re: #117 HappyWarrior

Okay, so you guys know I’m into genealogical research. Learning some stuff about marriage that really I think turns the wingnut view of sex only after marriage morality on its head. Apparently in Germany, before marriage, couples would try to see if the woman was fertile before marriage. And also it wasn’t that uncommon for people to marry older. So much of what wingnuts claim is “traditional values” isn’t really traditional at all. It’s their 1950’s view of things.

The no-sex-before-marriage thing is the logical extreme of the evangelical churches’ drive to prevent young unwed mothers, back-alley abortions, and shotgun weddings. The church in general has always looked unfavorably on sleeping around, but the evangelical concept of a soulmate (which idea is not found anywhere in Scripture, it’s a pure invention of the concept that God controls all and has “pre-ordained” the person you should marry) gave them an excuse to come down hard on pre-marital sex. And my generation is the one that is suffering for it; I have had several conversations with a couple of other Christian friends that have struggled with marital intimacy. I’m not trying to suggest that we should all slut it up as a matter of normal course - some people, myself included, just aren’t inclined to that as a facet of their personality - but we can’t dive into a marriage and know nothing about how our bodies respond to sex, or the mechanics of how to please a member of the opposite sex (for the heterosexuals).