Sex & God: How Religion Distorts Sexuality (11 page)

Alan Miller and John Hoffman looked at gender differences in religiosity as a function of risk aversion. The more risk averse a person is, the higher his or her religiosity and church attendance. In other words, risk-averse people don’t want to take a chance on getting on the wrong side of god.
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This would fit well with our guilt hypothesis. Women who are most afraid of divine consequences (as taught in shame and guilt training) are more likely than men to engage in fear- and guilt-reducing activities, like attending church. Men who are less fearful of divine retribution or less risk-averse see less need to be involved in religion.

Christopher Hitchens articulated a similar argument in a recent speech:
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The loss of a child is incredibly traumatic to a woman. No doubt men are traumatized as well, but it is the woman who carries the baby to term and spends much of her waking hours with the child. She has the strongest bond. … If a woman thinks that there is even a tiny advantage in preserving her child through prayer or giving to a priest, she will do so, and I cannot blame her. I can blame the priest for taking advantage of such a deeply held love and devotion for his own gain.

This is a powerful psychological argument that explains why mothers are often much more concerned with taking children to church and teaching them religious ideas than fathers.

The guilt cycle also works well to inhibit sexual communication between religious married people and keeps them feeling both guilty and sexually frustrated. Here is how it works. Sexual preferences develop, evolve and change over a lifetime. Some marry before they recognize they are homosexual. Others find their spouse has a frustratingly high or low sex drive. Or they discover that they have a fetish. Without opportunities for sexual exploration and discovery, how is a 19 to 20-year-old to learn what he or she likes and how his or her body reacts?

The younger a religious person is when she gets married, the less she understands and knows about her sexuality. Add to this the incredible fear of talking about sexual fantasies, masturbation, experimentation and pornography, and a young adult enters marriage with a serious handicap that can inhibit sexual development for life.

Such people have no template for communication except through their guilt-based training. Interacting and working with hundreds of people, I have found a huge difference in the sexual skill level of religious newly-weds and newly-weds raised in a secular environment. The former are often groping in the dark, sometimes literally. Even if they do have some experience or skill with regard to sex and sexuality, they are often reluctant to display it for fear of giving away previous sexual experience. The abstinence-only programs
and reclaimed-virginity movement make men and women ashamed of being sexual creatures before or outside of marriage.

For a woman, the result is denial even as she is having sex with her husband. If she was successfully abstinent before marriage, she enters into sex with great ignorance. Her husband dares not speak of any partners he has had, since it would quickly betray a double standard. Since it is highly likely that one or both had partners before marriage, they start the relationship on a lie.

A woman who “reclaims her virginity” is buying into the same guilt.
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Aside from the ludicrous idea that one can reclaim virginity or innocence, it is simply religion’s attempt to inject guilt and control sexuality. Should the woman remarry, how does she communicate about her previous sexual experiences except in derogatory ways? All she learned and experienced from previous partners is by definition bad and wrong. Her new husband is her only sexual partner since she has renewed her virginity. It is an amazing mental gymnastic that only a religion or a schizophrenic could contrive.

Of course, this insanity is not unique to women. I have known many Christian men who experience the male equivalent. Their sexual ideas and inhibitions are deeply rooted in religious doctrine and teachings. Catholic priests and nuns are among the best at teaching this. Those with the least experience in sex are also the ones perpetuating highly destructive ideas. The 1998 documentary
Sex in a Cold Climate
on the Irish Magdalene homes is instructive by documenting the incredibly cruel sexual messages and training of the Magdelene nuns.

Here is what one woman wrote me several years ago:

At 22, I married a good Catholic man and converted. I had been raised in a fairly non-religious home, but his religiosity seemed a part of the attraction at the time. It was something I had not seen or experienced before, and it held a certain attraction. We seemed to click in most areas. I liked his integrity and honesty. He had an air of confidence about him that just seemed to melt me. It was clear from the start that he was sexually inexperienced. While I was never promiscuous, I had been around the block a few times with a couple of other boyfriends. I wasn’t as uptight about sex
as he was but figured he would loosen up after we got married. We did sleep together before we got married, but it was not that great. He seemed wracked with guilt about our premarital sex, so I stopped tempting him
.

