I think there is a difference between the terms ‘double standards’ and ‘different standards’.
As you say, ‘double standards’ tends to look a lot like hypocrisy whereas ‘different standards’ does not.
In the parable of Jesus and the Adulteress, we don’t see Jesus looking for the man also involved in the affair.
Different standards or double standards?
The Catholic Church lays the burden on the woman to be responsible for saying ‘No’ when it comes to sex. Double, or different?
I think most philosophies understand the innate sex urges that drive most males and have tailored their cultures to survive the human storm. Women are asked to be stronger in saying no because they, as you say, have more sense in the matter when things get hot and lusty. Men are expected to concede to the woman’s wishes. Doesn’t always hold, but that is life.
Yes, double standards. Different standards are double standards.
In the account of the adulteress, Jesus forgave her. Why would you expect that He would go looking for the man?
The pharisees brought the woman who was caught in the act.
Well, if she was caught in the act, then where was the guy? They would have, and should have, nailed him, too, and yet they didn’t.
OT law demanded the same penalty for both men and women who engaged in adultery. That Jesus didn’t go ferret out the man is not relevant to what is being discussed, and that is that God’s standards apply equally to both.
The Catholic church is then hypocritical because of laying the responsibility of being morally pure on the man and having him set the standard for morals in society and the culture, they wink at it and lay then responsibility on the woman to say no.
It is not women’s place to make men behave themselves even though they have to do it.. It is the man’s place to control himself and PROTECT the woman from being taken advantage of. That is a man’s role, to be provider and protector, not the person whom women should be having to protect themselves against.
Men have flat out abdicated their responsibility for moral integrity before God, and have therefore no basis for complaint when they reap what they have sowed.
It may be life, but it is wrong morally.
ArtDodger: I'm curious, here ... are you Catholic? Your impression of Catholic Church teaching on sexuality is rather different from mine.
As it stands the story is about forgiveness and about hypocrisy (on the part of the scribes and Pharisees). How would the Gospel author have handled the story if both the man and the woman had been brought before Jesus? Could both have been forgiven without appearing to make light of adultery?