THE "SIN" OF FANTASISING ABOUT SEX
Preface
The Church forbids bad thoughts. That is you are not allowed to have deliberate
sexual or violent fantasies. Jesus said that adultery was a very serious sin and
to look at a married woman with desire was a big of a sin as adultery. And so
bad that it should make you wish your eye would be gouged out (Matthew 5). It’s
adultery in the heart. Yet the Church allows acting which involves rousing
violent emotions. Teenagers are blackmailed by the Church not to have wilful
sexual feelings or thoughts on pain of eternal damnation. To try and warp
sexuality and pervert it as the Church does is extremely damaging. When
sexuality is attacked so viciously one’s non-sexual relationships are impaired
for all relationships are sexual in the sense that it is a man or woman having
them. A system that teaches that to commit murder while being fairly insane and
therefore not guilty of a mortal sin is better than being fully sane and having
a wilful sexual desire for a few seconds is downright evil and any good it does
it not down to it but down to nature.
To write about nude women or sex involves much the same thing as thinking about
them so it must be a sin too. Even if you keep the picture out of your head the
picture is there subconsciously. Arousal is round the corner.
Some daring theologians have said that if you are a single person and are
reading a manual on sex out for educational purposes and you get aroused you
must stop reading. More logical theologians say you should not read such books
at all. They that if you are married or get married you will learn about sex by
practice and that is the way it should be. So you should not allow yourself any
deliberate sexual feelings outside of marriage.
SEX FANTASIES
The Church says that one reason sexual fantasy is so bad is because it leads to
forbidden and illicit sex.
Jesus said that any man who looks at a woman (he didn’t say married woman so it
is just woman in general for you can look at any woman) lustfully has committed
adultery with her as far as intention is concerned: “I say to you that everyone
who so much as looks at a woman with evil desire for her has already committed
adultery with her in his heart” (Matthew 5:28). He means that this man would
commit adultery with her and only the circumstances are stopping him. The man is
as bad as actually doing it for if he actually got her in the sack it would be
his will that would be making him do it. It is the will that counts in
determining if a sin has happened.
Our quote from Jesus implies that he forbids erotica, pornography, nudity – for
nudity causes lust - and sexual fantasy and masturbation. Adultery is a crime
that deserves death (Leviticus 20:10) and repudiation by the Lord. Fornication
is also condemned by the law of God in the Bible but the price is compulsory
marriage. An adulterer or fornicator cannot go to Heaven (1 Corinthians 6:9).
What Jesus’ assertion means is that all wilful sexual desire and thoughts are
forbidden outside of marriage. Falling in love must be a sin for it is about
sexual attraction. Masturbation must be wrong for it is accompanied by dirty
thoughts.
That the teaching banning sexual fantasy and masturbation is harshness is plain
from the fact that the Church has always permitted violent thoughts and desires
when evoked in the context of acting and television. You need to feel and think
violent to act violent. So sex is worse than violence! The man giving the
lustful look does not want to hurt the woman who attracts him at all so the
consensus among Christians who want to do what they like that this just forbids
malevolent lust is incorrect.
Even a man who loves his wife is treating her with lust when he has sex with her
because if she aged 60 years overnight he wouldn’t have sex with her again. It
is not about her being a person so much as being a sexy object.
The Church does not follow through its doctrine on the importance of decent
desires and thoughts at all. Jesus undoubtedly forbade going to violent or sexy
plays even if the violence and sex were not explicit for the imagination fills
in a lot of the gaps subconsciously at least and a desensitisation towards sin
always results. All that proves that the Church made up the confessional where
Catholics have to tell their sins to the priest for the sin of sinful thoughts
would mean you would need to pester the priest every day. Jesus could not have
established the sacrament with the belief he had that sin was rampant in every
person. The Church ignores Jesus in this for it knows he went too far and that
if it obeyed him nobody would join it.
Some people think that if an old man or old woman looks at sexual images it does
no harm for there is no risk of lust stirring up. But it is possible even if it
has not happened for years. If mortal sin is the worst evil then even the
slightest risk of committing it or being tempted to should not be taken. You
wouldn't take your eyes off your child purposely for ten seconds in a busy
shopping mall and would consider yourself evil if you did. So how evil are you
if you play dice with mortal sin?
The old man and old woman are still taking something from sin. They are looking
at images of people sinning and they imply approval for this sin merely by
having the pictures and looking at them. There would be no such images if nobody
looked at them. So they share in the sin of the immodest people in the images.
These images are to be abhorred as idols are to be abhorred according to the
Bible. Buying papers with page three girls in them is sinful.
The Church will say that if you fantasise about a person who does not exist
during masturbation it must be a sin for you are pretending it is a real person
and you think you are degrading a person.
