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Tag: Purity Culture

Virginity and Hymen Worship

Bruce Gerencser 6 Comments
awesome sex

Virginity: the state of never having sexual intercourse

Virgin: a person who has never had sexual intercourse

Hymen: a small, thin piece of tissue at the opening of the vagina. It’s formed by fragments of tissue left over from fetal development. The size, shape, and thickness of the hymen are unique and can change over time.

The above definitions are incontrovertible. However, when it comes to defining the word “sex,” opinions vary. Planned Parenthood has this to say:

A virgin is someone who’s never had sex. But people define “sex” and “losing virginity” in many different ways.

A virgin is someone who’s never had sex — but it’s not quite as simple as it seems. That’s because sex means different things to different people, so virginity can mean different things, too.

A lot of people think that having penis-in-vagina sex for the first time is how you lose your virginity. But this leaves lots of people and other types of sex out of the picture.

Some people haven’t had penis-in-vagina sex, but they’ve had other kinds of sex (like oral sex or anal sex) — and they may or may not see themselves as virgins. And there are lesbian, gay, bisexual or pansexual people who may never have penis-in-vagina sex at all. But they probably don’t see themselves as lifelong virgins just because they haven’t had penis-in-vagina sex.

Many people believe rape and sexual assault aren’t sex — it’s only sex if both partners have consent. So if someone was forced or pressured the first time they had vaginal sex, oral sex, or anal sex, they may not see that as “losing their virginity.”

Bottom line: the definition of virginity is complicated, and it’s really up to you to decide what you believe. Some people don’t even care what “virginity” means or think it matters. Stressing about whether you’re a virgin is way less important than how you feel about your sexual experiences. Ask yourself: are you happy with the sexual experiences you’ve had or decided not to have?

As you can see, “sex” is complicated. Does sex only happen when a penis is inserted in a vagina? Does sex require ejaculation? Is it “sex” if it is oral or anal? Is masturbation sex? Is using a dildo or a vibrator sex?

According to Evangelicals, virginity is sacrosanct. Well, female virginity is sacrosanct, anyway. Most of the preaching I heard as a teenager focused on girls keeping their legs closed and their hymens intact. There was no greater sin than for a girl to have sex before marriage. I can’t remember a sermon that focused on boys maintaining their virginity. Of course, if masturbation is considered “sex,” I doubt any Baptist boy was a virgin on their wedding day. 🙂

Evangelicals tend to be hymen worshippers, revering a thin piece of tissue in front of the vagina. The hymen can be broken (euphemistically called popping a woman’s cherry) when a woman has sex for the first time. The problem, of course, is that a woman’s hymen can be broken in other ways too:

There’s a lot of confusion about hymens out there. Many people think the hymen totally covers the opening of your vagina until it’s stretched open, but that’s not usually the case. Most of the time, hymens naturally have a hole big enough for period blood to come out and for you to use tampons comfortably. Some people are born with so little hymenal tissue that it seems like they don’t have a hymen at all. In rare cases, people have hymens that cover the entire vaginal opening, or the hole in their hymen is very small — they may need to see a doctor for a minor procedure to remove the extra tissue. Just like other parts of our body, hymens are a little different for everyone.

Your hymen can be stretched open the first time you have vaginal sex, which might cause some pain or bleeding. But this doesn’t happen to everyone. And there are other ways that a hymen can be stretched open: riding a bike, doing sports, or putting something in your vagina (like a tampon, finger, or sex toy). Once your hymen is stretched open, it can’t grow back.

The Evangelical obsession with virginity causes untold harm, putting unwarranted pressure on teenagers. and women. Like it or not, more than thirty percent of high school students will have sex by the time they graduate. Most people have sex before marriage — including Evangelical Christians. Despite all the fearmongering by preachers over premarital sex and virginity, church teenagers and adults have sex. No amount of preaching can overcome raging hormones and desire. While I was a virgin on my wedding day, it was fear of God’s judgment that kept me on the straight and narrow. My partner would say the same thing. We wanted to have sex before marriage and even came precariously close a week before our wedding to rounding third and sliding into home, but we feared God was going to get us if we did.

