There's nothing "merely" about it.

One of the great modern lies is that sex is just another bodily appetite to be satisfied however one pleases. “We eat when we’re hungry, we sleep when we’re tired, and we have sex when we feel like it.” Ignoring the obvious fact that even mere bodily appetites entail ethics (nutrition differentiates between good and bad eating and there are many situations where sleep is not an acceptable course of action), there’s something much more profoundly inaccurate here.

See, the view of sex as a bodily appetite is inherently degrading to sex, reducing it to something “merely” bodily. And yet, everyone knows that there is nothing “merely” about an activity which has inspired millions of works of art from poems to songs to paintings to sculpture to novels to movies. Someone may dislike being hungry or tired, but healthy people don’t weep in agony over a bad lasagna or a missed nap. Yet, emotions strong to the point of artistic expression are precisely the normal result of sexual fulfillment or frustration.

Thus, it is precisely because this human endeavor is so uniquely powerful that it must be treated so carefully and protected so vigilantly. We do no one a service when we encourage them to believe that something this precious may be treated with such casual contempt.