Skipping Towards Gomorrah by Dan Savage Page A

feels the Torah is on their side. “This is something we feel helps our bond as husband and wife. Torah says a man should leave his parents and cleave to his wife,” and David and Bridget feel that swinging brought them closer together, that is, it helps them cleave.
    God forbids adultery in the Sixth Commandment. In the Jewish tradition, sin requires an action. “Judaism doesn’t legislate thought,” says Bridget. “Even coveting requires an act in furtherance of the desire.” In the Christian tradition, however, adultery isn’t just a sin in deed alone but also in thought. Wanting to commit adultery, according to the Christian God, is every bit as bad as actually committing adultery. It may seem harsh that God would condemn millions of straight American men to eternal torment for, say, wanting to fuck Jennifer Aniston, the actress married to Brad Pitt, but, hey, who are we to question God? (As God points out to Job, we weren’t around when he was hanging the stars, so who the fuck are we and what do we know about anything?)
    Early Christians believed that the act of lusting after someone was not only a sin on the part of the luster but also potentially the lustee . “Someone who consciously seeks to induce lustful thoughts (or actions) in another is guilty of sinning,” according to Mícéal Vaughan, a professor of English at the University of Washington and an expert on the liturgy of the Catholic Church. “Sin in Catholic tradition is only the result of one’s personal thoughts, actions, and consent to them, so a person who is the object of lust is not thereby guilty of sin. It’s on other grounds entirely that the object of lust becomes guilty of sin,” such as behaving or dressing in ways that they know make others lust after them. Which means, of course, that Brad Pitt, Heath Ledger, and Tom Cruise—all three appeared shirtless on the cover of Vanity Fair —have sinned grievously, as their actions inspired lust in my heart and the hearts of millions of other straight women and gay men. When someone’s dress (or lack thereof), actions, or words tempt others to sinful thoughts or deeds (or both), “[that is] what is called making one’s self an ‘occasion of sin,’ and there is potentially some guilt incurred by that,” added Vaughan.
    Since Jennifer Aniston and Brad Pitt make themselves the “occasion of sin” about as often as I make myself toast, Jennifer can expect to roast in hell for prancing around on Friends in her underwear, and Brad will burn right beside her for splashing his abs all over the cover of Vanity Fair .
    And here’s some more bad news for Brad and Jennifer: Man and wife, according to early church fathers, were asked to love each other like brother and sister. Lust even within marriage was considered a form of adultery, believe it or not, which means it’s not okay for Brad and Jennifer to lust after each other . The remedy for lust, marital or casual, was chastity—with some kinds of chastity considered better than others. Virginity was the best kind of chastity, according to church fathers, which led some early Christians to castrate themselves. If you couldn’t be a virgin, the second-best chastity was widowhood. If you weren’t disciplined enough to be chaste or lucky enough to be widowed and too horny to go without sex, “it’s better to marry than to burn,” Saint Paul said. Hardly a ringing endorsement of the institution of marriage.
    But despite all the compliments the “ancient” and “sacred” institution of marriage gets from American clerics and candidates (who ignore the many ways in which the “unchanging institution of marriage” has evolved and changed over the centuries), early Christians regarded marriage as vastly inferior to celibacy. Which is still the Catholic Church’s position. Unlike the Jews—an embattled