pre-marital sex

Christian Sex Toys!

It has long been the case that the religious right has concerned themselves too much with what consenting adults do in the privacy of their own homes. Their “religious moral superiority” gives them the right to tell you how to raise your children, tell you what you can put in your body, and tell you what you can put IN your body. I was surprised to see a Christian website devoted to selling adult toys.

Book22 tags itself as an outlet for “intimacy products for married couples.” According to their about page, they sell their products only to married couples, because in Genesis it says some shit about man and woman symbolically being one flesh in marriage. It’s easy to make symbolic inferences when you believe that man was created from dust and woman was created from a rib. They quote 1 Thessalonians 4:3-4, “For God wants you to be holy and pure and to keep clear of sexual sin so that each of you will marry in holiness and honor.” Their website name is derived from “Song of Solomon” being the 22nd book of the Bible, and Solomon had 700 wives and 300 concubines, so obviously he’s the best choice of mascots for a website that celebrates monogamy.

The twenty-second book of the Bible is Song of Solomon. We believe that God intended that such love, as spoken of in Song of Solomon, be a beautiful and normal part of marital life. Unfortunately this gift from God has been grossly distorted and abused by both ancient and modern people. Book22 is offering quality products to enhance the intimate life of God’s children. Our hope is that our products will serve as intimacy enhancers for your marriage.

While the website owners’ choice to sell adult novelties to Christian couples is considerably progressive, their inner prude shows in their packaging policy. When they order their products wholesale, they request that they be poly-bagged to avoid exposing their tender audience to the crude packaging that can often enclose such products. They have no problem selling a jack-off sleeve or jelly cock ring, but Jeebus forbid they send it to you in a package that might include an “inappropriate cardboard backing with images of nude or partially nude people.” Whew! That was a close one. I almost saw a penis on a package. Oh wait, what about one of the products on their site, Happy Penis Cream? Is that a series of multi-colored, smiling, anthropomorphic penises on the product’s label? Surely a pure Christian site such as this would put a sticker over the crude image in their promotional copy. (Yes, they actually do that.)

Again, I’m pleased that they are using their twisted interpretations of their twisted scripture to mainstream the usage of these products into Christian households, but it would be nice if they didn’t just hide behind a website. These people should be out lobbying their prudish counterparts across the globe to stop treating the idea of using such products as sinful and lascivious. They should be confronting people like former Alabama Assistant Attorney General William Pryor, Jr. who said that there is no “fundamental right for a person to buy a device to produce orgasm”. While that may be true, there is also no fundamental right for a person to buy a device that uses rapidly-rotating blades to shorten their grass, but you don’t seem to have a problem with that, do you? Apparently, your smug sense of superiority gives you the fundamental right to decide what people can enjoy behind closed doors. If recent history has shown us anything, it is possible that we may one day see his face on TV with shocking charges that he has committed some act that he has protested his entire life. Like every other time that type of story breaks, I will laugh my ass off.

P.S. According to an article at Huffington Post, as of 2009, Alabama is the only state that still has a law on the books that bans the sale of sexual devices. I’d like to think that Alabama is oblivious to the fact that the rest of the nation (including Mississippi) is laughing at them. Sadly, I know this isn’t the case, because I lived there for eight years.

Update: The couple running the website moved on to other ventures, and endorse Covenant Spice, a similar company, on their domain.

Focus on the Family Cuts Jobs

Photo credit: Jeff Fusco (Getty Images)Businesses have surely felt the impact of the US economic crisis. This pain has also spread to the non-profit sector as well. While on the whole that is a bad thing, I cannot express dismay at news that Focus on the Family is cutting jobs and their entire operating budget.

While not a significant portion of their budget by any means, Focus spent half a million dollars campaigning against California’s Proposition 8, which, in case you have been without electricity for the last year, was the ballot initiative that passed defining marriage as strictly between one man and one woman. Perhaps that $500,000 could have been spent on better things? Hell, certificates of deposit are earning upwards of 3.5% depending on where you get them.

The majority of the Focus budget is used to spread “marriage and family advice” on the internet, in print magazines, and over the radio airwaves. How much is their 2009 budget? $138 million. That’s after the cuts. I know this is chump change for many organizations out there, but it still frightens me that there is a non-church organization whose sole purpose is to indoctrinate others and they have $138 million with which to do it.

Let’s hope the next job to be cut is Dobson’s.

SEXPOSED!

Of all the archaic “morals”, when will this one finally cease to exist? If someone chooses to not have sex before marriage, that’s fine. I know a lot of people who have made that choice and I 100% respect that. What I don’t respect is that some people have been brainwashed into thinking that it is somehow a sin or devalues your future relationships.

The Bible promotes slavery. As a society, we have all cast a furrowed brow upon that practice. The Bible promotes the subservience of women. As a society, most of us at least, have frowned upon that view as well. When will the same be true of pre-marital sex?

What tickles me the most is when I meet a practitioner of this idea that has done pretty much everything except have vaginal intercourse. Does that even honor the spirit of the idea? If you take the message of the video that you wouldn’t want something that someone else has already used, then how do oral sex, mutual masturbation, anal sex, and other acts “slip through the cracks.”

Don’t get me wrong, I think abstinence is a good idea, but I think discretion is an even better one. Obviously, there are a lot of threats that face people who engage in sex: sexually transmitted diseases and unwanted pregnancy being the most common. But are there not other ways to avoid those things without fear of eternal hellfire? After all, in accordance with Christian tradition, one could live a life of absolute debauchery and then surrender their heart to Jesus when they’ve finished sowing their oats. The only thing that keeps more people from truly liberating themselves from the shackles of this ancient prohibition is the fear that, if they were to die before surrendering their life to Christ, you know, the hellfire thing.