The overall view of the Abrahamic religious traditions (Christianity, Judaism, and Islam) has been a moralistic one towards human sexuality. Many religions are hung up on the acceptance, experience, and expression of sex, and often try to de-sexualize everything. Growing up Catholic, and attending 12 years of parochial school education, I was indoctrinated with a view that one’s sexual nature is to be never used except for procreation. I still remember the Eighth Grade “sex education” talk at St. Michael’s Grade School, by Monsignor McNamee. His talk (sermon) revolved around only touching our genitals for cleanliness and nothing else —-> a repressive unnatural message was implanted. Of course, he was saying what he was taught about taking a natural sexual need and turning it into an unnatural act. He was attempting to deny 13 year old boys the pleasure that comes with the natural act of masturbation. The girls had their own sexual instructions in a separate room with a nun. Growing up Catholic, it just seemed that the Catholic Church has a Virgin Mary complex and fascination because Christ is said to have been immaculately conceived without the act of sex. Catholism appears to equate chastity with holiness. In the Theory of Balanceology, I equate human sex and sexuality as a natural need that we should attempt to satisfy. A hero of mine, Bishop John Shelby Spong said, “guilt was attached to sexual desire and sexual activity, making sexual sins from the moment on the obsessive concern of the church. Thus it has ever been.” (1990)