Religion condemns sexual fantasies because they allegedly treat a person like a
thing to be used for sexual pleasure and not as a person. But when you intend to
receive sexual pleasure you are not thinking of a person as a person but of
pleasure so that would forbid all sex. Its idea of treating a person as a person
in sexual matters is sleeping only with a person you intend to spend the rest of
your life with. But it is not clear why this should be. It is like saying that
you should only kiss a person you will never leave. There is nothing about sex
that means you have to remain true to the person you have it with forever.
Sex is sometimes a desire and sometimes a need. Rights are based on needs. It is
agreed that a man has a right to marry meaning he has a need to. Love is as
necessary as food and drink and shelter to live. Sexual love then is a need
though sometimes it is not a need but a desire. For example, someone who is
lonely and needs sexual love has a need but somebody who has a partner he loves
but who desires somebody else has no need but just a sexual desire. It follows
from all this that the Church in its attitude to sex is setting itself up in
opposition to human rights. It does not care about the needs of priests, fertile
women who don’t want children, gays and I could go on forever. The Church might
say it cares about gays when it helps them to live without a relationship. But
to help people live out your standard of morality and not let them find their
own way by experimentation is not helping them but exploiting them.
RAPE FANTASIES
Is a man enjoying rape fantasies doing wrong even if it will not lead to any
violent behaviour towards actual women?
Christians say that even if he would not rape in real life he is intending to do
it in the fantasy world and in fantasy you show what you really want and could
do if you could control reality the way you do fantasy. For them, this man is as
bad inside as the man who really rapes. On the humanist level, this teaching
that equates a rape fantasist with a real rapist is deadly. It as good as tells
a man he may as well rape for real if he is going to fantasise about it.
Many say yes for the man will not know that his fantasies will not lead to
that. The man who enjoys violent films does not know that his enjoyment will not
lead to him becoming violent. But as long as he has no reason to think he can go
out of control, he is not doing wrong. And so it is with the man who fantasises
about rape.
Many say he distorts his relationships with women making it impossible for him
to relate to them.
Actual rapists are often so good at relationships with their girlfriends that
the girlfriends end up being unable to believe they are rapists. Saying it is
impossible to relate to women is strong and harsh. It could be difficult but not
impossible.
He is not being as good as the man who does not enjoy such stuff.
It is possible that actual violence against women may be just as easily triggered
by refraining from fantasies about violent rape. I would assert that if the man
suppresses his desire to fantasise about rape, he becomes unable to face the
desire and deal with it if it erupts uncontrollably. He becomes a pressure
cooker of evil. The Christian faith by making it a sin to fantasise about rape,
is clearly turning some men into rapists.
Is man enjoying rape fantasies doing wrong even if it is not intended to lead to
any violent behaviour towards actual women? The absence of the intention ensures
that he can fantasise without inciting himself to become a rapist.
SIN OF SEXUAL TEMPTATION
Immediately after condemning lustful looks, Jesus said, “If your right eye
serves as a trap to ensnare you or is an occasion for you to stumble and sin,
pluck it out” (Matthew 5:29). In other words, a man should be ready to suffer
like he plucked his eye out in order to avoid sexual temptation. And a man with
the roving eye should be happy to lose his eye in an accident – assuming Jesus
didn’t want a man to pluck his eye out. No wonder some of the saints ran a mile
if there was a woman about. (I wonder what the male saints who fancied men did?)
They battered and starved their bodies to root out sexual desire. The more a
person tries to repress sexual feelings the more they emerge and the more
powerful they grow. Forbidden fruits are definitely the sweetest. Jesus would
think nobody does enough to stop sexual temptation so their temptations then
would be their own fault.
Ezekiel 23 is incredibly pornographic and Jesus accepted it as scripture which
shows that Jesus had double-standards like the rest of us.
When to stir weak and harmless sexual desire is sinful it implies that sexual
desire is not bad because it is harmful but just because it is sexual desire.
Weak sexual desire that you don’t have enough desire to carry out hardly
degrades the object of attraction and is something you do for yourself. Since
men need to get aroused to have erections and produce children and women do not
the implication is that women should not seek or enjoy sexual pleasure. In fact,
women believing and being allowed to believe they should like sex is a recent
thing. Before, the Church could not stomach women liking sex and discouraged
enjoyment even in marriage. The woman was expected to lie back and think of
having another baby for God and the pope.
The Church says that involuntary desires and temptations towards sexual sin are
not sins. But it also says these desires are still bad which is why they are
sins if deliberately entertained. So it follows that if you would rather be dead
by a decree of God (who has the right to take your life) than alive to
experience these temptations, only then can you escape the experience unscathed
by sin. In other words, "I am a tempted being and I'd consent to destruction if
it were God's will. God has the right to destroy me if my temptations make me
potentially dangerous." The desires and temptations are not sins if you have
that attitude. But you would refuse to consent if God wanted to take your life
to rescue you from these temptations, then you consent to be alive for the
temptations. You are choosing to be tempted which makes you a sinner. You are
then no different from a person who entertains the temptations except you are
sneakier which is worse. So unless you love God perfectly which no person can
manage, if temptation does not cause you to sin one way it will another.
