Christian Right leaders and their followers are often quite prurient when it comes to the discussion of sex. (This prurience sometimes extends to sexual activity itself, but that’s another story). I well remember attending a talk at which the highly ’spiritual’ speaker treated us all, including a number of young teenagers, to a detailed description of physical homosexuality. The speaker was most enthusiastic and the sensation of delighted ‘disgust’ running through the audience was palpable.

Sometimes it’s hard to distinguish between an almost morbid fascination with sex and a simple matter of ‘too much information’. Bobbie Houston, wife of Hillsong Church’s Brian Houston, once produced a set of tapes called ‘Kingdom Women Love Sex’ in which she gave detailed tips on how to keep your husband happy. Most of it was excruciating Pentecostal nonsense:

When you are doing what is correct in God there is a protection over your life. Like - hello! - it is just there. So it is a very powerful thing. Amen. Yeah, fully.

But getting down to brass tacks:

[G]irls, pelvic floor exercises - can you believe I am saying this? - you know, I have heard that orgasm is not as strong if you are really sloppy in that area. (Greg Bearup ‘Praise the Lord and pass the chequebook’, Melbourne Age Good Weekend, 25 Jan. 2003, 19)

What reminded me of this was an article called ‘Body and soul’ by Mia Freedman, which appeared in the Sunday Age of 6 Aug. 2006. The focus was on an American evangelical family named Simpson - father Joe, a former Baptist minister, mother Tina and daughters Jessica and Ashlee.

As a child, Jessica displayed some singing talent and her parents steered her towards becoming a Christian pop star:

Then they hit a roadblock. Jessica’s breasts. ‘In the Christian market, she was considered a problem because she was so voluptuous,’ Joe explained.

This in itself says something about the Christian pop scene, but anyway the difficulty was easily resolved. Jessica’s parents simply reoriented her towards the secular pop scene and at 17 she landed a contract with Columbia records. Ex-Rev. Joe was euphoric and told the world about it:

[Jessica's] chest is ahead of her by about two or three feet … If you put her in a T-shirt or you put her in a bustier, she’s sexy in both. She’s got double Ds! You can’t cover those suckers up!

Of course, owing to her Southern Baptist pedigree Jessica had to remain a virgin, but as soon as she got married, father Joe was right back in the act:

She waited for marriage and now she’s happily married and having sex every day. Now she’s going crazy.

Jessica herself recently came to the party, boasting that her (surgically-enhanced) sister Ashlee had been offered $US4 million to pose nude for Playboy.

Luckily, we in Australia have Christian gurus like Fred Nile and Peter Stokes to remind us of the cause of all this sex trouble. Here’s Peter:

… [T]oday a man can hardly turn a corner, open a paper or watch a movie without the exposed female body hitting him in the eye … Micro skirts, skin-tight tops etc. are common not only when socialising at night but also in the workplace. Women pose for lewd pictures and advertisements. They also appear naked in movies and table-top dancing to attract men. (’Recovery from the influence of pornography’, Salt Shakers Newsletter, Mar. 1996, 7)

Yep, in the long run it all gets back to Eve.

Filed in: Sexuality