Category: Sex

Why I am not against Gay-LBTIQ marriage

Posted on by Elissa Anne

America has legalised gay marriage in all 50 states. My gay and bi Uncles were quick to rainbow colour code their profile pictures on facebook and these were the first of many posts in my newsfeed that announced this fact to me. Australia is yet to follow. Both of these Uncles–two of my mum’s brothers–are Australian and at least one has been campaigning to legalise it here in New South Wales.

Some of you may accuse me of being biased. You may say I’m not against gay marriage because I have gay and bi Uncles whom I love, very, very dearly. Perhaps to a small degree, this is so, but there is a lot more to it than just supporting my Uncles. Let me tell you the story of my experience and then explain my reasoning.

I was raised in a Christian family and I do not remember when I learned about homosexuality, but I do know that I was taught it was wrong to be gay. I was also taught to love everyone. So I made it my goal to love gay people as a teenager, before I was aware that my Uncles were gay and bi. I always believed that we were all equally sinners and that LGBTIQ people needed to be loved–not judged–just as much as I did.

When I was 18 I became friends with a male teenager around my brothers’ ages who was the first guy to ever admit to me that he was gay. I was excited to have gay friend. To my knowledge this did not cause me to treat him any differently. We still hung out as friends. He came to church with me a couple of times and I told him God loved him as he was.

Meanwhile, my homosexual Uncle was married to a heterosexual Canadian and they lived in Canada with their three children. When I was 22, I went to visit my Uncle and his family and one day I happened to be talking about my “gay friend.” My Aunt and Uncle gave me these strange looks and I had no idea what to make of them. That night, my Uncle and I took a long drive from Owen Sound to Toronto and he told me that he was gay. I honestly had no idea. I was surprised, but I also felt incredibly privileged because I was the first person in the family apart from his wife, one brother and father (my grandfather), to know.

That same year, my grandfather passed away and our Canadian and American relatives came to Australia to say their goodbyes and some were able to attend the funeral. That was when my Uncle started to talk more about his sexuality. Several years after that he was able to come out publically. The whole family knew and our Uncle was no longer trying to fight his homosexuality with heterosexuality. He and my Aunt divorced but remain friends. In fact my Aunt is a Pastor and is fighting to protect LGBTIQ Christians in Canada by educating other Christians from her own unique experience.

A lot of people look at this situation–my Uncle lives in Australia with 2 daughters and my Aunt in Canada with their son–and they presume that this is a terrible mess that has ruined their family. But I don’t see their family as ruined at all. I see 5 people who are extremely passionate about LGBTIQ issues, because they all love each other, even after divorce and the distance of two countries.

Over the past 10 years, since my Uncle told me and the rest of the family that he was gay, I have grown a lot. I have always been passionate about love and grace. I’ve made many LGBTIQ friends, have always believed in loving all people and have tried not to judge people because I fully believe we are all equal no matter what different behaviours / actions / sins / mistakes–whatever you want to call them–we have performed.

And over the years I have debated and studied and tried to determine whether it is actually a “sin” to be gay. I have questioned this because I was raised to believe that it was a sin, but I see little–if any–Biblical evidence for it. I like to think outside the box and my conclusion is that I DON’T KNOW. Two thirds of the way through my theology degree, I do however, have some theological opinions to share about the topic:

Let’s address the Old Testament first. There are two verses in Leviticus that reference two men having sex:
Leviticus 18:22 Do not have sexual relations with a man as one does with a woman, this is detestable (NIV).
Leviticus 20:13 If a man has sexual relations with a man as one does with a woman, both of them have done what is detestable. They are to be put to death; their blood will be on their own heads (NIV).

Jesus’ response to Old Testament law in the Gospels is intriguing because Jesus seems to pick and choose how things apply. He abolished “eye for an eye” and replaced it with “love your enemies.” He elaborated on “do not commit adultery” by showing us that lust of the heart is just as bad. Jesus and his disciples both broke Sabbath rules or expectations. By law Jesus was supposed to stone the woman caught in adultery, but he went against the law and walked away without stoning or punishing her, quite the contrary: he forgave her. Jesus came to fulfil or complete Old Testament law and prophecy, yet in doing so he overrode and rewrote much of it (see Mt 5:17, Rom 10:4, Eph 2:15).

