Religious people want to fiddle with your sex life

Let’s talk about sex.

It would be fairly reasonable to say that you are obsessed with sex.  We all are, so don’t worry about it.  It’s in our genes.  Let’s talk about it.

See that girl there, right? She’s a slapper.

It’s important for us all to be a little obsessed personally in order that as a species we manage to continue producing more of us to replace the ones that die. That’s why we have that sex drive that we might try to control or play down, but quite definitely exists and keeps us healthy and having fun whilst also reproducing as a by-product of all that fun.

From my own point of view, probably not unlike your point of view, I look for sex for me.  That’s how I’m driven.  Sex is a very self-centred thought and drive, and in my case, as an apparently heterosexual male (I have no idea that I’m not gay beyond having lived my life not finding any men I’d like to have sex with, and assuming that that for now is telling me I’m not gay so far), I have a very healthy sexual interest in women, and am very lucky to currently be with somebody who satisfies my current interests.

Outside of my self-centred interest in ensuring that I have access to sexual gratification, I have no interest in controlling other people’s sexual needs.  Ok, I guess morally, I believe that as long as they are not hurting anybody, and all parties are able to understand what they are doing and have complete ‘informed consent’ it has nothing whatsoever to do with me.

I suppose that the only person I would maybe want a certain level of control over would be the person I’m living with and in love with, assuming that the agreed terms of our relationship are that we require ‘exclusive’ sexual ‘rights’ over each other.   Not every ‘couple’ goes for ‘exclusivity’, and as long as both are fully informed and consenting, I can’t see any problem whatsoever with an ‘open’ relationship being their terms of reference.

My need or desire to ‘control’ my partner would of course no longer be valid once the relationship was properly over, and their sexual activity would be of no interest to me.  Likewise their sexual activity before being with me should be of no interest to me.  To try to interfere in the future or to judge them for what happened before knowing each other is, frankly, quite bizarre.

Outside of the need to have some form of agreement or ‘control’ relating to oneself, I really can’t see what other people’s sex lives have got to do with me.

As you read this, I honestly don’t care about your sex life.  I don’t care if you are straight, gay, bi-sexual, a swinger, a polygamist, or into bdsm, dressing-up, using life-size dolls or dogging or anything at all.  Ok, I might care if you desired sex with minors or animals or people unable to give informed consent, or if your sexual needs included breaking into my house and having sex on my sofa, but when I’m not involved in any way, why should what you do have anything to do with me?  And vice versa.  Why should anything I get up to need you to judge or grant permission?

Hey, this ain’t the missionary position!

Yet, very strangely, an interference in the sex life of others seems to be a running theme within the Middle-Eastern tribal religions, especially those of the Christian and Islamic flavours.

The whole concept of controlling sex in other people is at the forefront of all the major teachings within those religions.

Homosexuality is hated, and the idea of a woman having sex with anybody but her allotted ‘owner’, even if that sex was from being raped, will lead to her being stoned to death.  Sex is forbidden during holy months, and sex is forbidden until women have gone for a swim at a holy pool, and men who preach are not allowed sex, ever. Permissions and ceremonies exist to publicly display and flaunt the fact that a man and his woman are going to be allowed to have sex.  Even then, sex is not for recreation, so no condoms, no sex outside of fertile periods, just sex for reproduction.  Certainly masturbation, even mutual masturbation, is a dirty crime second only to homosexuality.

That medley of the basic ideology of the Jewish, Muslim and Christian religions approach to sex has different levels of enforcement depending on where the victim of that enforcement lives.  In the best case scenario, sex outside of the taught permitted boundaries leaves those involved feeling ‘naughty’ or ‘guilty’, such is the obsession with controlling sex that religion has.

I can’t fully see why these nomadic originating religions were so obsessed with denying people sex.  It’s never been explained.  The idea of wanting to control the sexual activity of others seems almost a sexual fetish in itself. Maybe that’s what it originally was.  Maybe the original architects of those religions got off on telling others not to get off.

However, in the Twenty-Hundreds we really have no need for these weirdos controlling other people’s sex lives or making judgements about them.  It’s not right; it’s perverted.