Two years ago, I published a book titled Shameless, a Sexual Reformation, in which I explore

the connection between sexual shame and the teachings of the church.

In it, I tell my own stories, as well as those of others like a woman who, even in middle

age, still cannot make herself wear a v-neck because she was taught it was immodest.

In a gay man who never reported their sexual abuse because they were told that being gay

was a sin.

And some married folks who still cannot manage to be fully present during sex because the

shame of it all has just never gone away.

The sexual shame that comes from religious teaching has a particular acuteness to it,

which is why I'm convinced that messages delivered to us in God's name embed inside

of us far below the surface and stay with us longer than anything the media or society

alone can dole out.

For decades now, what is known as the Evangelical Purity Movement in America has taught those

wild, beautiful, ever-changing, hormone-soaked beings we call teenagers that in order to

be good, in order to be pleasing to God, they must disconnect from their bodies.

They must repress any sexual thoughts, desires, or feelings until they can punch the golden

ticket of heterosexual marriage, which I guess might have made more sense when there was

no access to reliable birth control and marriage took place about 45 minutes after puberty,

but I digress.

A lot of us who were raised with these teachings have tried to dig ourselves out from heavy

layers of shame about our bodies and desires, and we're left later in life trying to reconnect

the frayed wires of our own sexual response systems.

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