What is so wrong about supporting Christian moral principles?
Premarital relations have become so common in some segments of Western society that Christian teaching on its sinfulness is a scandal to some defendants of contemporary morality. Like contraception, however, fornication as the voluntary sexual intercourse between unmarried persons was forbidden to the followers of Christ since the origins of Christianity.
The Savior himself distinguished between adultery and fornication when he castigated the Pharisees for their hypocrisy of insisting on external ritual like washing of hands but neglecting the interior movements of the heart, from which come such evil things as adultery and fornication. But the most elaborate attention to chastity outside of marriage was given by St. Paul in several of his letters, and especially in writing to the Corinthians, who had great difficulty adjusting themselves to the demands of Christian morality.
St. John in his Apocalypse warned the Christian leaders of his day against compromising the faith by tolerating the errors of such Gnostic sectarians as the Nicolaitans, who considered themselves at liberty to fornicate. John’s reproach was the same as Paul’s, that Christians who were told they could return to such pagan practices as fornication were on their way to estrangement from Christ, since abstinence from sexual activity outside of marriage is one of the marks of a true Christian.
There must not be any doubt at all that fornication is a serious sin, since the Apostle Paul declared that those who commit immoral acts such as fornication and adultery will not enter the kingdom of God. “Do you not know that the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived; neither the immoral, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor homosexuals, nor thieves, nor the greedy, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor robbers will inherit the kingdom of God. (1 Cor. 6:9).”
Part of this instruction is to convince that Christian wisdom is also human wisdom; that chastity before marriage is the best preparation for fidelity in marriage and that the selfless love that is cultivated between the man and woman who plan to marry is the only love that can sustain them through life after they are married.