In the book of Acts, Peter sees a vision of meat on a sheet. Unclean animals that he is given permission to eat. Animals that he was not permitted to eat as a Jew according to Old Testament law, he was encouraged to see as clean for New Testament Christians to eat. In the same way, when we read about homosexuality in the Old Testament, we should treat it as being part of the old covenant and therefore no longer applicable to Christians who do not come under OT law.

There are many laws in Leviticus that Christians deliberately overlook today. One law says that women must not have sex during their period or for seven days after their period (Leviticus 15:19-28, 18:19). I have done both and yet the church is not going to stone me for it. It was a law concerning hygiene, but we have better hygiene today and have discovered that women can, in fact, have sex during their period (with ready access to a shower afterward), and certainly the days following menstruation. These Old Testament laws are outdated and the New Testament affirms to us that we are no longer under these laws. We read them to understand the Jewish culture that predates Christian culture and the ideas the writers had about the coming Messiah. Then we look to the New Testament to see how Jesus treated these ideas, and more often than not it was in ways Old Testament Jews did not expect!

Turning to the New Testament we find three passages that seem to refer to homosexuality. Let me address these two first:
1 Timothy 1:9-10 We also know that the law is made not for the righteous but for lawbreakers … for the sexually immoral, those practising homosexuality, for slave traders and liars and perjurers …
1 Corinthians 6:9-11 Neither the sexually immoral nor idolaters nor adulterers nor men who have sex with men nor thieves nor the greedy nor drunkards nor slanderers nor swindlers will inherit the kingdom of God. And that is what some of you were.

The word translated “homosexual” or “sex with men” in the above verses is the Greek word “arsenokoites.” It has at least 3 possible translations including: “sodomite,” “pederast” and “homosexual.” We do not know exactly what sodomy included back when Sodom existed. We know from Genesis 19 that the sodomites were sexually violent, wanting to rape women and men so I tend to lean toward this as a definition for sodomy. Pederasty similarly describes men sexually abusing young boys. It is arguable that we should change the translation of this word to sodomite which brings across the point that we do not really know exactly what Paul meant when he used this Greek word, but that it seems to involve sexual abuse.

It is interesting, that regardless of how we translate this word, these passages still list sins that we have probably all committed. We’ve lusted, therefore we have committed adultery. We have all told lies and we are probably all greedy. So these passages require explanation regardless of whether they apply to homosexuals specifically or not, in that they apply equally to us all because we are all sinners. The key is found in 1 Corinthians 6:11 “That is what you were.” These sin lists are meant to be a blanket that cover all people. But those who know Jesus no longer identify themselves as sinners but as the saved. So sinners do inherit the kingdom of God (including the sexually immoral, sodomites / pederasts / homosexuals and liars etc.) because they now identify as the Lord’s people, not as their sinful-selves.

So we are left with Romans 1:
Romans 1:26-27 Because of this God gave them over to shameful lusts. Even their women exchanged natural sexual relations for unnatural ones. In the same way men also abandoned natural relations with women and were inflamed with lust for one another. Men committed shameful acts with other men, and received in themselves the due penalty for their error.

This is where I must address the notion that the Bible is inerrant. Not only did Jesus re-interpret the Old Testament for us, picking and choosing what he agreed and disagreed with, but we, through the wisdom of the Holy Spirit are to do the same. The Bible never claims to be perfect, nor does it claim to be the word of God. These are things that Christians claim about the Bible. These are also things that Muslims claim about the Quran and yet Christians disagree with them, right? It is dangerous to view any one book as the infallible word of God when the book was clearly written by fallible human beings. What we need to look at is what the Bible claims about itself and about the word of God. The Bible claims to be inspired by God and claims that Jesus Christ is the word of God. So we can trust that the Bible is relevant and has great truths within it because it is inspired by God. It is not dictated by God and it should not be viewed as inerrant when it has blatant historical and scientific errors. Matthew, Mark and Luke did not agree about the number of men and whether they were men or angels at the tomb after the resurrection of Jesus. The book of Joshua says the sun stood still when in fact the sun was already stationary and it was the earth that stopped rotating. These are small human errors that show us the Bible is imperfect. But the Bible is still good, “useful to teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness,” as it claims to be (2 Tim 3:16).

