Sex & God: How Religion Distorts Sexuality (26 page)

We found that only 2.2% said their sex life worsened after leaving religion. Leaving religion disrupted some marital relationships; others found they had reduced access to possible partners.

• “Since leaving religion, I have not had a physical or emotional relationship with my wife.”
  
• “Since becoming an atheist, I have not met anyone who does not have some religious or 'spiritual' belief system. As a result, life is very lonely. I am proactively meeting new single members of the opposite sex in an effort to find someone who does not believe in the supernatural.”
  
• “I used to be able to bed every girl in the Sunday School class; now they won’t talk to me.”
  

Using the denominational information, we were able to see how much difference there was in sexual satisfaction depending on former religious affiliation.
Figure 4
shows how much sex life had changed. Sex improved for those leaving the most conservative and sexually repressive denominations, but every group showed some improvement.

Figure 4

We hypothesized that guilt-based religious upbringing would have lasting or residual effects on people after leaving religion. Surprisingly, our data showed that sexual satisfaction was hardly impacted. In other words, those raised in the most restricted religious environments rapidly caught up with everyone else after leaving religion. It seems the guilt messages don’t stick around very long.

At the same time, there was a difference felt between the most and the least religious groups in terms of anger they still feel about their religious training. In response to the question, “How much anger do you experience
towards religion because of how it affected your sexuality?” the average rating among the most religious was 4.20 (10 being highest) while those from the least religious background scored 1.83. Among the most religious, 23% scored their anger at 8, 9 or 10 while only 4.3% among the least religious experienced high anger. As we can see from these results, some are still angry, but it does not seem to impact their current level of satisfaction.

While we were pleased that our results are consistent with major national studies in areas like first onset of adolescent sexual activities, none of those studies looked at what role religion may play in creating sexual behaviors. Religion has injected itself deeply into human sexuality; it is time to put it under the microscope and document the impact.

While much more needs to be done to understand how religion impacts sexuality, here are some conclusions to be drawn from this work.

1. Religions that use guilt the most also interfere and damage sexual satisfaction most. Less guilt-based religions do not impact sexual satisfaction as much.
   
2. If you wish to marry a religious person, make sure he or she belongs to a low-guilt religion like Unitarian, Episcopalian or some forms of Judaism. Your sex life will be less impacted.
   
3. The best thing you can do for your sex life is to leave religion, especially if you are in a high-guilt group like Mormon, Pentecostal, Jehovah’s Witnesses, Seventh Day Adventist or Baptist.
   
4. Childhood and adolescent religious sexual training has little effect on sexual behavior. Adolescents begin sexual activity about the same time regardless of prior religious training. The danger is that religious children have not been given accurate information and may engage in more risky behavior leading to higher unwanted pregnancies, STIs and abortions among the most religious.
   
5. While secular parents are three times better at talking with their children about sex, it is still far too low, at 38%. There is much room for improvement.
   

In the next chapter we will explore some of the underlying psychological and biological reasons why sex is so compelling and why religion has so little impact on the behavior.

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The full report can be viewed at
IPCPress.com
, “Sex and Secularism: What Happens When You Leave Religion.”

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Petting: “making out” or foreplay without intercourse or other direct sexual contact.

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The UCSF report found that “Not only is there no credible evidence that these millions of dollars have any positive effect, there is reason to be concerned that young people who receive the abstinence-only curricula in school will not have the tools to protect themselves in sexual situations.” (Collins, C., Alagiri, P. and Summers, T. (2002). “Abstinence only vs. comprehensive sex education: What are the arguments? What is the evidence?” University of California, San Francisco: AIDS Research Institute). Another research report stated, “Findings indicate that, despite the effects seen after the first year, programs had no statistically significant impact on eventual behavior. Based on data from the final follow-up survey, youth in the program group were no more likely to abstain from sex than their control group counterparts; among those who reported having had sex, program and control group youth had similar numbers of sexual partners and had initiated sex at the same mean age.” (Christopher Trenholm, et. al.(2007). "Impacts of Four Title V, Section 510 Abstinence Education Programs: Final Report." Mathematica Policy Research, Inc.)

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Matthew 5:27-28: “You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall not commit adultery.’ But I tell you that anyone who looks at a woman lustfully has already committed adultery with her in his heart.”

Relationships have cycles that are related to our biology. Recognizing the biological basis of our cycles allows us to make rational choices and create greater happiness and commitment in our relationships
.

“Marriage requires a special talent, like acting. Monogamy requires genius.”

-Warren Beatty

"When two people are under the influence of the most violent, most insane, most delusive, and most transient of passions, they are required to swear that they will remain in that excited, abnormal, and exhausting condition continuously until death do them part."

-George Bernard Shaw

If we were trying to understand the mating and bonding behavior of gibbons, we would take into account all aspects of behavior as well as brain chemical and neurological functioning. Our biology and chemistry is based on the same genetics and evolutionary history as the other great apes and other primates. Yet, religion paints us as non-animal, spiritual beings that are somehow disconnected from our biology. This fallacy prevents examination of what we really are and why we may behave in certain ways. Many religionists (and romantics) believe that understanding our biology and psychology detracts from sexual enjoyment. This myth allows religion to keep people ignorant and dependent upon Bronze Age ideas of sexuality.

