Christian Porno

Condemning pornography is a popular Christian sport. Is it that fundamentalist Christians don’t like sex much? Do they talk about it only to condemn it?

Advise & Consent: Christian Porno

Church bodies oppose homosexuality and all sex outside marriage. That means no sex for teenagers, young adults before marriage, the divorced, widows and widowers, or the handicapped (who may not be able to maintain married life and bear children). It also means no masturbation. This sex-negative attitude is bizarre, cruel, and unenforceable, and makes many Christians feel hypocritical.

I am a Christian, a lifelong Episcopalian, a priest of the church, and rector of a parish. My late father was a priest, as is my brother. My own Episcopal church wrestles with the questions of sex. Some of our members have a legalistic stripe and condemn all sex outside marriage. Most want to leave sexual behavior up to the individual Christian.

I am a very sex-positive person. I believe sex is a good and beautiful gift. While we need to be caring and responsible, we also should lighten up and emphasize the enjoyment and pleasure of sex before, during, and after marriage. We can also see that homosexual sex is natural and normal for a certain portion of the population of the planet. With that in mind, I want to put in a good word for pornography.

An obituary of Brendan Gill, distinguished writer for The New Yorker magazine, stimulated me to write about porno. He said that pornography made him happy. Sexually explicit art does arouse our sexuality and makes us glad. A newsletter from Good Vibrations, the San Francisco sex-book, -video, and -apparatus shop, says its customers are men, women, clergy, doctors, dentists, lawyers, students, teachers, police officers, and firefighters. In other words, people from all walks of life enjoy erotica and pornography.

Pornography is any art form that arouses sexual feelings in people. These feelings usually are filled with lusty pleasure.

Pornography as seen by prudes is any depiction of nudity or people having sex with themselves or another person. If the image arouses sexual feelings, it is wrong, bad, and sinful, they say. A picture of the Virgin Mary with her breast exposed as she feeds the Christ Child will be judged pornographic by some people.

Eroticism, on the other hand, is any art form that depicts love, warmth, and affection between people. In seminars I have run, I have used videos produced for educational purposes that depict explicit sexual activity and show completely nude people. The videos probably sexually aroused some, if not all, viewers, but their purpose is to depict love and caring in order to assist learning about sex.

One education video shows tender sex between a woman and a man severely maimed by a stroke. The woman caresses and plays with the man, massages him, and finally fellates him. The pleasure on his twisted face brings tears to the viewer. Is this film erotic enough to be called pornographic? Is it wrong to depict sexual pleasure in a man who gets so little pleasure out of life?

A producer of male porno gave me a good reason and rationalization for his work. “If a lonely gay man living in North Dakota in the cold and isolation can get some warmth and pleasure by watching two cute guys having sex, then I know my work has redeeming social value.”

A lot of porno videos are dull and repetitious. Some demean women, some belittle men. Many have little artistic value and are best left unseen. But individuals can and should make their own choices and not have religious groups push for legal bans (except for legal limits on the availability to children of porn videos and literature).

Sexually explicit art has been around for a long time. Primitive paintings found on the walls of caves depict sexual activity in most cultures around the world. Chinese and Japanese paintings of sex acts flourish. Indians adorn temples with erotic art. In Peru, small ancient sculptures show Incas in all manner of sexual positions. In Cuzco, the woman who sold me some cheap copies called them matrimonials. I thought, What better way to teach young people about sex?

Even the Bible has erotic poetry. The Song of Solomon is the Bible’s love song:

Pornography and erotic art have been around for a long time. A lot of noisy sex-negative Christians have it all wrong. They are devils who quote Scripture, finding passages that appear to condemn sex. Leviticus and Romans are quoted as proclaiming universal antihomosexual laws. In fact such passages refer to local agricultural and cultic problems of bygone eras.

Let’s look at the Bible from another point of view. It has a lot to say about nudity and sex. Genesis indicates God created us naked. Our original state was to walk in a paradise with no clothes on. We come from out of our mother’s womb naked. So what could be wrong with nudity in itself?

The Genesis story goes on to say that naked man and woman disobeyed God and became ashamed and put on fig leaves to cover themselves. Wearing clothes is a punishment. It is not the way we are created to be. We also clothe ourselves to keep warm, or to keep off the sun’s rays. Then we hide our bodies, particularly our genitals, because we are ashamed of our sex parts and what they do. It is because of sin that we hide our nakedness.

I spent five months at Esalen Institute in Big Sur, California. Leading features there are the hot mineral baths. Most people bathe in the nude, with others present whom they may or may not know. After the initial titillating shock, nudity in that setting becomes natural and normal. I loved looking at the naked bodies around me. I never saw a naked body I didn’t like. Fat ones, tall ones, short ones, disfigured ones. Somehow the magic of nudity makes us all look beautiful. Women with mastectomies soon felt comfortable. They felt full acceptance after initial pained and shocked reactions. Men and women of great weight just had lots more body to enjoy and present to the world. I found nudity in this setting to be quite normal and not particularly sexually arousing. I wouldn’t say I never was turned on by a beautiful, sexy body, but it didn’t happen often. I was not aroused enough to harass anyone.

Christians teach love. Brotherly and sisterly love, physical love, and sacrificial love. Sexually explicit pictures, films, videos, and art teach people how to make love and enjoy it. We do precious little to help people learn about sex and love. Some churches and religious groups even work to stop any teaching about sex in schools. Then they fail to teach about sex and love at home or church.

Learning to care for others is a Christian concern. Sexually explicit films can teach about physical touch, kissing, massaging, and being sensuous.

I think Christian church people need to get off their high horses; they must stop condemning pornography while knowing little about it. The usual attacks go against anything that depicts nudity and explicit sexual activity. The criticisms fail to make distinctions between pornography and erotic art. For instance, showing a sex act in a film-just for the sake of titillation-can be criticized as exploitation of people and sexuality. Depictions of sex acts in ancient caves or Indian temples are part of the religion and cultural heritage of some people. Yet both are usually lumped together as pornography, and thus viewed as bad, wrong, and sinful.

I can’t imagine Jesus being concerned about depictions of sex. He was busy enough condemning hypocrisy and legalism and urging folks to love and forgive.

Viewing sexually explicit art, films, and videos is fun. We learn about love and pleasure. When we love our bodies and our sexuality, viewing porno will be seen as just another way to enjoy God’s creation.