Even though the orgasm is humanity’s most readily accessible spiritual experience, organized religion has a long standing beef with sex. From original sin to circumcision, Muslims to Methodists, anytime a group of people decide that God has shown them the one true path, that path inevitably involves putting a stop to all the free love sex orgies. No one was worse about this point then the uptight New England Puritans who shaped the moral compass of early America. In their eyes, work was the best and sex was the worst. Historical records are unclear on how they felt about sex work.
Fortunately, in the last few years various religiously inclined folks have started pointing out that while deviant unmarried slutty fun sex is obviously bad, can’t devout married couples do what they want in the bedroom? And what about all those curious looking secular sex products? If their faith is pure and their marriage monogamous, why can’t they use vibrating cock rings and thick black butt plugs too?
Heading this call, each of the major monotheistic religions have responded in their own faith directed manner, though generally it just means a bland, unsexy website. While most of the F*Bomb staff are Orthodox Gnostics, we decided to put aside our religious beliefs for a moment and take a look at what the other teams are offering.
Christianity
Despite the fact that they worship a scantily clad carpenter hanging from a cross, Christians tend to be pretty down on sex. Fuck, let’s face it, they invented “missionary,” which is basically the Beatles of sex positions, as ubiquitous as it is boring. However, if you want to buy some Lucky Lovers Message Dice without having to risk stumbling across a naughty image, the Christians have got you covered. Just remember, it’s like a head shop. Bongs aren’t bongs, they’re water pipes. Double sided dildos aren’t double sided dildos, they’re marital aids. Here’s their mission statements in their own words
My Beloved’s Garden says, “At My Beloved’s Garden, we provide a safe non-pornographic place to shop for all your Christian sex toys and romance needs, while keeping Christ at the center of your marriage.” But do you still have to keep Christ in the center when you’re doing missionary?
Book22 says, “The twenty-second book of the Bible is Song of Solomon. We believe that God intended that such love, as spoken of in Song of Solomon, be a beautiful and normal part of marital life. Unfortunately this gift from God has been grossly distorted and abused by both ancient and modern people. Book22 is offering quality products to enhance the intimate life of God’s children.” One of the categories on their sidebar is “Aids.” They mean “Assorted Sex Toys,” but it’s still weird seeing a sex shop selling “Aids.”
Christian Love Toys has Site Guidelines that give 8 Commandments for using the site. Number 5 is “Do NOT allow this site to support you giving into perversion, impurity, or inappropriate fantasizing.” Also, only married people should use the site and they should only use it together. It’s amazing CLT doesn’t make you sign a waiver.
Judaism
Despite what you may have heard, Jewish people don’t actually have sex through a hole in a sheet. However, they do have a sex toy website so sad and sparse that of the four product categories offered, the fourth, Lingerie, is completely empty. Beyond lackluster web design, Orthodox Judaism does offer some interesting thoughts on marrital relations.
Sex isn’t just for procreational purposes. It helps establish an important bond between husband and wife and “Sex for selfish personal satisfaction, without regard for the partner’s pleasure, is wrong and evil. A man may never force his wife to have sex.” That’s pretty cool. And abortions are allowed, mandatory even if the mother’s life is in danger.
However, if you’re following the rules just right, you gotta mind this thing called the law of niddah, which basically says husband and wife can’t touch or share a bed when she is menstruating. While some feminists might take offense to that, apparently, it actually helps keeps the marriage sexy.
Islam
Well, alright, so let’s start this by saying, like any other religion, Muslims believe a lot of different things. Here in America, we tend to get riled up by horror stories about how they stone women to death for ordering Pizza Hut or whatever, and that shit definitely sucks. Stoning woman to death is not sex positive.
However, Islam itself isn’t as sex hating as some of its followers would lead you to believe. Dr. Heba Kotb, Egypt’s first sexologist, says that Muhammad wanted ladies to have rad orgasms, as long as they were married and they shouldn’t masturbate, even if they’re married because if the man does his job right they’ll be fulfilled. So yeah, there’s that.
But then on the other hand, there’s El Asira, the best designed religious sex toy website F*Bomb has seen yet. Just like a mosque, the site even has different entrances for the different sexes. As cool as it looks however, once you get inside and change the language from Dutch to English, you realize that all El Asira really sells are a bunch of massage lotions and candles. Though the categories have cool exotic names like “Glides,” “Sexual Energy,” and “Intimate,” all of the products seem to be weird lotions. And the “Lingerie” section is still yet to come.
The Rest
Basically, most non-monotheistic religions are down with sex. Buddhists are anti-material world as a matter or principle, but they don’t have any specific problems with fucking. Though the non-Cosmo Kama Sutra is more of a marriage manual than a sex position playbook, Hindus aren’t to freaked out by fucking either. Wiccans, pagans, atheists, Pastafarians, Neo-Zorastarians, chaos magicians and what else, they’re wildly pro-boning. So much so that they don’t even both having their own sex toy sites. They just buy sex toys at regular sites which is where you probably should too unless you really want some Middle Eastern sex glide. Fun fact: Amazon has some of the best sex toy deals on the Internet.
