Darryl Ray. Secular Sex Educator.
I’ve blogged on his talks, podcasts and books before: Do you Masturbate? No? RIGHT!!.
A recent podcast covers Abstinence Only. This is an interview with Amber Barnhill on the damage done with religious (read mostly Xian) attitudes toward sex, sexuality, masturbation,
She is another former Fundamentalist Xian, Baptist, partially home-schooled, from Texas, got pregnant as soon as she had sex…sound familiar????.
Her former pastor who signed her diploma from the Bible College she attended is in prison for child molesting….
I don’t even have to LOOK for this stuff!! A few minutes into the podcast and the discussion of Amber’s writing on abstinence hasn’t even started and the obscenity of religious practice just jumps out of your earbuds!
Religion bashing is so easy. They supply you with the ammunition by the boatload, every minute of every day.
I’m not a podcast kinda guy (too old I guess), I get all my info from books and videos, but I am aware there is a whole podcast world out there and many if not most folks really dig podcast listening on a regular basis. I get that I’m an anomaly. By recent estimates podcast listeners are pushing the 100 million mark in 2015.
Before Amber even gets into the abstinence sex part of the interview she relates a horrifying story of religious ignorance, the kind that doesn’t make the papers. A pastor advises a kid with seizures who has gotten so bad that he is puking up his medication to just “wait it out”, not to go to the emergency room, or see someone for immediate medical attention, even to call his doctor and see what he might say, No just “wait it out.” The kid dies.
The arrogance of religious thought knows no bounds. When you live in Fundy setting, raised hard-core Xian your pastor is not merely a church authority, a scriptural expert to consult on occasion, no he’s an AUTHORITY you go to for guidance because he knows…that’s what you are taught…and you take his advice whether he knows anything about what you may need information on or not…and kids die. Or stay sick, or get bullshitted on all sorts of subject, like sex and suffer for it.
Pastors, priests, imams, the Pope, the Dalai Lama know nothing more than you me or your neighbor about how the world works. They have studied their religious tradition of myths and commentaries on those myths: i.e theology.
And theology is total fiction.
Religious leaders know nothing more than anyone else. Often they claim to know and actually know much less than correct info that is readily available, often with disastrous consequences like Amber’s college friend with the seizures. And all too often they are ridiculously misinformed. The bullshit is so deep in religion you need wings to stay above it.
That’s the scam, that’s the lie, that’s the arrogance. That religions or the religious or the religious authorities know anything but their own myths, when in fact besides those fantasies they are full of lots of horrible misinformation.
So listen to Amber and her Fundy Xian upbringing…teen girls getting a unexplained occasional paddling by Xian schoolmasters, girls who think their period was God’s punishment for masturbation…it goes on and on. Ya don’t even have to look hard for this stuff.
Darryl is a great interviewer, and Amber tells a damn good story that covers a lot of the insanity of being raised Conservative Xian besides the sexual misinformation and mental abuse.
And its not a story, its true experience. Its too fucked up to just be sad, its disgusting the lies the Conservative Xians tell their children.
It’s a great listen. You will learn a lot about the insanity of religious practice here in the US.
As an aside the parallels with Islam and Fundamental Xianity are frightening.
Give this podcast a shot and put Darryl Ray on your favs/bookmark list. If you want an education on sex and sexuality, Uncle Darryl is the man.
end religion now
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