So you think Broadsheet is full of bad news? Every day with the patriarchy and the oppression? All the time with the criticism and sniping? Not today, suckers. Today we have something surprisingly generous to say about the church. Today, we bring you Joe Beam, an evangelical Christian preacher based in Tennessee who is spearheading a campaign to bring healthy sexual attitudes to his congregants, for many of whom sexuality ('specially the girl kind) may provoke feelings of guilt and shame.
But Beam, who's getting a Ph.D. in sexology from the University of Sydney, preaches that "sex is the most wonderful gift God ever gave to Christians."
"Why can women be multiorgasmic and men not?" he asks crowds. "Well, I've decided God just likes you better!" Yes, it's true that he follows that up with, "What's the difference between a woman with PMS and a Doberman? Lipstick." (Ba-dum-bum!) But let's stick to the positives: Beam preaches that masturbation is OK. Oral sex is OK. Phone sex is OK. Anal sex is OK (as long as it does no damage to the body, which is a good tip for everyone!). He even advises men to eat foods that will make their semen taste better.
OK, sure, Beam is buddies with Jerry Falwell and Focus on the Family creep James Dobson. Sure, his whole theory is that God only wants you to have hot sex if you're straight and married. And yeah, there's that part about how even if you're straight and married, you still can't have sex during a woman's period. (That last one comes from the Book of Acts: "You are to abstain from food sacrificed to idols, from blood, from the meat of strangled animals and from sexual immorality." What-ever.)
But hey! I'm trying to be glass-half-full here.
So let's trim some of the hypocritical, offensive, inaccurate fat off of Beam's message and cut to the meat of it: Whoever you are, and whoever you may love, even Jesus wants you to get off.
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