hermionesviolin | sex and religion

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sex and religion

I read Lauren Winner's Real Sex a while back and sadly got no discussion on it. [Note: I get comments e-mailed to me, so you can always comment on old stuff of mine. And anything of interest is likely in my Memories.] The topic of sex-having has come up yet again on the flist, so I'm making a poll. Clarifications are delineated beneath the poll.

[P.S. Speaking of polls: Layna, you can tell Chris that Charging Rhinos beat the U.S. Supreme Court 9-8 if we don't count my vote, though my parents both voted for Charging Rhinos though they're not represented in the LJ poll.]

[Poll #596927]

The poll is spurred by knowing so many people who identify as some flavor of Christian and yet don't seem to have any qualms about having sex. I grew up in a Christian tradition, and NO SEX outside marriage always seemed a full-stop for me [though I honestly can't point to any specific instances of that being taught], so I'm curious about this disconnect (hence the poll lumping together everyone who does not have religious prohibitions on non-marital sex).

I know non-hetero couples in most states/countries don't have official legal marriage as an option, but I tend to think that replacing "marriage" with "relationship both parties have (publically) committed to intending to be permanent" works fine for having the non-marital sex discussion. So please read "non-marital" in the poll as appropriate shorthand.

As for whether or not you are part of a religious tradition . . . I trust your judgement. If you go to Mass because your parents make you but actually you're an atheist, I think the "not a part of" option is yours. If you identify yourself as Catholic even though you disagree with the official line on a number of issues, pick from one of the first three.

The would/would not question is intended as a hypothetical. I'm purposely being good and not doing the nosy "Have you had non-marital sex?" question (though honestly, I already know the answer for most of the people on my flist) but if you wanna elaborate in comments with personal experience, I'm not gonna tell you not to. I pretty much don't have a TMI threshhold, so share or not as you wish. And obviously if you wanna e-mail me privately, go for it. I am not gonna bother screening comments on this post, though.

Some of you are currently married, but I trust you to be able to think hypothetically (or not so hypothetically if you're poly).

Basically, I trust you all to be intelligent people. Please do let me know if I should clarify anything about this poll, though.

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Okay, technically, my religious tradition strongly urges you to stay celibate outside of marriage and chaste within, but it does not completely forbid it.

And yes, I do believe in following this, so I'll most likely still be a virgin up till the wedding day.

Remind me which denomination you are?

Episcopalian. We tend to focus more on worshiping together, we'll argue about doctrine and anything else, but it is our common worship that bonds us. This tends to give ordinary Episcopalians some extreme latitude in how we choose to interpret some things.

Huh. Interesting.

I'm used to thinking of the denominational distinctions as being defined by doctrinal/faith issues, with worship styles being merely incidental (in part becaise issues of faith and doctrine are so important to me and issues of style are so not -- see also previous discussions I've had about church community and how I am so all about the individual+God[+Bible] equation).

A lot of denominations are like that, ours is more of an exception. It has some strengths and weaknesses. It means that we can allow for a lot more viewpoints, a lot more differences without splitting, but at the same time it means that you don't always have a lot of support for your own opinions.

An example of the differences between Episcopalians and our various ideologies is that my home church is rather far on the left side, in fact we just joined the center for progressive christianity over the summer, with a few loud exceptions, while the church I attend while I'm here at college is far more conservative. But if you attended a service with either church, you would find that we use the same Book of Common Prayer, that we followed the same service format, and that, depending on which Eucharistic prayer we were doing, that the service itself, aside from individual hymn choices and the sermon, would be identical. We are united in worship. Everything else, we'll debate ad nauseum

That makes sense. I so couldn't do that, though. I get used to a certain format of church service, but it is far more important to me that my denominational identity reflect my religious beliefs (one reason why I don't have a denominational identity beyond "Protestant").

Yeah, whereas we have a few key things, and then everything else you may choose to believe or disbelieve as may be. Individual churches tend to come to a consensus, but there's still a lot of variety.

