Premarital Sex & The Bible

[blackpudd1n]

Sex is really the one thing christianity can't compete with. Every religious experience pales compared to a great orgasm. This is why it MUST BE demonized by christianity. It's too good.

 

Can't have the worker bees enjoying themselves

[Will02]

Sex is really the one thing christianity can't compete with. Every religious experience pales compared to a great orgasm. This is why it MUST BE demonized by christianity. It's too good.

 

I've often wondered what the Christians could possibly gain by demonizing every good and pleasurable thing in life (sex, booze, etc.) It doesn't win Christians any new converts, and many people already in Christianity follow those teachings unwillingly. (I did until I deconverted) It's incredibly foolish... you sacrifice the fun things in the life YOU ALREADY HAVE NOW for promises of unparalleled pleasure in heaven?!? As always, the "heathens" knew better, especially in antiquity.

 

For instance, ancient Greece and Rome had no taboos on human nudity, and the naked human form (both male and female) was universally regarded as a thing of beauty. Casual sex was no big deal, and the gods loved to have sex as much as everyone else. In many cases, public nudity wasn't inherently sexual in nature. (the original Olympics, Roman bath houses, etc.) It was the Christians who turned nudity into a shameful thing and inextricably bound it to sexuality. It was fools like Tertullian and Origen who turned sex into a disgraceful thing that needed to be suppressed, and incalculable harm has resulted from these teachings. It never ceases to amuse me that christians expect everyone to live by their rules yet they can't even keep their own houses clean. (the whole catholic pedophile thing, plus the MANY prominent protestant ministers who get caught having an affair.) Liars and hypocrites all.

 

Not even the bible outright bans booze, yet many christian denominations have prohibitions on drinking. It's really bizarre.

 

In both cases, you answered my question.

[Vigile]

I've often wondered what the Christians could possibly gain by demonizing every good and pleasurable thing in life (sex, booze, etc.)

 

The constant cycle of guilt and forgiveness leads to a Stockholm syndrome effect where the captee loves and remains dependent on the captor. It's a quite brilliant formula for lasting success, especially when you make natural, undeniable impulses a sin as you guarantee none will ever triumph over them.

[Inqui]

Sex is really the one thing christianity can't compete with. Every religious experience pales compared to a great orgasm. This is why it MUST BE demonized by christianity. It's too good.

"Puritanism: the lingering fear that someone, somewhere might be happy." - H L Mencken.

[Suzy]

While the Bible requires women to marry as a virgin but I don't remember such a requirement for men. Is there?

 

In fact, in the OT we have lots of men with several wives and concubines. I guess the distinction between wives and concubines is that you marry the first but you don't marry the latter. But it was OK for men to have concubines (basically lovers) as well as wives. So marriage wasn't really as "holy" and "sacred" in the Bible as many Christians imagine today. I have the impression the strict rules only applied to women.

[Suzy]

Sexual sin is the "big ticket item" in Christian circles. You can't turn on any Christian radio program without hearing the words "porn addiction" within the first fifteen seconds! What a viscious cycle of being human, feeling guilt and shame, repenting - only to do it all over again.

 

Exactly, this is a big part of what "broke" me. I remember discovering porn in my early teen years. On the outside I was the paragon of adolescent fundamentalism, (I practically had a halo over my head!) but on the inside I was incredibly frustrated because what evolution had hard-wired into me was "sinful" and no one ever mentioned how to deal with these new feelings. (other than suppress them, of course) As years passed, this frustration turned to bitterness because although the porn helped, it still wouldn't give me what I wanted no matter how much I indulged. The real danger is that absurd christian taboos on exploring sexuality can damage young people and render them practically incapable of relating to a real person of the opposite sex later in life. As I got older and wiser, I understood that porn has its place (mostly as a pressure release valve) but it's no substitute for a relationship and true intimacy with a real person.

 

 

Same here. As a teenager I accidentaly discovered porn when one night I stayed up late and I saw it on TV. After that I started to masturbate and then of course felt very guilty about it because I knew it was a "sin". Yet, I always returned to it and did it again, only to feel guilty again and repent and the whole cycle all over and over again for a long, long time. I felt so horrible about it. I cried so much about it too, praying a lot that God would set me free from my "sin". I felt like the dirt of this Earth. I was convinced I was such a horrible, horrible sinner - only murderers were worse than me. It's so wrong to make teenagers feel so guilty about their natural urges. It's great to enjoy sex without any guilty feeling now.

