Finally, these anti-sexual attitudes that so thoroughly permeate our culture cause
neurosis, broken marriages and crime.
"Dr. Robert J. McAllister of Catholic University reported that of
100 hospitalized priests he had examined, 77% had been
mentally ill as seminarians," (Fact: Nov-Dec, 1965, "The
Psychopathology of Priests and Nuns," p. 26)
This indicates that they chose a life of celibacy because they were already mentally
ill.
So apparently, the Church attracts and cultivates the mentally ill; but when they
are cured, they leave it!
In one or another of the cultures of the world, nearly every type of
sexual behavior has been condemned, while in other cultures the
same activities have been considered desirable sources of
pleasure and socially valuable. Behavior which Is accepted by the
culture does not generate psycholgic conflicts in the individual or
unmanageable social problems. The same behavior, censored,
or condemned, tabooed, or criminally punished in the next
culture, may generate guilt and neurotic disturbances in the non-
conforming individual and serious conflict with the social
organism. This seems to be the source of most of the (mental)
disturbances in American males and females .... (Kinsey, op. cit.,
1953, p. 320)
There is a prevalent opinion that these youths should ignore their
sexual responses and should abstain from sexual activities prior
to marriage - which means, for the average male and female in
this country today, until they are somewhere between twenty-one
and twenty-three years of age.
Of course, those who go into the professions must delay it many more years!
But neither the law nor the custom can change the onset of
adolescence, nor the development of the sexual capacities of
teen-age youths. Consequently they continue to be aroused
sexually, and to respond to the point of orgasm. There is no
evidence that it is possible for any male who is adolescent, and
not physically incapacitated, to get along without some kind of
regular outlet until old age finally reduces his responsiveness.
While there are many females who appear to get along without
such an outlet during their teens, the chances that a female can
adjust sexually after marriage seem to be materially improved if
she has experienced orgasm at an earlier age.
The law specifies the right of the married adult to have regular
intercourse, but it makes no provision whatsoever for
approximately half of our population, which is sexually mature but
unmarried. Many youths and older unmarried males and females
become seriously disturbed because the only sources of sexual
outlet available to them are either legally or socially disapproved.
(ibid., p. 14)
Between one-third and one-half of all unmarried females over
twenty years of age have never had a completed sexual
experience. This existence of such a large group of females who
are not having any sexual outlet poses a problem of some social
importance. Many of them were sexually responsive enough, but
they were inhibited, chiefly by their moral training, and had not
allowed themselves to respond to the point of orgasm. Many of
them had become psychologically disturbed as a result of this
blockage of their sexual responses. All of these females were
limited in their understanding of the nature of sexual responses
and orgasm, and many of them seemed unable to comprehend
what sexual activity could mean to other persons. They
disapproved of the sexual activities of females who had high
rates of outlet, and they were particularly incapable of
understanding the rates of response which we have reported for
the males in the population.
When such frustrated or sexually unresponsive females attempt
to direct the behavior of other persons, they may do
considerable damage. (ibid., p. 526)
In many instances the law, in the course of punishing the offender
does more damage to more persons than was ever done by the
individual in his illicit sexual activity.
In its attempt to protect itself from serious sex offenders society
has threatened the security of most of its members who are old
enough to perform sexually. The efficiency of many individuals
and their integration into the social organization is, thereby,
seriously impaired. (ibid., p. 20)
What are some of the things our society officially condemns? Well, it's
hysterically opposed to pornography. But what are the facts?
One of the commonest considerations at the arrest of a sex
offender is whether or not he had pornography in his
possession. Since only positive cases are reported, that is,
cases wherein pornography was found, an intimate connection
between sex offenses and pornography has been assumed.
[But] when one reads in a newspaper that obscene or
pornographic materials were found in an individual's
possession, one should interpret this information to mean that
(1) the individual was probably a male of an age between
puberty and senility, (2) that he had a fairly high degree in
intelligence and education and (3) that he [therefore] derived
pleasure from thinking about sex. No further inferences are
warranted. With great assurance many persons state that
exposure to erotica and pornography leads to moral decay and
sex offenses. The poorly educated are apt to be much more
pragmatic and require something more concrete in order to
respond. Thus an uneducated male from the lower
socio-economic stratum may say, 'Why get worked up about a
picture? You can't do nothing with a picture.'
Since the majority of sex offenders are not well educated, their
responsiveness to pornography is correspondingly less and
cannot be a consequential factor in their sex offenses....
