Physicians. In this book, published in 1998, Dr. Wetzel addresses 17 misconceptions surrounding premarital sex, sexually transmitted diseases, pornography, contraception and sterilization, abortion, sexual orientation, and sex education. The book has received the praise of prominent Catholics, including Alfonso Cardinal Lopez Trujillo, the late John Cardinal O'Connor, Father John Stravinskas, Peter Kreeft, and Ronda Chervin.
Doctor Wetzel, a Catholic and a family medicine practitioner in Orange County, said he wrote Sexual Wisdom because he was teaching students and adults about sexuality. "I had been getting into conversations for years with patients over these issues," said Wetzel, "and in a busy family physician office I wanted to refer them to some book to follow up on our conversation. I didn't see a book I could refer them to; those available either had a lot of religious content that would be offensive to some of the people -- I was talking to people of all different faiths -- or were mostly disasters."
Sexual Wisdom does not draw on religion, but seeks, said Wetzel, "to apply the natural law so that it would be available to anyone with an inquiring mind who is honest about the issues. From the standpoint of sexuality, when you look at body, mind and soul, I left out the soul part -- but, I'm trying to lead horses to water."
Has the book been effective? "The response has been extraordinary to me," said Wetzel. "I gave a copy to one of my neighbors with whom I argued about pre-marital sex, abortion -- just go right down the list. He came back about four months later and said, 'I read it. I realized there wasn't one argument you made in the whole book that I didn't disagree with.' That blew me away! I've had a couple of people tell me that. One of my patients is gay, and before the book came out, I said, 'look, I'm publishing a book -- we haven't really talked about these issues very much, but there's a potential of you being very offended by it. I want to tell you a little about it, and if you don't want me to be your doctor after, that's fine.' He ended up reading it, and ended up giving it to one of his real liberal feminist lesbian type friends, because he thought it was good and wanted her to read it. She thought it was good, too."
That "people, especially men, have specific, genital, sexual needs" is the central misconception about sexuality, according to Wetzel. He traces this misconception to psychologist Abraham Maslow's "hierarchy of needs." "He's the one who put the word 'need' in our lexicon," said Wetzel. According to Maslow, there is a pyramid of human needs, at the base of which are physiological (including sexual) needs, followed by, in ascending order, needs for safety, love, and self-esteem. When lower needs are not satisfied, higher needs remain unsatisfied. When all needs are satisfied, then one reaches "self-actualization" where one can act unselfishly.
There may be no need for sexual intercourse, but Wetzel thinks there is a need to be sexual -- a much broader category. "This is one concept we owe sex educators for," he said. "They have talked about a holistic approach to sexuality (that is, from one side of their mouth -- on the other side they only talk about genital sexuality), to look at holding hands and kissing as part of our sexuality, and to recognize that we all are sexual beings, and that we should express ourselves sexually. We have a legitimate need to be sexual in a general sense; in the sense that (if you want to go a little bit extreme on it) that the physical nurturing of children [hugging them, touching them, providing them companionship] is in some sense a sexual act between the parent and the child. You could consider that part of one's sexuality. And if that's the case, then you certainly have to say that that' s extremely important and a need -- if it is not fulfilled, the child will end up a little funny. But that is why I speak of more specific genital sexual needs as opposed to more general needs."
But what of married couples? Have they no "need" for sexual intercourse? "A married couple should be sexually active with each other," said Wetzel. "There are some who have taken a vow within marriage to abstain from sexual intercourse; that's expecting heroism from one's spouse, and I never want to ask heroism if I don't have to. There is a need for balance within relationships, and for couples to be sexual, and to have an approach to the issue that is mutually acceptable. But to say a woman needs to satisfy a man, or that a man needs to satisfy a woman -- to take it to the point of a need -- you need to say that there is some serious consequence to not having a need fulfilled. There isn't really a particular consequence that you can put your finger on when one abstains for long periods or for short periods."
Wetzel drew an analogy with childless couples. "The Catechism," he said, "talks about children in marriage being a blessing, but those couples who are barren can still have a life that's a very full life if they commit themselves. Likewise, if I was HIV positive, that would be it; I would never risk killing my wife. So, would our marriage be less, somehow? I don't see it. Our marriage would not be less, it would be different; it would be blessed in some other way."
