Darrel W. Ray - Sex & God: how religion distorts sexuality

How Religion

Distorts Sexuality

Darrel W. Ray, Ed.D.

IPC Press
Bonner Springs, Kansas

Copyright 2012 by Darrel W. Ray. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise without the prior written permission of the copyright holder, except brief quotations used in a review.

Editors: Deborah Shouse, Kirsten McBride

Ray, Darrel W.

Sex & God How Religion Distorts Sexuality

by Darrel W. Ray.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

LCCN 2011961234

ISBN-13: 978-0-9709505-4-3

ISBN-10: 0-9709505-4-3

Published by

IPC Press

15699 Kansas Avenue

Bonner Springs, Kansas 66012

Visit www.ipcpress.com for additional information.

Published 2012

Printed in the United States of America

Dedicated to

Julie

I want to thank many friends who supported me during this intense process. First, Julie my love and partner who was involved every step, supporting and reading many of the early versions. My friend and travel companion Judy Roepke, who, for the second time in as many books, spent our European vacation time reading and critiquing a very rough draft. Thanks to Missy Andeel for her insights and critique of the manuscript. Some of her suggestions led me to change or refine several ideas.

Putting together this project required several special people that I have come to trust and rely on over my last three book projects. A big thank you to my editors, Deborah Shouse and to Kirsten McBride. Deborah also served as my psychologist and counselor during the most difficult parts of the writing. Kirstens tough approach to editing kept me on the straight and narrow when I wanted to wander. Neither of them have any idea how many arguments I have had with them (in my mind) and they win almost all of them. Thanks to Micki Lubbers for her contributions to the final proofs.

Thanks to Shayne Schuldt whose ideas and support make him much more than a designer in this process. And to Adam Brown whose cover ideas made the design process easy. Finally, thanks to Amanda Brown for her help in the Sex and Secularism research in .

Chapter 2: You Can Take Religion out of Sex,
But You Cant Take Sex out of Religion

I have been a psychologist for over 35 years. Before I went into psychology, I thought I was destined to be a minister. I went to Scarritt College for Christian Workers for two years, and received a Masters degree in Church and Community. The result of this religious study convinced me that most religion was self-serving, but I remained a liberal Christian. Over the next 14 years, I helped train ministers, chaplains and other church officials in many protestant denominations and a few Catholic priests and nuns. I also trained army and civilian chaplains. Through my work, I saw layer upon layer of complicity in sexual scandals and financial fraud. The behavior of ministers and priests was clearly no better than the average behavior of their parishioners. I could see little positive effect of religion on behavior. In fact, it seemed that religion often was an excuse for bad behavior. Moreover, financial issues got quick response while sexual behavior was ignored or covered up.

Over time, I saw an astonishingly high incidence of sexual misconduct among the church leaders. Not all displayed this behavior, but almost all participated in hiding or ignoring it. This experience led me to a deeper study of how religion works and what allows such obviously inappropriate behavior to go on for years in all kinds of churches. No book or study I read seemed to address this question.

It is hard for me to remember a time when my sexual behavior was not influenced by Jesus watching or a god judging. By the time I became aware of sex, at about 8 or 9 years old, I knew it was dangerous, dirty, suspect and something I should not talk about. While my mom was pretty open about sexuality, she still thought Alfred Kinsey was a communist, Masters and Johnson were pornographers and that the books of D. H. Lawrence should be banned. My father did not seem interested in talking about sex except to make occasional obscure comments. As for my grandparents, I knew and loved all four of them but suspected that they had sex only four times, to produce their four children. The mention of sex could set any of them off on a religious rant.

I often sneaked the medical dictionary off the shelf and read all it said about sex, which, sadly, was very little. I asked questions my mother didnt want to answer, so she eventually took me to the library where we checked out books on sex. In the early 1960s, most of the books were restricted. My mother had to check them out for me as I was only 12 years old. I came home from the library excited at the prospect of finally finding the answers. I read and read for days. But much to my disappointment, I found few answers and many contradictions. The books were clinical and filled with biological facts.

As I read, every so often a book would venture into the juicy stuff like how to actually have sex only to disappoint by saying, You must communicate with your partner. or Pray about your relationship and talk with your minister or priest. At the end of my research, I knew little more than when I started. Nevertheless, I became known throughout our school as the expert on sex, since I was the only one who had actually read the forbidden books. Boys had a hundred questions. I answered them with great authority and listened to their concerns. Despite all my reading, I knew little more than they did. For most it came down to, My parents say that I will learn about sex some day and in the mean time I should read the Bible and pray for Gods guidance.

Somehow I heard about the Kinsey Report. In the interest of furthering my research, I asked my mom if she would check it out for me. She informed me that it was smut and that the library did not carry it.

Then one day a friend of mine, whose father was an elder in the church, revealed his fathers stash of pornographic magazines. When his parents were not around, we both devoured first the pictures, then the articles. With this information, I soon became a true expert and began to answer questions much more intelligently. The main thing I noticed in these magazines was the lack of religious references. In fact, some even had anti-religious messages. I distinctly remember one photo spread that highlighted nuns in revealing habits and priests leering at them. Later I created my own collection of porn, and my brothers began collecting theirs as well. Ultimately, my mom found out and made a minor fuss. She threw everything away, so we got better at hiding it.

From then on, my sexual development involved pornography. Despite its bad reputation, it was one way to learn about sex. But everyone knows that porn is masturbatory material. As a young teenager, I noticed how many people acted like they did not masturbate or use porn. One preachers son was famous for always having great sex photos in his pocket, yet he claimed he never masturbated. His father was caught three times having affairs with women in the church. It was an unwritten rule, Do not admit to it or you will be labeled a homo. As I leered at friends magazines in the shed behind my house, getting an erection under my jeans, I dared not admit the pictures had any effect on me, let alone admit that I masturbated later to the memory of those photos.