(Kinsey, Sex Offenders, 1965, p.p. 673-6, 404)
In New Jersey, a questionnaire was sent to 934 psychiatrists and psychologists.
They were asked whether they had ever had any normal patients who were
provoked to antisocial acts by exposure to sexually stimulating literature. Over
ninety-five percent said no. Only 5.7% said yes. But nearly all agreed that the
effects of censorship were infinitely more harmful than the pornography could
ever be. Sixty-seven percent said pornographic material had served as a vicarious
outlet, thus minimizing antisocial behavior. And several recommended that
"sexually stimulating materials might help people to develop a normal sexual
drive.” (The Independent, Jan. 1967, p. 12)
Another thing that unhinges the mind of Christians is nudity, which they call
"obscene," and "indecent exposure." But what are the facts?
"The fear of observing the nude human body constitutes one of the most curious
phenomena in human history." (Kinsey, op. cit., 1953, p. 366)
Anatomic differences are of considerable interest to most
children. Their curiosity is whetted by the fact that they have in
many instances been forbidden to expose their own nude
bodies and have not had the opportunity to see the nude
bodies of other children. Their curiosity is especially
stimulated by the fact that they have been cautioned not to
expose their own genitalia, or to look at the genitalia of other
children.
On the other hand, we have the histories of children who were
raised in homes that accepted [nudism] .... In such groups the
children were still interested in examining the bodies of other
children, although they soon came to accept the nudity as
commonplace and did not react traumatically, as they would
have if nudity were taboo. (ibid., p. 111)
Early attitudes in respect to nudity, to anatomic differences
between the sexes, to the reproductive function, to verbal
references to sex ... are developed at very early ages. When
the child becomes older these early attitudes may influence
its reactions to sexual manifestations in its own body, and its
capacity to meet sexual situations without serious
disturbance. (ibid., p. 16)
For example, in the sample of sex offenders, those who had been prevented
from seeing female genitalia before age eleven tended to become either
homosexuals or peeping toms. (Kinsey, op. cit., 1965, p. 472)
In aggressive boys, mothers were typically non-permissive of
any overt expressions of sexuality. The majority of parents
showed considerable confusion and lack of perspicacity in
their handling of their children's sexual curiosity. Many failed to
give any information to the child. Others gave lip service to
more enlightened views ... [but acted otherwise]. And training
in sex attitudes and behavior commences even before verbal
communication is possible. Early conditioning, for example,
through prompt removal of the child's hands from his genitals,
[or spanking him] insistence on 'modesty' [meaning:
concealment of the genitals] and control of early sex curiosity,
play a large part in determining basic sexual attitudes. (Albert
Bendara, Adolescent Aggression, 1959, p. 185)
In the Kinsey study of sex offenders, "The vast majority reported that most of
their early knowledge of sexual behavior and reproduction came from their
contemporaries, their friends, and acquaintances." (p. 469) Christian attitudes
would not allow them to see real human bodies; Christian attitudes would not
allow them to see photographs of human bodies; and Christian attitudes would
not allow their parents to freely discuss sexual behavior; so they acquired a fund
of misinformation from other children. And they eventually became sex criminals.
There is even an implication that many sex murders are committed partly to
enable the man to thoroughly inspect a female body just once in his life without
interference.
There is no doubt that after rendering his victim unconscious
and helpless [this typical sex-murderer] then took his time
inspecting the entire body, taking note that she was virginal
and a 'good girl.' (Dr. J. Paul DeRiver, The Sexual Criminal,
p. 28)
And of course our society officially opposes any kind of socio-sexual experience
outside of marriage: homosexuality, premarital, and extramarital heterosexuality,
even petting. But what are the facts?
As Dr. Albert Ellis has repeatedly emphasized, "Of all sexual perversions, the
most inexplicable and the most harmful is chastity."
If we wish to promote normal heterosexuality, our social
institutions charged with the training of youth should facilitate
and not impede such development. (DeRlver, op. clt., p. 183)
Religious and legal codes, the psychologic and social
sciences, psychiatric and other clinical theory, and public
attitudes in general, agree in extolling heterosexual coitus as
the most desirable, the most mature, and the socially most
acceptable type of sexual activity. Simultaneously, however,
the religious and legal codes and much clinical theory
condemn such activity when it occurs outside of marriage
and thereby... negate all of these claims concerning the
desirability of coitus. Such conflicting appraisals of similar if
not identical acts often constitute a source of considerable
disturbance in the psycho-sexual development of American
youth.