If people want to remain virgins until their wedding day, fine. However, they shouldn’t be guilted into doing so. Instead of telling younger people to “just say no,” they are better served if they receive comprehensive, guilt-free sex education. Since most teenagers will have sex before marriage, it is vitally important that they are taught the ins and outs of sex, including the proper use of birth control.

Bruce Gerencser, 66, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 45 years. He and his wife have six grown children and thirteen grandchildren. Bruce pastored Evangelical churches for twenty-five years in Ohio, Texas, and Michigan. Bruce left the ministry in 2005, and in 2008 he left Christianity. Bruce is now a humanist and an atheist.

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Songs of Sacrilege: You Might Not Like Her by Maddie Zahm

Bruce Gerencser 0 Comments
maddie zahm

This is the latest installment in the Songs of Sacrilege series. This is a series that I would like readers to help me with. If you know of a song that is irreverent towards religion, makes fun of religion, pokes fun at sincerely held religious beliefs, or challenges the firmly held religious beliefs of others, please send me an email.

Today’s Song of Sacrilege is You Might Not Like Her by Maddie Zahm.

Video Link

Lyrics

If you would’ve told me I’d throw away my purity ring
In the middle of an airport
My younger self would laugh, would never believe that
It’s against everything that we stood for
She’d hate that I’ve smoked weed and cuss frequently
And she’d try to convert everyone I call a bestie
You’ll throw shots in the dark and black out at a bar
There’ll be good, then there’ll be bad parts

Someday, you’ll kiss a girl and you’ll panic
Some guy’ll break your heart and you’ll feel manic
Then you’ll learn to let people have their opinions
And talk about your traumas and like the body you live in
Someday, you’ll learn to keep your own secrets
Say you’re doin’ okay and really mean it
You’ll lose your faith a bit and question if she’s you
For a while you might not like her, but I do

Some days feel like whiplash, one-eighties, and you’ll hate that
You’ll label yourself just to take it back
Convinced you’re not bi ’cause you’re way too into guys
And the first time you have sex, you’ll cry
You’ll sometimes skip meals and numb how you feel
And you’ll miss the old you, but here’s the deal
That good girl you were was really fucking bad at being real

Someday, you’ll kiss a girl and you’ll panic
Some guy’ll break your heart and you’ll feel manic
Then you’ll learn to let people have their opinions
And talk about your traumas and like the body you live in
Someday, you’ll learn to keep your own secrets
Say you’re doin’ okay and really mean it
You’ll lose your faith a bit and question if she’s you
For a while you might not like her, but I do

You might not like her
You might not like her
You might not like her
You might not like her

Someday, you’ll think you disappoint your parents
But they’ll love you, not despite, but regardless
And you’ll learn to let people have shitty opinions
And talk about your traumas and like the body you live in
Someday, you’ll learn to keep your own secrets
Say you’re doin’ okay and really mean it
You’ll lose your faith a bit and question if she’s you
And for a while you might not like her, but I do

Bruce Gerencser, 66, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 45 years. He and his wife have six grown children and thirteen grandchildren. Bruce pastored Evangelical churches for twenty-five years in Ohio, Texas, and Michigan. Bruce left the ministry in 2005, and in 2008 he left Christianity. Bruce is now a humanist and an atheist.

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Dear Unmarried Evangelical Women: Can You Prove You Are a Virgin?

Bruce Gerencser 7 Comments
awesome sex

Evangelicals worship at the altar of female virginity. Premarital sex is verboten, and women are expected to maintain an intact hymen until their honeymoon. Men are expected to not dip their pens in the ink either, but rarely do Evangelical preachers mention male virginity. The reason is simple, women are viewed as gatekeepers. Evangelical boys and men are weak, pathetic horn dogs that will fuck their way through their churches unless stopped by iron-padlocked vaginas. In some circles, virgin teen girls and women sign purity contracts with their fathers, pledging to be daddy’s little girl until marriage. Frankly, I find purity contracts, along with daughter-father purity jewelry, downright creepy — especially in light of the ongoing sexual abuse scandals roiling through Evangelicalism.

Despite the monumental effort by Evangelical churches/pastors/parents to thwart their daughters from having sex before marriage, sexually aware teens and young adults do what they always have done — engage in sexual activity. Smart parents teach their children about safe sex and birth control, realizing that it is more likely than not that their children will not be virgins when they walk down the wedding aisle; that is, if they bother to marry at all.