To some extent this seems to be how all churches function.

More or less.

With where the church and the person fall in that more-less spectrum helping in the church selection process :)

Yeah. For example, I'm always going to be Episcopalian, but I'd definitely prefer a church like my home church over a church like the one I attend here at school. The people at both are great, but I feel more comfortable with the mindset at my home church.

What about those of us who identify as non-religious but were raised in a religious background?

I would consider you as "not a part of" because I'm interested in the disconnect between faiths people profess to have and this particular article of faith (or more accurately, article of doctrine?). The religious tradition you were raised in obviously influences your thinking on various matters, but if you have explicitly rejected that tradition as workable for you personally, then there isn't that disconnect that so confuzzles me.

"Forbids" seemed like really strong language. My religious faith definitely discouraged pre-marital sex and didn't agree with it, but I never felt like I'd be hated or cast out if I did so.

eek, non-marital. I also have all sorts of other comments (more of me thinking than anything else) that I'd like to share/talk to you about just for fun, but my brain lacks power and my bed calls me (CAT! I'm comfy! Lay down on meeee!).

Ttfn :)

(CAT! I'm comfy! Lay down on meeee!)

You sure that wasn't me talking to you? ;)

And hey, you can always comment at length later on or go the e-mail/phone route.

I will soon soon, after my midterm on Tues.

Yay!

(And I hope your midterm went well.)

Well, "Thou shalt not commit adultery" seems pretty firm to me. And I didn't mean to imply "hated or cast" out, just that it's a firm "Don't."

Oooooh, that's how I interpreted it. Oops.

Nice usericon.

Well now you know :)

And yeah, Charisma Carpenter's June 2004 Playboy shoot. The one issue I have actually purchased.

wickedripeplum made a whole bunch of icons (http://www.livejournal.com/community/buffy_icons/1521347.html) from the photoshoot.

Obviously you knew what my answer to that poll was going to be. I still have thoughts on the issue, though.

My parents are both Catholic, as you know, and they both certainly had a good deal of pre-marital sex. I suppose you could argue that they were in a committed relationship and intended for it to be permanent, so it was kind of "marriage" even without the official bonds, but I doubt they would have seen it that way at the time. (Certainly my mother's father didn't.) I didn't know this as a child, but I can't remember a time when I believed in "waiting until marriage." I'm sure it had something to do with the fact that they didn't teach me to.

When I was a little younger and teetering on the brink of Catholicism, I tended to think that this, as with many of the specific socially-oriented religious laws, was one that should probably be taken with a cultural and historical grain of salt. We all know the various reasons why orderly marriage is useful to society (legitimacy, etc). However, having done more thorough reading of the New Testament, I find that the extremely descriptive condemnations of premarital and even marital sex (marriage as a "matress to keep you from falling all the way down," or something to that effect) that I recently read in medieval Christian writings (in England) are present in the gospels. Certainly, Paul's recommendation that Christians stay chaste even within marriage if at all possible seems to be morally, rather than socially-practically, derived.

I'm pretty sure this is one of a host of issues which are troublesome to believers: they believe the main tenants of the religion (i.e. one creator God, the death and resurrection of Christ, sin and forgiveness, etc), but certain rules do not make sense to them (such as the prohibition of homosexuality, of course). I've never entirely understood their ability to reconcile these disagreements, but clearly many people have such an ability, since many Christians do have sex outside of marriage.

(It is issues such as this that make organized religion so problematic for me: even if I believed in a God, I still doubt I would call myself Christian or a part of any other organized religion, because I would not be willing to accept such specific guidelines from someone else. I believe that our beliefs can be found inside ourselves, not in the pages of a "holy book.")

Of course, when it comes down to even basic rules, there's a lot of quibbling to be done over what texts are truly canonical (I've found my taste of learning about how the New Testament texts were actually chosen to be extremely interesting), what is supposed to be literally God's will, and what might be more the opinions or philosophies of specific writers . . . etc.

Oh dear, it is too late for all of this. Bed, I say.