Seeing sexual intercourse as a need "introduces an imbalance," said Wetzel. It gives men an unwarranted power and control over relationships, because if a man needs something and the woman does not have the desire," the need trumps the desire. "One of my patients said to me that 'my husband says he needs to have sex every day, but I don't want to. There you have a need opposed to a desire, and somebody's got to win, and the decision point is more likely to go with the man. Once you say that someone has a need or requirement, then you have just thrown the whole balance to one side; then there's no discussion at that point. It puts the onus on women to satisfy men."
Doesn't it also lead to a blessing of pre-marital sex? "Absolutely," said Wetzel. "It is easy to see the connection between this needs idea and any other issue you are looking at -- homosexuality, self-stimulation, pornography, pre-marital sex, contraception -- they so directly relate to this idea, it's amazing. After thinking about it for a long time, it's really struck me what a no-brainer the whole thing really is."
Wetzel deals with all these sexual deviations in his book. He described for me how he treats the subject of contraception in speaking to patients who ask him for a birth control prescription. "I tell them, 'I don't do that, and the reason I don't do it is because I believe that contraception encourages unhealthy, dysfunctional attitudes in relationships. Why would I want to do that to you? I would not want to encourage you to compromise on responsibility, to compromise on commitment, to compromise on respect, to compromise on love in your life.'
"I may mention the needs idea," continued Wetzel, "how contraception directly encourages this addictive approach to sexuality -- you can always have your needs fulfilled if you have a condom. I go into the reasons why I think contraception is mentally unhealthy and -- if I have an opening -- spiritually unhealthy for them to use. I say, 'I'm worried about the effect of it on you. You may be able to negate that effect, you may be able to rise above that effect, but how could I possibly know that? Why would I want to be involved in that?' And, you know, most of my patients that I talk to about this, cut me off in mid sentence -- and it's not do disagree with me. They say, 'you're right, you don't have to tell me the rest.' Some will say to me -- it's not been every day -- 'I'm not going to take any contraceptives anyhow. Forget it.'"
Wetzel will sometimes tell patients about Natural Family Planning. He says to them, "why would I give you contraception or encourage you to use a pill or get an IUD or be sterilized when I can encourage you to use Natural Family Planning which tends to build relationships, tends to bring health into relationships, tends to encourage healthy attitudes?' The take-home point that I often don't get to is that someone using contraceptives could have healthier attitudes than someone using Natural Family Planning; but that's not really the issue. The issue is that the Church has always focused on how you can improve your attitude, to become more holy than you are. What influences can you put in your life (confession, etc.) to encourage you to have better attitudes and be more holy, be more loving, more virtuous, more chaste? So I tell them that Natural Family Planning may not save your marriage if you're bad enough off; it ain't necessarily going to turn things around; but the very nature of the method is to encourage healthy attitudes, while the very nature of contraceptives discourages healthy attitudes."
Wetzel believes that in the field of sexual problems homosexuality is the "number one issue of all." "Abortion is the number one issue in terms of morality," he said, "but I think the bigger problem is not immorality, but the thinking behind the immorality -- the thinking rooted in subjectivism, moral relativism. And the ultimate of that is not abortion, but homosexuality, because you cannot justify homosexuality if you have a brain.
"There is not one argument I know of," continued Wetzel, "that would indicate that homosexuality is anything but biologically unnatural. There is not one argument that I know of that would indicate that it is anything but medically unhealthy. If that's all true, then one can say that this act is disordered, and if it's disordered, then we have a lot to talk about.
"I've had homosexuals tell me, 'You're right. I only have oral sex with my boyfriend.' Now, that's a more subtle subject; I'm not getting into that. But if I've gotten them that far, I feel really good about it. If I get a gay guy to tell me that anal intercourse is disordered, that's pretty good."