In Deuteronomy 22:13-20, the inspired, inerrant, infallible Word of God sets forth how questions of virginity should be handled:

If any man take a wife, and go in unto her, and hate her, And give occasions of speech against her, and bring up an evil name upon her, and say, I took this woman, and when I came to her, I found her not a maid: Then shall the father of the damsel, and her mother, take and bring forth the tokens of the damsel’s virginity unto the elders of the city in the gate: And the damsel’s father shall say unto the elders, I gave my daughter unto this man to wife, and he hateth her; And, lo, he hath given occasions of speech against her, saying, I found not thy daughter a maid; and yet these are the tokens of my daughter’s virginity. And they shall spread the cloth before the elders of the city. And the elders of that city shall take that man and chastise him; And they shall amerce him in an hundred shekels of silver, and give them unto the father of the damsel, because he hath brought up an evil name upon a virgin of Israel: and she shall be his wife; he may not put her away all his days. But if this thing be true, and the tokens of virginity be not found for the damsel: Then they shall bring out the damsel to the door of her father’s house, and the men of her city shall stone her with stones that she die: because she hath wrought folly in Israel, to play the whore in her father’s house: so shalt thou put evil away from among you.

As you can tell from this passage of Scripture, virginity worship has been around for thousands of years. The Abrahamic religions, in particular, covet hymen-intact vaginas. Husbands expect their new wives to be unsullied when they have sexual intercourse for the first time. If they find out that another penis has been there before theirs, the woman is labeled a whore and the husband is free to divorce her. Keep in mind, the Bible says nothing about male virginity. I know, I know, s-h-o-c-k!

If a man says, hey, your daughter is not a virgin, it is up to her parents to prove otherwise by providing evidence of her virginity — a blood-stained sheet. I am still at a loss to understand how a man could have sex with a woman and not “see” the blood-stained sheet underneath him and his new wife. Perhaps, the woman’s parents were lurking nearby and gathered up the sheet as soon as the deed was done. But, even then, wouldn’t they have held the sheet up to their daughter’s husband and said, see, she was a virgin? She’s yours now! So many things in this story that don’t make sense; not that such insensibility is rare for the Bible. Remember, not only is this passage straight from the Christian God’s holy book, but it is also the never-changing law of God.

If a woman’s parents proved to the city elders that their daughter was indeed a virgin before marriage, her husband was required to stay married to her all the days of his life. Imagine THAT marriage! Imagine living with a man who accused you of being a whore and tried to have you executed. All the husband had to do to right the matter is pay 100 shekels to the father of the bride. After all, it was HIS reputation that was harmed by the husband’s accusation.

If the woman’s parents couldn’t prove their daughter’s virginity, their daughter was to be taken to the door of her father’s home and stoned to death by the men of the city. She would forever be known as a whore.

Explain to me, again, why any woman would ever want to be a Christian. (Why Would Any Woman Want to be an Evangelical Christian?)

Crazy Stories From the Church House: No White Dress for You

Bruce Gerencser 20 Comments
bruce-and-polly-gerencser-1981
Bruce and Polly Gerencser with son #2, 1981

In February of 1979, Polly and I moved from Pontiac, Michigan to Bryan, Ohio. When I moved away in 1976 to study for the ministry at Midwestern Baptist College, I planned to never return to Bryan. However, marriage, an unexpected pregnancy, and job loss turned my “never” on its head.

Not long after we first moved to Bryan, Polly and I began attending my sister’s church, Montpelier Baptist Church in Montpelier, a community ten minutes north of Bryan. Jay Stuckey, a graduate of Toledo Bible College, was the pastor, and after a few weeks, Jay asked if I would be interested in becoming the church’s bus pastor (an unpaid position). I quickly told Jay yes!

