Sex & God: How Religion Distorts Sexuality (21 page)

Early Jewish law, as among Muslims in Saudi Arabia today, had a constant message of female uncleanliness. How did that impact young Jewish women and girls? How much did the message of male dominance in the home and total control over the children impact male and female sexual expression and development? A Jewish father had complete discretion over who and when his children could marry. How did that affect sexual development? How many women or daughters were beaten, ostracized, sold into slavery or executed for having sex before marriage? How many boys were berated and beaten for masturbating? How many homosexual men were put to death under Jewish law for expressing their sexuality?

Of all the possible avenues for sexual expression, Jewish children could choose from a very narrow set. To step outside of them meant punishment or banishment from the community, shame for the person and the family and guilt over the transgression against “god’s laws.”

When Judaism became monotheistic, it also eliminated sexuality from its deity. A single god has no sex partner – it is essentially asexual. Just as the Greek gods reflected the sexual mores and taboos of that society, the Jewish god reflected the sexual ideas of Jewish society.

For Judaism, a single god meant the ultimate domination of the masculine over the feminine in the culture. With this came stringent restrictions on sexual behavior, especially for women. Polygyny, which was widely practiced throughout Judaism among the upper classes, gradually changed to monogamy. Divorce became more difficult, especially for women, and sexual rules were abundant, as can be seen in Leviticus. From birth, women were seen as inferior. Menstruating and bearing children were seen as unclean. Even touching a woman during menstruation made another unclean. Here are examples of some of the Jewish laws:

Leviticus 15:19,
And if a woman have an issue, and her issue in her flesh be blood, she shall be put apart seven days: and whosoever toucheth her shall be unclean until the even.
12:5,
But if she bear a maid child, then she shall be unclean two weeks (one week for boys), as in her separation: and she shall continue in the blood of her purifying threescore and six days.

Prohibitions on sex during menstruation are common in many cultures, but the Jews take it to an extreme in this verse:

20:18,
And if a man shall lie with a woman having her sickness, and shall uncover her nakedness; he hath discovered her fountain, and she hath uncovered the fountain of her blood: and both of them shall be cut off from among their people.

While males have fewer rules and restrictions, there are still plenty. For example, regarding masturbation:

15:16,
And if any man’s seed of copulation go out from him, then he shall wash all his flesh in water, and be unclean until the even.

So if he has a wet dream, he is unclean the rest of the day.

In all of these rules, we can see clear distortions of sexuality based on the idea of ritual cleanliness. These restrictions have no basis in biology, ethics or psychology, they are simply responses to ancient superstitions, based in patriarchal, agricultural society, and give religion control of sex and sexuality.

Non-agricultural tribes may have had similar taboos, but the menstruating woman was not necessarily treated like a pariah. Most hunter-gatherer societies also showed little concern about masturbation.

Many modern apologists claim that these religious rules were primitive ways to control the spread of disease, but ritual cleanliness was based in supernaturalism and had nothing to do with disease or germs. In many instances, ritual cleanliness actually promoted disease. For example, male circumcision using unsterilized instruments was dangerous. Even today, the risks are substantial. In 2005, Orthodox mohels using an ancient practice infected a number of babies with herpes, which is very dangerous to infants and some babies died.

Further, ritual washing was anything but clean. Ancient rituals used fonts, bowls or instruments that were never washed. While the water may have been replaced, the hands and instruments of ritual cleansing were never sterilized. What better way to spread water-borne diseases than to use the same bowl for days or even years without sterilization?

When Jews, Catholics, Muslims or any other group claim that ancient rituals prevented disease, they are speaking from a modern perspective. Ritual cleansing and cleanliness were totally unrelated to actual sanitary cleanliness. Ritual cleanliness is designed to protect the individual and community from contamination from deities and invisible powers and forces. When a woman brings two doves for a burnt offering, as in Leviticus 12:8,
she is trying to rid herself of spiritual filth that comes from having a child and just being a woman.