Certainly, Paul's recommendation that Christians stay chaste even within marriage if at all possible seems to be morally, rather than socially-practically, derived.

Yeah, Paul can be pretty special. In his defense, he did believe the End Times were coming soon, so his belief that people should not be focused on things of this world is more understandable (though yes of course still so very anathema to you).

I'm pretty sure this is one of a host of issues which are troublesome to believers: they believe the main tenants of the religion (i.e. one creator God, the death and resurrection of Christ, sin and forgiveness, etc), but certain rules do not make sense to them (such as the prohibition of homosexuality, of course). I've never entirely understood their ability to reconcile these disagreements, but clearly many people have such an ability, since many Christians do have sex outside of marriage.

Well, I personally believe homosexuality totally can be reconciled to Christianity (http://www.athenewriter.com/gaybible.html) but yeah, the ability of people to hold apparently discordant beliefs is rather boggling sometimes. (One does wonder why people are so up in arms about homosexuality, which has maybe a half a dozen mentions in the whole Bible, as opposed to stuff in the Ten Commandments -- adultery, coveting, lying.)

Of course, when it comes down to even basic rules, there's a lot of quibbling to be done over what texts are truly canonical (I've found my taste of learning about how the New Testament texts were actually chosen to be extremely interesting), what is supposed to be literally God's will, and what might be more the opinions or philosophies of specific writers . . . etc.

Yeah, I so need to do more research on how those texts were selected.

I don't even know if I am part of a religious tradition anymore.

I perhaps should have phrased it as a religion, since many people are culturally Jewish but don't abide by the doctrinal stuff.

Though really, "religious tradition" does feel more accurate, since there are so many variations even within say Christian denominations, so so much of a person's religious beliefs come down to the specific way they were raised (family, their specific church community, etc.).

I guess I mean if you identify yourself as accepting a set belief system which includes in its tenets a prohibition on non-marital sex.

Admittedly, even this definition doesn't provide a space for everyone, since I for example am unsure of how much I actually consider myself a Christian (and thus subject to having to deal with the Christian tradition, make peace with the Old Testament, etc.). I decided that since I am still so attached to the Protestant tradition (and at least have not done enough research to really make a decision one way or the other) that I would count myself as part of a forbidding religious tradition -- especially because my conflict over whether non-marital sex is a right option for me is rooted in a continued attachment to that Christian tradition (which I interpret as forbidding non-marital sex, though I'm still figuring out what exactly my personal stance on it is).

Sometimes the hard part is asking the right question. Not getting the right answer.

Yeah, trying to ask the right question -- especially when I'm doing a poll rather than just offering up an open-ended discussion question -- is a serious challenge. (A good kind of challenge, though, as it makes me figure out just what exactly it is that I'm trying to figure out.)

Again with me not knowing what to say, because by the time I considered having sex in a non-hypothetical way, I put non-marital sex in the same category as homosexuality -- "a lot of people don't believe that Christianity sanctions this, but that's an inaccurate reading and/or so historically conditioned that it probably doesn't apply to MY situation" so when asked if my religious tradition forbids it, I can't help complicating everything-- "What IS my tradition exactly? Is 'my' tradition largely univocal on this?" since I've gotten mixed messages from Christians (even here at YDS, it wasn't until I started going to the evangelical women's lunches that I heard chastity talk and was semi-floored) to say nothing of my confusion and feeling of hypocrisy as to what I would actually do now. Hence shame.

I rather suspected you would abstain from taking the poll.

It's interesting to see where you (and others) are coming from because even before I self-identified as queer I was researching what the Bible said about homosexuality and easily made my peace (http://www.athenewriter.com/gaybible.html) with the idea that the Biblical writers knew it only as acts rather than orientations and that additionally the acts they knew were primarily exploitative and otherwise ungood, but it never occurred to me to question the idea that "sex outside marriage (or some equivalent thereof) is not permitted" so I'm only now wrestling with that. It got to be mostly moot for me since I wasn't in a relationship, but I was always floored that people who were really into their Catholicism were having lots of gay sex -- because while I totally didn't question the gay-acceptance thing I felt like, "But . . . sex-having . . ."