Jay Stuckey was a typical Independent Fundamentalist Baptist (IFB) preacher in the 1970s. Sermons on salvation, sin, and prophecy. Church teens were expected to refrain from all sexual activity before marriage. Despite Jay’s moralizing from the pulpit, one of the church’s teens got pregnant. Shock! Sermons are ineffective birth control. She was expected to immediately marry the boy before she started showing. Even worse, Stuckey forbade her from wearing a white dress. White was reserved for “virgins.” She was dirty goods in his (and God’s) eyes. Stuckey also told the girl that she could only invite immediate family to her wedding. No friends. No schoolmates. Of course, the goal was to sweep this girl’s shameful crime against humanity under the rug.

Plenty of “virgin” women walked down the aisle over the years at Montpelier Baptist Church. Fortunately, for them, they didn’t have to “prove” their purity. For this teen girl, all she likely remembers from her wedding day is the shame heaped upon her head by her pastor and church.

Bruce Gerencser, 66, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 45 years. He and his wife have six grown children and thirteen grandchildren. Bruce pastored Evangelical churches for twenty-five years in Ohio, Texas, and Michigan. Bruce left the ministry in 2005, and in 2008 he left Christianity. Bruce is now a humanist and an atheist.

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Hey Girlfriend: You Only Need One Man to be Truly Satisfied!

Bruce Gerencser 11 Comments
jesus is my superman

Did you know that you only need one man in your life to be truly satisfied? That’s right, ladies (no non-heterosexuals need apply). According to the Girl Defined website, young women have a hole in their hearts that can only be filled by the most awesome man e-v-e-r: Jesus. In a December 2015 post, guest writer Addi wrote:

I have a God-sized hole in my heart but I’ve been trying to fill that hole with a marriage-sized cork or a man-sized puzzle piece.

Neither of these were meant to fill the hole so they aren’t going to fill the emptiness.

I have learned that only one man is able to truly fulfill me.

Only one man has the ability to fully satisfy me.

We all were born with a hole in our hearts—an emptiness and void inside of us. There’s is only one man who can fill that hole and His name is Jesus Christ.

We, as girls, can try to stuff it with the things that surround us. We can choose to fill it with our desire for a relationship, our longing for a specific career, our group of friends, our greed for more possessions or more money . . . but none of these things will satisfy us—nothing of this world ever can.

My first thought was quite base: I know a hole that Jesus can’t fill. 🙂 Only a real flesh and blood man can fill this hole. Someday, Purity ring-wearing young women will fall in love and get married. If they have not “sinned” before their wedding day, they will learn, for the first time, that there are certain things that only a man (or a vibrator or dildo) can do for them. While Jesus might be able to fill the mythical hole in their mythical hearts, Jesus is no match for a real man with a penis or an Adam & Eve purchase (don’t click on the link “Dr.” Tee, you will go blind) with fully charged batteries.

I’m convinced that teachings like those espoused on the Girl Defined website are quite harmful. First, there is the denial of normal human sexuality. I dealt with this in a post titled, Hey Girlfriend: Eight Steps to Sex-Proof Your Life. Second, one day these young women will marry, carrying unrealistic expectations into their marriages. Their husbands will always be second to Jesus. When their husbands don’t or can’t meet their physical or emotional needs, they will turn to Jesus, the only man who can truly satisfy their every longing. Jesus will always be a better friend, confidant, and lover.

Marriages like this are actually polygamous: husband, wife, and Jesus. Years ago, I mentioned to a close pastor friend of mine that Polly and I listened to the Carpenters during our lovemaking (it was the only secular CD we owned). My friend told me that he and his wife only listened to hymns when they made love. Even then, when I was still very much a card-carrying member of the Independent Fundamentalist Baptist church, I thought, hymns? Really? What, did they play Victory in Jesus when they had orgasms?  My friend and his wife believed, and still do, that Jesus should be a part of everything. Jesus becomes a voyeur, always lurking nearby.

Someday, Addi will find that having a real man to snuggle up to on a cold winter night beats a mythical Jesus every time. When she finds herself in a dark place, when it seems that Jesus is nowhere to be found, her husband will be there for her to talk to. When pain and loss bring tears to Addi’s eyes, it won’t be Jesus who holds and caresses her and wipes away her tears. Jesus makes for a great cliché, but Addi will one day learn that the people who really matter aren’t found in the pages of a religious text.

