Sexing Up the Christian Conservative Religious Right

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Open a recent evangelical advice book and you will read comments like this one: “Some people have the mistaken notion that God is anti-sex . . . in fact, he’s outspokenly pro-sex! He invented it. What an incredible thought! Passionate sex was God’s idea.” Or: “Orgasm is an integral part of God’s design for sex.”

We’ve always known that sex sells. Now it’s being used to sell both God and the Republicans, dressing up the old repressive values in fishnet stockings and flouncy lingerie.

The religious right is enthusiastically asserting that, in contrast to general belief, it is far from sexually uptight. On the contrary, these conservatives are wildly pro-sex, provided it’s marital sex.

Evangelical writers even coined a catchy new term, soulgasm, to describe the joys that await the evangelical wife: incredible orgasms plus intimate emotional connection with the husband plus the presence of God. They detail how the husband can become a “Superman-lover” and make his wife come repeatedly and how breasts and penises can be most sensually caressed. Websites such as My Beloved’s Garden even offer Christian sex toys (Christian vibrators, Christian clit-ticklers, Christian jelly rings) and pride themselves on marketing these items without any offensive pornographic images.

Repression just isn’t a very good marketing tool. It’s the promise of pleasure (and lots of it) that is building a new following for the religious right. Even more insidious, though, is the fact that the evangelicals haven’t confined their erotic message to religion. Instead, they’re moving into the realm of psychological health, even taking over the language of New Age therapy.

Suddenly the mainstream conversation in women’s magazines and on daytime talk shows is not so much about physical danger as about self-esteem. People who sleep around have low self-esteem. Porn use is a sign of low self-esteem. Even the supposedly kinder, gentler homophobia that has replaced the ugly old disgust-mongering rides on the self-esteem theme. Children of gays and lesbians are likely, we are now told, to suffer from low self-esteem.

Abstinence education campaigns in the schools are an ominous example of the new secularized mental health strategy. Framing sexual conservatism as mental health promotion has become the main tactic for avoiding being taken to court by the American Civil Liberties Union for bringing religion into the public schools.

Websites and books that plead for premarital chastity contend that delaying the onset of sexual intercourse is a sign of heightened self-respect. Scholastic and athletic achievement are presented as mutually exclusive with sexual activity. Virgins, it is said, have “better life outcomes.” In 2006 the federal government required any program wishing to receive federal funding for sex education to include the “information” that adolescent sexual activity could lead to depression and suicide. In the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s 2008 report on youth and risk (seat belt use, alcohol, etc.), sex itself—not just unprotected sex—is treated as a risk behavior.

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