Wetzel said he may recommend reparative therapy to patients to help them overcome their homosexuals drives, though he admits that that may never happen. "In my book," said Wetzel, "I have some Kinsey stuff, which makes me controversial. But even though I think Kinsey was a pervert, he was right that there are continuums and that we're all on these continuums. He listed a continuum of heterosexual/homosexual inclinations, and I would say there are also continuums related to children and adults. For instance, a man sees a beautiful woman; he's attracted to her. Now he sees a beautiful 18-year-old, and he's attracted to her. Now he sees a sixteen-year old, and he's attracted to her; then, a twelve-year old; you keep going down the road, and when is it when it's not a sexual thing anymore? There's not as if there's a line anywhere. I see the whole issue of orientation as very complicated, a mish-mash of continuums that we all have, and we're all probably moving on those continuums in one way shape or form, in different directions.
"The bottom line is, though, no matter what your orientation might be, it's what you do with that orientation, how you live chastely within that orientation, and encourage or discourage aspects of that orientation that's important. If, for instance, you have a homosexual inclination and you look at homosexual pornography, you're encouraging yourself in having that inclination."
Wetzel closes Sexual Wisdom with a subject perhaps of most interest to parents -- teaching children about sex? It's of prime importance, according to Wetzel, that parents understand that children need to have a childhood; do not burden them with adult issues at too young an age. "If I've given my children innocence until they are twelve, then I feel pretty good about myself," said Wetzel. "At that point I start to have them understand a lot of the issues. So from 12 to 20, or 18, pick your number, you have six to eight years to get them organized in understanding a lot of these adult issues. It's very important that parents do this; it is an obligation of parents to sex-educate their children."
The most important way parents educate their children, said Wetzel, is in how they live their lives -- "if they use NFP, if they keep garbage out of the house, off the TV, if they live chaste lives themselves. I think chastity is under the virtue of temperance, which is under the virtue of charity. Parents must live a faith-filled life. If I go and talk to my children about my prayers in my prayer book I'm reading, and what strikes me about what I happen to be reading that day, that's part of their sex education, in a sense, that they're being taught about love, about wisdom about the great things in life and our faith. That can be done at any age and should be carried out all throughout childhood."
Parents can begin the sex education of their children early on in childhood by talking about modesty. "When my girls were eight or so," said Wetzel, "they would walk into the market and say, 'Mom, you know that lady on the cover of Cosmo is dressed immodestly. They should know that; but beyond that, I'm not sure there's too much young children need to know."
"A lot of parents feel uncomfortable with these issues for various reasons," said Wetzel. "They feel inadequate, and they feel that sex educators should be the ones to do this sort of thing. I always tell parents that they have to realize that they are the experts on love, not the sex educators, who haven't a clue what true love is. That final connection between sexuality and love is all you really need to teach anybody in the end. Now, how do you combine those? When you look at the cover of Cosmo and see the woman degrading herself dressing like that, you can bring up love, God, virtue, character, integrity in regard to sexuality. Is this woman being loving of herself, dressing like that? Is this what God wants her to do? Parents are very good at that, if you think about it. They can come up with that kind of stuff. And if you are not too good at that stuff, you should get books that can help you spoon feed your children."
Wetzel said that to teach children about sex, parents must have a care for what is "age-appropriate for them. That's what a parent is absolutely the best qualified to know," he said. "A sex educator couldn't possibly know that. Don't bring up subjects if you think your child is not ready for them. You can go back a day later, two weeks later, whenever, and bring up the subject again if you really feel like you didn't get into it enough -- because it's your child. You can always bring it up again and get into it more."
Family unity is essential to good sex education. "The closer the family is, the more the kids can think that their parents aren't stupid and really care about them. If you can convince your children of those two things, when these issues come up, they will be more ready to listen to you. Our culture tells people that when we reach the teen years we're all going to be against each other, and that doesn't have to be the case at all."
Those interested in obtaining a copy of Doctor Wetzel's book, Sexual Wisdom, may contact the publisher, Proctor Publications, at P.O. Box 2498, Ann Arbor Michigan 48106; fax: (734) 480-9811. The book sells for $12.95 (U.S.) and $17.95 (Canada). For quantity discounts, call (800) 343-3034. More ordering information is available on Doctor Wetzel's internet site: www.sexualwisdom.com.