Free Sex & God: How Religion Distorts Sexuality by Darrel Ray

was found to have abused his own children from a young age. A key woman had a child that was not fathered by her husband, but by one of the ministers. Another long-serving and upstanding “family-values” leader was “exposed” and pushed out of the church for homosexual behavior.
    It is time to acknowledge that sex is happening all the time among church members, but it is hidden, secret and all too often exploitative or abusive. Three statistics bear this out:
In the United States, the most religious areas of the nation have the highest divorce rates.
One of the best predictors of child abuse and sexual abuse is the religiosity of the parents. The more religious the parents, the more likely they are to abuse their children. 41 ,
The states with the highest porn use are Utah and Mississippi. 42 Mormon Utah tops all states in Internet porn in each of four different measures. Generally speaking, the more religiously conservative U.S. states and zip codes have the highest porn use by a small margin. In the most religious areas, the only time porn use drops is on Sunday, but it more than catches up the rest of the week.
    Could these three statistics be related to religiously dammed-up sexual desire? Could these be proxies for the effects of religious sexual repression? It seems to point in that direction.
    Now let’s look at how religious sexual guilt impacts women more stongly than men.
Women, the Guilty Sex
    Gender differences are evident in infants with respect to emotional expression, social interaction and social contagion. That is, infant girls are more attentive than boys to the emotional states of their mothers and those of other children. This heightened sensitivity to the emotional environment seems to be genetically based. Throughout life, women interact more, talk more and listen more than boys and men. Women are generally more tuned into the emotional environment than men. This seems to be true at all ages and in all cultures.
    This general tendency for women to be sensitive to the emotional environment means they imbibe emotional messages and cultural ideas more rapidly and easily than men. Religion takes advantage of this tendency by creating guilt messages that are uniquely targeted at women.
    All major religions put most of the responsibility for sexual morality on women. Religions teach that women should remain chaste and should control and hide their sexuality so men will not be tempted. Once a woman is infected with ideas of chastity, modesty and sexual morality, she is more susceptible to guilt when these are violated or she imagines that they have been violated. If the woman “gives in” to the man, it is her fault. If she tempts a man, it is her fault. Some religions even blame the woman if she is raped.
    Sarah Hargreaves, a rape counselor and group facilitator, writes:
    Women agonize over Matthew 6:14-16, “For if you forgive men when they sin against you, your heavenly Father will also forgive you. But if you do not forgive men their sins, your Father will notforgive your sins.” They torture themselves trying to forgive the person who humiliated and terrorized them. Or worse, yet, they stifle their genuine emotions because they believe forgiveness is the magic cure for fixing their anger and resentment. If they cannot forgive their attacker something is wrong with them and they will not be able to heal. These are frankly crazy ideas because it assumes the rapist is worthy of forgiveness. 43
    With this intense programming, women experience religious sexual guilt more often and more strongly than men. They are encouraged to get relief by going to their religion. They are told, it is their duty to forgive or they are not worthy of Jesus.
    These religious ideas are the ultimate distortion. Women can pray, attend services, go to mass, do Bible study, go to women’s religious meetings, but the fact remains, they are guilty of being a woman. Just as Eve was guilty of the “fall of man,” all women