Bruce Gerencser, 66, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 45 years. He and his wife have six grown children and thirteen grandchildren. Bruce pastored Evangelical churches for twenty-five years in Ohio, Texas, and Michigan. Bruce left the ministry in 2005, and in 2008 he left Christianity. Bruce is now a humanist and an atheist.

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J. Lo, Shakira, and the Evangelical Purity Culture

Bruce Gerencser 6 Comments

j lo and shakira super bowl

Guest Post by ObstacleChick

In the United States, Super Bowl Sunday is a big deal. People who rarely watch American football during the regular season will gather together to watch the Super Bowl Championship game. Companies pay millions of dollars to buy advertisement time during the broadcast, and many of the ads are quite clever, funny, or touching. The halftime show typically features A-list performers with advanced choreography, lighting, and showmanship.

This year, the performers were Latina entertainers Jennifer Lopez and Shakira. Both are women over 40 who are superstars in their respective genres. In addition to her career as a singer-dancer-entertainer, J. Lo is also an actress and a judge on the show “World of Dance”. Shakira is known for her dual Lebanese and Colombian heritage, incorporating belly dancing into her performances, and she was a voice character in the animated movie “Zootopia”. Both performers have won multiple awards during their careers.

It did not take long for the Evangelical Christian world to lose their minds over the halftime show. J. Lo and Shakira, along with their backup dancers, put on a dance-heavy performance in which many appeared to be scantily clad, though in photos it’s obvious that J. Lo’s base layer was a long flesh-colored bodysuit, and Shakira’s costumes were no more scanty than the outfits of the cheerleaders on the field. However, Evangelical Christian sensibilities were ruffled by the fact that these two women, both over the age of 40, were dancing and wearing costumes that showed some of their skin or what appeared to be skin.

Common in Evangelical Christianity is the concept of purity culture. Purity culture revolves around the way that Evangelical Christians believe their deity designed men and women. They teach that men were designed to be predatory, dominant, aggressive, and aroused by visual stimuli. Women, conversely, are designed to be passive, nurturing, submissive, and aroused by tactile stimuli, and are therefore the designated gatekeepers of all sexual activity. The belief is that if a man sees something that arouses him, he will be unable to control his urge to dominate and possess what he sees. As women supposedly are not aroused until they are touched, they have the ability to thwart sexual activity by not drawing attention to themselves and by saying no. The idea is that if a woman draws attention to herself by wearing clothing that shows her physique, by any motions that draw attention to her physique (such as dancing or swaying of her hips), even by making direct eye contact with a male or “flirting,” that means she is signaling that she welcomes sexual activity. She is therefore at least partially culpable in any sexual activity. In Evangelical Christian purity culture, I learned that it was important to be as silent and as invisible as possible in order to prevent sexual advances from men.

When J. Lo and Shakira sang and danced on stage, purity culture adherents viewed their activity as openly welcoming sexual activity. The performers were tempting upstanding Christian men and boys to desire sexual activity with them. Additionally, J. Lo and Shakira were demonstrating to girls and women how to draw the attention of men. The performers repudiated purity culture’s directive to be as silent and as invisible as possible. These two mature, successful, talented performers dominated the stage and made their voices heard. (I won’t even address the references they made to children singing in cages, the nods to Shakira’s Middle Eastern heritage, J. Lo’s use of the Puerto Rican and US flags or her daughter’s singing of “Born in the USA”, but those were all important elements in the show as well.)

I grew up in the 1980s with purity culture, but fortunately I was too old for the more slickly marketed purity culture that exploded during the 1990s and 2000s. It affected me as well to the point that I hated and was ashamed of my body and wore oversized clothing for several years. In the Fundamentalist Christian school I attended, we had a strict dress code that included rules about skirt length, sleeve length, and cleavage-covering. Prior to our senior trip, girls had to model their swimsuits in front of three female faculty members for approval. The message was that we were to be “feminine” but also well-covered so as not to draw too much attention from our male classmates and teachers. My mom did not know the extent of purity culture that I was taught at church and school, and she did not understand the source of my body hatred. When I was in my early 20s, my mom bought me a two-piece bathing suit and a suede miniskirt and told me that I should wear these types of clothes while I still “could” before the inevitable obesity that plagues females in our family set in. Eventually, I became accustomed to wearing age-appropriate and body-appropriate clothing, but the body image issues have never completely gone away.

