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What Josh Duggar, Sam Rader and Adam and Eve Have in Common
According to the Bible, the first sinful moment resulted in a realization of nakedness. Instead of Adam and Eve high-fiving each other upon the awesome discovery of their genitals, they hid in shame. This is how the Christian story begins. It starts with sexual shame and repression, and this thread of self-hatred over one’s naughty bits runs through the whole religion.
I know from personal experience. I was a teenage fundamentalist Christian.
Sometimes people ask me when was the moment I knew I was gay. Honestly, I have no idea. When I was coming of age during the late 80s in small town Indiana, there was nothing more horrifically taboo than homosexuality. Absurd philosophies often came from the pulpit on Sunday mornings about how the mythical gay creature came to be. I remember an actual printed pamphlet that circulated my megachurch. In the pamphlet, there were insane calculations of how much poop a gay man might unintentionally eat in his lifetime or how much pressure a colon can take before it ruptures. (Supposedly, it’s just one penis-worth of pressure.) What was the sense in such bizarrely specific speculation? Why was my pastor obsessed with why two dudes might want to bang each other? Why was a great deal of youth group conversation about resisting masturbation? Welcome to the minds of the sexually repressed.
I can’t really pinpoint the moment when I knew I was gay because it was such a gradual unveiling due to constant repression. As soon as puberty unleashed its first rush of hormones, my fantasies were of men. Full-on gay. It’s like my glands were wearing daisy dukes and rollerblading though my body waving glow sticks. Still somehow I was able to convince myself that I was attracted to women while spanking it to the men’s underwear section of the JC Penny Catalog.
My teens were a phase of silent torture. Of falling in “love” with my best friends and trying to cop a feel during sleepovers. Then of course crying to Jesus about it the next day. Go ahead and throw in some “pray away the gay” therapy at now defunct Exodus Ministries. Sexual repression really does a number on a human. It took years before I was finally able to even let the words “I’m gay” into my brain.
Thank God I was eventually found out and essentially ousted. I was poised to marry the preacher’s daughter and had I managed to get away with it, I have no doubt I would currently be a sad liar of a man caught up in my own personal Ashley Madison scandal.
It doesn’t really surprise anyone that Josh Duggar and Christian Youtuber Sam Rader are exposed as sexual hypocrites. Not to misplace blame, but they were screwed from the beginning. If your response to human sexuality is to hide it behind a fig leaf, it’s going to take you to unhealthy and even potentially criminal places.
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