 

I only recently got to know from an "insider" who left the same church as I did, but who was in the leadership of the church what a hypocrisy there was about sex in the leadership. There were pastors who frequently went to prostitutes. All the while the same people were making regular congregation members feel guilty even if they just kissed their fiancés before marriage or make teenagers like me feel horribly guilty about masturbation. But I guess this phenomenon isn't unknown for any of you. After all it's the Christian church. It's all about hypocrisy.

[Suzy]

 

YES! We were even told that there were only certain things appropriate for a married couple to do. Basically, boring in the dark missionary position sex.

 

That was what we were told too. Oral and anal sex were considered sinful even in marriage. After all God didn't make your mouth/anus for that.

 

I don't know though how would they back this up with the Bible because though the Bible has its sexual hang-ups but many Christians today are even more hang-up about sex than the Bible is. Actually masturbation is not prohibited in the Bible either. (Onan's sin was NOT masturbation!) Though Jesus already developed some pathological ideas on sex - such as just thinking of someone with lust equals to actually fucking him/her.

[Will02]

If I have kids one day, I'll let mine know (sons especially) that porn/masturbation is OK and society can go to hell (metaphorically speaking) if it says otherwise. It's important that young people learn about their bodies and those of the opposite sex. Abstinence-based sex ed solves nothing because kids who only get that POV usually end up not knowing shit about protection and how to use it correctly. The bible certainly isn't going to teach them about their bodies, and you can't expect parents to have that sort of discussion with the necessary level of detail. (when I got "the talk" at age 14, it was just pitiful and it ended up confusing me more than anything else)

 

However, I would stress that the "porn-is-ok" thing has a few caveats:

 

1. I would make it very clear that love != the lust feeling you get from watching porn or just seeing someone who is attractive. Kids often mix the two up. There's nothing inherently wrong with lust...it's part of being human, after all. Mistaking it for love can be disastrous, especially in the early relationships you get into as a teenager. Teen guys want to fuck everything that moves yet completely ignore any consequences, and my future daughters (if I have any) need to be able to recognize this for what it is.

 

2. In a committed relationship, porn can do much more harm than good, and it's better to play it safe and give it up for awhile unless you know for certain that your significant other is OK with it. It really depends on the situation...some people think it's natural while others consider it borderline cheating.

[DesertBob]

However, I would stress that the "porn-is-ok" thing has a few caveats:

I think the caveat you're forgetting is how porn both objectifies and exploits people, especially women. I don't see why porn is necessary for anyone's sex education and I can think of ways it can be harmful.

 

I suppose some forms of porn, such as erotic prose, are arguably victimless, and some visual porn is created by consenting adults. But most of the latter, I think, is exploitive and manipulative of the participants and a lot of it involves minors and other vulnerables.

[Vigile]

However, I would stress that the "porn-is-ok" thing has a few caveats:

I think the caveat you're forgetting is how porn both objectifies and exploits people, especially women. I don't see why porn is necessary for anyone's sex education and I can think of ways it can be harmful.

 

I suppose some forms of porn, such as erotic prose, are arguably victimless, and some visual porn is created by consenting adults. But most of the latter, I think, is exploitive and manipulative of the participants and a lot of it involves minors and other vulnerables.

 

You seem to be victim of the anti porn propaganda machine. A lot of porn does not in fact involve minors. Almost none of it does and that which does is aggressively prosecuted. The vast majority of it is just sex and sex isn't exploitative, it's just a natural function of all animals. Workers in the industry are exploited like McDonald's exploits its workers I guess; only most are paid a hell of a lot more to be exploited and are exploited in far less grueling ways. I think you can only infer they are exploited in other ways if you view sex as somehow sacred.

[Inqui]

You seem to be victim of the anti porn propaganda machine. A lot of porn does not in fact involve minors. Almost none of it does and that which does is aggressively prosecuted. The vast majority of it is just sex and sex isn't exploitative, it's just a natural function of all animals. Workers in the industry are exploited like McDonald's exploits its workers I guess; only most are paid a hell of a lot more to be exploited and are exploited in far less grueling ways. I think you can only infer they are exploited in other ways if you view sex as somehow sacred.

