Episode Details

Too often, the Christian response to questions about human sexuality is to point to Leviticus, and similar Biblical passages.

Like other religions, Christianity has a few laws, taboos, and prohibitions about a variety of life issues (diet; holidays; technology; money; dead bodies). But when it comes specifically to human sexuality and gender, Christians have come up with a very, very ….. VERY …… long list of things to regulate and prohibit.

And the application of that preoccupation starts very early for many Christians. Many children find out before they’re two or three years old that touching their genitals actually feels kind of good, but the typical parental response to this self-exploration is to quickly scold the child and tell them how “you don’t do that …. at least not in public!” That’s the beginning of a life-long journey of associating sex with being dirty, and of feeling shame and guilt. As the kids get older, they get dire warnings about masturbation, about not dressing in a way that causes the men in the church to stumble, about the dangers of dating, and the lectures about premarital sex. And once those kids do get old enough to start exploring their own world of sexuality, that shame and guilt is complemented with condemnation if they stray even a little bit outside of very narrowly prescribed pathway of what is called “normal” sex.

That shaming, condemnation, regulation and prohibition isn’t only a parent-child transaction. Evangelicals will also direct it at pastors and worship leaders who have been caught in a sexual affair, and the response is usually an immediate termination of employment and ostracization. They’re much more forgiving and compassionate if the offence is a substance abuse problem (drugs, or alcoholism), or embezzling ministry funds; but an illicit sexual affair …. that’s just too much for them.

And typically, Evangelicals justify all of this regulation, prohibition, shaming and condemnation by pointing to Biblical passages taken from the Old Testament, especially Leviticus, or to other ones in the New Testament which in turn point directly or indirectly to those Old Testament ones.

In this episode, we talk to Dr. Stephen Simpson, who has grad le