When people begin a sexual relationship, they experience the rush of endorphins, opiate-like chemicals in the brain that make them feel euphoric. Some have called this “new relationship energy” or NRE.
¹³⁹
Anyone who has been in love knows the feeling of new love. Art and literature are filled with stories of people like Romeo and Juliet in the throes of NRE. People want the sense of well-being and euphoria that comes from interaction with their lover.

NRE is an incredibly powerful part of our species’ reproductive strategy. As an important first step in the bonding process, it lasts a limited time and then either dissolves or evolves into a second type of long-term bonding. Long-term bonding is dependent on another set of chemical and neurological processes that generate very different feelings from NRE. We will call this long-term security or LTS and will discuss it in detail in
Chapter 23
. Briefly, LTS is when people feel satisfied and secure in a relationship. Unlike the powerful emotions of NRE, LTS feels solid and reliable.

The fact that NRE can be almost uncontrollable is frightening to parents and religious leaders. Thus, all the major religions fear and condemn NRE. Some religions try to prevent it from happening. For example, arranged marriages effectively prevent NRE from undermining social, religious, political and familial order.

Most major religions have been involved in and supportive of arranged marriages at some time in their history. The practice allows for careful selection of socially or politically advantageous in-laws, thus ensuring that the
religion is propagated as well. While arranged marriages are less common today, taboos against marrying outside one’s religion are still enforced in most cultures. Mormons and Jehovah’s Witnesses, among others, work to ensure young people marry within the religion. This is designed to prevent people from falling in love and diluting religious control over the offspring.

In India, no Hindu father would select a Muslim husband for his daughter. An Orthodox Jew would never consider marrying a Christian. If a Christian married a Muslim in the United States, both families would likely disapprove.

In modern U.S. Christianity, all the conservative religions preach against “succumbing to the passions of youth.” Abstinence-only courses focus on helping youth avoid the pitfalls of sex before marriage. None of this training works, and it sets the youth up for failure and guilt that will keep them tied to the church.
¹⁴⁰
Educating children on the entire spectrum of sexuality, including realistic ideas about NRE, would prevent many unwanted pregnancies, diseases and divorces. Unfortunately, the church’s motivation is not prevention through education, but guilt induction for religious propagation.

After NRE ends, humans may transition into attachment (LTS), the easy, comfortable feeling a person can achieve with a long-time partner. The brain uses the same pathways for adult attachment it used in childhood attachment to parents. The chemistry of attachment uses the brain chemical oxytocin to create the feeling of wellbeing. The same chemical is released during orgasm, breast feeding and other intimate encounters. It bonds married couples, best friends and pets. That is why some people can feel so strongly about their pets. All objects of attachment evoke similar neural pathways and chemistry in our brains. Oxytocin makes us feel safe, trusting and comfortable. It is an important part of the cycle of attachment.

If the sex is adequate for both parties, the relationship can settle at this level for decades, if not a lifetime. If the sex is not adequate for one party, the relationship may appear settled, but that party may seek outside stimulation.
The attachment may still be strong, but the need for stimulation and variety is not being satisfied.

A marriage contract is surrounded by cultural norms and expectations. Some are unwritten, others have been put into law like “Only one spouse per person” and “No sex outside of this legally sanctioned marriage.” Religious marriages may be subject to additional rules such as:

• No birth control.
  
• The woman is under divine obligation to keep her husband satisfied, except when she is pregnant.
  
• The man is the head of the house.
  

There are also a host of other unwritten rules. For example,

• You cannot lust after another person.
  
• You may not masturbate while married.
  
• You may not think about other people while having sex with your spouse.
  
• You may not talk about sexual topics to a person you are not married to.
  

Another unwritten rule is that one partner has full control over the other partner’s sexual expression. The ultimate expression of control is when one spouse decides he or she doesn’t want sex any more. In other words, involuntary celibacy is imposed by one spouse on the other.

This kind of celibacy is quite common among religious couples or couples where one is religious and the other is not. If one partner decides he or she does not want to be sexually active, religious ideas about sex and marriage preclude a rational discussion of the issue.

I was once the guest co-host on
The Atheist Experience
TV show.
¹⁴¹
The subject was sex and religion. Rich Lyons from Seattle called in and told us he had been a Pentecostal minister for 20 years. He had been married for 21 years, and he and his wife had had sex only about 12 times during their marriage due to religious guilt and inhibition. He went on to say that during those 20 years, virtually every male member of his congregation came to him for counseling about their wives’ lack of interest in sex. The only thing
he knew to suggest was to have them pray with him. In his words, “That did little good.”

Women have a sex drive and capacity for sex that is equal to or greater than that of men. What could possibly have happened to a whole congregation of married Pentecostal women to tamp down that powerful drive and make them not want sex with their husbands?

Guilt around sex often preys upon one partner more than the other. Once child bearing is over, the justification for sex is gone. As a result, the most guilt-ridden partner often decides it is easier to go without sex than to deal with the guilt associated with it. The natural aging process may also mean that one partner has less of a sex drive than the other. Less drive combined with more guilt makes it easy to refuse sex. The other partner may still have a strong sex drive but no where and no way to express it.