Sex. Calling it an anathema to the religions will not be much of an exaggeration. The religious lot has always demonstrated an incessant need to curb and control human sexuality. In a religious society, they can turn blind eye to terrorism, abysmal corruption, hunger, poverty etc… but one should not be able to have sex freely. Who cares if hundreds die in an act of terrorism or thousands perish of hunger; but people having non-marital (I have reservations in using 'pre-marital' as a general term as it fallaciously presumes marriage as an inevitable and necessary eventuality in one's life) sex must be kept in chains, if not killed. It comes hardly as a surprise that in the epitome of a theocratic hegemony called Saudi Arabia, a man has been sentenced to five years of incarceration and a thousand lashes for merely boasting about his sex life in public. How is it even remotely justified to take 5 whole years of life out of a 'braggart' (along with this inhuman corporal punishment) who at the very most is just a nuisance? His actual 'crime' was that he had some sex and was stupid enough to brag about it.

Well, what is there to expect really from this country? This is a kingdom where sexual segregation is a way of life, women are deemed inferior, human rights are every so often abused. Some megalomaniacal God rules this petroleum fuelled monarchy via proxy of some obscenely rich 'royal' nitwits. This is where human rationality is often regarded as an alien concept. They would rather read, reread and reread and then read again a 1400 years old book than give their brains a chance to think rationally. They would have no qualms about funding a medieval madrassah to preach their intolerant agenda where students would only learn to hate and kill, but they would do their utmost to control and subvert someone’s wish to have consensual sex freely. And yes, then they would read the book again.

I do not want to generalise and I am sure there is a significant number of sane and progressive individuals in Saudi Arabia. And I do empathise with their agony and frustration.

Anyhow, this sort of close-mindedness isn't really limited to Saudi Arabia (although no other can surpass the Kingdom in the severity of it). Sex without marriage is a taboo that dwells the religious mind in every part of this planet. Fornication is the pet-word that the religious orthodoxy has been using to denote sex without marriage; the reason behind obviously is to give it a pejorative connotation which doesn't really effect a liberal mind; if Jack wants to have sex with his girlfriend Shelly and she with him, they wouldn't really care whether it is being called love-making, having sex or fornication; while the local clergyman may bump up his blood pressure, condemning them to hell with a pale blue shuddering face, ruminating over the 'diabolical ills of fornication.'

This brings me to a discussion thread entry by someone obviously pious that I've read few days back. And it is not the first time I came across this, “Fornication is a root of evil in the society!!!”

Really? Care to elaborate? How does an unmarried couple having consensual sex construes as evil? Do people explode while having sex? Do they die of hunger because of too much sex? How exactly? No seriously, tell me?

Forget sex out of wedlock. This sanctimonious bunch even shudders at the mere mention of the word 'sex'. Try uttering the words like 'sex education', 'safe sex' etc. on their face; they'd jump like they are stung by a jellyfish, some might leave your presence and immediately perform an ablution in order to cleanse their ears of the 'sinful' utterance. I guess if one sadistic individual is to torture them, one of the most effective ways would be to record the word 'sex' and play it in an infinite loop (hence one must never do that). Then comes the clergymen, the most pernicious and the most sly of the bunch across all religions; they wouldn't talk about sex education or the necessity of having a good sexual health, but rather exert their repressed desires on the weak by the means of rape and paedophilia.

This makes me think, why? Why such dread of sex in religions, especially non marital? In my opinion it comes from the chauvinistic patriarchal misogynistic attitude of old times (which is unfortunately residing in the mental psyche of many even to date) when these religions were in their inceptions. Needless to say that all religions have been engineered by men. In their own narcissistic chauvinism, men have considered women vile, unclean and villainous. And the union with women have been considered a treacherous act that men couldn't abstain from. In this sordid guilt-ridden affair of men, sex has become a matter of angst along with women. It would be fair to mention here that the status of women has improved with each subsequent religions but it has never been even close to be good enough, let alone rightful. Same can be said about sex.

The Christian concept of ‘Original Sin’ is another revolting piece. Saying that human birth comes with company-manufactured-box-packed-sins is very disturbing. In a multitude of religions many of the ‘pures’ were needed to be born by virgins or non sexual means: the most popular one being Jesus who was born from the ‘Immaculate Conception’ of Virgin Mary, Krishna (ironically, who himself was a philanderer) was born of Devika via some sort of ‘mental transmission’ as Bhagavad Purana recounts. All the Pandavas of Mahabharata were essentially gods’ children by Kunti and Madri as their husband Pandu was cursed to death if he ever had sex with his aforementioned wives. Even Buddha was also of a miraculous birth who is said to have been conceived sans coitus. Seems like in order to be great, one must not be a product of sex.

Abrahamic religions do their best to regulate sexuality more than anyone else. Setting aside their vociferous prohibition of sex out of wedlock, they even go on to prescribe on how to have sex as a married couple. I wonder why these sort of explicitly detailed diktat isn’t given in matters of abolition of slavery, poverty alleviation, corruption etc. All these come to me as telltale signs of anthropomorphic roots of these religious texts that demonstrate the attribution of significant ‘real estate’ to typical human psyche within the confines of our human imagination. Even the prized heavens of Islam are filled with promises of debauchery and indulgence that are so heftily prohibited on earth. So essentially you get a cookie for not eating the cookie. I often wonder what is the use of these bodily, earthly, material indulgence for the ‘pure souls’ that would ramble around in those opulent heavens? Couldn’t God come up with a bit more out of the box originality? Well, of course not…

Human is a sexual being. Sex is a perfectly natural and normal process. There is nothing to be ashamed of it, no reason to dread it or feel guilty about it. Other than serving as the instrument of our survival as a species, it is also an important tool for our mental, physical, emotional wellbeing. Repressing this completely natural biological drive is unhealthy and immoral. The prevailing hush-hush and obscurantism (and many a times unabashed sophistry) with regards to sex and sexual topics is risky, detrimental and utterly imbecilic.

So a request (in all likelihood a futile one) to the exemplars of piety: Please, please, please, do away with those shudders, broaden your outlook, educate your children about sex (please don't read 'abstinence' here; that doesn't work), discuss sex freely just as you'd discuss the weather. And while you never miss a chance to utter how great your God is, it wouldn’t hurt to let one talk about how great sex is…