Editor's note: The following is adapted from an article by Dr. Cherry Lee. It's reproduced here in response to feedback we've gotten from Dr. Cherry Lee's materials, which like many of these articles, is designed to spark thought-provoking debate.

Major Problems Develop When Attitudes
and Laws Lag Decades Behind Reality—

Confronting Our Archaic Sexual Views

Our sexual mores date back a few centuries, and were originally codified into Jewish law primarily to protect racial purity and church property. These scriptural laws were subsequently perpetuated by Christian doctrines.

A lot has changed in the intervening centuries. It was almost a half-century ago that effective birth control came on the scene and pulled the rug out from under the justification for most of the original sexual injunctions.

The use of effective birth control was forbidden in a marriage, even when it wasn't possible to adequately feed, cloth, and educate additional children. Today, the ban on effective birth control and the resulting fear of pregnancy, drives a wedge between millions of couples, and, especially in some Latin American and Asian countries, causes men to look outside marriage for sexual satisfaction.

Within the last few decades incurable diseases such as AIDS and herpes have burst onto the scene, and although safe sex measures could remove much of the danger, religious factions persist in opposing their use. These views influence political thinking and the financing of world organizations that could relieve untold suffering.

Religionists who say that, "God's laws as set down in scripture are eternal and unchanging," need to make a list of the scores of religious injunctions in the Old and New Testaments that are disregarded or are routinely "reinterpreted." [Editor's note: Some of these can be found here.]

During one time in early church history adultery was only applicable to women, while at the same time prostitution was seen as being necessary. At one point in church history a married couple could be burned at the stake if they were caught having sex with the women on top.

A Strong Anti-Woman Bias

The strong Judeo-Christian anti-woman that we've seen throughout the centuries bias is clearly reflected in these scriptures.

Although we might think that this view has long been relegated to ancient history, consider this quote from the Rev. Pat Robertson, one of today's most influential Christian fundamentalist evangelists:

The Feminist agenda is not about equal rights for women. It is about a socialist, anti-family political movement that encourages women to leave their husbands, kill their children, practice witchcraft, destroy capitalism, and become lesbians.

And just recently The Southern Baptist Convention, the nation's largest Protestant decision-making body added to its core teachings that a woman must be subject to her husband in all things. Plus, a woman is not to have authority over a man—a concept that could even now reap havoc in the workplace. 

The Mindset Trap

However, the years the centuries-old sexual prohibitions sunk in to the collective consciousness to the point that sex became "evil," "dirty" and "ungodly." This "baggage" has convoluted the essence of sex. Street words for sexual intercourse connote wrongdoing and degradation.

Anti-sex attitudes start at the earliest possible age. Parents clearly convey their own feelings about human sexuality by saying such things as, "Don't touch yourself there," and quickly pulling their child's hands away. These guilt-fostering, anti-sex attitudes persist for a lifetime.

Many people object to witnessing a mother breast-feeding her infant in public. They feel we must cover this "inappropriateness," even though it represents sustenance for "the miracle of new life."

In 2003, a court in Dallas, Texas arrested a couple for taking photos of their baby while breast feeding. A photo lab saw the photos and called the police. They were charged with "lewd exhibition of a portion of the female breast." In addition, they were charged for inducing a child "to engage in sexual conduct." Although the charges were later dropped, the couple's two children were taken from them by welfare officials. -The Week, Oct. 31, 2003

The act that initiates this "miracle of birth" is considered inappropriate to the point of being criminal to depict. At the same time, graphic violence and killing are commonplace in movies, TV, and video games.

In short, we have succeeded taking an act that should represent the most loving and enjoyable acts possible between two human beings and turned it into something degrading.

Strangely, by condemning our sexual inclinations we have succeeded in creating a bit of an obsession with sex, The result has been a convolution of this powerful force into aberrant, antisocial sexual behaviors. By relegating sex into the social gutter, we have pushed it into the province of organized crime, along with drugs and social violence. The promise to "clean up filth" has been a part of the platform of more than one successful politician—including Adolf Hitler.

This is a new century. It's time we confront the our centuries-old, outmoded sexual views that include prohibitions against birth control and safe sex—views that lie at the base of the misery, heartache, and death by starvation that we see in the world each day.

By any rational definition, this isn't "morality."

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