Kissing Is Not SEX

[Janes Heir]

Did anyone read that woman's website about her porn addiction? Thoughts?

[2xx1xy1JD]

It has ALWAYS bothered me how obsessed Fundies are with sex. They spend a ridiculous amount of time thinking and talking about it. My neighbors growing up were Fundie Lite, and I've always had to laugh a bit at how their "luck" turned out. All 4 of their daughters ended up pregnant before marriage - two of them in high school. Because of their suppressing their wants and desires at home. In fact, we are going to the wedding of the 4th daughter this weekend, she's the oldest to get married at 19 - and due in December. (And this is a family of leghumpers - they are huge Duggar fans and gush about how much the want to be like them - Idolize much? Isn't that against the ten commandments? Oh wait, they don't care about those - it's just the women's purity.)

I suspect that the appallingly high rate of teen pregnancy among the fundie lite is part of what fuels the hard-care fundies into becoming increasingly protective and strict. I'm sure the mindset is, "sure, you may think that the frumpers are unnecessary, look at the church down there with everyone in jeans and tons of girls getting pregnant before marriage." Then, the fundie-lites might look at the Duggars and be in awe of the fact that they have 4 girls 20 and over, and none of them got pregnant. They don't see that you also have low teen birth rates amoung the ebil liberal families who vote Democrat and live in the Blue States, because they don't run in the same circles.

This is just my theory - if anyone has first-hand experience, please share!

[itsnotmeitsu]

For what it's worth, I'll give these girls some kudos. I did not save myself for marriage, and it was embarrassing to kiss my husband on our wedding day, in front of everyone, because I didn't want to kiss in front of Jesus (I did, when the time came, LOL). And I'd had plenty of experience. It's kind of gutsy to have your first kiss ever on that day.

[2xx1xy1JD]

I'm surprised that no couple(as far as we know)has gone "all the way"(so to speak)and not even met before marriage. You can't get more pure than that!

Make that no modern fundie Christian couple.

It does happen with some arranged marriages. I've had a few clients who didn't know their spouses before the wedding.

[curlytoes79]

I'm surprised that no couple(as far as we know)has gone "all the way"(so to speak)and not even met before marriage. You can't get more pure than that!

Haha, I'd love to meet the married/courting Duggars and act like they're all sluts because they look at each other before marriage. The women should wear opaque veils that their husbands lift only on their wedding day! Wait, this is starting to sound like the fundy version of some other religion....

[Tangy Bee]

Four Duggar girls–teens from the homeschooling reality show family 19 Kids and Counting–have just released their first book. Garnering the most press attention is the little tidbit that they will save not just sex, but also their first kiss, for their marriage.

I have several friends who have saved the smooching for the ceremony, and they’re very glad they did. I certainly don’t think there’s anything wrong with it, though the thought of hundreds of people watching me kiss for the first time is more intimidating than romantic. But I still find the whole Christian purity culture a little perplexing.

My mother grew up in a very conservative rural Manitoba community. They kept the Sabbath sacred; they didn’t wear makeup; they certainly didn’t dance. But kissing, at least when you were engaged, was fine. Today, though, large swaths of Christianity are more conservative than our parents’ and grandparents’ generations were.

What’s going on?

I think it all started with Joshua Harris’ I Kissed Dating Good-Bye. That book spread like wildfire through the church, and all of a sudden dating, which had been one of the main attractions of youth groups for decades, became an anathema.

Yet while I agree there’s little benefit to high school relationships (an opinion I am so glad my teenage daughters shared), Boy Meets Girl, Harris’ follow-up book about courtship, still left me a little uneasy. He and his now-wife didn’t kiss until they were married. They really only did that famous “Christian side hug†that every evangelical teen has perfected. And Harris has a list of strict guidelines they followed so as to not feed lust.

Are Christian teenage girls growing up ashamed of their sexuality?

Lust is a real battle, yet this movement to grab lust by the throat and throttle it until it’s dead seems a little like overkill. We have purity ceremonies where we ask girls to stand with their dads and pledge not to have sex until marriage. We give endless talks on modesty, discussing hemlines and cleavage and how high T-shirts should be (two finger widths below the clavicle, apparently). I do believe in modesty; the world would be a much better place if everyone agreed that leggings are not pants. But in our eagerness combat the sexual revolution are we doing more harm than good?