This. From what I hear it's not nearly as exploitative as is sometimes made out either. Gay porn pays up to $5,000 to star in. I'm straight but I'd definitely take that. Further, after an AIDS outbreak a year or so ago the industry's begun to tighten up safety procedures so porn stars apparently now enjoy some of the lowest STD rates in the world.

 

If I have kids, I'd intend to tell them things like how it's not real sex (just someone's fantasy), to get it from an open source like RedTube as opposed to something some Russian mobster filmed and put on some dark corner of the internet, and to never watch it at work/school.

 

I went back home for a bit this year and my mum finally decided to give myself and my two brothers a porn talk. What did she say? "Don't watch child porn. There's a whole government department looking for those kinds of people." Gee thanks. I love my parents, I do, but they can be pretty useless sometimes.

 

And in terms of repressing sexuality, religion has taken me to some pretty dark places and I'd hate to see my kids put through the same shit.

[DesertBob]

I think the caveat you're forgetting is how porn both objectifies and exploits people, especially women. I don't see why porn is necessary for anyone's sex education and I can think of ways it can be harmful.

 

I suppose some forms of porn, such as erotic prose, are arguably victimless, and some visual porn is created by consenting adults. But most of the latter, I think, is exploitive and manipulative of the participants and a lot of it involves minors and other vulnerables.

 

You seem to be victim of the anti porn propaganda machine. A lot of porn does not in fact involve minors. Almost none of it does and that which does is aggressively prosecuted. The vast majority of it is just sex and sex isn't exploitative, it's just a natural function of all animals. Workers in the industry are exploited like McDonald's exploits its workers I guess; only most are paid a hell of a lot more to be exploited and are exploited in far less grueling ways. I think you can only infer they are exploited in other ways if you view sex as somehow sacred.

I view sex as ideally sacred, in the generic sense of sacred vs profane. Sometimes real-world sex is primal, back-arching, muscle-pulling, trampoline sex, and there's nothing wrong with that, but it seems that porn is 99% that kind of sex and therefore I can't relate to it because most of the time I'm interested in a woman as something other than meat-on-display or a vehicle for getting off. In addition, as I get older, porn becomes less relevant because it's all about preternaturally attractive young people in various contortionist fantasies. I suppose that I'm also influenced by my fiancee, who has apparently seldom if ever successfully connected sexual activity with intimacy and has issues with me wanting something other than impersonal rutting. It seems pretty obvious that porn cultivates the latter rather than the former, at least from any porn I've ever seen.

 

If you know of porn that has an actual storyline with believable characters who care about each other and whom you want to care about and root for, made by people with artistic sensibilities that extends beyond mere raunch, I would love to know where to find it, because all I've ever seen is people spread-eagle and talking dirty and it just gets old for me.

 

As for whether the industry exploits people ... I suppose it depends on your definitions to a certain extent. I don't pretend to know whether for every paid voluntary porn actor there are 10 people who would rather do most anything else but are cajoled into it in various ways, including financial want, but it wouldn't surprise me at all. That is not exploitation in the sense of someone threatening you with bodily harm lest you do it, but it's exploitation in the same way that buying the kidney of some poor schmuck in India is exploitation. I guess what I'm trying to say is, why objectify people, why not let sex be a way of expressing commitment and intimacy rather than just a way to get mechanical release? The latter isn't inherently bad per se, but it is one of those deals where at the very least mediocracy robs us of excellence, and with something as lovely as sexuality, that seems a terrible waste. Kind of like using a Stradivarius for square dancing, only with less class.

[Vigile]

Dunno, I see American Idol as culturally vanillafying, and as such more harmful to cultural aesthetic values than porn, which allows people to express and ingest their raw animal instincts. As for those who would rather be doing something else if it weren't for the money, that captures about 98% of society.

[Will02]

I view sex as ideally sacred, in the generic sense of sacred vs profane. Sometimes real-world sex is primal, back-arching, muscle-pulling, trampoline sex, and there's nothing wrong with that, but it seems that porn is 99% that kind of sex and therefore I can't relate to it because most of the time I'm interested in a woman as something other than meat-on-display or a vehicle for getting off. In addition, as I get older, porn becomes less relevant because it's all about preternaturally attractive young people in various contortionist fantasies. I suppose that I'm also influenced by my fiancee, who has apparently seldom if ever successfully connected sexual activity with intimacy and has issues with me wanting something other than impersonal rutting. It seems pretty obvious that porn cultivates the latter rather than the former, at least from any porn I've ever seen.