After we got married, it went south quickly. Our first night I decided to give him a treat and go down on him. Before we were married, he insisted on strictly missionary position and nothing else. I figured now that we are married, what we do in the bedroom is our business. Boy was I wrong! He nearly bit my head off when he figured out what I was getting ready to do. Little did I know I was committing a mortal sin. I had never heard any sermons that prohibited oral sex, and none of the premarital counseling we did with the Priest indicated it was wrong. Well, it was wrong as far as he was concerned. “Only prostitutes did that, my wife will never do that.” He couldn’t even say the word! That should have been my first clue. In three years of trying, I could never communicate with him about sex. He seemed totally uninterested in what I wanted and absolutely refused to relax and try something different once in a while. He responded to me like I was from outer space, if I suggested anything
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About three and a half years into the marriage, when I was totally sick of going to church and climbing the walls in sexual frustration, I discovered he was visiting prostitutes when he was out of town. I tried talking to him about it, but there was no talking as far as he was concerned. He was definitely embarrassed and contrite, but it didn’t change anything. I look back and think how stupid I was. All the signs were there, I just didn’t pay attention to them. We got divorced soon after
.

This is not uncommon for religious newly-weds. An otherwise compatible couple finds they are utterly unable to communicate about sex or adjust their sexual styles and preferences. They cannot even grow and experiment together. Jesus is always watching and sin is always lurking.

Among secularists, sex seems to be taken more in stride. In many cases, both have had several previous partners and communicating about what they like and want, while awkward at first, does not seem to be a major problem. The evidence for this comes from my own survey research and clinical experience. Those raised secular are much more comfortable with
their bodies, easily admit to masturbating, openly discuss ways to negotiate safe sex and condom use and generally have no reluctance in talking about sexual ideas. Many of the discussions I have had with secular groups on campuses or in humanist or atheist community groups have been easy and natural. The same discussion and content would get me kicked out of a Campus Crusade for Christ meeting or a Baptist Sunday School.

In marriage, the urge for variety and change arises within a few years. She will want to do something more than missionary position; he will want to experiment with oral sex; she will want him to pull her hair occasionally; he will want to have her dress up like a slut sometimes. Unfortunately, none of this will happen if both think these are potentially sinful behaviors.

The guilt cycle works to keep both sides quiet, within narrow sexual boundaries. Unable to communicate and fearful of their spouse’s judgment, sex slowly dies over a period of years, but the sex drive does not go away. He will start using pornography and masturbating more. She will avoid his physical advances. She will start reading more romance novels and engulf herself in children or church activities. He will go out with friends and spend huge amounts of time doing his hobbies in the garage.

Eventually, she may find his porn stash and feel extremely hurt and rejected. She may lash out at him, berating him for defiling their marriage. For his part, he may see her reading dozens of trashy novels and feel that she may be interested in romance but not in him. The hurt may come out as verbal abuse or constantly finding fault in one another.

If things get bad enough, they may go for marital counseling with their minister, who will pray with them. That is about all he can do, since advice on actual sexual behavior runs the risk of revealing unbiblical thinking. If he is a Catholic priest, it is even worse, since he’s not supposed to have any first-hand experience with sex.

The double problem for the Protestant minister is that he is very likely having the same problems as his members, but he and his wife cannot discuss or reveal them to anyone or talk to each other. It is a religiously transmitted disease but no one will admit it.

The cycle of behavior we have described has consequences far beyond the church. Religious training and indoctrination creates internal states that are in conflict with natural urges and drives. A person feels condemned by his own sex drive. God has created him as a sexual being and then condemns him for acting on that drive. Indoctrination tells him that the church’s teaching cannot be wrong, so it must be his sinful nature and Satan tempting him.

