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You may not be convinced by Scripture, but I am. h/t #Grok for synthesis. - Widespread, casual premarital sex among both men and women is functionally equivalent to πορνεία (porneia)—the broad New Testament term usually translated “sexual immorality,” “fornication,” or in older English Bibles, “whoredom” and “whoring”—can be made from Scripture without appealing to cultural tradition or sentimentality. The argument rests on four biblical pillars: 1. The positive creation pattern: one-flesh covenant as the only sanctioned context for sexual union - Genesis 2:24–25: Sexual intercourse is the covenant-sign that makes two people “one flesh.” - Jesus reaffirms this in Matthew 19:4–6: what God joins together in this one-flesh union, man must not separate. - Paul echoes it in 1 Corinthians 6:16: “Do you not know that he who is joined to a prostitute (πόρνῃ) becomes one body with her? For, as it is written, ‘The two will become one flesh.’” Notice: the act itself, apart from any covenant, still creates the one-flesh reality. The problem is that it creates it illegitimately—exactly the way uniting with a literal prostitute does. The physical act is not morally neutral; it is covenantal by God’s design. 2. The Seventh Commandment and the single biblical category of πορνεία - The Seventh Commandment (“You shall not commit adultery,” Ex 20:14) is not limited to sex with another person’s spouse. In Hebrew thought, adultery (נִאוּף, ni’uf) is the narrow subset of πορνεία that violates an existing marriage covenant. The broader category is זְנוּת (zenut, “whoredom”), which includes all sexual activity outside the one-man/one-woman lifelong covenant. - In the New Testament, πορνεία is consistently forbidden to all Christians (Acts 15:20, 29; 1 Cor 6:18; Eph 5:3; Col 3:5; 1 Thess 4:3; Rev 21:8). It is never limited to prostitution or adultery; it explicitly includes premarital sex (1 Cor 7:2—“because of the temptation to πορνεία, each man should have his own wife…”). - Crucially, πορνεία words (pornē, pornos, porneia) are the Greek equivalents of the Old Testament’s “harlot” and “whoremonger.” When the KJV translates 1 Corinthians 6:9 as “nor adulterers, nor effeminate, nor abusers of themselves with mankind, nor whoremongers…” the underlying word for “whoremongers” is πόρνοι—simply “the sexually immoral.” Modern translations soften it to “fornicators” or “sexually immoral,” but the older English is linguistically accurate: habitual, non-covenantal sex is whoredom. 3. The logic of 1 Corinthians 6:15–20 — treating the body as a prostitute’s body Paul’s argument is devastating: - Your body is a member of Christ (v. 15). - Shall I take the members of Christ and make them members of a πόρνης (prostitute)? - Every casual sexual encounter, even if both parties are “single” and “consenting,” treats the body exactly the way a client treats a prostitute’s body: as a means of temporary gratification detached from lifelong covenant. - The difference between paying money and not paying money is morally irrelevant; the core transgression is the same: severing the sexual act from its God-ordained purpose. 4. The abolition of the double standard in the New Covenant - Old Testament law sometimes punished the woman more visibly (Deut 22), but the moral standard was always the same for both sexes (Lev 20:10; Prov 6:32–33). - In the New Testament, the double standard is explicitly destroyed: - 1 Corinthians 6:9–10 lists both πόρνοι (male fornicators/whoremongers) and μοιχοί (adulterers) as excluded from the kingdom—side by side. - Hebrews 13:4: “Let marriage be held in honor among all, and let the marriage bed be undefiled, for God will judge the πόρνους and μοιχούς” (again, both categories). - Revelation 21:8 and 22:15 lump πόρνοι together with murderers and idolaters—men and women alike. Conclusion When a culture normalizes men and women cycling through dozens of premarital sexual partners (serial monogamy, hook-up culture, friends-with-benefits, etc.), it is institutionalizing πορνεία on a mass scale. Biblically, that is mass whoremongering and whoring—not in the vulgar insult sense, but in the precise scriptural sense: treating God’s covenant-sign as a recreational activity detached from lifelong, exclusive, self-sacrificial marriage. The only remedy Scripture offers is the one it has always offered: “Flee πορνεία” (1 Cor 6:18), repent, be washed (1 Cor 6:11), and either marry or remain celibate (1 Cor 7:8–9)—because the fire of sexual desire is designed to be satisfied only within the covenant that images Christ and the church (Eph 5:31–32). That is the consistent, reformed, biblical argument. Soft-pedaling it may feel compassionate to modern ears, but it is not faithful to the text.

While I agree with your analysis, the biblical injunctions to marital faithfulness are directed at the church---i.e. at the people of God, not at the broader Gentile world. When the church/people of God stray from gospel faithfulness to Christ, that's spiritual adultery (c.f. Ezekiel 16). However, Paul seems to assume the Gentiles will of course live like that---see his repeated refrain to Christians that they WERE like that until they put on Christ. Also, the history of early Christianity shows that rather than sleeping around, they practiced a counter-culteral monagamy: they were said to generously share their table and possessions, but not theirbeds or wife. I don't see the New Testament condemning a pornegraphic pagan culture so much as calling Christians to faithful witness within it---all the while calling pagan Gentiles to Christ, trusting that once they were believers chaste sexuality would grow as they abided in the vine.