Nick Johnson

Recently someone showed me a web site admonishing teenagers to stop masturbating, going as far as to sell "Ex-Masturbator" T-shirts. My first inclination was that this had to be a joke; they couldn't possibly be serious. And yet, the group seems to check out as legit-- or as legit as a group of crazy, mentally-unstable religious fundamentalists could be.

Of course they believe that the omniscient sky ghost doesn't want them to masturbate, which of course is why the omniscient sky ghost created human beings with opposable thumbs and conveniently-located genitalia, and of course made it possible for that genitalia to respond to masturbation... because what self-respecting vengeful sky ghost wouldn't damn you to hell for something he or she established.

There is of course absolutely no direct biblical justification for the belief that the Christian God (aka the sky ghost) doesn't want you to masturbate. Often offered up is the story of Onan, who God commanded to fuck his late brother's widow to produce offspring for him. Onan much preferred the bachelor's life of wine, hookers and pot, so he pulled out before shots were fired. For this act of defiance, God killed him. (God loves you.) Somehow this action became intertwined with the idea of masturbation, though strictly speaking this is coitus interruptus, not masturbation. Nonetheless, various languages have variants on the name "onan" for the self-sexual act including the English word "onanism," the Swedish "onanera" and the Hebrew "leo-nen."

That got me to thinking, "what about all this 'no sex before marriage' nonsense?" Is there any biblical justification for that idea? The answer, which may surprise you, is no. Despite a laundry list of prohibited sexual acts in the bible (which include not having sex with both a woman and her daughter and not having sex with a woman who is menstruating) there is nowhere that I can find in the Christian Bible where sex prior to marriage is prohibited or even discouraged. Sex with animals is a bit no-no though; that'll get you and the animal put to death.

(Don't take my word for it. There are many sites with searchable Christian bibles. Go see for yourself!)

Sure, there are a number of references to "sexual immorality," but it's anybody's interpretation what that could mean. To me, sexual immorality suggests sex with dishonesty, sex without consent, or sex by coercion.

But isn't it funny how there are people willing to accept as theological fact that certain sexual acts (like sex before marriage or sex with oneself) are forbidden by an angry sky ghost without any real biblical justification?

Now I'm sure this couldn't have anything to do with a power play by the church at all, right? I mean, the church wouldn't be trying to control its congregants by manipulating who they could have sex with, setting itself up as the arbiter of who can be married while prohibiting sex outside of marriage, would it?

Nah, that'd surely never happen.

Labels: religion, sex