The Sexuality Dragon

Back in January I read a thought provoking post on By Common Consent called The Black Hole. The subject of the post is male sexuality. For some reason I didn’t blog about it then, but I want to now. You should read the post, but just in case you don’t, here’s the key point. John C, the author of the post, says that “We have a tendency to treat male sexuality as a great untamed beast.” He also says we treat male sexuality like the Hulk. “You don’t know when it will come to the fore, but when it does it will take over everything in your life and the results won’t be pretty.”

He also makes reference to the Ted Bundy story. Raise your hand if in YM’s or YW’s you heard about how Ted Bundy said that it was pornography that started him on the path to where he ended up. This story was shared at church to keep us from looking at porn. Cause if you do, you will end up killing over 30 women in the most horrific ways imaginable. Not that they said it that directly, but I took things pretty literally as an adolescent. I think a lot of people take things literally as children and adolescents. Then I also wonder if by looking at male sexuality that way, we’ve kind of created the beast.

So we put male sexuality in this mysterious box that is unknowable and uncontrollable. Don’t even open the box, because if you do, your life will crumble before your very eyes. I’m not saying that we should open the box and let it all out and do whatever feels good, but I am saying we could stand to study and explore and seek to understand male sexuality more than we currently do, both inside and outside of the church.

Taking it a step further, I think that approach to male sexuality gets even more intense when we talk about homosexuality. If we see straight male sexuality as the Hulk, then homosexuality is seen as the perverted, horny teenage Hulk who somehow manages to have even less self control than his straight counterpart and who is even harder to understand. Jeff Robinson compares homosexuality to a dragon that you should just walk away from (very helpful advice from a straight dude who’s never experienced homosexuality) instead of engaging the dragon and chatting with him because his name might be Pete and he might be your friend and he might even have some important things to teach you.

Instead though, the approach is to pretend like it doesn’t exist, don’t associate with openly gay people and don’t consume any media that promotes “the gay agenda”. Because the gay agenda is all about turning everyone into a homosexual and certainly not about asking for basic rights and mutual respect. I realize the delivery doesn’t always communicate that, but I think lots of groups and sides and people struggle these days with perfect delivery of their ideas and hopes and dreams.

I think too many years of not seeking to understand male sexuality has led to a lot of serious dysfunction in good peoples’ lives. Tiger Woods? What about the (insert name of politician) sex scandal? Or the (trusted religious figure) sex scandal? Like I said before, it’s time to sit down with the sexuality dragon and have a talk. Find out how he’s doing, ask him what he’s all about. Mark Wahlberg style.