 

If you know of porn that has an actual storyline with believable characters who care about each other and whom you want to care about and root for, made by people with artistic sensibilities that extends beyond mere raunch, I would love to know where to find it, because all I've ever seen is people spread-eagle and talking dirty and it just gets old for me.

 

As for whether the industry exploits people ... I suppose it depends on your definitions to a certain extent. I don't pretend to know whether for every paid voluntary porn actor there are 10 people who would rather do most anything else but are cajoled into it in various ways, including financial want, but it wouldn't surprise me at all. That is not exploitation in the sense of someone threatening you with bodily harm lest you do it, but it's exploitation in the same way that buying the kidney of some poor schmuck in India is exploitation. I guess what I'm trying to say is, why objectify people, why not let sex be a way of expressing commitment and intimacy rather than just a way to get mechanical release? The latter isn't inherently bad per se, but it is one of those deals where at the very least mediocracy robs us of excellence, and with something as lovely as sexuality, that seems a terrible waste. Kind of like using a Stradivarius for square dancing, only with less class.

 

I can see where you're coming from, but porn has its uses.

 

A few posts up, I outright said that I don't consider it a substitute for a real relationship/intimacy and I meant what I said. However, if you're single and need to get your rocks off RIGHT NOW, (every guy has been there at least once) there's really no substitute for porn unless you have a hell of a good imagination and can make it up as you go along. I'd personally rather have a real relationship and all the good stuff that goes with it instead of porn, but sometimes you have to make the most of what you've got. Like I said earlier, it's a pressure release valve.

 

Does porn cheapen sexuality? Who's to say? I'm not disputing that sex creates bonds with your partner, of course it does. Sure, you could put sex up on a pedestal, but so do the christians who think it's a special gift from jesus or something. Kids who get taught abstinence their whole lives get pumped full of hype, so when the big moment does arrive, they are usually left with a "is this it?" feeling. Are porn stars exploited? Maybe some are, but others probably make way more money than I do. Child porn is indeed despicable and I doubt that anyone will challenge that, but most of the time the women who do it know what they're getting into beforehand.

 

Kids (especially teenage boys) are going to be curious about porn. It's inevitable. Back before the internet took off, most guys knew where their dad's stash of girlie mags was, it was a rite-of-passage sort of thing. I'm getting older as well, and porn has started to get boring for me. On the other hand, it's probably the best thing ever to a horny 13 year old guy. When I have kids, I’m not going to outright ban porn or encourage it. I'm going to adopt a "porn is out there if you need it and whatever happens happens" approach. I'm not going to blame my kids for their curiosity because I did the same exact thing at that age and (christian upbringing aside) I turned out fine.

[DesertBob]

When I have kids, I’m not going to outright ban porn or encourage it. I'm going to adopt a "porn is out there if you need it and whatever happens happens" approach. I'm not going to blame my kids for their curiosity because I did the same exact thing at that age and (christian upbringing aside) I turned out fine.

That was my attitude toward it.

 

I guess I must have had a pretty good imagination then because I never needed porn as an aid.

[izzytheterri]

Have you read the book, "God and Sex?"

 

Brilliant read.

[izzytheterri]

Also, my feelings on the topic:

 

1. We were made to want it to procreate, it's a natural desire and instinct!

2. If God is love, and love is perfect, then all expressions of love (with whomever) should be considered beautiful.

[freeasabird]

 

If you know of porn that has an actual storyline with believable characters who care about each other and whom you want to care about and root for, made by people with artistic sensibilities that extends beyond mere raunch, I would love to know where to find it, because all I've ever seen is people spread-eagle and talking dirty and it just gets old for me.

 

 

Try a movie called Faithless, starring former Miss USA Kelli McCarty. My wife and I watch porn together, normally getting it on about halfway through the movie. This movie had her so enthralled she wouldn't let me touch her until it was totally over. It has genuine plot and above average acting, even by traditional movie standards.