The God Virus: How Religion Infects Our Lives and Culture (17 page)

As in the crime of rape, clergy sexual abuse is more about power than sex. Especially in mega churches,
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charismatic vectors have a great deal of power and opportunity.
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From an anthropological perspective, ministers in mega churches clearly put themselves in an alpha male role within the social structure. In most cases, they have total control over who serves on the board and the budget. As the alpha male, the minister tends to attract a high proportion of females to males. The sex ratio in these churches is female dominated, as high as 60/40, and even higher in some. Within this context, the alpha male has groupies, like a rock band; females who work hard to get close to the alpha male by working on committees, volunteering, etc. The high-status male is sexually attractive to the females, which gives him the opportunity to choose the most desirable among his followers.

It may sound far-fetched, but it fits well within the structure of any polygamous society. In early Mormon culture, the high-status alpha males got the pick of the desirable females. In Middle Eastern Islamic culture alpha males, those who are tribal leaders or have huge resources clearly, have the pick of desirable females. A cursory study of many cults from Jim Jones’ People’s Temple to Warren Jeffs’ Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints reveals the same pattern. Mega churches produce a tribal group with similar hierarchies and some of the same sexual patterns. Power is the aphrodisiac, as Henry Kissinger once suggested.

Some religions are sex-positive, but they keep a low profile in the United States. These include Wiccan and Pagan groups.
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Some of the less mainstream groups like Unitarians, Quakers and Baha’i are also more sex-positive, but they are still quite influenced by the larger sex-negative culture. They may not use the reproductive control strategy as much, if at all.

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A mega church is generally defined as having 2,000 or more attendees, on average, each Sunday. A mega church might have tens of thousands of members.

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Dee Ann Miller,
The Truth About Malarkey
(1stbooks.com, 2000) is a disturbing account of Protestant clergy abuse and the trials of the victims as they seek justice.

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For an excellent article on a sex positive philosophy see Charlie Glickman,
Electronic Journal of Human Sexuality
Vol. 3 [journal on-line] (6 July 2000, accessed 21 November 2008); available from
http://www.ejhs.org/volume3/sexpositive.htm
; Internet.

If you are a non-religious person you can no more avoid the influence of the sex-negative environment than a fish can avoid pollution in its stream. From access to the Plan B drug or abortion, to the fundamentalist pharmacist refusing to sell birth control, to public funding for abstinence programs, you are affected by religious control efforts all around you.

As a psychologist, I see a good deal of sexual dysfunction directly related to religious guilt. When parents are afraid to have sex while the children are in the house, they are displaying specific viral behaviors. I have worked with many women who simply cannot enjoy sex if the children are anywhere near. The message is that children should not be exposed to their parents’ sexual nature. Where did this come from?

Not many centuries ago in our culture and in many cultures still today, parents had sex in the same room where the children slept. How does a Hutu couple living in a one-room hut avoid sexual activity within sight or hearing of their children? How did nomadic Cheyenne or Shawnee Indians hide sexual activity from their children while living in a tent? How did Iroquois Indians living in an open lodge have sex? The answer is, they didn’t worry a lot about it. Sex was seen as a normal, natural activity. These cultures don’t make a display of sex, but they don’t try and hide it from their children. Hiding implies guilt. Remember the story of Adam and Eve? They hid their nakedness from god.

Before the invasion of the hugely successful, sex-negative viruses of Christianity and Islam, many cultures were more sex-positive.
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The rise of non-culturally based viral religions has led to sex-negative environments in many areas of the world that were once sex-positive. As a sex-negative religion invades a culture, it strongly influences the mores and taboos of that culture. Whether the old mores and taboos were more sex-positive or sex-negative, they inevitably move toward the sex-negative after the invasion.

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See such studies as Margaret Mead,
Coming of Age in Samoa
(Harper Perennial, January 1, 1971) and Ruth Benedict,
Patterns of Culture
1 edition (Mariner Books, January 26, 2006) for examples of both sex-positive and sex-negative cultures that largely predate western influences.

Christian missionaries for two thousand years have been invading native cultures and creating sex-negative environments. The process has been so complete that even cultures that have not converted to one of the main religions have felt the influence. Just as smallpox hit communities in the Americas that had never seen a white man, sex-negative ideas have passed to societies who never saw a missionary.

A look at the missionary influence on Hawaiian culture is a classic study. Marriage was loosely defined, and sexual contact was not particularly regulated. One author notes that before contact with westerners, Hawaiians put more control on eating than on sexual practices.
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As an example of sex-positive culture, sexual ethnographer Milton Diamond wrote:

As they slept in the family house, they observed their parents having coitus. Among the Mangaian Islanders, as it was described by Marshall (1971, p. 108), probably is similar to the ‘privacy’ that was found in Hawai’i and elsewhere in Polynesia: A Mangaian may copulate, at any age, in the single room of a hut that contains from five to fifteen family members of all ages — as have his ancestors before him. His daughter may receive and make love with each of her varied nightly suitors in the same room ... But under most conditions, all of this takes place without social notice: everyone seems to be looking in another direction.