I no longer see my body as a temptation to men, something to be covered and hidden. Life experiences taught me that people are responsible for their own actions, and I am not responsible for someone violating my consent. As I have grown older, I am a lot more vocal about what I will and will not tolerate from other people. As someone who has become an athlete later in life, I have learned a lot about what my body can and cannot do and about the signals it gives me when it is hungry, tired, or in need of care. I can still find plenty of things “wrong” with how my body looks, but I will no longer cover up just because of someone else’s rules about “modesty,” nor will I cover up because of my own insecurities, which are probably mostly in my head anyway. I wish I had known at age 18 what I now know at age 50, but I believe I have been successful in passing along to my own daughter that she should use her voice, own her space, and demand that others respect consent.

I will no longer be as silent and as invisible as possible in order to ward off actions that are the responsibility of someone else. Purity culture and all it entails can go to hell.

Hey Girlfriend: Is it a Sin to Kiss Your Boyfriend?

Bruce Gerencser 18 Comments
no kissing
No Kissing Graphic from the Pure Dating YouTube Channel

According to Baptist Scott Croft, a married man who has a readily available sex partner, any romantic physical contact between unmarried people is a sin. In a 2007 article titled, Biblical Dating: Principles for Drawing Boundaries, Croft states:

“I believe the Bible teaches that all sexual activity outside of marriage is sin, and all romantically oriented physical activity is sexual activity. In my view, this includes premarital kissing.”

Croft believes that any romantic bodily contact between unmarried people is a sin. Hand holding? Kissing? Snuggling? Putting your arm around your boyfriend or girlfriend? Sin! Sin! Sin! Let me give you a real life illustration of how this kind of thinking works. Bethany Baird, an attractive 27-year-old Christian woman had this say when she answered the question, Should Christian Girls Kiss Before Marriage:

I’m just going to be honest from the get-go.

I’m twenty-five years old, I’ve been in two serious relationships, and I’ve never kissed a guy. It’s not because I think kissing is gross, or that I’ve never wanted to kiss. The fact is, I’m saving my very first kiss for my future husband on the day of our wedding.
Kissing is totally the norm.

In a day and age where kissing is the norm for elementary schoolers and losing your virginity in, or by high school is expected, it seems absurd and ridiculous that anyone would possibly save their first kiss for marriage.

I’m totally aware of the fact that many of you reading this might have already given your first kiss away and possibly your virginity. If so, check the note at the bottom of this post before you continue reading.

I want to take you through five points that will help you better understand why I’m saving my first kiss for marriage, and why I think you should too. Even if you’ve kissed in the past, I want to challenge you to stop kissing and start waiting from this point forward.

….

Baird gives five reasons for why young women should NEVER kiss before their wedding day:

  • Your Kiss is a gift. As the years have gone by I’ve to come to view my kiss as a gift. I view it as something very special, something I can treasure, something that I can save and share with my future husband alone…Instead of viewing your kiss as something meaningless and cheap, I want to challenge you to view it as a very expensive treasure box. It’s your job to keep your treasure safe until the person with the right key comes to unlock it.
  • Viewing guys as brothers in Christ. It’s our job as Christian girls to live out a Biblical mindset. Even if you are a dating a guy, according to Scripture he is your brother in Christ until the wedding day. It’s not until the wedding day that he switches to the husband. Only then do we see the sexual dimension come in to play. No sooner and in no other type of relationship.
  • Relationships with a purpose. We as Christian girls need to look to the Bible as our example and guidebook. The entire point of “getting to know” a guy or girl shouldn’t be for the goal of fun and pleasure, it should be for the purpose of discovering whether you two should marry.
  • What does the Bible say? The most important question you can ask yourself about romantic relationships is this, “What does the Bible say?” I realize the Bible doesn’t say “thou shalt not kiss,” but it does give us some incredible principles and some pretty clear direction on where we should be headed.
  • The Pure Bride. Did you realize that as a Christian your future marriage represents the Gospel? Just check out Ephesians 5. The chapter is filled with illustrations that compare an earthly bride and groom to Christ and the Church. A huge goal in each of those relationships is absolute purity, holiness and blamelessness. Instead of trying to scrape by until your wedding day, shoot to arrive as completely pure and undefiled as possible. Don’t ask, “How much can I get away with?” Instead ask, “How pure and undefiled can I be?”

