Apparently, friends, you and I are part of a vast conspiracy to overtake the world with our desire to enhance our marriages and sex lives…
Professor Dagmar Herzog (didn’t she make that movie about the guy that was eaten by Grizzly bears?) has just published a truly necessary and insightful (…ahem) book called “Sex In Crisis: The New Sexual Revolution And The Future Of American Politics.”
The fundamental theme of this book is that, just like in all mainstream culture, Christians are to blame for every problem in our culture. Particularly, our desire to enhance our marriages and sex lives by being more sex positive is really an attempt to oppress everyone else.
In a review in The National Post, the reviewer describes Herzog’s premises in this way…
As Dagmar Herzog reports in her just released book, Sex In Crisis: The New Sexual Revolution and the Future of American Politics, the goal of the emerging Christian sex industry is, in part, to sell what she calls “soulgasm” –incredible orgasms, a deep connection with your partner and “God’s spiritual presence.”
But Prof. Herzog says there is a weird paradox in all this: While evangelicals were loosening up in the bedroom, they were also becoming increasingly hostile to the sexual culture around them. Anti-gay and anti-abortion agendas have become the norm of the Republican Party, and objections to pre-marital sex, sex education (at least the kind that does not emphasize abstinence), contraception and even masturbation are also seeping into America’s already fragile sexual psyche.
“The religious right did the sex work for the Republican Party and actually helped the Republicans come to power in state legislatures, Congress and ultimately the White House,” she said from New York City.
Prof. Herzog, a professor of history at the City University of New York, grew up in a small town in North Carolina in the 1970s. Her two grandfathers and father were Protestant pastors and the town had “Christianity in the air.” But she does not remember anyone in this classic American Protestant milieu caring about anyone else’s sexual activities. Even the churches, she said, “let the congregants alone when it came to sexual issues.”
Why that live-and-let-live attitude changed, and how it became a major political force, is the thesis of her book.
I don’t want to say that Ms Herzog is “out there”…but, the New York Times (yeah…THAT New York Times), in their review of the book, felt that it was a flimsy enough premise to write…
At this point, you almost have to feel sorry for the Christian right. The movement’s most famous leaders are dead or fading from view. It’s stuck with a presidential candidate who barely goes to church. It’s losing gay marriage court cases left and right. Yet still, its ideological opponents are bent on discovering new corners of American life that conservative Christians have single-handedly destroyed.
Wow, to get the New York Times on our side, the book had to be truly stretching to prove it’s premises.
But, one paragraph in the Times’ review did jump out at me, particularly…
There is a “Christian right” as Herzog seems to intend it. These are the minority of evangelicals who attend church at least weekly. These are the people who do save themselves until marriage, who do believe disease and heartache follow naturally from premarital sex. They believe in patriarchy and female submission and an abundance of children. No doubt Herzog will be dismayed to learn that in national surveys, the wives in such marriages say they are happier and have more orgasms than the average American woman.
Honestly, I think that Herzog’s book and premises are too silly to spend any time refuting. But, I do find it interesting that even the New York Times had to admit that married Christian women report that they “are happier and have MORE orgasms than the average American woman.”
To me, this fact is the “diamond in the rough” of the whole “Christian sex and culture” debate.
Most non-Christians (especially those with the megaphone of a media delivery system) ASSUME that it is a given that ANY “traditional” (i.e. heterosexual, married, monogamous) approach to sexuality must be, by definition, boring and bad for you…despite the facts.
And, God forbid, you make any claims to the spiritual (soulgasm) nature of sex…or even broach the idea that sex in marriage might actually be BETTER than random, non-committed sex of ANY other type…then you are “oppressing” everyone else with your “values.”
In the meantime, you and I (and our spouses) can experience the reality of sex in Christian marriage that is elevated by the relationship and commitment and DOES offer truly “spiritual” benefits…and MORE and BETTER sex.
Just don’t tell anyone about it, you might be accused of destroying the culture (and probably the planet).
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