I was sitting at my desk in my alma mater, just after teaching a religious education class to a group of first graders. The question was coming from an older sibling of one of them, and I was just thankful that I hadn’t taken a sip from my cup of coffee right before it was asked. I looked up at the boy that had to be around 13-years-old at the time, and raised my eyebrows while trying desperately to keep from either bursting out laughing, or flying off on a tirade about crazy statements made to impressionable young boys.

“Ummmmm… who told you that?” I asked quietly.

The boy’s face turned an even brighter shade of red as he replied barely above a whisper, “My mom…”

I absentmindedly started gathering my papers from the desk, placed them in my tote, and got up from my desk to erase my notes from the blackboard. All the while my mind was racing, and I was getting furious with myself for being just like teachers from my own past that would side-step answering the really tough questions. I stopped dead, and looked at the boy, knowing he expected no real truths from me that day.

“No, it will not fall off.”

I think I was as surprised as he was that I’d opened my mouth and said the truth.

The floodgates had been opened, and as I went back to cleaning the board, he asked another question. “Will I go to hell for doing it?”

I sighed, torn between my own beliefs, and what I knew I was supposed to say as a religious education instructor. “Your mother doesn’t want you to do it, so that means that if you choose to… do it… you’ll have to hide from her. That is lying. The Church considers it wrong, so doing it is considered a sin as well. What do you do when you sin?”

He looked down, and stared at his feet as he said, “I tell the priest in confession.”

“So, if you do those things, confess your sins, and do as the priest says for penance, alright?”

“Yes. Thank you!” He literally ran out the door as he said it, and I ended up feeling guilty for sending that particular ball into the parish priest’s court.

When I left the Catholic Church years later, that conversation with that boy was on my list of reasons why. The denial of sex and sexual desire as a normal and natural thing is a major hypocrisy of the Church that I just couldn’t overlook anymore. And now, all of that annoyance with the stupidity of it all has come back thanks to a misguided woman from Delaware.

Christine O’Donnell has become the rightful target of ridicule for her statement on masturbation, amongst other things.

“The Bible says that lust in your heart is committing adultery. So, you can`t masturbate without lust.”

That is what she said. But the irony is that her blanket statement doesn’t hold water even for those that happen to agree with the biblical statement she uses to reach that conclusion. If I were still teaching catechism in the Catholic Church, I’d have to call her on it.

“You have heard that it was said by them of old time, Thou shalt not commit adultery: But I say unto you, that whosoever looketh on a woman to lust after her hath committed adultery with her already in his heart.” (Matthew 5:27-28)

Masturbation is not always adultery. One cannot call another an adulterer for masturbating unless one is certain that the individual in question is thinking about someone other than that individual’s mate. Conversely, if one does not have a mate, and doesn’t picture someone else who happens to have a mate while masturbating, it is not adultery either. Additionally, one is not an adulterer if one masturbates at the request of, or for the pleasure of one’s mate. (That last one is a really sticky situation for the Catholic Church, since in theory, it should be exempt from the dogma forbidding masturbation altogether, especially if such a request is made because of medical restrictions, i.e., a husband masturbating for the sake of creating a child.)

Beyond Catholicism, there is of course a fascination with controlling the sexual behavior of followers. Most notably (and disturbing), is what is seen amongst followers of Islam. While Islamic law does not suggest this sort of action, cultural traditions amongst followers of Islam sometimes require genital mutilation to prevent women from deriving too much pleasure from sex. It is a barbaric tradition, and is generally frowned upon by even the most pious Christians. However, Christians that run about calling just about everything to do with sex a sin are not much better than their Islamic neighbors that take it to the point of mutilation. Guilt is a powerful thing, and can end up causing all manner of problems for people, mentally. As far as sex is concerned, it is possible to cause enough guilt in a person about it, that they are incapable of performing sexual acts normally. It’s been argued enough times that the Catholic Church suffers from sex scandals because of the dogma that requires celibacy of its priests. The need will not be denied forever, and all of that. Somehow, I doubt that O’Donnell gave any of that a great deal of thought when she made her statement about masturbation.

Some food for thought – something that I asked a priest once – a question he couldn’t answer on a spiritual level, but is easily answered by science: If sex is evil in any way, why did God make that the way for people to multiply, and why didn’t he make it painful like giving birth?