Sex & God: How Religion Distorts Sexuality Read Online Free PDF Page A

more the behavior becomes ingrained. Powerful biological urges make the person want to masturbate or have sex, but the fear of hell impinges on her thoughts. She picks up the beads, reads the Bible or kneels and prays to resist temptation. Any number of physical actions may be used, but they all lead to the same result – deeper infection with religious sex.
    The person may resist temptation successfully, in which case the biological need generally grows stronger. He may succumb immediately, but have to pray, kneel, count beads, read the Bible or something similar to assuage the guilt.
    In other cases, a person may successfully redirect his attention and energy to other activities, often of a religious nature. He may become amissionary, work for the poor or teach Sunday School. The redirection of energy often benefits the religion. The more a religion makes a person feel guilty and insecure, the harder the person works for the religion. This is especially effective for sexual guilt. Ultimately, a religion may so undermine a person’s sexual confidence that he or she becomes a celibate nun or priest or stops having sex with a spouse in order to be able to channel energies into religious study and endeavors. 7
    The token keeps the person focused on the god to the exclusion of other more natural behaviors. People who don’t pray, who don’t sing god’s praises, who don’t read the Bible can’t be trusted and are a threat to the comfort and security of the religious. Those without tokens are not a part of the “in group,” which makes them suspect.
    The token and the beliefs it represents takes on greater meaning and comfort than real sex. Here is what one religious leader said at the end of a long article on sex and god, “As we conclude our sex series we learn that sex is great, but the kingdom of heaven is better.” 8
    Religious sexual foreplay often interferes with sex before it even gets started. For example, you dare not ask your spouse for a new kind of sex for fear that he or she will believe it is sinful, even in marriage.
    Our culture teaches us to think of marriage as lifelong and exclusive. However, the biological and anthropological facts do not support this notion as we will see in later chapters. Most humans are too sexual to stay tied up in a single sexual style for decades. Of course, people can stay in committed relationships for decades, but they will only be happy if they keep the sexual energy properly channeled and not artificially dammed up by religious ideas.
    Failing this, sexuality will express itself – sometimes in unusual or inappropriate places. That is why thousands of “happily married” religious leaders engage in illegal sexual behavior every year, to say nothing of the many Catholic priests “married” to the church. At the same time, millions of religious followers engage in sexual behavior that is legal but violates theirreligion’s moral code, such as having heterosexual or homosexual affairs, masturbating or using porn. They can engage in extra prayers, confession, Bible reading or giving money – pushing the button – to gain forgiveness, then go back to doing it again. It keeps the vicious cycle alive.
     
    3 Some examples, from
Rights in Islam
by Ashraf 'Ali Th ī (1863–1943): "When a man calls his wife for sexual intercourse, even if the woman is cooking at that moment, she should answer her husband’s call.” Or “If the woman performs nafilah (supererogatory) fasts without the permission of her husband and avoids meeting the desires of her husband, Allah loads the sin of three bad deeds over her.” (Available online at http://www.darululoom-deoband.com/english/books/rightsinislam.htm ).
    4 From Hitchens' memoir,
Hitch-22
(2010).
    5 I wrote two books in this field as well:
Teaming Up: Making the Transition to a Self-Directed Team Based Organization
(1995, McGraw-Hill), and
The Performance Culture: Maximizing the Power of Teams
(2001, IPC Press).
    6 Unless