As an aside, my father has pointed out that the time frames of abstaining have changed. An average girl would start menstrating at around age fourteen, and would find herself married off within the year. With us, between better nutrition and the demands of education, we've stretched that time period between sexual maturity and marriage out to easily ten times that long.

That's one of his justifications for being able to override the proscriptions against pre-marital sex, though he personally would prefer it in a committed, caring, relationship between consenting adults.

And I personally agree with you on the Biblical view on homosexuality. Everything I've studied goes back to that as well.

Ooh, I hadn't thought about that dimension of the prohibition on pre-marital sex. I mean, it's not foreign to me, but it had completely slipped my mind for this conversation -- in part because I usually think of it in terms of issues of childbearing (and also issues of how modern women menstruate way more than in past eras and is that healthy etc.).

And yes, "a committed, caring, relationship between consenting adults" = ideal.

Also: yay for agreement on the Bible&homosexuality issue :)

Ah, dinner conversation at the Clinch household. Always insane and wide-ranging. We'll bring in lots of different things, and since we're all pretty well read and thoroughly educated, it can get quite extensive.

My personal choice is celibacy and chastity, but in general, that's my criteria for approving/dissaproving of a relationship. Anyone who passes that mark, I'll support, heterosexual or homosexual. The reverse is that if those criteria are missing, I don't approve of the relationship, again, regardless of the sexual orientation of the participants, because it just becomes unhealthy.

My church rehashed that whole controversy a few years ago, while the Gene Robinson issue was going on. Our basic discovery is that you can't say that the Bible truely supports homosexuality, but that at the same time, what it considered wrong was those exploitative acts that anyone would be sickened by.

Ah, dinner conversation at the Clinch household. Always insane and wide-ranging. We'll bring in lots of different things, and since we're all pretty well read and thoroughly educated, it can get quite extensive.

Aww, makes me miss my Smith College people. (Not that my parents aren't intelligent and insane, just that dinner conversation is usually pretty subdued since we're all worn out after workdays and it's more of a touch base & share anecdotes than a time for intense discussion.)

Yeah, I definitely admit that bringing up Jonathan&David for example is stretching it, but yeah, the picture the Biblical writers had of homosexual acts was a collection of things modern people wouldn't condone either, and the committed same-sex partnerships that modern people are trying to get protected would have been completely foreign to the Biblical writers.

Unfortunately, most days we can't really eat as a family, as we can't all fit around the kitchen table without Sara stealing everyone's food, and we don't have that much time to eat together.

But on special occasions, when we either get out the large table or go up to Grandmommy's nursing home and rent out a room, then the conversations bounce right back into that wide ranging set of ideas, memories, and anecdotes.

These days, conversations tend to be one on one in a car, on the way somewhere. Especially on the four hour drive home from college, when my dad comes to pick me up.

And again I nod my head frantically at your summary of why we have to look beyond the biblical text for an understanding of homosexuality.

My situation is that my denomination (Uniting Church in Australia, which has similarities to the United Church of Canada, and is the result of union in the 1970s between Methodists, Congregationalists, and some Presbyterians) does not expressly forbid pre-marital sex, and although the same part of the church that is anti-gay is also anti-premarital sex, that's not the *whole* of the denomination.

When I still assumed I was straight, I was very firm that I would not have sex until I was married. That (marriage) now being out of the question in the foreseeable future, I think I'm nevertheless still pretty firm in my conviction that I'm not about to get involved with anyone sexually until I'm seriously involved with them emotionally. If that makes sense.

That totally makes sense.

As I've said in replies to people here and elsewhere, regardless of what I finally end up deciding in terms of specifics, I definitely think that "a committed, caring, relationship between consenting adults" (as

mari4212 phrased it) is the ideal.

Also: Yay for new voices in discussions in my journal :)

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