Such misattribution means the root cause will not be found and no cure or treatment is possible. It is like a diabetic who refuses to believe that her diabetes is caused or exacerbated by the five cokes and pint of ice cream she eats each day. There may be medical treatments to reduce the symptoms, but sooner or later the disease will flare up with all its consequences.

Religion is a master at thought diversion. For example, if you have a normal sexual thought, religion can distort and divert that thought into something guilt-inducing.

Compare these thinking processes:

A religious person:

1. “God hates porn. I succumbed to temptation and feel guilty for looking at a porn site last night.”
   
2. “I love my husband, but the new minister really turns me on. I am a loathsome person for even thinking about such things.”
   

A non-religious person:

1. “It was fun looking at that porn site last night. Glad I found it. It gave me some ideas for my wife and me to explore, and I enjoyed masturbating to one of the scenes.”
   
2. “That new man at work really turns me on. I think I’ll tell my husband about him. He seems to enjoy knowing I get turned on by other men.”
   

Which of these individuals will have a better time tonight? Who is more in tune with their sexuality? Which of these is likely to experience a flood of inappropriate behavior or uncontrolled emotions?

Here is a story that illustrates this thinking style. It was sent to me by an ex-Christian woman, Candace Gorham, of the Ebony Exodus project:
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Countless religious experiences in my childhood through early adulthood (Jehovah’s Witnesses, United Methodists, Non-denominational/evangelical,
Baptists) taught me that sex was something to be feared. Despite the fact that everyone said that sex was good once married, the messages about sex outside of marriage were very different. Sex became this terrifying, disease-spreading monster that had the ability to ruin your life and tarnish your reputation forever. I cannot think of a single time when I was young that I got straightforward, non-religiously biased information about sexuality, safe sex, masturbation or even general education about male/female differences from religious institutions. They only taught abstinence. All that I learned about sex came from fifth grade D.A.R.E. classes, science classes about reproduction, one ninth grade health class, and obviously, friends and personal experience
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There was guilt and shame in “touching yourself” and kissing. Even what I call ‘appreciating the beauty of the feminine’ was wrong because, if I were a lesbian, it would mean that god would hate me more than if I were a heterosexual fornicator. Though not a lesbian, my strong appreciation for that particular form worried me, sometimes more intensely than heterosexual encounters
.

During my first sexual relationship in high school, I was less worried about pregnancy and disease and more embarrassed that God was watching me every time I “did it.” I was sure that he hated me for giving up my virtue and felt that I deserved eternal hell. Regardless, I kept doing it anyway. At times, the guilt and shame were so extreme that I would feel physically ill afterward. I would literally have to roll over in bed and lie still for a few minutes afraid I would vomit
.

When I went off to college, I was resolute to abstain from sex before marriage. Shame ensued after my one and only one-night stand. Another one-time-only experience involved fairly innocent ‘messing around’ in a group. Both incidences were followed by periods of abstinent contrition
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Once in a solid relationship, I convinced myself that God would recognize the purity of my heart and love me anyway. Sadly to say, that optimism didn’t last, and I entered a downward spiral into a deep depression sparked by my fear of God and love of man. How
does one choose between the intense pleasure of carnal love and the God who loves you, yet hates you?

My college love and I married at 20 because we believed a prophecy that God had ordained it and we shouldn’t delay His plans. But even in our marriage, I struggled with my sexuality. Pornography? It repulsed me. Anal sex? It led to the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah. Talking dirty? Profane! Trips to the ‘toy’ shop only produced gels and lotions. Suffice it to say that my husband’s and my exodus from religion was one of the best things that we could do, not only for our marriage but also for our sex life. I once believed that religious prohibitions plus messages to play the sexy vixen plus the guilty sickness from sex that persisted into my marriage
made the orgasm more drama than it was worth.