The girl who has spent her premarital years withdrawing from
physical contacts and tensing her muscles in order to avoid
response has acquired a set of nervous and muscular
co-ordinations which she does not unlearn easily after
marriage. (Kinsey, op. cit., 1953, p.p. 285, 172)
When there are long years of abstinence and restraint, and
an avoidance of physical contacts and emotional responses
before marriage, acquired inhibitions may do such damage
to the capacity to respond that it may take some years to get
rid of them after marriage, if indeed they are ever dissipated
.... While premarital experience in orgasm attained in
masturbation and petting also shows a positive correlation
with the capacity to reach orgasm in marital coitus, there is
no sort of experience which shows a higher positive
correlation with orgasmic success in marriage than coitus
before marriage. (ibid., p. 330)
It has been an axiom of psychiatry for the last 70 years that in nine out of ten
cases, marital incompatibility can be traced to sexual incompatibility. And when
you have a frigid woman, you most assuredly have sexual incompatibility!
As Masters and Johnson verified with scientific instrumentation, "... obvious
female response increases the male's subjective pleasure during coitus." (p. 138)
And in fact, "... any sense of rejection [such as annoyance or boredom on the
part of the female] impairs the physiologic effectiveness of his response." (Human
Sexual Response, 1966, p. 301)
Many males are disappointed after marriage to find that their
wives are not responding regularly and are not as interested
in having as frequent sexual contact as they, the males, would
like; and a great many of the married females are seriously
disturbed when they find they are not enjoying sexual
relations as they had anticipated they would. A great many of
the divorces which occur within the first year or two of
marriage are the product of these discrepancies between the
sexual backgrounds of the average female and the average
male. It is not surprising that so many find it difficult to adjust.
It is more surprising that so many are ever able to work out a
satisfactory adjustment. (Kinsey, op. cit., 1953, p. 520)
Thus far we have shown what the religious anti-sexual doctrines are, how they
are reflected in our cultural attitudes and how fallacious these attitudes are. And
now what are the final results?
The religious factors were of considerable importance in
determining the ages at which the females in the sample had
first responded to orgasm. For instance, the females who
were devoutly Catholic had, on an average, not reached their
first orgasm until some six or seven years after the females
who were only nominally Catholic. There were some 21% of
the devoutly Catholic females who had not reached orgasm
by thirty-five years of age, even though most of them were
then married and regularly having coitus in their marriages. It
was not more than 2% of the nominal, non-religious Catholics
who had not reached orgasm by that age. (ibid., p. 515)
The differences among devout and inactive Protestants and Jews are about the
same - which proves that there are no essential differences among them in their
actual attitudes. What matters is how strongly the individual believes them.
There seems no doubt that the moral restraints which lead a
female to avoid sexual contacts before marriage, and to
inhibit her responses when she does make contacts may also
affect her capacity to respond erotically later in her life. We
shall not solve the problem of female 'frigidity' until we realize
that it is a man-made situation, and not the product of innate
physiologic incapacities in those females. (ibid., p. 516)
The data seem to indicate that all women are physiologically capable of
orgasmic response, but "Its achievement in our culture is more dependent on
psychosocial acceptance of sexuality than any other factor." (Masters and
Johnson, op. cit., p. 139) And as we have seen abundantly illustrated, Western
culture, under the influence of Judeo-Christian concepts, has never accepted
sexuality as such in an approving manner and as a positive good, much to be
desired, as in many other cultures. Here, it has been accepted only grudgingly,
as original sin and a necessary evil - certainly not to be enjoyed for its own
sake, but only tolerated for purposes of procreation.
In nearly every age-group, and in nearly all the samples that we
have from Protestant, Catholic, and Jewish females, smaller
percentages of more devout and larger percentages of the
inactive groups had responded to orgasm after marriage.
(Klnsey, op. cit., 1953, p. 529)
Church leaders often fear that Christianity is not having very much influence on
society. Well it's had this much influence: Of all unmarried females in America,
nearly one half had never experienced orgasm and had no concept of the
meaning of sexual response and its significance to others. Among married
women, 10 to 20 percent had never experienced orgasm - 20% within the first
year of marriage, dropping to 10% after 15 years of marriage - this 10%, of
course, being the most religiously devout. (ibid., p.p. 527-529)
Frigidity results in male impotence, leading to frustration and hostility on the part
of both partners; and this seething vindictiveness which underlies so many
marriages is enough by itself to create social havoc. But in one out of every three
marriages these antagonisms culminate in divorce; and divorce, as is well known,
contributes to juvenile delinquency. And juvenile delinquency often continues
into adult crime.
According to the President's Crime Commission Report (1967), the U.S. led the
world in crimes committed per 100,000 population. There were 200 murders a
week. In 1966, twice as many were murdered in the U.S. as were killed in Viet
Nam. Rape and assault had doubled in the last 30 years. A majority of these
crimes were committed by persons under 21; and of these, a very large portion
were sex-offenses.
Does that mean Billy Graham is right? Sex is getting out of hand, and we need to
suppress it even more? Not at all. He and his kind created the situation in the
first place!
The Kinsey Institute is emphatic in insisting that about two-thirds of all those in
prison for sex crimes should not even be there! Because what they did should
not be considered an offense. They were behaving in perfectly normal fashion
for human beings, but they got caught by sick Christians who happen to control
the power structure! Recent
...sex laws [now] make felonies of some acts which were never
penalized or which were treated as minor misdemeanors until a
few years ago. ( ibid., p. 18)
...current sex laws are unenforced and are unenforceable
because they are too completely out of accord with the realities
of human behavior. Such a high proportion of the population is
involved in sexual activities which are prohibited by the law of
most of the states that it is inconceivable that the present laws
could be administered in any fashion that even remotely
approached systematic and complete enforcement. (ibid., p. 20)
They recommended the abolition of all obscenity and sex laws except those involving
force, public display, and those involving children - with "minor" set at the reasonable
biological age of 16, instead of the absurd 21! The closing recommendation of the
volume on Sex Offenders is, "What two or more consenting adults do sexually in
private should not be governed by statute law." (p. 875)
On the one hand we stress and encourage the development of
heterosexual behavior - the literature, the advertisements, the
movies, everything relentlessly dins in the order: be sexually
attractive, find romance, get a mate. On the other hand we strive
to prevent heterosexual coitus, the logical end-product of the
social campaign for heterosexuality, in any situation other than
legal marriage. We tread the accelerator and brake
simultaneously; this may result in the desired speed, but it is
rough on the mechanism. If early marriage were feasible for
everyone, our position would be more tenable, but our complex
civilization demands that marriage be delayed. (ibid., p. 108)
So one reason we have so much "crime" is because the Billy Grahams of America
have created so many ridiculous laws, that make "crimes" out of normal behavior.
Another way Christianity has contributed to crime is this:
A canon of the post-Freudian psychologies has been that
suppression of sexuality may cause an outcropping of violence
and sadism. A literary parallel is the allegedly puritan era of
Queen Victoria and the concomitant flowering of sadomasochistic
erotica. (ibid., p. 668)
The findings of this volume and all others available seem to support that hypothesis.
In the Kinsey Report on Sex Offenders it was found that in every kind of sex crime,
except one, the man had grown up in a sexually repressive atmosphere; he had little
heterosexual experience during adolescence, and he tended to be dogmatically
moralistic and puritanical.
We noted earlier how eroticism is equated by Christians with sin, pain and horror. Is
it really hard to understand, then, why there is so much sadistic brutality in our
culture? If you ring a bell each time you feed a dog, he develops a conditioned
response: he identifies the bell with hunger, so that when he hears the bell he feels
hunger and begins to salivate. So too, if a child is taught to associate sexual pleasure
with pain, horror and disgust, it therefore follows that the more painful, horrible, or
disgusting an act the more sexually satisfying it is to him. And when one reads the
literature of sadomasochism, such as Paychopathia Sexualis, and the works of
DsSade and Masoch, it becomes obvious that each act is carefully calculated to be
as outrageous as possible. And by the testimony of the perpetrators themselves,
committing these atrocities is the only way they can achieve sexual satisfaction.
The only exception to this personality type was the simple rapist (as opposed to the
child-rapist, and the sadistic rapist). He was not necessarily puritanical, he was just
stupid - one who took what he wanted when he wanted it, without enough
intelligence to think through the consequences. But even in this case, the offenders
claimed that if there had been more accessible outlets available, such as prostitutes,
they would not have resorted to rape.
The sex murderer, however, reverts to type. The typical sadists and mass
murderers - those who pick out victims at random and scatter their bodies over
several states - have usually been raised in a harsh, punitive home, where affection
is not displayed and sexual activity severely suppressed. (De River, op. cit., p. 226)
"There is considerable evidence that sexual deviation may be the result of repressive
attitudes in the home." And the violent sex offender is most likely to be male, single,
white, under 30, low IQ and education, Catholic, and sexually repressed. (Dr.
