Everything You Always Wanted to Know about Sex (But Were Afraid to Ask the Church)

The whimsical title of this blog post is based on the 1969 book by David Reuben entitled Everything You Always Wanted to Know about Sex* (*But Were Afraid to Ask).  I chose the title because although the Church has its own teaching about sexuality, many young Orthodox Christians are afraid to inquire diligently about it for fear the Church will give unwelcome advice.  Which of course it will.

       Particularly unwelcome is the Church’s teaching that sexual activity must be confined to faithful heterosexual marriage, and that so-called “casual sex” before marriage is sinful.  Many if not most young people, including some raised in the Church, find this teaching simply incomprehensible.  There is a genuine failure to understand the underlying rationale for the prohibition of pre-marital sex.  

Taught by the prevailing and triumphant culture of their time, they can see nothing wrong with the notion of two consenting adults of whatever gender being sexually intimate with each other as long as no one “gets hurt”.  It is assumed that as long as both consenting adults agree regarding the obligations or non-obligations arising from intercourse all is well and that no moral infraction is involved. 

Bluntly put, whatever two consenting adults decide to do is none of anyone else’s business, and especially not the business of the Church.  To suggest otherwise is considered as intolerant, bigoted, judgmental, and perverse, something akin to morally condemning eating cotton candy.  It also tends to confirm their suspicion that the Church has always thought sex in general to be morally dubious and that it explains the Church’s odd fascination with monastic celibacy and its weird insistence that its bishops be celibate.

       Many pastors therefore been approached by concerned parents asking them to “explain” and justify to their teenaged children why the Church insists that they abstain from sex with their girlfriends or boyfriends and wait until marriage to have sex.  The young people who are the intended targets of this apologia are not rebellious, just puzzled.  As children of the prevailing culture, they genuinely have no idea why they should refrain from having sex until they are married.  They are mostly open to hearing the Church’s explanation but are predisposed to regard any deviation from the cultural values portrayed on The Big Bang Theory as lacking any credibility.  What can one say to them?   I suggest the following.

       First of all, I would suggest that they consider the notion that they are being brainwashed.  The brainwashing does not involve abduction and submitting them to a barrage of propaganda while they are held prisoner in a cellar.  The brainwashing involves a ceaseless and omnipresent barrage of propaganda from all forms of media so that the notion of “casual sex” is the only message they ever hear and have ever heard since they were born.

       Consider such propaganda in other times, such as the propaganda in the (then) atheistic Soviet Union.  The notion of the existence of God was ridiculed by every government source, in newspapers, films, and in schools.  Those brought up in such an environment considered the truth of atheism and Communism to be self-evident.

       It is exactly the same today in the West (minus the existence of gulags).  The notion that casual sex, either “gay” or “straight”, is healthy, inevitable, and normal is found in every television programme, every movie, every magazine, and is part of established government policy.  In the popular media the person who objects to such promiscuity is uniformly portrayed as strange, intolerant, and dangerous, a weirdo from another age.  This is propaganda and in the West it is culturally inescapable. 

Leaving aside the presence of concentration camps for vocal dissenters, this was how propaganda functioned in Nazi Germany: in its laws, its government speeches, its print media and its film the Jew was always presented as dangerous, greedy, and sexually defiling, while “true Germans” (i.e. Nazis) were presented as heroic, self-sacrificing, patriotic, and pure.  To those brought up under this constant racist barrage the truth of Nazi dogma was self-evident.  This is hardly surprising; propaganda works.

So, the first thing I would do is suggest to young people that everyone born in the last generation has been subjected to a ceaseless and omnipresent barrage of sexual propaganda.  If someone objects and says, “I don’t feel as if I’ve been brainwashed” I would reply, “Naturally.  That’s because propaganda works.  If one suspects that one has been brainwashed, the brainwashing wasn’t effective.  The Hitler Youth didn’t feel they had been brainwashed precisely because they had been.”        

The question remains:  how do you know that you haven’t been brainwashed?  If every culture in all the world going back time immemorial says that there are only two genders and you feel that of course there are more than two genders that can be chosen at whim, who is likely to be correct?  All the world from its beginning or you?  Is there any evidence to suggest that this generation is that much smarter than all previous generations?  If so, how do you explain the choice of our current political leaders?

That is the first reply to our young people:  consider for a moment the notion that your generation has been conditioned and conned.  The second reply would be an appeal to experience.  When one looks away from Friends and The Big Bang Theory and every idiot rom-com movie and looks to experience then one realizes that “casual sex” is a contradiction in terms. 

The propaganda insists that sex apart from an ongoing relationship of commitment can come with no emotional price tag so that one can have a different sexual partner from a bar every Friday night and all will be well—no angst, no bonding, no muss, no fuss.  That’s the message contained in every movie, and that’s a lie.  Any sexually active teenager can tell you that sexual union creates emotional intimacy and creates a bond.  The Bible calls this “becoming one flesh” and says that this bond is created every time a sexual encounter takes place, even if it is with a prostitute (see 1 Corinthians 6:16). That is why after such a union one is expected to phone the partner to see “how they are doing”.   

One can, of course, insist upon making sex casual by refusing to make a bond with any of one’s sexual partners through short-circuiting the bond as it is made.  By refusing the emotional connection, sex can indeed become casual.  In the animal world such experience is called “mating”. 

Animal sexuality does not involve an emotional bond, but only physical release.  After Fido and Mitzi mate Fido does not contact Mitzi to see how she is doing.  Unless Mitzi has puppies, after the mating finishes, that’s the end of it.  And that’s okay, because animals are not people.  Wolves may mate for life, but in general animal sexuality is promiscuous by definition.

It is otherwise with human beings, and the vulnerability involved in sexual intercourse sets up an emotional bond.  One can resist the bond, but by doing so one damages the emotional machinery of the heart. 

It is like a piece of sticky tape:  it you glue the tape onto many surfaces and then tear it off, eventually the tape loses its stickiness and cannot adhere to any surface.  In the same way, if one insists on refusing to bond, eventually one loses the ability to form such a sexual bond.  Of course, one can form an emotional bond through other means such as other shared experiences, but sexuality will no longer work to form that bond as it was intended.

We see the same internal dulling in those who have developed an addiction to pornography:  such addicts have cauterized themselves emotionally and damaged their ability to let sexual intercourse form and nurture an emotional bond.  The difference between pornographic addiction and casual sex is one of degree, not of kind.  Sexual intercourse is intended to create and nurture an emotional bond.  When it becomes mere mating through promiscuity or pornography it can no longer fulfil its intended purpose.

Why then should people wait until marriage before having sex?  Because marriage is about forming a bond of love and sex is intended to serve that purpose.  Prolonged promiscuity damages the ability to have sex serve that purpose and turns lovemaking into mating.  Mating is okay for Fido and Mitzi, but for those made in the image of God, sex was intended for a higher purpose.  And wrecking the ability to achieve that purpose comes at a high cost.  Too high a cost, in fact.  It is better to wait.

It is true that when the young and hormonal do not wait until marriage before having sex they do not regard their sex as casual because they are so in love and imagine that their relationship will last forever.  That is the time for calm statistics:  how many people actually marry their first crush?  How many relationships does the average person have before finding their marriage partner?  Even engagements have been called off before the actual wedding.  Gambling like this with one’s future is unwise; it is indeed better to wait.