Based on the Bible verses Baird quotes in the aforementioned post, she believes that kissing=sexual immorality. That’s right, kiss your boyfriend and you are committing sexual immorality. I will assume Baird thinks that kissing is fornication. So then, following Baird’s illogical logic to its theological conclusion, no young Christian woman who regularly necks with her boyfriend will go to heaven when she dies. I can hear Baird screaming from here, NO! NO NO! That’s NOT what I said. Yes, but it is what the Bible says. 1 Corinthians 6:9,10 states:

 Know ye not that the unrighteous shall not inherit the kingdom of God? Be not deceived: neither fornicators, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor effeminate, nor abusers of themselves with mankind, Nor thieves, nor covetous, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor extortioners, shall inherit the kingdom of God.

Galatians 5:19-21 states:

Now the works of the flesh are manifest, which are these; Adultery, fornication, uncleanness, lasciviousness, Idolatry, witchcraft, hatred, variance, emulations, wrath, strife, seditions, heresies, Envyings, murders, drunkenness, revellings, and such like: of the which I tell you before, as I have also told you in time past, that they which do such things shall not inherit the kingdom of God.

And while we are playing the Bible Sex Manual game, let me press this issue even further and say that having thoughts about kissing someone will land a person in hell. If kissing is immoral (fornication), then thinking about it is too. The Bible is clear on this matter. Matthew 5:28 states:

But I say unto you, That whosoever looketh on a woman to lust after her hath committed adultery with her already in his heart.

Surely Baird would agree with me that a longing desire to kiss is no different from “looking on a woman to lust.” Surely, if Christian young women entertain the thought of being kissed and give off the I’ll let you kiss me vibe, they are committing, in thought and deed, fornication. If this is so, then these lustful, vile hussies shall NOT inherit the kingdom of God.

I feel sorry for Evangelical teenagers and young adults who have bought into the fundamentalist lie about pleasure and sexual gratification. There is a vast chasm between kissing a young man and starring in a Girls Gone Wild video. A look or a kiss does not lead to sexual intercourse unless a person wants it to. Evangelical parents emotionally cripple their children when they teach them that sexual desire and gratification must be avoided until marriage. Even masturbation, a sure-fire way of releasing sexual tension, is frowned upon, and is, in some dark corners of the Evangelical world, considered a horrible sin.

If I were given the opportunity to give sexually-aware Evangelicals a bit of advice I would tell them this:

Pleasure is not a sin. Having sexual feelings and desiring to act upon those feelings is not a sin. Being physically intimate with someone is not a sin. Forget all that you have been taught in church about sex and sin. Instead, educate yourself about human sexuality, especially birth control. You are in control of your body and sexuality. You decide when, where, how, and if you will have sex or do any of the things that lead up to sex. You do not have to do anything sexually you are not comfortable doing. Do not give in to peer pressure, nor allow anyone to pressure you into do anything sexually you don’t want to do.

Above all, remember, you are the master of your sexuality. Choose wisely.

Let me conclude this post with a no-kissing video by Nino Guarisco, pastor of H2O Campus Church (Assembly of God) at the University of Michigan. Guarisco is married, has 4 children, and freely admits that he was once a fornicator. In but a few minutes, Guarisco piles a mountain of guilt on teenagers and young adults who have already done the dirty (kissing) or are contemplating doing so.  By far, this is the worst video I have ever seen on this subject.

Video Link

Bruce Gerencser, 66, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 45 years. He and his wife have six grown children and thirteen grandchildren. Bruce pastored Evangelical churches for twenty-five years in Ohio, Texas, and Michigan. Bruce left the ministry in 2005, and in 2008 he left Christianity. Bruce is now a humanist and an atheist.

