Why can’t many Christians just be honest about sex?

One of the things my girlfriend has encouraged me to do is talk about difficult topics because she has made herself open to me for them. I think the “difficult” topic we’ve discussed most is intimacy. I wasn’t going to talk about it until the proper time because of a byproduct of how I was raised, and me absorbing purity culture by osmosis.

I basically had no sex education because of my parents’ attitudes towards it, and I went to a Catholic high school (disclaimer: I’ve never been Catholic). The extent of our sex education was one hour of a rather bleh conversation. The man was direct with us, but I was a senior in high school and thoroughly checked out. I had left the faith by this time anyway.

As I never had any sex education, I turned into a bit of a creep because I never was equipped or able to talk about it with women I was attracted to. I was also very shy and had trouble expressing myself (which I believe now was undiagnosed mental illness). So until now, I’ve been single with very little experience and unhealthy attitudes towards sex. My girlfriend has changed that in just a couple months. She has been open and honest with me about anything I want to talk about involving intimacy. She’s even going to be giving me a book she had from high school about healthy, safe sex.

Back to the topic at hand: it was the inaction and stigmatization of sex by clergy and Christians that ruined me for about two decades. After taking a bird’s eye view of these attitudes, it bears asking: why can’t Christians tell young people the truth about sex and intimacy? The truth being…it’s hard work, it takes mutual understanding, and communication is king.

Actively telling people not to talk about it while simultaneously saying “sex is a good thing” is horrifically two-faced. If you want teen pregnancies and abortions to go down, the most honest, responsible thing you can do, is to tell kids the realities of intimacy, and how much work it takes for your sex life to be great. Not lies about how condoms don’t work, how abstinence is the only way, how you should only date for marriage, how you don’t need to talk about sex before doing it, etc. These are toxic behaviors that have ruined lots of people, and almost ruined me for good.

I am grateful to my girlfriend for changing my perspective, and so quickly at that.

Thank you for coming to my TED Talk.