But there are conservative Christians in the world who think that sex should be a mutually satisfying sexual experience every time for both partners. Joy Wilson, of Book22.com [NSFW] is one of those people. She runs a Christian marital aid shop that caters to conservative Christians looking to maximize the sexual pleasure in their marriage without porn or products that advocate "immoral" acts. And, a couple of decades ago, Tim and Beverly LeHaye encouraged Christian couples to see mutual orgasm as mutually beneficial (unlike Dennis Prager, who thinks that women's insistence on having one every time is responsible for the decline of the American family).

Here's the thing. Is it easy to mock from a secular perspective? Sure, as my choice of photo demonstrates. But the pro-sex (even if it is only pro-sex-in-marriage) Christians are doing the, um, Lord's work. They are, in effect, reframing feminist arguments about sex and women's sexuality and women's sexual pleasure in a language and a belief system in which a good part of this country fervently believes. They are encouraging people — within the context of marriage, which, okay, they're not going to talk about it pre-maritally — to view mutual sexual pleasure as not only an okay thing, or a good thing but as an important think and a required thing and even a gift from God.

And, not only are these Sex Crusaders encouraging men to think about sex in those terms, but they are encouraging women to open up about their sexuality to their husbands and with themselves and to be fully engaged, happy and comfortable with their sexuality. Is it so terrible for Christians to run around telling men that female orgasms are a gift from God that they should be helping their wives find? Hell, no. In fact, we need hundreds more of these men and women running around and shouting down Dennis Prager and Tucker Carlson and Ed Young every time they open their yaps and talk about submission and frigidity and male desire and the lack of female desire. If everyone was having more regular orgasms, don't you think the world would be a better place?

The Joy of Christian Sex Toys [NPR]
From the Crap Archives: The Beauty of Sexual Love [Village Voice]

Earlier: Which Flavor Of Ice Cream Would You Swap For Sex?
Tucker Carlson's Guide To Not Getting Divorced
Conservative Dennis Prager Knows It's Not Rape If His Wife "Submits"
Dennis Prager Still Thinks Women Should Just Give It Up Already

Image "David 4" via Zach_ManchesterUK

Tucker starts off his piece by just throwing it out there that the real problem is that all us coastal elites hate evangelicals:

Let’s concede right up front that you hate evangelicals. Most affluent, educated people do. Where I live, they're the most unpopular group there is.

Now, I'm a coastal elite, and most people who are educated and affluent don't hate evangelicals. We might, say, resent that their leadership has attempted to use its political opportunities to impose its particular religious world view on the rest of us, but I don't hate individual evangelicals except for the people at the subway stations who keep cursing my pagan soul. Those people suck. But, already, he's missed the point: the story isn't amusing or creepy because it's about evangelicals — replace Ed Young with a rabbi, a priest, an imam, or a Lutheran minister (I'm pretty sure that's how most jokes start anyway) and it is, in fact, equally creepy if not more so. It's one thing to suggest that people take time out of their hectic schedules to engage in intimate acts with their partner — which include but are not limited to penetrative vaginal intercourse, by the way — in order to improve their marriages and another to order everyone to bone for 7 days straight while lounging on a bed in a church. One is solid pastoral advice, and another is using your religious beliefs to try to force you to do something you don't actually want to do.

Tucker then goes on to add that it's really just a public health issue:

Once you factor out venereal diseases, there’s almost nothing better for you than regular sex.

Oh, well, gee, once you factor out the risk of death and infertility, among other things, it's all good? What kind of advice is that for people — especially the women quoted in the Young article whose husbands were unfaithful? Fuck him anyway, just "factor out" the disease risk? It also ignores the many men and women who suffer from some form of sexual dysfunction, which can range from an inabilty to get a non-chemically-enhanced boner to women that cannot engage in intercourse without pain — let alone the many, many women that simply can't achieve orgasm or have difficulty enjoying sex due to psychological trauma. For those people, no, it's not the best thing for them and it's unfair to place upon them the burden that they are not doing right by their marriages or God to try to make it so.

Tucker adds to his thesis that Americans aren't having enough sex, and that religious women have better orgasms, supposedly. While it's a bit foolish to cite one study as evidence that religious people enjoy sex more — I am far from religious and I'm happy to take the challenge of who has better orgasms pretty much any day — the real problem is that assuming that people should want to have sex more. Maybe they do, and maybe they don't. I would like to have sex more, perhaps Tucker would like to have sex more, Ed Young apparently prefers to have more sex (but, if the time his wife tried to ask him for it and he turned her down is any indication, on his schedule alone), but that doesn't mean Americans are all unhappy with the frequency of their sexual contact. There is no standard for how much sex a married couple (or a single person) "should" have — they should have as much consensual sex as they and their partner mutually agree to have and on the schedule they agree to have it.

