sex and religion
Oct. 24th, 2005 12:04 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
hermionesviolinI 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.
[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.
no subject
Date: 2005-10-24 04:39 am (UTC)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.
no subject
Date: 2005-10-25 01:02 am (UTC)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.