Sex & God: How Religion Distorts Sexuality (27 page)

The very religious state of Utah has consistently had the highest consumption of pornography.
¹⁴²
In addition, porn use in the United States is generally higher in the most religious zip codes. This points towards the notion that sexual energy has to go somewhere, despite strong religious teachings and sanctions.

While religious guilt does not explain all sexual dysfunction within a marriage, it explains a large proportion. Issues often have roots in religious dogma taught in childhood and adolescence. For example, a man or woman may be turned off by oral sex. If asked, they may say, “I just don’t feel comfortable with it.” All too often a Sunday School teacher or minister told them that it was dirty and unnatural.

When children are starting puberty, they are extremely susceptible to religious messages. In my research, I encountered hundreds of stories about people being warned about eternal damnation for certain sexual activities. These messages often come from trusted adults, and the children carried them into adulthood and marriage. How does a woman relax and enjoy a good oral sex orgasm with her husband when she believes that it is an act only “Satan himself would teach.”

If you were forced to eat your favorite dessert every day for the rest of your life, you would probably be sick of it within weeks. Sex is similar. We need stimulation and variety. Children quickly tire of playing with the same toy and want new things. Most will go out of their way to invent new games. The same is true of adults and sex.

Sooner or later, NRE comes to an end. The novelty wears off; the excitement is less frequent or gone. At that point, the bond that holds a couple together must transition to something more settled, or they may break up. That is probably why the highest divorce rate is around four years of marriage, the maximum length of NRE.
¹⁴³
If they make the transition, sex may continue, but at a lower level. It may taper off over the next decade or two as it becomes harder and harder for the partners to stimulate one another. It doesn’t mean the sex drive goes away; they just have a harder time directing it toward each other.

What would that couple look and act like if they were members of the Hadza or Na cultures? In all probability, they wouldn’t stress over a lifelong marriage. Each of the partners would have several long-term relationships over a lifetime. The children would still get great care and teaching from aunts and uncles and others in the village.

Religious notions of fidelity and marriage do not hold up to cultural and biological scrutiny. The basis for monogamy is rooted in the need for agriculturalists to control labor and inheritance. At the same time, religion takes advantage of this agricultural necessity to ensure that it is passed on to subsequent generations.
¹⁴⁴
The farther our society gets from agriculture, the fewer economic restrictions on women. This, in turn, weakens religion’s ability to propagate through sexual rules and guilt focused on the submission of women.

With more economic and educational options for women, we may be seeing the natural course of biology take place. Just as many hunter-gatherer
women have significant independence within their tribal structure, modern women have more power to decide who, when and whether to marry.

This does not mean that lifelong relationships are not possible, even desirable. It
does
mean that we should recognize the nature of love and attraction in humans. It is normal to get tired of your mate and desire someone else. The question is, what do you do about it?

The current religious model for marriage allows no path for discussing attraction issues. As a result, people may feel trapped, unloved, and angry. These unexpressed feelings often are acted out in destructive ways like becoming hypercritical of one another, undermining the financial security of the relationship, having an affair, etc.

Eliminate religious ideas of marriage and monogamy, and many options open up. A couple can talk openly about what they like and want. What would stimulate them and give them more satisfaction? They can also discuss and explore issues of insecurity, inadequacy and jealousy that are typically ignored or suppressed. Ignoring these slowly undermines the relationship. It is never easy to talk about these things, but the practice of doing it strengthens the relationship and keeps it alive.

Through these discussions profound love can develop – love that goes far beyond NRE and still has the power to evoke NRE chemistry. We will explore this further in
Section V
and develop some practical ways to manage the relationship cycle.

139
Probably first coined by Zhahai Stewart in the 1980s but more widely used in the 1990s. For a full discussion, see an article by Stewart in
Loving More
magazine, Issue 26, “What's All This NRE Stuff, Anyway?”

140
From “Abstinence-Only Education Does Not Lead to Abstinent Behavior, Researchers Find” in
ScienceDaily
. Available online at
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/11/111129185925.htm
.

141
The Atheist Experience Television
, #688. Available at
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YO8eubj23dQ
.

142
“Red Light States: Who Buys Online Adult Entertainment?” by Benjamin Edelman,
Journal of Economic Perspectives
, 23 (1), Winter 2009.

143
See Helen Fisher’s discussion of the four-year itch in
Anatomy of Love: The Natural History of Monogamy, Adultery, and Divorce
, (1992).

144
Arranged marriages were still the norm in Europe as recently as the 1700s. “Love marriages” did not become common until the 1800s. Stephanie Coontz,
Marriage, a History: How Love Conquered Marriage
, (2005).

Why are religious parents poor at sex education? What inhibits and prevents them from being honest with their children? Sexual guilt in marriage and childrearing creates problems for everyone
.

Rarely can parents talk easily and intelligently to their children about sex; moreover, rarely do children want to talk about sex with their parents. As a result, even the most well-intentioned, best-educated parent has great difficulty with the conversation. The problem is often quite simple – deeply ingrained religious guilt.

In his research on adolescents and sexual communication with parents (
Forbidden Fruit
, 2007), Mark Regnerus reports:

… parents for whom religion is important communicate less often about birth control than parents whose religious faith is not important. This suggests that when devoutly religious parents say they are talking regularly with their adolescents about sex and birth control, it means they are talking with them about morality rather than sharing information.