Jesus Christ being the living word of God, is our exact representation of the Father according to Hebrews 1:3. So who Jesus is revealed to be is our ultimate understanding and model for God himself. In Matthew 19 Jesus said that some “eunuchs” were born that way. The Greek word here “eunouchoi” can refer to a man who has been castrated, or as Jesus said a man born with some reproductive or sexual abnormalities, or perhaps an emasculated or effeminate man. This at least suggests that we have Biblical precedence for people not being born simply male and female. If a man can be born as a eunuch, then likely people can be born gay, lesbian, bi, transgender, intersex or questioning.

Perhaps Paul struggled with this concept when he wrote Romans 1. His culture taught him that homosexuality was wrong and perhaps he did not deviate. But when Corinthians says “every women who prays with her head uncovered dishonours her head,” most Christians today place this into its cultural context and say it is irrelevant now because hair does not have the same symbolic meaning. Or we talk about the husband being the head of his wife and say this has nothing to do with hair (even though the text is clearly talking about head shaving and hair cutting) or we say that it was a Corinthian slogan (this argument I like). But basically a minority of Christian women keep their hair literally covered every time they pray. In the same way, we should acknowledge that even if Paul was speaking literally about homosexuality being sinful in his understanding … he may have been culturally biased.

The Bible promotes love above all else. “The greatest of these is love.” “Love your neighbour as yourself.” “Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you.” It is far more important that we as Christians love and accept LGBTIQ people for exactly who and what they are, as they are, than that we stand against some behaviour we can’t unequivocally prove to be either right or wrong.

At the end of the day, we are all sinners who sin every minute of every day. No amount of legislation is going to change that. Making it illegal to be overweight, won’t stop people from overeating, laziness, gluttony etc. and it doesn’t mean that skinny people are actually eating healthy just because they are not overweight. In the same way, prohibiting gay marriage doesn’t stop gay sex from occurring, and doesn’t make the heterosexual person’s sex-life any healthier.

I am not against Gay-LBTIQ marriage because I believe in the higher law of love and that my sins are just as bad as anyone else’s. I’ll happily attend my Uncle’s weddings if they choose to remarry. I believe they should have the option to do what they feel is right for them. For these reasons I vote in support of Gay-LBTIQ marriage.

Premarital Sex

Posted on by Elissa Anne

My mother passed away 4 years ago, when I was 28, on the 5th of May 2011. She had bowel cancer for four years prior and it was not a huge shock when she died. Even though I had that preparatory grief for four years, I had no idea how much grieving there still was to do. For a year I could barely manage to do more than: eat, sleep, work (when I had to) and do one jigsaw puzzle after another, after another while watching episodes of Smallville or some other DVD. My Mum loved jigsaws and part of my grieving process was to spend time most days doing puzzles because it made me feel close to her.

I also remember crying on the way to work every Thursday for the first few months after her death, because Mum died on a Thursday. It slowly decreased to about once a month and after a year I felt that my grieving had significantly lessened.

But there was another aspect to my grieving process that I did not expect. There was a tremendous increase in my desire to have sex. To be close to someone physically and emotionally so that I wouldn’t be grieving on my own. My masturbation increased and I started to resent my virginity.

Up until that point, the most I’d done apart from masturbate, was to experience a small amount of petting and dry humping during make-out sessions. I had phone sex once or twice – and even those were things I did not engage in before the age of 27. But within that first twelve month period after Mum died, I let my guard down a lot further. I had this friend whom I knew was sexually active, who asked me one day if I was still a virgin, but I indicated that I was no longer sure I wanted to be one. He jumped on this opportunity and started coming to visit, probably with the goal to break me down over time and conquer my virginity.

So I let him into my life because I had just lost my mother, and my best friend, and the man I was dating, in the space of about 9-12 months. I felt rejected, lonely, horny, resentful toward myself for succumbing to my “religious obligation to maintain my virginity” and somewhat desperate. We started by making out and petting in the lounge room. Before long we moved to the bedroom, gave each other massages and started taking more clothes off. It took me a long time to touch his penis, but not long to move from that to giving him blow jobs.

