He is a good Christian, Michael is telling his two therapists. He goes to church most Sundays. He’s a devoted husband and father of two daughters.
“But when I would leave on business trips,” he says, “I knew I was going to get to be someone else.”
“Prostitutes, porn – I took anything I wanted…”
Therapists Richard Blankenship and Mark Richardson wear solemn but empathetic expressions. Certified counselors and Christian ministers, they tell him they know how to listen and nod for him to continue.
“I’ve had a record of purity since March when I confessed to my wife,” says Michael, whose name has been changed by CNN.com to protect his privacy. “No porn, no masturbation.”
“Awesome,” Richardson says, leaning forward in his chair. “God knows you’re trying.”
This is Michael’s second week at “Faithful and True – Atlanta” a 16-week counseling program that, like dozens of others like it around the country, combines traditional psychotherapy with the Bible in an attempt to treat addictive behavior…
He says he has helped people achieve what he calls “sobriety,” which means resisting porn and lustful thoughts…
And we all know how much Christians love a crusade.
“no masturbation”
There is nothing in the Bible against masturbation.
Or porn.
Or fathers having sex with their daughters….
“Porn is lust, and lust is a sin,” the pastor said.
Lust is also why you are walking around on this planet.
Maybe a reality-based value system is in order now that we know that the earth is not flat, etc.?
The Shakers managed to eliminate sex.
Met any?
Who cares? People worship:
Jesus
Mohammed
Buddah
Steve Jobs
Money
Sex
Beer
Football
Who gives a shit?
Any “Fundie” should review the One Commandment of Christ and contemplate the question if he or she is REALLY A CHRISTIAN !!!
In the mean time, each and every Fundie is urged to GO F HIM OR HER SELF and stop trying to interfere in other people’s lives !!!
I’d just ask them about their faith, and let go on until they’ve contradicted themselves, that I’d call in my friend doubt.
Them I’d ask: “But doesn’t statement A contradict statement B? (The bible is full of contractions. It was written by a bunch of people trying to keep a flock’s attention. The authors weren’t logicians, or logical, or even sensible.)
Fundamentalists hate doubt. 🙂
#1: Actually, that’s not true. There’s the story of Onan in the Bible where they were told it was better to visit a prostitute rather than spill your seed on the ground. Fundies took that to imply masturbation was a sin, etc.
The true story is his people had been at war for a long time and their male warrior population was being decimated. Given it takes a male child years to grow, if you visited a prostitute, there was the chance a male, future warrior might result. But that story doesn’t provide the control they want.
“Don’t touch me there!”
More red meat for the secular bigots.
Eidard really seems to hate Christians, every other post is about them. Sounds like childhood trauma followed by resentment. Was it a priest, Eidard?
I laugh at this very topic simply for the fact that I know way more Christians and Catholics that are more sexual and some more kinky than other people. 🙂 Very funny when this topic shows up.
I don’t hate Christians. Its Christianity that I hate 🙂
I want all the Fundies to move to New Brunswick. Or at least the Minneapolis airport toilet.
I once had a 30 something male colleague who always said he never *ever* had masturbated in his sad life…… No girlfriends, virgin, not even hand-job abilities… He was one of the most neurotic, sad, insensitive, guys I ever met in my life… As a sysadmin he used to read a girl’s email ‘to see if he could find her phone number’…. I asked him ‘why don’t you just ask her’…. And he said ‘because she wouldn’t give it to me’…… Sort of defeats the point.
If you got no girl, masturbate, masturbate, masturbate until your dick falls off!!! Masturbate like a crazed bonobo! Go for it!
The Unholy Church is the sinner!
Castration sounds more fun than his wife.
Get a divorse. He’s probably 30 and wasting is youth married to a 30 yo hag.
#14–spsffan==sounds like you are being a good Christian there: loving the sinner, hating the sin. Ha, ha. Rereading…..you were much more refined. “not hating” much more considered than saying you love them. So much silliness in religion.
How are my three boys doing?
#6–FactsOn/FactsOff==posts as an atheist or as if he worships something not on his short list. Might be himself?
#8–PeaPod==posts as an atheist and makes an excellent point maintaining his 50/50 record on his liberal vs conservative record. Never know which side he will take.
#11–NextLie==head firmly up his ass confusing who is anti-sex with who is normal. Say NextLie, assuming you masturbate, have impure thoughts, and sex for the pleasure of it, how do you feel about your faith telling you that is immoral? We red meat eating bigots would like to know.
New comedian on the tube these days: Louis CK. Has a half hour show. Still unsettling to me a bit how often he riffs on masturbation. Comedians–the court jesters/truth tellers in our society.
It is a fun thought experiment: what would be good about everyone masturbating less and having sex less versus what would be bad about everyone masturbating more and having sex more, then vice versa, then compare and contrast.
OR–we could just mind our own business and leave other people alone? FREEEEEEEEEDOM: other people doing what you don’t like.
Yea, verily.
http://5z8.info/dogporn_v1i4ff_titstitstitstits
#17 Blowhard
You sure have masturbation on the mind. Is this a date night for you?
yea verily
To paraphrase a great scene in the movie Serenity. Do you know what your sin is? Aw hell I’m a fan of all seven, right now I have to go with lust.
Back in the 1960s, when we were just emerging from the “Mad Men” and “Pillow Talk” era, my stepfather said:
“Most of the sex that happens shouldn’t. And there should be a whole lot more sex than there is.”
Meaning that a whole lot of stupidity and jealousy and rape and subterfuge and revenge and sense of duty and you name the other bad context went with much of the sex that actually happened.
While sex for the right reasons..love, caring, we both just feel like it, etc. should be much much more plentiful that the sum total of sex that was actually occurring.
Of course despite this wisdom, he was a child molesting, mind controlling selfish asshole. But he did make some good points now and again.
“The rapists Richard Blankenship and Mark Richardson”
Just because they are Christian ministers you can’t assume they are both rapists.
# 9 Uncle Dave said:
#1: Actually, that’s not true.
Actually, it is. Onan’s crime was contraception.
My question is: How do you think the Muslim community would react to a PlayBoy on top of the Koran?? And christians are just supposed to sit there and take it when the liberal media (since the pic came from CNN, i know) really shove their noses into something so disgusting…. oh well. SQUIRREL!!
Good for this man for recognizing he needed help and seeking help for his problem, and good for the church for trying to help him. Bad for this site for making fun of him.
I usually jump into these religion debates but, honestly, this doesn’t strike me as ultimately about religion. It’s a litmus test of how liberal I am.
As a liberal, I believe in giving people a lot of latitude in how they run their lives (as long as they aren’t hurting people.)
This would include hyper-conservative moralists who strike me as nutty.
After all, as a liberal, I try not to judge people who dance nude in the full moon or dress up as plush toys. It strikes me as weird but it’s none of my business.
Similarly, it wouldn’t be very liberal of me to pass judgment on someone who refuses to masturbate because of some dodgy interpretation of the bible. It’s none of my business.
I seriously doubt that this really has anything to do with stopping pornography. More likely it’s a cover, for restricting free speech. But they can’t so easily get away with stopping what people want to say, that’s mostly political. So they declare a war on artistic sexual expression. And hope the aging voters won’t notice (or care) that everything other form of expression, is getting lumped into this “crusade” against all things undesirable. And our government goes along with it, courting their campaign funding.