In Judaism the notion of ritual purity is critical. Jewish culture, while having many food restrictions and taboos, placed much more emphasis on sexual purity than many other cultures. Looking at modern Judaism, it may be hard to believe that the harsh and specific penalties of Leviticus and other books were actually practiced, but we have only to look at the laws and practices of Saudi Arabia today to see what life was probably like in Israel in 500 BCE. Today a couple caught in adultery, for example, can be stoned to death or beheaded. Sounds exactly like Leviticus. There is no reason to believe Israel of that day was not like it is described in the Bible.

Judaism brought intense sexual control in the service of the patriarchal Yahweh god in order to propagate the religion. Jewish culture continued with this straitjacket until only a few hundred years ago when it slowly began to change. Still today, the more conservative forms of Judaism contain a good deal of sexual guilt and repression.

You may think that these old scriptures mean little today, that nobody stones people for adultery or sells errant daughters into slavery, but millions of Jews and Christians actually read these Old Testament books and believe that their god dictated the words. How can those words not have some impact?

By the first century CE, both Greek and Roman sexual views and practices had been circulating in and around Palestine for several centuries. The Jewish response was to tighten up the system to keep pagan practices from seeping into Judaism. The advent of Christianity came within this context. The apostle Paul led the new cult with a hyper-controlling sexuality.

Here is a list of verses from Paul. It is hard to see any positive sexuality in these:

1 Corinthians 6:9,
Do you not know that the wicked will not inherit the kingdom of God? Do not be deceived: Neither the sexually immoral nor idolaters nor adulterers nor male prostitutes nor homosexual offenders.

1 Corinthians 6:15
, Do you not know that your bodies are members of Christ himself? Shall I then take the members of Christ and unite them with a prostitute? Never!

2 Corinthians 12:21
, I am afraid that when I come again my God will humble me before you, and I will be grieved over many who have sinned earlier and have not repented of the impurity, sexual sin and debauchery in which they have indulged.

1 Thessalonians 4:5
, not in passionate lust like the pagans, who do not know God;

2 Corinthians 6:14,
Do not be yoked together with unbelievers. For what do righteousness and wickedness have in common? Or what fellowship can light have with darkness?

1 Timothy 2:11-15
, A woman should learn in quietness and full submission. I do not permit a woman to teach or to assume authority over a man; she must be quiet. For Adam was formed first, then Eve. And Adam was not the one deceived; it was the woman who was deceived and became a sinner. But women will be saved through childbearing – if they continue in faith, love and holiness with propriety.

While the statements of Jesus on sex and marriage were restrictive, Paul’s became explicit. Women should keep their mouths shut and heads covered and defer to men in all things.

From the earliest Christian writings of the Ante-Nicene fathers, sexual repression was a recurring theme. Tertullian (150-230 CE), the great Christian apologist from Carthage, makes hundreds of sex-negative references about women. Here is his central idea:

Do you not know that you are each an Eve? The sentence of God on this sex of yours lives in this age: the guilt must of necessity live too. You are the Devil’s gateway: You are the unsealer of the forbidden tree: You are the first deserter of the divine law: You are she who persuaded him whom the devil was not valiant enough to attack. You destroyed so easily God’s image, man. On account of your desert even the Son of God had to die.

Tertullian, often called the father of Latin Christianity, is a revered saint of the Catholic church. He was also married. Imagine being this guy’s wife! He is still studied and quoted by the highest church scholars and officials. Tertullian set the pace for sexual distortion with many others to follow, but he was also reflecting the already misogynistic environment of Christianity.

One of the most incredible distortions of Christianity is celibacy of the clergy and others. Given that the Christian god is asexual, celibacy is seen as a way to achieve a kind of communion with the god. Paul writes:

1 Corinthians 7:8-9,
Now to the unmarried and the widows I say: It is good for them to stay unmarried, as I do. But if they cannot control themselves, they should marry, for it is better to marry than to burn with passion.