A part of me wanted to have sex with him just because I wanted to experience sexual intimacy. I was getting really tired of waiting and had no guarantees that I would ever marry and experience sexual intimacy the way I really wanted to i.e. with a loving husband. So I had a conversation with my Dad when I was 29, just before he re-married (I was so jealous that he was about to have sex with a second person when I hadn’t had sex with anyone) and I told him that I was thinking about having sex. I asked him if he would forgive me if I had sex before marriage. My Dad said he would still love and forgive me if I did, and encouraged me to wait for a man that I loved who loved me.

That was a powerful conversation to have. I knew that if I had sex with the guy I was secretly doing sexual things with, it would not affect my relationship with my Dad: he would still love me. My Dad allowed me the freedom to be myself, make my own decisions and live out the consequences. And freedom has power. Even though I continued fooling around with my friend, and actually started fooling around with another friend as well, over time I became stronger in my resolve to wait for love. Not necessarily marriage, but love.

The temptation to have sex after my thirtieth birthday was high. I still resented never having had sex in my twenties, I probably blamed God for keeping me single all that time. But within three months of my birthday, I met my future husband on facebook. Not long after that I stopped fooling around with both of my friends … and started fooling around with my husband over skype and whenever we spent time together in person.

Not everyone has a story like this. Some Christians are very strong in their resolve not to have sex before marriage. My sister didn’t have sex until her wedding night – at the ripe old age of twenty-one. I secretly call any age between 18-24 “twenty-nothing” and used to make bitter remarks like “they got married when they were twenty-nothing and I had to wait until I was 32.”

I grew up in a Christian household where waiting for marriage was held up as the sexual ideal, only to find out that my parents had sex for the first time a week before they got married. Mum was 19 and Dad 23 – so they were both twenty-nothing! One of my brothers had three kids before he was married and the shunning he received from a lot of our church friends was awful!

On the one hand, I was much older than Mum, Dad, my sister and my eldest brother when I got married and had sex for the first time. But on the other hand, I doubt any of them have done sexual things with anyone other than their spouses like I have. We all have our own sexual journey.

I have read that statistically, most Western Christians are engaging in premarital sex. This has partly to do with the average age of marriage increasing, and probably a lot to do with Western culture. If we continue to hold up the ideal of waiting for marriage, without also upholding love, acceptance and freedom, then premarital sex will only increase, behind closed doors, in secret, with contraception so that people are less likely to get caught. But if we, the church, become more concerned about accepting each other’s sexuality, experiences, decisions, regrets, mistakes and lessons learned, than about upholding an ideal (that most people are failing), then we are much more likely to set people free from sexual bondage, to encourage healthier sexual decisions in the future generations and in our own.

Masturbation Part 2

Posted on by Elissa Anne

There was a lot of discussion on my previous blog about masturbation. Some of the questions that were raised were:

Is it possible to masturbate without lust?

What about the fact that a lot of masturbation is pornography based?

What if I’m addicted to masturbation?

I’m going to address these questions one at a time, however, I am not an expert. This is my personal opinion based on my personal experiences and relationship with God. I don’t expect everyone to agree and at the end of the day, we all choose for ourselves. I also want to clarify that this particular discussion around masturbation is geared at single/unmarried people and not related to masturbation within the context marriage – that is another discussion for another time. My motivation for writing about this is to help people like myself who were raised with legalistic views of the topic and need permission to talk about the subject and fresh ideas about how to express their sexuality.

Masturbation and lust are not synonymous.

Just as it is possible to have a wet dream or nocturnal emission (females have them too) without lust, it is possible to masturbate without lust. I’ve masturbated with my thoughts focused on men, I’ve masturbated with my thoughts focused on my body and physical sensations, and I’ve masturbated with my thoughts focused on God. Now, I’m not saying that every time we focus on male or female anatomy during masturbation it is always lustful, but for argument’s sake, let’s talk about the other options of focusing on one’s own body and on God.

It was my husband (when we were dating) who first suggested to me that people can masturbate and worship God at the same time. He asked how can we honour God with the sexuality He’s given us in our singleness? This got me wondering is it possible to do so in a way beyond just being chaste? I’m not talking about fantasising about having sex with God, I am talking about masturbating before God. He is the one who created us as sexual beings. He sees and knows everything right? So whether we are masturbating with pornography, having sex with a person or masturbating on our own, He is right there with us, loving and accepting us exactly where we are at. So why not turn our hearts toward him in gratitude for our sexuality, and enjoy sexual expression in his presence?

