{"id":1818,"date":"2012-10-16T16:55:13","date_gmt":"2012-10-16T20:55:13","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/phoenixandolivebranch\/?p=1818"},"modified":"2014-07-03T11:24:37","modified_gmt":"2014-07-03T15:24:37","slug":"love-is-what-we-do-sex-is-what-they-do","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/phoenixandolivebranch\/2012\/10\/love-is-what-we-do-sex-is-what-they-do\/","title":{"rendered":"Love is what “we” do; sex is what “they” do"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Justin Lee, executive director of the Gay Christian Network, has just written an excellent post using The Lion King to illustrate the unequal terms in which evangelical Christians (in this case, his 16-year-old self) think about sex and relationships. Check it out here:<\/p>\n

Crumbs from the Communion Table: Can you feel the sex tonight?<\/a><\/p>\n

In my mind, for Timon and Pumbaa to be\u00a0gay\u00a0would have meant that they were having sex. But for Simba and Nala to be\u00a0straight\u00a0meant only that they were in love\u2014even though we see the evidence of their sexual union at the end of the film when a child is born.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

For my fundamentalist church, this went beyond the gay-straight divide. Reducing other couples to their biology was an all-hands-on-deck affair (pun not intended). If you were a conservative, evangelical Christian who followed a parent-approved and supervised courtship, saved all physical contact for the wedding altar, promised to make your body a living sacrifice to your particular gender role, and reacted to the mention of birth control as though somebody were offering you bath salts, then, and only then, did you qualify as an exemplar of love. Perfect, Christian love. Everything else was just sex.<\/p>\n

This opposition of love to sex\u00a0is not the healthiest paradigm around. But it did fit nicely within the constellation of falsehoods<\/a> I learned about sex as a kid. And it left me extremely confused. Sex was some nasty thing that worldly people did, right? No good woman actually\u00a0enjoys<\/em> it! Wouldn\u2019t it be horrible and embarrassing to have to do that with someone you love and respect? For a long time, I believed that a married couple did it exactly once \u2013 on the wedding night \u2013 and thereafter could have a baby at any time for the rest of their fertile years. When I got old enough to realize that wasn\u2019t true, I found another myth waiting for me \u2013 that sex is something men need and women put up with.<\/p>\n

When we looked at \u201cworldly\u201d couples, we judged them in Machiavellian terms. Either they were animalistic, driven by lust and incapable of more rarefied emotions (hello, 19th century!), or they were driven by the urge to dominate one another. Worldly women used sex as a lure to entrap men and control them, while worldly men put up with emasculation in order to receive sex.<\/p>\n

For people who professed perfect love, we were the most cynical misanthropes in the world. George Carlin would have a hard time competing with us.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s possible to degrade the entire human race that way. There\u2019s even a handy formula:<\/p>\n

Step 1. Convince yourself and others that the body is shameful.
\nStep 2. Pick a group to dehumanize.
\nStep 3. Point out all the bodily functions that group performs. (It\u2019s different<\/em> when your group does them.)
\nStep 4. Dismiss all motivations that group might have other than primal bodily urges.
\nStep 5. Sneer.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s funny, really, that this attitude prevailed about sex in a church with intense Pentecostal<\/a> leanings. Our pastors spoke openly of crying out before God until snot ran down your chin, of falling on the floor screaming and weeping (and yes, people did all of these things in services). We washed each other\u2019s feet. Women were almost constantly pregnant or nursing, and discussed all the ugly details of childbirth with complete candor. My church prided itself, in fact, on how different it was from stodgy Catholics or Lutherans who didn\u2019t acknowledge the body. We were the loud, obnoxious holy rollers and if you couldn\u2019t handle a little body fluid, then the New Birth wasn\u2019t for you.<\/p>\n

Except for that whole sex thing. It\u2019s called\u00a0making love<\/em> when True Christians do it.<\/p>\n

Hallelujah.<\/p>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Justin Lee, executive director of the Gay Christian Network, has just written an excellent post using The Lion King to illustrate the unequal terms in which evangelical Christians (in this case, his 16-year-old self) think about sex and relationships. Check it out here: Crumbs from the Communion Table: Can you feel the sex tonight? In […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1147,"featured_media":1820,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,6,9,16,17,18,20,29],"tags":[93,131,794,795,792,264,956,957,793,543,791],"class_list":["post-1818","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-birth-control","category-chastity","category-families","category-love","category-marriage","category-men","category-patriarchy","category-women","tag-bodies","tag-christian-fundamentalism","tag-crying","tag-dehumanizing","tag-embodiment","tag-fundamentalists","tag-love","tag-marriage","tag-pentecostals","tag-sex","tag-true-christians"],"yoast_head":"\nLove is what "we" do; sex is what "they" do<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Justin Lee, executive director of the Gay Christian Network, has just written an excellent post using The Lion King to illustrate the unequal terms in\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/phoenixandolivebranch\/2012\/10\/love-is-what-we-do-sex-is-what-they-do\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Love is what "we" do; sex is what "they" do\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Justin Lee, executive director of the Gay Christian Network, has just written an excellent post using The Lion King to illustrate the unequal terms in\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/phoenixandolivebranch\/2012\/10\/love-is-what-we-do-sex-is-what-they-do\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"The Phoenix and Olive Branch\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2012-10-16T20:55:13+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:modified_time\" content=\"2014-07-03T15:24:37+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"https:\/\/wp-media.patheos.com\/blogs\/sites\/247\/2012\/10\/Pot_Meet_Kettle.jpg\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:width\" content=\"600\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:height\" content=\"369\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:type\" content=\"image\/jpeg\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Sierra Phoenix\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"Sierra Phoenix\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"3 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\/\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/phoenixandolivebranch\/2012\/10\/love-is-what-we-do-sex-is-what-they-do\/\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/phoenixandolivebranch\/2012\/10\/love-is-what-we-do-sex-is-what-they-do\/\",\"name\":\"Love is what \\\"we\\\" do; 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