Antisex jihad creates sexual cripples.

This blog has rather extensively argued that America is a nation with a large element of the population in a permanent panic over sexuality. Let’s face it -- lots of Americas are literally obsessed and horrified over the sexuality of others.

I personally blame this on the presence of fundamentalist Christians in our culture. I know these people well having been a cured member of their breed and having attended one of their high schools and Bible colleges. These people are psychologically screwed up when it comes to sex. They are utter hypocrites about it.

But that is to be expected. Sex is part of human nature and fundamentalism is at war with human nature. It hates human nature. It has this image, based on Biblical mythology, of what human’s are supposed to be and everything is twisted and distorted by them, in order to try to cram things into the box that the fundamentalist believes they should fit in. The fundamentalist doesn’t base his beliefs on reality. He tries to force reality to fit his beliefs.

And that is how they view sex. And what happens when things do fit? Lie! That seems to be the most prominent means of doing so. I could name a dozen prominent fundamentalist leaders who lived double lives. On the one hand they couldn’t escape their own sexuality but on the other they couldn’t be honest about it either.

Rev. Jack Hyles, pastor of the largest fundamentalist church in America, carried on an affair with his secretary for years. His son, Rev. David Hyles, wasn’t satisfied with cheating with his wife, a girl I knew. He cheated with dozens. Rev. Ted Haggard was the head of the National Association of Evangelicals and he was sneaking around to have sex with male prostitutes.

Evangelist Jimmy Swaggart was one of the major critics of televangelist Jim Bakker and he helped expose Bakker for the sexual affair he had. Then Jimmy Swaggart got caught taking “little Jimmy” out for a romp with a prostitute. Accounts of the incident said Swaggart tried to convince the prostitute to bring her underaged daughter in to entertain him.

Rev. Billy James Hargis was one of these Right-wing anti-communist preachers and a major one at that. He started a Christian college. The first I knew of his actions was from a girl I took a cross-country trip with. She had attended his school and told me he was known for seducing students -- male and female. The stories were proven true when one hapless couple, in a fit of guilt on their wedding night, had admitted to each other that they had slept with Billy James.

Rev. Lonnie Latham was a prominent Southern Baptist minister until he was arrested for propositioning a male police officer for sex. Note the police set Latham up and Latham actually did not violate the law but he did try to get the officer to his hotel room for sex.

One of the largest Baptist Churches in the United States was Trinity Baptist Church in Jacksonville, Florida. Rev. Bob Gray the founder, was a prominent fundamentalist. He was arrested for sexual battery on two six-year-old girls. Numerous girls and women came forward. Apparently Gray’s activities had gone on for decades and some of the young woman told the church about the incidents. The church covered them up.

It is my belief that the fundamentalist view of sex creates sexual cripples. I should note that the official Catholic view of sexuality, while it has some differences, is very similar, and we see how well it has done for them.

Human sexuality is a complex and difficult issue. It is the most complex of human traits in many ways. Obviously our sexual natures, as a species, evolved long before our mental abilities developed. Sexuality is strongly determined by factors entirely outside our conscious control. Yet mentally we can convince ourselves to believe certain things about our sexuality. So we are capable of creating a war between our perceptions regarding our sexual nature and our actual sexual nature.

I am not arguing that we must simply “give in” to whatever urges strike us. But the idea that sex is sin, if not the original sin, is inherently destructive. I suggest that this is precisely what is wanted by my religious groups. Religion gains much of its power over people because of their feelings of guilt. To preach an unrealistic view of sexuality, one that is almost impossible for individuals to achieve, imposes heavy guilt on the believers. And it is that guilt that gives the church such great power over them.

This conflict also addresses the need of the fundamentalist to be on a crusade constantly battling sexuality. So we get their useless “abstinence” campaigns, they constant demands for state censorship and their maniacal antigay crusades. Much of the fundamentalist obsession with sexual issues is because of their own inner conflicts. They have such mental conflicts over their own sexuality -- because the facts don’t fit their faith -- that to give them some assurance of “morality” they must constantly be on the attack against others who dispute their “morality”. It is a self-defense mechanism.

America’s jihad over sex is directly related to the fact that it is the only Western nation infested with this sort of fundamentalist fanaticism. It should be noted this is the same sort of problem that infest Islamist nations as well.

This anti-sex philosophy screws people up. It screws them up because, like it or not, they are sexual beings. It is part of human nature and human evolution. And this conflict spills out into crazed campaigns to stamp out “sin” wherever they find it. The culture war that many people speak about is not so much a culture war as a war between people who accept reality and people who despise it.