Benjamin Karpman, The Sexual Offender and His Offenses, p.p. 97, 39)
Finally, oppressive sexual doctrines and social attitudes create not only sex offenses,
but violence in general.
Doctors Stan and Inge Hegeler, in The ABZ of Love, say that the Scandinavian
countries have the most liberal sexual attitudes in the world, and also the lowest
crime rate in Europe. According to Kinsey, America has the most harsh sex laws in
the world; and according to the President's Crime Commission, we also have the
highest crime rate in the world. In Scandinavia, the age of consent is 16, and
deviations are discouraged simply by encouraging normal heterosexuality. Any girl
of 16 or over can get contraceptives, and premarital relations are legally and socially
acceptable. In fact, they have had, for many years, the same sex laws as urged by
the Kinsey Institute. And we should also add that they were able to adopt these laws
because they are the most non-Christian countries in Europe. Result: In
Copenhagen, a city the size of Houston, there was one murder in 1965. In Houston,
the heart of the Bible Belt, two hundred and one!
In spite of the general opinion that religion creates 'good' conduct,
and irreligion causes delinquency, the statistical data available tend
to prove the contrary almost to the point of a paradox ...
Strange as it may seem, almost 99% of all delinquents in court and in correctional
institutions report membership in some (Christian) denomination. And since church
affiliation is less than 50% of the U.S. population, that means that 50% of the
juvenile population commits 99% of the crimes. Catholics committed 60%, and
Protestants the remaining 39%, though Catholics are a much smaller percentage of
the population - but tending to be more devout.
If it is assumed that [the Christian] religion does have an affective
relation to behavior, it appears from the above data that the
non-religious display non-delinquent behavior, and the more
religious, the more criminal. (Walter E. Lunden, Dept. Of
Economics and Sociology, Iowa State U. of Science and
Technology, Statistics on Delinquents and Delinquency, 1964, p.
154)
The following statement appears in the summary of The Psychology of Sex
Offenders, by Albert Ellis, PhD, & Ralph Brancale, M.D., (p. 91)
"Our sex laws must be overhauled, redefined and rewritten, so that only those sex
acts which are truly inimical of individual and public welfare be considered as legal
offenses."
Sex education must be vastly increased and bettered over its
present sorry state. All important private and public agencies -
including the home, the school, the state, and the church - must
foster at a very early age in the child's life, scientific, objectively
stated sex information, and must encourage a much more liberal,
socially sanctioned heterosexual participation on the part of young
people than is now encouraged in our nation. Sex offenses as the
facts of this study clearly show (and Kinsey, 1965) are largely
related to sexual ignorance, fear, guilt, conflicts, and inhibitions. It
is the basically under-impulsive, rather than the 'over-sexed' male
who is most seriously disturbed emotionally. Sexual pussyfooting,
puritanical preachments, and evading of heterosexual issues on
the part of society can only be expected to increase the incidence
of sex offenses.
To which we must add neurosis, divorce, delinquency, and violence in general.
But if two thousand years of history has taught us anything, we can rest assured
that Christian churches will fight these recommended changes to the death.
Hatred of sexuality has always been the core of the Christian religion - because
if people can be made to feel guilty about normal human desires then they must
depend upon the church for absolution. That's what gives the clergy its power,
and that's why they will never change.
* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *
Update! A documentary film released in 2006, called "This Film is Not
Yet Rated," examines the practices of the Motion Picture Code and
Rating Administration in depth. The film proves that movies with any
sexual content are rated far more restrictively than those with extreme
violence. Two prominent (Christian) clerics are always in attendance at
screenings to apply pressure on the rating board.
Vatican City, Sept. 18 (Reuters) Benedictine monks at a
monastery in Mexico have been undergoing individual and group
psychoanalysis for the past four years ...
Father Gregory LeMercier ... said that in 1961 a new phase of life
had begun at the monastery ... with the introduction of
psychoanalytic treatment among the monks.
In addition to individual analysis, the monks took part in group
analysis ... under the guidance of a psychoanalyst ... He said that
about 60 monks were still undergoing analytical treatment. About
40 other monks have since left the monastery. Among them,
LeMercier said, were many who discovered that their vocation
was toward marriage .... (ibid.)