As a boy of the Fifties and Sixties era and raised in a Fundamentalist Christian church, there was no sex-education as such, but of course it was subjective. In our system, we were taught that good boys save themselves for the 'right' woman and respect all girls and women as ladies, unless they proved to us, by word or deed, that they weren't. (however they were supposed to do that...) As Americans we all, male and female, inherited the very aspects of the Puritans that got them run out of England and Europe and have adopted that as our National Morality and it's been fucking up generations of Americans forever after. This was one of my very early disagreements with 'Holy Mother Church.' "God" supposedly gave us this playground that feels wonderful to use and in complimentary sexes so that we can all play with each other's toys to mutual satisfaction, then in 'His Infinite Wisdom,' said, "Hand's off, boys and girls! You can only do that behind closed and locked doors and only in preset arrangements which will be confining and intolerable. Furthermore, if any of you ever step over the lines I'm drawing, then you will be ostracized from your community, then for good measure, you will be publicly thrown naked into an everlasting lake of fire to burn forever and ever, amen. Now! Aren't you glad I created you and gave you this playground to never, ever use? Praise Me!" I thought, "God is a BASTARD!!!" I used to pray that He'd take the testosterone drive away, or at least reduce it to more manageable levels. How could I be such a good Christian boy and still get a hard-on when I accidently (or not so accidentally) opened the Sears catalog to ladies foundation garments? It was torture! Oh yeah and we can't forget, it's an even bigger sin to "cast your seed on the ground." So, God gave us all sex organs then explicitly told us "No Sex! and No Masturbation either! Enjoy, people! I'm off to Vacation now at Hedonism, the Planet" See? God was a Bastard! Then I thought, "Well OK, He created Satan to be His fall-guy. If we're all gonna blame this on God and call him a Bastard over this, it might as well all be 'Satan's fault.'" But then, Satan started blaming God for it too! "It wasn't me! Go have all of the sex you want to have! I didn't say that, it was that Big-Assed Bastard up there on the Golden Throne!" So God gave us STD's with the idea that this would stop us and close the playground He'd created for us not to use, but it didn't work!! Why, you ask? The Trojans, in league with Satan, created balloons to fit over men's phallii, thereby stopping God in His tracks on the STD front! So God retaliated by starting the Hellenic wars and trying to burn the Trojan factory to the ground. We now call that the seige of Troy and boor young people to death making them read the Iliad and then the Oddyssey, but those stories are subterfuge, created by the Big Bastard  In The Sky to disguise the real nature of the thing.
We are all sexual beings. We all have the right as to how or whether or not to use our sexuality, and to engage in sexual behavior or not. As a kid, the church indoctrinated me to believe something their 'God' gave me was wrong and shameful. As an adult, I've learned to put them and that far behind me.

Thoughts on growing up Seventh Day Adventist

I wrote this in response to a particularly nasty individual who hadn't grown up in the Fundamentalist system that I had and wanted to argue with me about it.


"I think that what some on this site don't truly understand and in some cases even care about is that a lot of us - all of the ones raised in the sAdventist school system spent absolutely years hunched over a desk, being force-fed the White woman's drivel. (Ellen G. White, the purported Prophet[profit?] of the Seventh Day Adventist Cult). We became adept at reading 19th Century prose, as well as what was known in the 17th Century as "The King's English." We, every one of us, hated it all! We also were forced into a 19th Century mode of thinking, and writing, which we (on the site in question) have mostly all rejected, and have had varying degrees of success in overcoming. We were also indoctrinated (read 'brainwashed') in militantism as a tool. We were bent so as to use it as a 'Defense of the Faith,'  which made us different from everyone else. The other kids most like us were the Jewish children who had their own version of this same hell in their schuls and the Catholic kids who were force-fed Catechism. On the other hand... As children of a cult, we had a lot in common with the Mormon kids. All of the above were forbidden to us as 'The Enemy.' As a matter of fact, we were forbidden to them as well.

I revile the White woman, her husband, all of their compatriots and all that they stood for. Those people, even though long-dead, wrote the framework for the system that largely stole my childhood, certainly any joy I might have had. They created the system that forced me, personally, to restrict my thinking to a very small box for years. They were the force behind the system that tried to do these things at any rate, and succeeded well with most of my cohorts. I was lucky because I had recourse to a public library, which was actually forbidden to us according to 'Church Rules,' a stubborn streak that led me to defy my parents and leave their home at 13 and a native intelligence that questioned everything skeptically. Nonetheless, I was deeply, emotionally scarred by their heinous system.

I, and many of us in this group, spent agonizing years under this system and rebelled and ultimately rejected it. Then we had to learn from scratch how to think new thoughts and see new ways of doing and saying things. This too was emotional agony. Again, we have scars. We needed a forum where we can express the hurts we had, where we can laugh at the people who created that pain that we are still working to overcome. My compliments to Stephen Wold for creating this forum for us.

Some of you in this group have never experienced this. You may have experienced some parallel to it but not the same issues we had. Some of you may consider yourselves above us because you don't have those emotional scars that we do. You're not. You are, in fact, deluding yourselves and wasting our time. I would suggest that when we start talking or making fun of something deeply ingrained in the system that we grew up being tortured in, that you give it a pass and hopefully learn something. If you find it distasteful, then remember that so did we find it distasteful to be robbed of a large part of our childhood.