The Sin of Fornication I

Ahhhhh fornication. Courtesy of a very good friend who finds things like this online in his free time, I watched this lecture by Paul Bloom at Yale University, and he (Paul. A professor, mind you) says that sex is quite important to people. I’ll give you a second to let that whopper settle in.

Fornication is it. If you've ever taken a biology class of any caliber, you know this. Sex is the big one. And the debate is, how can something so natural be considered a sin? If dolphins are doing it in the same ocean where you swam last week on your Oahu vacation, what could be wrong with it? Everyone does it, and by everyone I mean everyone from Peggy Lee to the two copulating flies The Mom enthusiastically swatted on the kitchen table a month ago.

"At least they died happy," she muttered solemnly.

The thing with sexy-time is that it’s a little bit like when your cat walks into the bathroom while you’re trying to poop. You’re not sure why, but it feels like it might be wrong, and while you know there’s no bad intention behind anyone’s involvement, it’s not something to tell the girls later on, lest they judge. Not always, but sometimes. The sinful feeling starts to creep in, and you start to wonder what the Bible thinks of you at this moment.

Well, while I am a fan of The Bible, I don’t like to listen to all of it. Especially the parts that address sin. The Bible thinks a lot of silly things are sins. We’ve all heard about how you can’t get your haircut on a Wednesday or eat Pork and Sunny-D at the same meal, etc. I do understand, however where they're coming from when it comes to fornicating.

Men really are the problem, here. Left to their own devices, men really are total jerks about everything. According to the lecture I linked above, we are enormously more likely to harm ourselves or each other than women are; we're just violent. Do me a favor, if you will, and follow this link (possibly NSFW.)

If you followed the link, you are probably looking at a list of postings requesting rough, no strings attached sex, from guys in the LA area. Continue down the list, and you will see that it goes on. And on. And on.

And on.

There is a testosterone-fueled anger embedded in these postings that reveals itself through words of violence and of self-deprecating submission to the wills of others. I assume you’re familiar with this anger, we’ve all felt it in the moment, a kind of need to destroy that manifests itself in diverse ways. I myself like to bite.

I’ll let you pause to write that one down, boys.

Not charming, and not nice. I figure this is one of a menagerie of reasons for sex to be a sin: the sheer anger of it. It makes a lot of sense. Who are the most violent people in the world (I'm going to generalize here, so watch out)? Men. Who have the testosterone-soaked predisposition for roughness? Men. Who wrote most of the major religious documents in the world? Men.

An example of this roughness, you ask? Well, just to show that I’m not talking about love-making, here... I was once in the moment with a young man in college, and we were having a good time. A movie was playing on my laptop in the background, ignored, and we were essentially doing what high schoolers across the country artfully call "stuff." And then it happens. This boy leans back, rears his head, gives me a look that would have made Margaret Thatcher’s hair shrivel up and regress back into her head, and actually screams. No grunting, here. Not that sighing moment of release. Screaming.

This was my first experience with another individuals "O-face," and it was a doozy. Not a great start, If I'm being perfectly honest.

Furthermore, how am I, as a creative, scatterbrained individual, supposed to put myself in the position of someone about to start a major religion, and not include THAT in my list of religious Don’ts? In my eyes, no God would look upon two people screeching and slathering at each other like a couple of WB Tasmanian Devils and go, “Yes, I am glad I put these people on Earth now. One-hundred percent.” There have been moments (on more than one occasion, on more than one evening) where I honestly haven’t known if my personal safety was in tact. I’m sure (well, I hope) that I’m not the only person who has felt this. I’ll feel weird if I am.

I don’t know if having an alarming “O-Face” qualifies as being actually wicked, but it should. If sinning is a matter of harming other people or making them uncomfortable, then fornication is probably a front-runner for Most Sinful, worldwide. But that’s only half the point of sin, isn’t it? The wickedness.

There’s a happiness that goes with it too. I’ll let you write that one down, too. Sex isn’t always nasty fury. We’re learning a lot, aren’t we?

Tricky. The Sin of Fornication is a big one. More to come.