In our own research, discussed in
Chapter 16
, we also found that religious children got more of their information about sex from experience, peers and porn than from their parents. Thirteen percent of religious parents talked to their children about sex compared to 38% of secular parents. According to thousands of survey respondents, religious parents are much poorer than non-religious parents are at talking about sex. Something is interfering with the communication, and religious guilt is the probable cause.

Religious guilt around premarital sex may be one possible inhibitor. Ninety-five percent of the U.S. population has had premarital sex, even religious people.
¹⁴⁵
The religious taboo against premarital sex is so strong that religious people cannot admit to this, especially to their children. This creates a barrier to communication between parent and child. As one religious parent told me, “What if my daughter asks if I had sex before marriage? Do I lie to her and tell her no, or do I tell her I did but she shouldn’t do it? How do I justify my behavior to my daughter? It’s just easier not to talk about it at all.”

There is also the possibility that one or both of the parents have deceived the other partner about having premarital sex. This creates further guilt and conflict. If religious parents admit that they could not resist premarital sex,
how can they ask their children to resist it? The answer seems to be: better to lie or not talk about it.

More secular or religiously liberal parents do not face this dilemma. They openly talk about sex and premarital sex. They don’t have to justify their behavior to their children because they don’t see the behavior as wrong or sinful. As a result, secular parents tend to give their children better sex education.
¹⁴⁶

Religious parents see honesty about normal human sexuality as too risky; therefore, they talk less to their children and give them less accurate information. This failure to communicate important, rational and emotional information leaves religious children more at risk than those raised in secular homes. The irony is that what religious parents most fear and preach against – premarital sex or unwanted pregnancy – is more likely to happen with their children than with secular kids. Guilt doesn’t stop anyone, but it does inhibit clear thinking.

“Fathers, teach your daughters to say no until they get married. Mothers, teach your daughters how devastating premarital sex will be in their marriage.” This is the message propagated by patriarchal religions the world over.

In religion, women are seen as the sexual gatekeepers, yet they are subordinate to their husbands. If a couple has sex before marriage, it is the woman’s fault; she should have the moral power to say “no” and to save herself for her husband.

This message is present in Islam, Catholicism, Hinduism, Mormonism, Eastern Orthodoxy, Buddhism and many other religions. The notion that a woman’s sexuality belongs only to the husband is a central tenet tied to the idea that a woman is the property of the father first, then the property of the husband. Incidentally, that is where Christians get the tradition of the father giving the bride away.

Messages to keep girls “chaste” are almost always accompanied by fear and guilt. Girls are taught sex is dirty and sinful; women are taught that it is their responsibility to control the sexual relationship. If they are given the message that sex is dirty and sinful, and women are the cause of the fall
of man, it is no wonder many women go into marriage horrified of sex and unprepared, except to say no.

Here is an example of such married guilt:

I was an agnostic/atheist forced to convert to an extreme evangelical Christian faith in order to marry my wife, whom I recently separated from. She was a 30-year-old virgin when we married, and her prolonged abstinence wreaked havoc in the bedroom from the very beginning. We refrained from any kind of sexual activity while we were dating and engaged, and unfortunately we were unable to consummate our marriage on our wedding night. (When we were dating and engaged, and practicing “purity,” I was promised and guaranteed that our sex life would be greatly rewarded by God, and I bought into it.) In fact, we didn't actually have what could be considered sex for over two weeks after we got married. When we did start having sex regularly, it was extremely awkward, and I could tell that the guilt and shame placed upon sex and normal human sexuality when my wife was growing up was holding her back from thoroughly enjoying life's greatest pleasure
.

The wife in this story was the victim of horrendous sexual programming by her Evangelical religion. With this kind of childhood religious programming, many religious marriages are sexually dead from the start.

The major religions give powerful negative messages to women. The woman does most of the childrearing in patriarchal societies, so it is important for religion to infect her with guilt-inducing sexual ideas to ensure the children absorb the guilt as well. How are these messages conveyed to children, especially girls?

The messages are conveyed through oblique or indirect communication. Women’s gossip within hearing of young girls is a particularly effective way of conveying such messages. Children love to listen to adults as they gossip and take in the stories they hear as lessons on how to live your life. What if a girl overheard a comment like this, “Mrs. X caught her daughter playing with herself; they are going to send her off to a special religious camp this summer so she will learn the fear of god.” The eavesdropping child quickly picks up the meaning and tone of such communications and integrates it
into her sexual map. It is hard to miss the message that masturbation can get you in serious trouble.

This kind of cloaked, gossipy talk often substitutes for the direct communication and information the child needs. Many parents and adults do this intentionally. Such quiet secretiveness, harsh judgment and often embarrassed tone communicates volumes to a child about the sinfulness of sex and the treatment you can expect if you are caught doing it. I have heard from dozens of women who were raised in deeply religious homes, and the pattern is remarkably similar.

Menstruation is another aspect of life that the religious label as shameful and dirty. Here is one woman’s story, told as I was counseling her and her husband:

My mom never told me about menstruation. I knew she used tampons, and as a little girl I asked her about them. Her response was curt and clearly let me know it was not something I was to ask about again. I knew there was blood involved, and it scared me because I thought my mother was hurt. The most I could find out was that it had something to do with sex. When I realized what ‘sex’ was, that really freaked me out. I thought, “You mean I will bleed if I have sex?” I lived with this fear and uncertainty from as early as I can remember to about 10 years old. At that time, the older girls in my religious school started talking about things, and some were obviously breasts and talking about boys. I liked to listen, but I could never understand what was the truth and what were their own ideas. If I got up the courage to ask one of them, I got vague or conflicting answers
.