Can we talk?

Some Christians are bringing a most private matter way out into the open | Janie B. Cheaney

Mark Driscoll (Associated Press/Photo by Scott Cohen)

It's beautiful, it's essential, it's earthy, delicious, funny, filthy. It's enormously powerful, yet easily crushed. It can be done in less than a minute, yet consumes lifetimes. It can drive one narcissistically inward or fling one gloriously out. It's generation and completion, also shame and bondage. It starts with s and ends with x.

And as the kids say these days, it's complicated. Meaning, let's not talk about it.

But of course we have to. That was determined in the '50s and accelerated in the '60s. Ever since, we've talked about sex incessantly, both how-tos and why-nots. And even thou-shalts, as sanctified guides like Intended for Pleasure reassured Christians that God created sex to be enjoyed in the proper context, and there need be no hindrance to mutual satisfaction.

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June 20, 2009, Vol. 24, No. 12

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