On this and other passages, the Catholic church has built a justification for celibacy of the clergy. The result has been two thousand years of pedophilia, priests with mistresses, illegitimate children of priests and nuns, and Popes with illegitimate children and several “nieces” living in the Vatican.

When sex is suppressed, it tends to come out in strange places. Over the centuries, thousands have been executed throughout Europe by both Catholic and Protestant authorities for sodomy, witchcraft, homosexuality, adultery and bestiality. A total of 150,000 to 250,000 people, the majority of whom were women, were executed throughout Europe in the 16th century for crimes that frequently seemed to be related to sex or sexuality. How many of these people were executed because of the sexual paranoia of some celibate priest or sexually repressed Calvinist minister?

Ayaan Hirsi Ali tells a number of heart-rending stories in her books,
Infidel
(2006) and
Nomad
(2010), about her journey from Somalia and Ethiopia to Europe and the United States. The themes are consistent: a woman’s body belongs to men – father first, brothers and cousins second and, finally, her husband when she marries. She has little or no choice in the matter.

Islam is consumed with sex and sexuality; consumed with the suppression and control of female sexuality. To be Muslim is to be sexually pure, especially if you are a woman. Everything from masturbation to sex before or outside of marriage is forbidden for women. While there are also behaviors forbidden for men, the sex police tend to look the other way when men transgress. Mohammed himself allowed men to engage in sex while in foreign countries or serving in the armies of Allah. No such permission was given to women. On the contrary, for women to travel in a foreign country without a male escort was almost unheard of until very recently.

Having sexual relations with a non-Muslim woman does not taint a man. Infidel women are seen as less than human, and Allah gives Muslim men the right to use them. A Muslim man traveling from Saudi Arabia to Amsterdam may have no compunction about visiting the red-light district and engaging a prostitute or dating a Dutch woman. Should a Muslim woman have sex with an infidel, on the other hand, she is rendered impure, and in some Muslim countries, may pay with her life. If the legal system does not execute her, her family probably will.

In her memoir,
Nomad
, Ayaan Hirsi Ali tells this revealing story of her cousin, who came to America as a refugee. She fled her native country and at some point acquired AIDS. Unable to admit that she had ever had sex, she became involved with a European man but never told him she had AIDS. As a result, he too became infected. She was deeply shamed and felt that she should be stoned or beaten for sinning against Allah. When he confronted her about it, she accused him of giving it to her. Even then, she could not admit to him, or anyone, that she had engaged in sex and became infected before she met him.

In other stories, Ayaan Hirsi Ali tells of Muslim men who, when informed that they had AIDS, responded by saying, “I don’t have that! I’m a Muslim! And Somali! We don’t get Aydis (AIDS)!” The delusion and self-deception rooted in religious dogma facilitate the spread of both biological and religious viruses.

When Islam swept out of the Arabian Peninsula, it became an invasive species to both the pagan and Christian areas it conquered. With it came the sexual practices of a very patriarchal, polygamist culture. While the religions it displaced were not particularly sex positive, Islamic sexual practices, on the whole, were uniformly sex negative.

The invasion of Islam into India led to the decline of some sex-positive religious practices, but to be fair, Hindu, Jain, Buddhist and other religions in the region were already very patriarchal and sex negative. Much of what the upper classes practiced in India was less restrictive than for the masses. For example, the early highly sexualized art of the period after 500 BCE was the result of royal patronage and polygyny among the ruling classes. In southern India, it was customary for most people – both men and women – to wear nothing above the waist in that hot climate, as is customary in
many other hot climates. This changed with the conquests of the Muslim Moguls. Islamic sexualization of the female body required women to cover themselves, regardless of their religion. The result was a dramatic change in sexual attitudes and practices across India. Where local cultures had different dress and sexual practices, new pressures forced the population to dress “modestly” and restrict women’s rights. Thus, Islam ensured that the culture was more uniformly sex negative.