It is possible to masturbate to worship music, masturbate with prayer and masturbate with our thoughts on God’s love for us. My husband and I have both individually masturbated to worship music. For me personally, I have always been aware of God’s presence while I masturbate. Whether I’m feeling irrational guilt and shame (that don’t come from God but rather taint my experience of him) or I’m feeling God’s love and acceptance of me and my sexuality, His love is a constant that we all need to focus on it more. It is also possible to masturbate with lust and still know that God is there and that he still loves you and, in fact, the more you are aware of his love for you, the more likely you are to let go of the lust that entangles.

It is not necessary to kick God out of the bedroom (not that anyone could). Instead we need to recognise that God is actually in the bedroom while we express our sexuality. Let’s re-contextualise our experience of God during masturbation and/or sex by including him. Invite Him to teach us about our bodies. Thank Him for orgasms. If you struggle to orgasm, ask Him to help you. Receive His love, acceptance and forgiveness for all the things we’ve done that we perceive as sexually impure, and ask Him to teach us more about healthy sexual expression in His presence.

During masturbation we become quite attentive to our bodies. I want to talk about the second question “What about the fact that a lot of masturbation is pornography based?” in the context of focusing on our bodies. When we are focused on pictures of naked men or women, we lose some of the connection to the feelings and sensations in our bodies, our hearts and our minds by relying on external material to stimulate us, rather than listening internally. I am not discussing the morality of using porn, I’m talking about the effects of relying on porn.

If you are a regular pornography user, ask yourself this: “Can I masturbate without porn?” If the answer is no or that it has become difficult to masturbate to the point of orgasm without porn, then I suggest a re-invention of your sexuality. Approach it like an adventure: it is time for me to re-discover my body. I don’t want to just rely on external materials to bring me to a climax, I want to be able to do this to myself. This requires listening to one’s body: tuning into physical sensation.

Here is my best attempt at instructions:

  1. Don’t be in a rush
  2. Take some very deep breaths, deep into your loins
  3. Focus on the air circulating throughout the body
  4. Breathe out all that is distracting and hindering you
  5. Breathe in thoughts of love like: “I am loved. God loves me.”
  6. Concentrate on your sex organs and welcome the stimulation that comes from simply sensing internally
  7. Move your body in ways that sexually stimulate you without touching your sexual organs e.g. tighten muscles, raise/lower or extend/retract pelvis, etc
  8. Delay manual stimulation for as long as you can by focusing your thoughts on the sensations in your body and on emotions of nurturing your sexuality
  9. If you feel turned-off by thoughts of nurturing your sexuality, ask yourself why and really listen to the answer. Are there religious lies that stop you? Do you see all forms of sexual arousal as ungodly?
  10. Ask God to change the way you think about your sexuality and to help re-invigorate your sexual expression without always needing pornography and without attaching guilt to all forms of masturbation

Now we turn to the final question: what if I’m addicted to masturbation? In my opinion there are healthier things to consider first. We need to be addressing things like:

  1. How do I feel about God when I masturbate? Since God sees everything I do sexually, am I comfortable with my sexuality before God?
  2. If shame/guilt feelings arise it is important to prayerfully ask God whether they are produced by healthy behaviour or unhealthy behaviour. I can’t tell you exactly where to draw the line on what is healthy or unhealthy, but to be more specific I don’t believe we need to feel guilty for all forms of masturbation. So if guilt feelings arise in this area, we need to ask God for help to remove it. If guilt feelings are produced by behaviours or thoughts we consider unhealthy then we need God’s help to re-invent our sexuality in ways that we believe are healthy.
  3. What are my thoughts about others when I masturbate? Let’s be honest: we’ve probably all had some unhealthy thoughts toward other people during masturbation. The best solution I can think of is focusing more on our own bodies and on God than on other people (while we are still single).
  4. How do I feel about myself when I masturbate: am I nurturing my sexuality or abusing it?
  5. Don’t be too hard on yourself for the things you have done that you perceive as “wrong.” Let God’s grace into every area of your sexuality and turn your attention more to what you can do that is healthy, and less to what you have done that may not have been so healthy.

 

Is Masturbation a Sin?

