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From: saquigley@watdaisy.UUCP (Sophie Quigley)
Newsgroups: net.women,net.religion
Subject: judaism, christianity and sex
Message-ID: <6400@watdaisy.UUCP>
Date: Mon, 9-Jan-84 22:27:09 EST
Article-I.D.: watdaisy.6400
Posted: Mon Jan  9 22:27:09 1984
Date-Received: Tue, 10-Jan-84 05:11:27 EST
Organization: U of Waterloo, Ontario
Lines: 52

In one of my articles I said
"I believe that the idea behind circumcision is very related to the judeo-
christian belief that there is something very wrong with sex"
I have been getting a lot of mail pointing out 1/ that judaism doesn't think
that there is anything wrong with sex as long as it is done a certain way 2/
that christianity doesn't think that there is something wrong with sex as
long as it is done a certain way.

The "certain way" for judaism is that
	1/ the people engaging in this activity must be: one female and one
		male.
	2/ they must be married,
	3/ the sex must be done at night (evenings?)
	4/ sex should not be done while the woman is menstruating or right 
		after she has finished menstruating.
The restrictions for christian sex are (as far as I know)
	1/ and 2/ like for judaism,
	3/ Roman catholics are not supposed to use any "non-natural" methods of
		birth control.
	I am ignorant about other conditions except that some "guidelines"
	have recently being published by the catholic church which, among
	other things, tried to explain to catholics in which spirit they
	should conduct themselves sexually.  One of these guidelines was the
	infamous "thou shall not lust after thou own wife" (my wording) which
	was apparently was greatly misinterpreted to mean that one should not
	feel sexual desire for one's spouse, when the actual meaning was closer
	to "one should not view one's spouse as a sexual object, but respect
	him/her as a person" (again my own feminist wording).
So these are the "official" restrictions.  If I have got some wrong, please
correct me on the net.  I am not too knowledgeable about any of this, really.
As I do not really know much about judaism or about the jewish way of life,
I will now turn my attention to the christian part of the problem.

Not believing in God, I see the bible not as a holy book, but as a book 
containing very good advice on how to behave as individuals and as members
of a society, so as to benefit the well-being of that society. I think most
of the sexual rules in the bible have been placed there as they are good
guidelines, which, if respected, will make most people reasonnably happy, and
will create less problems for society.
I think, however, there is a great discrepancy between this point of view,
and the point of view of those who have vulgarised Christianity to bring it
to the masses.  It is the latest who has had the most profound effect on 
people's lives, and the latest to which I was refering in my original quote.
For a long time, most people did not know about christianity, but simply about
"churchality", an overly simplified version of christianity consisting of very
simple black and white rules that people are to follow if they want to go to
heaven.  One of these rules is that sex is bad, except for procreation.

This is the background we are now working on; the judeo-christian belief
I was refering to is really more a church-rule that has been passed into 
the consciousness of our society for many centuries, and out of which we
are barely emerging nowadays.