If you were raised in the United States, you were raised in a sex-negative culture and probably have some sex-negative ideas and behaviors. Eliminating the virus from your life means taking a hard look at activities that may be outside your consciousness. Compare your attitudes to those of pre-contact Hawaiians. It does not appear that they experienced any guilt over sex. That would be one benchmark against which to measure our cultural and individual sex negativity.

You probably received feelings of guilt about sex from parents, priests, nuns, preachers and Sunday school teachers. How does a Pope give anyone advice on sex? A Pope, priest or nun teaching about sex or giving advice
on sexual matters seems rather odd. Almost as bad is an uptight, highly sex-negative fundamentalist preacher telling you about the joys of Christian sex! What kind of advice does Ted Haggard have that would enhance your marriage?
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Milton Diamond, Ph.D.,
Sexual Behavior in Pre-Contact Hawai’i: A Sexological Ethnography
(University of Hawai’i at Manoa, 2004), 43.

Here are some questions to ask yourself as you try to diagnose the effects of the virus on you today:

• How does my sex-negative training affect my relationships?

• How does it affect my enjoyment of sex with others or with myself?

• Do I find myself fixated on things that were prohibited by my training?

• How much is my own sexual response affected by guilt or early viral training?

• What did my parents teach me about sex?

• Were my parents open and direct with me concerning sex as I was maturing, or were they secretive and nervous around sexual issues?

• Have I had sexual partners who were strongly affected by the virus? How did that affect my relationship and ability to enjoy them?

• Do I feel guilt about masturbation and pleasuring self?

• Am I self-conscious about my body in ways that may be related to the virus?

While our culture is largely sex-negative, there have been some sex-positive developments. It began slowly with the women’s suffrage movement and Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony’s efforts to teach and support family planning in the late 1800s. With birth control in 1960s, feminism in the 1970s, the gay movement of the 1990s, and the polyamory
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movement in recent times, many pockets of sex-positive culture have developed.

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For those who don’t recall, Ted Haggard was the fundamentalist minister who was caught with a Denver male prostitute in 2007. He went through six weeks of counseling with other fundamentalist ministers who report that he is completely cured, an amazing feat only a fundamentalist could achieve.

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Polyamory (from Greek [poly, meaning many or several] and Latin amor [literally “love”]) is the desire, practice or acceptance of having more than one loving, intimate relationship at a time with the full knowledge and consent of everyone involved.

Fundamentalism has tried to control sexual expression but has not been very effective. In fact, there seems to be a correlation between pornography and fundamentalism. When I was in graduate school in Nashville in the 1970s there was a church on every block, but far more porn shops than in northern cities with far fewer churches. The same was true than in Houston, Atlanta and other southern cities. Porn seems to follow fundamentalism. I guess the more they rant against something, the more people want it.

While the religious right rails against pornography, no reputable study has established a link between pornography and child or sexual abuse. At the same time, some interesting research shows a clear link between parental sexual abuse and religious orientation. According to research by Brown and Bohn:

A disturbing fact continues to surface in sex abuse research. The first best predictor of abuse is alcohol or drug addiction in the father. But the second best predictor is conservative religiosity, accompanied by parental belief in traditional male-female roles. This means that if you want to know which children are most likely to be sexually abused by their father, the second most significant clue is whether or not the parents belong to a conservative religious group with traditional role beliefs and rigid sexual attitudes.
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The god virus is very active in trying to define what sexuality is permitted and what is not. From homosexuality to monogamy, religion continually tries to limit or eliminate normal human sexual expression. Question the training and assumptions you received from your family and culture and decide for yourself what is appropriate sexual expression, not what the god virus wants.

I have always been open-minded about sex, but one day when I was about 35 years old, a non-theist friend of mine challenged me on some homophobic statements I made. I immediately denied that I was homophobic and got quite defensive. I started thinking about his observation and reflecting on some of my childhood training and experiences. I soon realized that I had some irrational ideas about homosexuality that had been hidden from my awareness.

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Carolyn Holderread Heggen,
Sexual Abuse in Christian Homes and Churches
(Herald Press, 1993), 73.

As I go through life, I find these little surprises quite invigorating. Just when I think I have figured myself out, something comes along to upset the apple cart. This is the stuff of real life. Hard as it is sometimes, it is powerful and empowering, so embrace it when the opportunity presents itself.

Modern, highly evolved religions propagate best in a sex-negative environment to maximize viral control over the family unit and to guarantee efficient propagation. The alleged focus on the family is really focus on the god virus. Indeed, the virus will disband the family to preserve its ability to propagate. Do not be fooled by the words; look at the effects of a given behavior from opposition to birth control to guilt in the bedroom, the viral purpose is propagation – not the happiness of its victims. The virus is so powerful that it can literally shut down sexual drive and reproduction, as in nuns and priests or married couples that severely restrict their sexual practices. Sex-positive god viruses are rare and getting more so with the invasion of the powerful sex-negative western religions. Take a good look at yourself, and you may find a surprising amount of residual indoctrination in your behavior.

“Human beings will find a balanced situation when they do good things not because God says it, but because they feel like doing them.”

-Olof Palme, Swedish Prime Minister (1927-1986)

We will examine the constant changing and shifting of values within the god virus. Despite protestations, religious values change constantly and in dramatic forms at times. The myth of unchanging morality is useful in maintaining viral dominance while adjusting to the local culture.