Hypocrisy: The Role Of Sexuality In Religion

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One of the major controversies in contemporary society concerns sex. The gap between our supposed sexual morality and our actual behavior is extreme and when an entire nation practices such hypocrisy, the results can be calamitous. Since the behavior is based upon a natural sex drive that, when repressed, results in perversion, impotence, frigidity and unnatural feelings of guilt and shame, society is searching for a new morality more in keeping with the newly recognized "facts of life." To better understand this Sexual Revolution, it is worthwhile to explore the origins of our present-day traditions and taboos regarding sex. As we have seen, our sexual mores are based primarily on religious teachings. But where did our religions acquire their strong anti-sexual nature? Man hasn't always equated sex with sin and his concepts of sexual morality have varied greatly through the centuries. Where did the ideal of chastity come from? And the notion that virginity is a virtue? Who devised the idea of chaste "romantic love" to replace natural …show more content…

Sex played an important role in early religious beliefs and rites, and vestiges of its celebration are apparent in many of our contemporary religious rituals. The first religions of primitive man deified sex and fertility. In the quite complex, sophisticated and intellectual societies of pre-Christian Rome and Greece, the gods were patterned after men and they were as sexually potent as one might expect a god to be: Roman and Grecian mythology are filled with tales of their sexual prowess. But the Jewish and Christian faiths perceived a less human God, and in this more ethereal state, He had no need of sex. The psychoanalytic might also point out that the Christian God has all the attributes of a father figure, with whom sex would be considered incestuous; and it is certainly true that incest and Oedipal fears played a major role in the early history in

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