That’s the question Amanda Barbee asked recently in her viral article “Naked and Ashamed.†She says that the evangelical church has made teenage girls ashamed of their sexuality, and this causes much sexual dysfunction later.

I certainly see where she’s coming from. We spend so much time telling girls, “Don’t do it! Don’t even think about it!†And then they get married and suddenly some switch is supposed to go off that lets them see sex as a positive thing.

What makes it especially problematic, though, is the way we frame the whole issue. “Boys are walking hormones who will lust all over anyone in a tight sweater. It’s your job to keep him from lusting!†Girls’ sex drives are barely mentioned, while boys are presented as testosterone-induced drones, rendered helpless by cleavage. Girls become responsible not just for their own purity, but for boys’ purity, too, and sex becomes something boys want but girls have to fight against. No wonder so many girls grow up ambivalent about sex!

Unfortunately, Barbee didn’t offer an alternate approach. Yes, we’re shaming girls too much, but purity is important, and sex before marriage damages you both spiritually and emotionally. We do need to teach our kids to wait. But if we really want kids to make good choices, maybe we should stop teaching them to do the right thing and start introducing them to Jesus.

I was recently talking with a 19-year-old young woman who didn’t date in high school, but is now in quite a serious relationship at university. When she and her boyfriend were first discussing boundaries, they decided not to define “how far they should go†because as soon as you draw a line, you immediately rush to that line and start flirting with it. Instead, they decided that they would start every time that they’re together by focusing on Jesus. Make Jesus the centre, and the rest will follow.

We have become so scared that teens will have sex that we have created a purity culture that is centred around rules and shame rather than centred around Jesus. Yes, we should be modest, and yes, we should be pure. But we’ll achieve that much faster by having a relationship with Christ than by memorizing a bunch of rules.

I’m convinced that Christian kids often rebel because we put too much energy into teaching rules and not enough into showing them how to love Jesus. Rules don’t win people to God; Jesus does. And He’s the only one who can help us create a purity culture anyway.

What happens when we take young women from this sex-obsessed approach to purity (because that is exactly what this is), and we brush them up against a guy and nothing happens? When holding his hand does not lead to petting or when having coffee does not lead to a slumber party? If a girl has grown up believing these are boundaries and that all roads lead to sex, the temptation is going to be to throw all of her ‘boundaries’ out the window.

Nothing happened when she held his hand, so why should anything happen when they snuggle? Nothing happened when they were alone for coffee, so what’s the big deal if she rides in his car? She starts thinking, “What’s the big deal?†and that is the last thing you want her thinking! What we need to be doing, instead, is encouraging young women to establish their boundaries and to come up with guidelines that help them.

This is a good blog post [link=]http://beggarsdaughter.com/2014/05/kissing-sex//link]

So Josh Harris is the fart that started the "no kissing" crap. Did you all know his wife was NOT a virgin when they married? He knew this and was "ok" with continuing their relationship. Last I checked they are still happily married. I don't understand why this part of his life isn't discussed. I feel other fundie couples NEED to know that it's possible that a relationship is not doomed even if one of you isn't a virgin. I just can't help but wonder if Jill Duggar would have ended her "special friendship" with Derick if she had found out he wasn't a virgin or had kissed a girl. Was she in love with him BEFORE she asked all the personal stuff...or did it happen AFTER she found out? :think:

[Toothfairy]

So Josh Harris is the fart that started the "no kissing" crap. Did you all know his wife was NOT a virgin when they married? He knew this and was "ok" with continuing their relationship. Last I checked they are still happily married. I don't understand why this part of his life isn't discussed. I feel other fundie couples NEED to know that it's possible that a relationship is not doomed even if one of you isn't a virgin. I just can't help but wonder if Jill Duggar would have ended her "special friendship" with Derick if she had found out he wasn't a virgin or had kissed a girl. Was she in love with him BEFORE she asked all the personal stuff...or did it happen AFTER she found out? :think:

Wasn't he molested?

[Toothfairy]

Did anyone read that woman's website about her porn addiction? Thoughts?

Sad to say I never in my life watched porn :embarrassed: :oops: