The joyless sects
SEX and religion — is there any combination more likely to get people all hot and bothered? Yet the intertwining of these topics — because sex and religion are even more joined at the hip than politics and power — generally makes for more interesting dinner party conversation than, say, falling house prices or shrinking job markets. Providing you don’t accidentally sit next to a fundamentalist of any kind, (the word ‘mental’ isn’t in there for nothing).
“Many religions drive with one foot heavy on the sexual accelerator and the other riding the sexual brakes,” writes Wendy Doniger, Professor of History of Religions at the University of Chicago and quoted in the Washington Post. “Judaism, Christianity and Hinduism celebrate, on the one hand, the power of sex within marriage and are keen to harness its power for their worshippers, while, on the other hand, they warn you that hair will grow on the palms of your hand if you masturbate.”