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Hey Girlfriend: Eight Steps to Sex-Proof Your Life

Bruce Gerencser 6 Comments

purity shirt

Bethany Baird is a writer for the Lies Young Women Believe website. In a post titled 8 Ways to Fight For Purity, Baird gives sexually aware young women eight ways to sex-proof their lives. If young women follow Baird’s advice, they can be certain that they will never get laid until their wedding day. Isn’t that good news?  Here’s Baird’s prescription for a sex-proof life:

  • Get in the Word.
  • Pray for strength.
  • Take up your shield of faith.
  • Confess when you fail.
  • Get rid of the bad.
  • Fill your mind with good.
  • Find a solid group of girls.
  • Get accountability.

Girlfriend, are you dating a young man who wants to get in your pants? Read the Bible, pray, and take up the shield of faith. How does this work? Evangelical Suzie is out with Billy Bob and Billy starts getting frisky. Should Suzie call a time out for Bible reading and prayer? In what universe would this EVER happen? As study after study tells us, Evangelical teenagers and young adults engage in sexual intercourse at roughly the same levels as their unsaved counterparts in the “world.” Instead of teaching sexually aware young women to be responsible for their sexuality and to plan for sexual intercourse, Baird presents a voodoo-list of spells she hopes will extinguish raging hormones. Spells, by the way, that do not work.

Baird should be honest with her readers. The only sure way to make certain young Christian women never, never do the dirty is to avoid any contact with the opposite sex, the same sex, or their index finger. If young men are the problem, shouldn’t young women just stay away from these horn dogs? Why not cut the temptation off at the source? Of course Baird won’t suggest this because she knows that young women want what young women want: boyfriends.

Baird, thanks to her fundamentalist indoctrination, lives in denial of basic human biology. Instead, she suggests that young women spiritually cross their legs, blocking access to their vagina.  The minds of young women, honed by evolution, naturally desire to mate. If this wasn’t so, our species would have perished long ago. Instead of preaching the failed gospel of purity, people like Baird would better serve their readers if they talked honestly about human sexuality. Of course they can’t do this because the Bible says that any and all sexual activity (fornication) before marriage is a sin against God.

I’m all for teenagers understanding everything there is to know about sex. From biology to contraception, teenagers need to know the facts. Far more effective than Baird’s eight steps is sexual knowledge. Equipped with this knowledge, young adults can then determine when or if they want to have sex. Telling them to Just Say No (and No including masturbation) is setting up young adults for failure. Baird knows this, but she has to justify the continuation of her ministry, so she continues to guilt young women unto ignoring their sexual desires.

Let me finish this post with several of the comments that  appeared on Baird’s 8 Ways to Fight for Purity. I think most readers will find these comments heartbreaking illustrations of what happens when young women buy into Baird’s guilt-inducing purity gospel:

(All grammar errors in the original. Each paragraph is a new comment)

I had sex outside of marriage. I feel so ashamed even if I prayed. Please pray for me. I know our God is a good and forgives but the guilt inside me is killin’ me and making me feel unworthy of God’s love.

I don’t know what to do… i masturbute. I know its wrong but I don’t feel sorry when I’m done. I don’t feel anything. I feel like I can’t stop. Pray for me!!!!’

Do you think that God still might call some young women/girls to be like Jephthah’s daughter and be dedicated to God to never marry and remain abstinate?

Love it! Sadly for me I have no Goddly girls in the area! I do have some that I have met, who are close with the Duggar family! A year ago I decided to come out of public school, and do an online school, and I am so thankful God put opportunity in my life. After a while, with all the time I had, I found the show 19 kids and Counting! They helped me to change my life (before I started to date because everyone was doing it!) So glad!!!! They helped me to realize that you don’t HAVE to do everything that the world does. God loves you, and you need to think about the future. Then I started a CHRISTIAN online school, and boy did that help! Anyway, excuse me for the long backstory. I, one day decided, to get one of my special rings that my Grammie gave me, and have it be my “purity ring!” Every time I look at it, I remind myself that God DOES care what I do and think about!!! The kind of purity I keep for myself is more on the moral side, and less on the physical purity side (because I don’t plan to date for a while, I’m 15!) So maybe you could just have your own purity ring, and wear it as a reminder! Mine isn’t fancy or anything! Hope it helps someone!

Note

Bethany Baird and her sister Kristen Clark blog at Girl Defined: Getting Back to God’s Design

Bruce Gerencser