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Free Sex, More Free Sex

By Merle Harton, Jr.


"Free Sex"

Yesterday Reuters reported that a Zambian man committed suicide after his wife caught him in a love embrace with a chicken and he was admonished by his neighbors in the village. I mention this because it bears directly on an important issue with homosexuality and its standing outside of God's purpose.

I figure that gays hate it when their sexual incidents are compared to bestiality, since the comparison suggests a mere slippery slope argument, but it really is relevant to the overall issue of choice. My point is this: There is not much that we are not free to do to gratify the physical sexual urge. Even our contemporary humor calls attention to this. Take this gag, for example:

A man is washed ashore on a desert island and must live alone with only a vicious snarling dog and a sheep. After a year of this, the man begins to look at the sheep with amorous intentions, but whenever he approaches the sheep, the dog attacks him. This goes on for several years. One day, a beautiful, sexy woman washes ashore. The man rescues her and nurses her to health. As a reward to her savior, the beautiful, sexy woman declares: "You saved my life! I will do anything for you!" The man, in response, says: "Do you think you could keep that dog over there distracted for about an hour?"

Whether it's animals, other people, apple pies, or the autoerotic deed, we always have the choice to stand outside of the purpose God has established for the natural, approved, sanctified expression of human sexual desire. What is lawful, what is socially acceptable, what our shifting culture says is okay—these are all irrelevant to what God approves for us. As Paul points out, "Everything is permissible for me" [1 Cor 6:23; see also 10:23]. Outside of God's will for us, there is nothing that we cannot do, as the atheistic existentialists (and humanists, too) themselves affirm; only our neighbors and the land's laws are there, like fences, to narrow the boundaries of our personal desires. Sometimes those boundaries are widened, as we see our society now doing in the case of gay marriage or, um, civil unions, but we ought not to adopt as our standard merely what is socially acceptable or what is lawful, for this is not always what God approves.

"More Free Sex"

I've gone over this before, but perhaps not from this angle. I maintain that, if the nuptial bed is the standard for the proper Christian man's response to sexual desire, everything outside of that is mere pretense. This pretense is not only the act of prostitution but also the autoerotic deed aided by such items as the blowup doll, apple pie, farm animals, and other men.[1] To this list, which may never be exhaustive, we can now add pavements and bicycles:

EDINBURGH, Scotland, Oct 27 (UPI) -- A man who admitted having sex with a bicycle in a Scottish hotel has been placed on the sex offenders' register for breach of the peace.

Robert Stewart admitted to the crime Friday in Ayr Sheriff Court and is to be sentenced next month, Britain's Telegraph reported Saturday.

Stewart was discovered last October by two maids who entered to clean his room during a stay at the Aberley House Hostel in Ayr, Scotland.

"The accused was holding the bike and moving his hips back and forth as if to simulate sex," a sheriff's spokesman told the court. The shocked witnesses told the hotel manager who told the police.

Stewart, according to the Telegraph, is not the first person convicted of sex with an inanimate object. In 1993, Kar Watkins, an electrician, was arrested for having sex with pavements in Redditch, England.
[2]

But the point isn't any specific kind of sexual aid (the variety of which continues to surprise me), but how, even though "permissible" from Paul's perspective, all sexual pretense outside of the nuptial bed always stands in opposition to God's standard for the natural relationship between a man and a woman.[3] I think this must mean that a married man who enters the nuptial bed and engages in love-making as if in relationship with someone or something other than his wife, does not therefore behave in accordance with God's standard. Men—perhaps some women, too—know whereof I speak. A man who treats his wife sexually as if she were a mere sex aid stands outside of that relationship.


1.  By "apple pie" I am referring of course to the crude 1999 film American Pie; by "other men" I am referring to homosexual acts.
2.  "Man admits to sex with bike," UPI News, October 27, 2007. [More recently, see also Miami Herald (September 19, 2012): "Man accused of having sex with donkey now wants animal back; and The Local (Sweden - November 20, 2012): "Woman charged for sex with human skeleton."]
3.  See 1 Corinthians 6:12-20.


"Free Sex" - from New Quaker Notebook (May 24, 2004)
"More Free Sex" - from New Quaker Notebook (October 28, 2007)
Copyright © 2004-07 Merle Harton, Jr.  All rights reserved
merleharton.com


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