"To hear many religious people talk, one would think God created the torso, head, legs and arms, but the devil slapped on the genitals"
Don’t get me wrong, I love my Catholic Church. I go to church every Sunday and try to attend Mass whenever I can during the week. I was raised to be Catholic, but since my dad was raised Methodist, I was never baptized under the Catholic faith, so now I have to take a class and make a formal proclamation of faith to be technically considered a part of the Church. I take my beliefs seriously, and I love that my fellow church members are so supportive in my Catholic studies, but there was always something that rubbed me the wrong way. Some of the same people that are so loving and supportive end up passing judgment on others when it comes to sex and sexuality.
Both of my parents are very Old Testament and raised me with little to no exposure to contraception, let alone homosexuality and gender issues. In fact, my dad is the kind of guy who believes homosexuals need to be hunted down and killed, and somehow he sees that as okay for a Catholic to believe; he’s not the only one who believes these kinds of things, and it’s something that drives me crazy. Aren’t we supposed to be compassionate Christians? Jesus says “love thy neighbor," and “he who is free of sin may cast the first stone." While some Catholics, including me, do remember to be compassionate to those who are different from us, many of us get stuck on the Old Testament view that a man shall not lay with another man, but it’s not our authority to cast judgment. We should learn from everyone, and no matter your sexuality or sexual preferences, we all have something to teach one another.
Even among those who say that they accept people of all paths of life are out to change homosexuals. We want to save everyone, show them the correct way to live, the correct way to have sex, but I don’t see it that way either. If my mother knew I liked anal play, or if my father knew I befriend homosexuals, there would be tension in my home. In my Catholic class recently, I was told that it isn’t the homosexual we should look down on, but the act of anal sex. So am I wrong for having anal sex? I’m probably just as guilty as any homosexual according to the Catholic teachings. My Church says homosexuals have the greater challenge to remain pure because they cannot get married or have sex, but why not? I think the challenge is to find a way to accept sexuality in general.
I don’t see the need to dictate someone’s sexual life. If you like it in the ass, you like it in the ass. If you have sex for enjoyment, isn’t that a good thing? If we can accept our bodies, embrace our sexuality, and quit fearing that God will look down and judge us for using our genitals the wrong way, we may finally feel a sense of sexual freedom! God made every part of us, if you believe that God is our creator. Like Don Schrader’s quote says, many religious people act as if genitals are the devil, that our P-spots and G-spots are little bits of temptation inside of us that we are supposed to ignore, but working out our arms is okay to God and the Catholic Church. Taking pleasure in sex is not something to be ashamed of, and that should be more widely recognized.
I believe in God. I live by the morals in the scriptures, but when I’m in the bedroom I do what feels right. If I want to have anal or oral sex with my partner, I do it. I aim to please my girlfriend in the bedroom, not my priest. Oh, and did I mention, this is pre-marital sex? Sexual chemistry is a big part of a strong relationship, and neither I nor my girlfriend would commit to a lifelong relationship without exploring our sexual relationship first. I want to please her, and she wants to please me. And it is our place to be selfish and self-loving. Self-love is just as important as loving thy neighbor, and denying ourselves and our partners of the love we most desire isn’t the way to become closer to God. God is a part of me, and in no way does my libido diminish that. In fact, I feel like I would be one miserable person without sex. We were given our genitals for a reason, and by God, let’s use them!