Posted on by Elissa Anne

Have you ever heard anyone tell you to let your conscience be your guide? Back in the days when I used to let my conscience be my guide, I felt guilty about everything. I thought that picking my nose was a sin–and yes, most of the time I ate the fruit I picked! My first attempt at shaving my legs made me feel so guilty that I reverted back to not shaving them, until I saw someone staring at my hairy legs on a bus one time and decided: enough was enough! I debated dying my hair for a really long time before having it done. I was never comfortable with the lengths I saw females go to, to make themselves “beautiful.” I worried about the sins of vanity and pride. I also believed it was a sin to be overweight, and I felt very ugly in my own skin. But I strangely suspected that there was something holier about being plain and ugly than about being beautiful and … well … sexual.

If I were to let my conscience be my guide, I would have a miserable life in which I avoided doing anything that might have the slightest appearance of being “wrong.” But when I was in high school, one of my teachers told me about a “seared conscience.” He said there were kids out there who were able to commit murder without feeling any remorse whatsoever, because they had a seared conscience. It was then that I realised that no one’s conscience can be trusted. No two consciences are the same. I might feel like it’s sinful for me to shave my legs because God put hair there on purpose, but most women in western society would never think twice about shaving their legs because it is socially accepted. The Bible tells us that our hearts–which I believe includes our consciences–are deceitful (Jeremiah 17:9).

In a similar way, when I started masturbating at age 22, I felt sick with disgust. I was convinced I would never do it again after that fateful first time (in another country–might I add), but I was already addicted. We really can, as human beings, hate the things we love and love the things we hate. I spent the next five years feeling guilty every time I gave into the desire to masturbate, which was about once a month. Sometimes I cried afterward and I prayed and begged God to make me stop. My conscience told me it was a sin.

But interestingly, the Bible never once ever addresses masturbation. You would think that if masturbation was a sin, then Leviticus 18 would have something to say about it in its extensive list against certain sexual behaviours. But it says nothing whatsoever about touching one’s own sex organs, sexual arousal, wet dreams, erections, orgasms or masturbation. Similarly in the New Testament when Paul addresses sex and marriage, he says nothing about touching oneself or getting off and he certainly doesn’t say it’s wrong. If anything, he says that those who burn with passion should get married. I can make a stronger biblical case against wearing make-up, jewellery and cutting hair than I can against masturbation.

There are a lot of mixed opinions about masturbation. I’ve heard some people label it “self-gratification,” and declare it a sin because we should be seeking God for our needs, not trying to satisfy the lusts of our flesh. But when you think about this argument logically, is it self-gratification to eat food? Who is going to determine whether the food is a gift from God, or whether it was the selfish indulgence of the consumer?

Other people say that masturbation is healthy for the body. But then again, sex is also healthy for the body. Some say that masturbation takes away the temptation to have pre-marital or extra-marital sex, while others testify that once they started masturbating, sex was the next logical step. At the end of the day, all I can do is open up the discussion by talking about my own experience in this area. You will have to decide for yourself whether you find this practise healthy or unhealthy.

My experience is that after five years of feeling ashamed of myself every time I succumbed to the feelings in my vagina that demanded my attention, I decided not to trust my feelings anymore. After talking with a pastor and a naturopath, I concluded that it was healthy for me to masturbate, since I was not having sex, and my body was horny. In deciding not to trust my feelings, I learned how to retrain those feelings. This might be called desensitisation, but one can’t assume that desensitisation is always a negative thing. Our ears become desensitised to certain sounds so that we do not become distracted every time a bird sings or a car drives past the window.

In order to retrain my feelings around masturbation, I decided to deliberately masturbate much more regularly and to self-soothe if I experienced any guilty or negative feelings afterward. There were times I bawled my eyes out after masturbation, called myself a slutty whore and prayed that I would just stop experiencing all sexual arousal. My feelings were often extreme because I had learned to feel wrong about all things sexual. I needed to learn to tell myself that everything was okay. It doesn’t matter whether I’m a slut or not because God still loves me. There is no condemnation for those in Christ Jesus (Romans 8:1) and I refuse to continue feeling guilty. God made me sexually female. He gave me my sexual organs. In fact he gave me a clitoris on purpose and the only function a clitoris has is sexual pleasure! If my body can orgasm in my sleep–and it can and has–then how can it possibly be a sin to enjoy climaxing?