The God Virus: How Religion Infects Our Lives and Culture by Darrel Ray Page B
Authors: Darrel Ray
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enjoy sex if the children are anywhere near. The message is that children should not be exposed to their parents’ sexual nature. Where did this come from?
Not many centuries ago in our culture and in many cultures still today, parents had sex in the same room where the children slept. How does a Hutu couple living in a one-room hut avoid sexual activity within sight or hearing of their children? How did nomadic Cheyenne or Shawnee Indians hide sexual activity from their children while living in a tent? How did Iroquois Indians living in an open lodge have sex? The answer is, they didn’t worry a lot about it. Sex was seen as a normal, natural activity. These cultures don’t make a display of sex, but they don’t try and hide it from their children. Hiding implies guilt. Remember the story of Adam and Eve? They hid their nakedness from god.
Before the invasion of the hugely successful, sex-negative viruses of Christianity and Islam, many cultures were more sex-positive. 14 The rise of non-culturally based viral religions has led to sex-negative environments in many areas of the world that were once sex-positive. As a sex-negative religion invades a culture, it strongly influences the mores and taboos of that culture. Whether the old mores and taboos were more sex-positive or sex-negative, they inevitably move toward the sex-negative after the invasion.
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14 See such studies as Margaret Mead, Coming of Age in Samoa (Harper Perennial, January 1, 1971) and Ruth Benedict, Patterns of Culture 1 edition (Mariner Books, January 26, 2006) for examples of both sex-positive and sex-negative cultures that largely predate western influences.
Christian missionaries for two thousand years have been invading native cultures and creating sex-negative environments. The process has been so complete that even cultures that have not converted to one of the main religions have felt the influence. Just as smallpox hit communities in the Americas that had never seen a white man, sex-negative ideas have passed to societies who never saw a missionary.
A look at the missionary influence on Hawaiian culture is a classic study. Marriage was loosely defined, and sexual contact was not particularly regulated. One author notes that before contact with westerners, Hawaiians put more control on eating than on sexual practices. 15 As an example of sex-positive culture, sexual ethnographer Milton Diamond wrote:
As they slept in the family house, they observed their parents having coitus. Among the Mangaian Islanders, as it was described by Marshall (1971, p. 108), probably is similar to the ‘privacy’ that was found in Hawai’i and elsewhere in Polynesia: A Mangaian may copulate, at any age, in the single room of a hut that contains from five to fifteen family members of all ages — as have his ancestors before him. His daughter may receive and make love with each of her varied nightly suitors in the same room ... But under most conditions, all of this takes place without social notice: everyone seems to be looking in another direction.
Your Sexuality
If you were raised in the United States, you were raised in a sex-negative culture and probably have some sex-negative ideas and behaviors. Eliminating the virus from your life means taking a hard look at activities that may be outside your consciousness. Compare your attitudes to those of pre-contact Hawaiians. It does not appear that they experienced any guilt over sex. That would be one benchmark against which to measure our cultural and individual sex negativity.
You probably received feelings of guilt about sex from parents, priests, nuns, preachers and Sunday school teachers. How does a Pope give anyone advice on sex? A Pope, priest or nun teaching about sex or giving adviceon sexual matters seems rather odd. Almost as bad is an uptight, highly sex-negative fundamentalist preacher telling you about the joys of Christian sex! What kind of advice does Ted Haggard have that would enhance
Not many centuries ago in our culture and in many cultures still today, parents had sex in the same room where the children slept. How does a Hutu couple living in a one-room hut avoid sexual activity within sight or hearing of their children? How did nomadic Cheyenne or Shawnee Indians hide sexual activity from their children while living in a tent? How did Iroquois Indians living in an open lodge have sex? The answer is, they didn’t worry a lot about it. Sex was seen as a normal, natural activity. These cultures don’t make a display of sex, but they don’t try and hide it from their children. Hiding implies guilt. Remember the story of Adam and Eve? They hid their nakedness from god.
Before the invasion of the hugely successful, sex-negative viruses of Christianity and Islam, many cultures were more sex-positive. 14 The rise of non-culturally based viral religions has led to sex-negative environments in many areas of the world that were once sex-positive. As a sex-negative religion invades a culture, it strongly influences the mores and taboos of that culture. Whether the old mores and taboos were more sex-positive or sex-negative, they inevitably move toward the sex-negative after the invasion.
----
14 See such studies as Margaret Mead, Coming of Age in Samoa (Harper Perennial, January 1, 1971) and Ruth Benedict, Patterns of Culture 1 edition (Mariner Books, January 26, 2006) for examples of both sex-positive and sex-negative cultures that largely predate western influences.
Christian missionaries for two thousand years have been invading native cultures and creating sex-negative environments. The process has been so complete that even cultures that have not converted to one of the main religions have felt the influence. Just as smallpox hit communities in the Americas that had never seen a white man, sex-negative ideas have passed to societies who never saw a missionary.
A look at the missionary influence on Hawaiian culture is a classic study. Marriage was loosely defined, and sexual contact was not particularly regulated. One author notes that before contact with westerners, Hawaiians put more control on eating than on sexual practices. 15 As an example of sex-positive culture, sexual ethnographer Milton Diamond wrote:
As they slept in the family house, they observed their parents having coitus. Among the Mangaian Islanders, as it was described by Marshall (1971, p. 108), probably is similar to the ‘privacy’ that was found in Hawai’i and elsewhere in Polynesia: A Mangaian may copulate, at any age, in the single room of a hut that contains from five to fifteen family members of all ages — as have his ancestors before him. His daughter may receive and make love with each of her varied nightly suitors in the same room ... But under most conditions, all of this takes place without social notice: everyone seems to be looking in another direction.
Your Sexuality
If you were raised in the United States, you were raised in a sex-negative culture and probably have some sex-negative ideas and behaviors. Eliminating the virus from your life means taking a hard look at activities that may be outside your consciousness. Compare your attitudes to those of pre-contact Hawaiians. It does not appear that they experienced any guilt over sex. That would be one benchmark against which to measure our cultural and individual sex negativity.
You probably received feelings of guilt about sex from parents, priests, nuns, preachers and Sunday school teachers. How does a Pope give anyone advice on sex? A Pope, priest or nun teaching about sex or giving adviceon sexual matters seems rather odd. Almost as bad is an uptight, highly sex-negative fundamentalist preacher telling you about the joys of Christian sex! What kind of advice does Ted Haggard have that would enhance
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