Lesson 3.4

I thought the extent of religion involved in people’s sex lives was the idea of waiting until marriage to engage in sex for the purpose of procreation. BOY WAS I WRONG. I was raised Catholic and was never *super* involved with church and hardly know the stories of the bible, let alone interpreted the means of describing sexual acts within the stories. These readings completely opened my eyes to the relation between #sex(uality), religion, politics, and power conflicts. It never clicked that sexuality was a historically constructed concept and how the heterosexual matrix — the assumption that heterosexuality is universal and innate, was such a huge part of modern American religions and society. The American religious studies scholars confront the over-significance of sex and I found that very interesting because of the effort some religions use to NOT inform others about it. I like the idea that sexuality is fluid and unstable, as suggested by Dyer because humans are not concrete in their consciousness. I am so confused as to why some sex acts and sexualities are regulated by the government. (just learned about sodomy and WOW) I believe our government has no place to regulate sexual or marital relations between consenting individuals. Sexual purity movements also anger me. It is not fair to misinform and implement fear into the act of consensual, penetrative hetero sex because if people do not know the precautions they can take other than abstinence, they will be at a disadvantage. It is such a shallow way of “teaching” the very expansive field of what sex is.