Tucker engages in a little marital therapy at the end, offering his sage advice for those couples in bad relationships: just fuck, it will keep you in the relationship.

Let’s say your marriage was falling apart. Alienated, angry, frustrated with couples therapy, you decide to divorce. But before you do, you agree to try one last thing: Every day for a month, you'll have sex. You don't particularly want to, but you will, and you'll be disciplined about it: half an hour minimum, naked, both striving for orgasm.

Let’s say you actually did that. Do you think by the end of the month you'd go through with the divorce? Maybe you would. Likely you wouldn't.

Ed Young is right. Sex is medicine. It’s worth doing, whether you feel like it or not.

Great, so, his advice is to let fucking keep you in a relationship that leaves you angry, alienated and frustrated because between the social aspects of how you're "supposed" to feel about the person that you're having daily sex and the oxytocin your body produces when you do, you'll stick around. That's not even to discuss the vaguely humiliating prospect of forcing oneself to engage in penetrative intercourse with a spouse one doesn't love anymore every day for 30 days. Little is less sexy or less of a bonding experience than having coercive sex, even if the coercion is mental or emotional or self-inflicted. And then that's not even to mention the divorces that are occurring because of abuse, addiction or just plain incompatibility that means two people probably shouldn't stay together for 60 years, religious teaching aside.

Sex isn't going to fix a relationship: it might paper over the holes momentarily, but a bad marriage can't be saved with sex, and it shouldn't. And a pastor should try counseling his parishioners about mutual respect, fidelity, emotional intimacy, honesty, trustworthiness, thoughtfulness and quality time spent being in a partnership, as those are the things that make a lasting, fulfilling marriage — not daily sex.

Why Are Christians Having Better Sex Than the Rest of Us? [The Daily Beast]

Earlier: Which Flavor Of Ice Cream Would You Swap For Sex?
There's A Reason The Name Tucker Rhymes With…

• If you are a fan of just regular, missionary sex, go get yourself some vanilla and an imagination.
• If you are slightly more adventurous and like to try out as many positions as possible before collapsing in a sweaty, sticky mess, Ben & Jerry's has a pint of "everything but the..." with your name on it.
• If sex just doesn't feel right until your muscles are strainged from trying out any of a number of porn-tastic positions, try B&J's "Caramel Sutra" instead.
• If you're on the rag but quivering with sexual desire, get yourself some Cherry Garcia and some expensive white sheets.
• If you're one of those women (or men) who just lives to get spooged on at the end, obviously Cold Stone's Cake Batter has your name written all over it.
• If you like to do a little pirate role-playing thing in the bedroom, parrot and peg-leg optional, get some of Häagen Dazs' Rum Raisin. And just pretend that the parrot and the peg leg are optional.
• If you like your men (or women) a little young — but still legal, obviously — get some of Cold Stone's Green Apple Gummy Bear.
• If you can't get enough of men or women (like George Hamilton, John Boehner or Lindsay Lohan) who are perma-tanned orange, and/or have a tanning bed fetish, try out Cold Stone's Orange Dreamsicle.
• If there's nothing you're craving more that a cock up your ass, you should probably get yourself a freshly-packed pint of Chocolate Fudge Brownie at the nearest B&J's location near you.
• But if you're really into asses more generally, they also make a slightly spicy Cinnamon Buns you could try.
• If there's just something about Ron Jeremy that just completely floats your boat, please just go buy a lifetime supply of Chunky Monkey and never tell anyone.
• But if you're hoping that there's just one, big way that Howard Dean resembles Ron Jeremy, get yourself a pint of B&J's Vermonty Python.
• If you get off more on angry sex or break up sex than anything, Häagen Dazs has your Rocky Road waiting at your local supermarket and my therapist has an open slot on Wednesday you can have.
• If you are a lactation festishist, they've got your Dulce de Leche, too, and there's probably going to be a breastfeeding woman somewhere in the supermarket anyway.
• If you just can't stop pestering your lover to do it again and again, B&J makes a S'more ice cream that he would probably just as soon you started eating because shit chafes after a while.
• If you're really into teabagging, Cold Stone has a Macadamia nut flavor that they can definitely add even more nuts to.
• Obviously, if you're more into the three-ways, Neopolitan is the way to go.
• And if you just can't go without a movie star hopped up on amphetamines — even though you're going to have to — grab a pint of B&J's Coffee Heath Bar Crunch and a box of Kleenex for whatever bodily fluids you might excrete from either grief or pleasure.

Pastor’s Advice for Better Marriage: More Sex [NY Times]

Related: Ben & Jerry's Flavor World
Häagen Dazs Ice Cream
Cold Stone Creations