The Church says masturbation is sinful and is objectively seriously wrong and
very evil. However, the less control you have over it the less sin you commit.
Speaking from experience, though the Church claims that wet dreams are not
sinful and are good and normal and healthy, this is not the message you get from
the ban on masturbation. If pleasure and ejaculation should always be open to
creating new life as the Church says then it is certainly not good and therefore
not normal – though common – and not healthy. You don’t say having involuntary
orgasms in public is healthy and normal – even if it were happening to most men.
So you should feel bad about wet dreams. You should feel dirty. God could have
made us so that wet dreams occur a lot less than they do but he didn’t. If God
is good then though the person swears it is involuntary his sinful nature and
self-will have had something to do with it so wet dreams are always sinful. To
deny this is to say that God is a sinner for he causes the wet dreams – when it
is not the person it is him. I do wish the Church would admit it hurts young men
who had wet dreams and do something about this. If a gay man was turned on by a
workmate involuntarily the Church would still require him to leave his job for
his job is giving him bad thoughts. He might not be in control of the thoughts
but he is free to prevent the opportunity for the thoughts to present
themselves. The ban on sexual desire has many cruel implications.
The Church says that masturbation is objectively bad. Just as you would feel
terrible if your hands took a life of their own and somebody gets strangled to
death, so you should feel bad if you are subject to involuntary masturbation.
You should abominate the pleasure. The teaching that masturbation is only a sin
if there is any consent given to it is not much of a comfort.
Finally
The Catholic Church should face stern opposition from psychologists who should
not allow it to hurt people and lie to them over sex fantasy which is a
wholesome and natural thing.
WORKS CONSULTED
A Catechism of Christian Doctrine, Catholic Truth Society, Westminster, 1985
A Teenager’s Answer to “Shall I Go to the Prom?” Sherry Burgess, Guardian of
Truth Publications, Kentucky
A Work of the Flesh: Sexualism, Weldon E Warnock, Guardian of Truth
Publications, Kentucky
Believing in God, PJ McGrath, Wolfhound Press, Dublin, 1995
Biblical Dictionary and Concordance of the New American Bible, Confraternity of
Christian Doctrine, Washington DC, 1971
Contraception and Chastity, Elizabeth Anscombe, Catholic Truth Society, London
Contraception, John T Noonan, Jr., A Mentor-Omega Book, New American Library,
New York, 1965
Courtship and the Dangers of Petting, John R Rice, Sword of the Lord,
Murfreesboro, Tennessee, 1943
Divorce, John R Rice, Sword of the Lord, Murfreesboro, 1946
God Is Not Great, The Case Against Religion, Christopher Hitchens, Atlantic
Books, London, 2007
Eunuchs for the Kingdom of Heaven, Uta Ranke Heinmann, Penguin, London, 1991
Moral Questions, Bishops Conference, Catholic Truth Society, London, 1971
New Catholic Encyclopedia, The Catholic University of America and the
McGraw-Hill Book Company, Inc., Washington, District of Columbia, 1967
Pornography – A Psychiatrist’s Verdict, Melvin Anchell MD, Liguori Publications,
Missouri
Preparing for a Mixed Marriage, Irish Episcopal Conference, Veritas, Dublin,
1984
Rediscovering Gay History, John Boswell, Gay Christian Movement, UK, 1982
Rome has Spoken, A Guide to Forgotten Papal Statements and How They Have Changed
Through the Centuries, Maureen Fiedler and Linda Rabben (Editors), Crossroad
Publishing, New York, 1998
Scattered Vows, Exodus From the Priesthood, David Rice, Blackstaff Press,
Belfast, 1990
Sex & Marriage A Catholic Perspective, John M Hamrogue C SS R, Liguori,
Illinois, 1987
Shall We Dance? Dick Blackford, Guardian of Truth Publications, Kentucky
Son of Joseph, The Parentage of Jesus, Geoffrey Parrinder, T&T Clark, Edinburgh,
1992
The Emancipation of a Freethinker, Herbert Ellsworth Cory, The Bruce Publishing
Company, Milwaukee, 1947
“The Lord Hateth Putting Away!” and Reflections on Marriage and Divorce The
Committee of the Christadelphian, Birmingham, 1985
The Pope and Contraception, Brenda Maddox, Counterblasts 18, Chatto & Windus,
London 1991
Vicars of Christ, Peter de Rosa, Corgi, London, 1993
The WWW
How to Fight the Religious Right, Brian Elroy McKinley
http://elroy.net/ehr/fighttheright.html
BIBLE VERSION USED
The Amplified Bible