9. GOD IS NOT SEXUAL


In the last two or three hundred years there has been a very
considerable disentanglement of the idea of God from the complex of
sexual thought and feeling. But in the early days of religion the two
things were inseparably bound together; the fury of the Hebrew prophets,
for example, is continually proclaiming the extraordinary "wrath" of
their God at this or that little dirtiness or irregularity or breach of
the sexual tabus. The ceremony of circumcision is clearly indicative
of the original nature of the Semitic deity who developed into the
Trinitarian God. So far as Christianity dropped this rite, so far
Christianity disavowed the old associations. But to this day the
representative Christian churches still make marriage into a mystical
sacrament, and, with some exceptions, the Roman communion exacts
the sacrifice of celibacy from its priesthood, regardless of the
mischievousness and maliciousness that so often ensue. Nearly every
Christian church inflicts as much discredit and injustice as it can
contrive upon the illegitimate child. They do not treat illegitimate
children as unfortunate children, but as children with a mystical and
an incurable taint of SIN. Kindly easy-going Christians may resent this
statement because it does not tally with their own attitudes, but let
them consult their orthodox authorities.

One must distinguish clearly here between what is held to be sacred or
sinful in itself and what is held to be one's duty or a nation's duty
because it is in itself the wisest, cleanest, clearest, best thing to
do. By the latter tests and reasonable arguments most or all of our
institutions regulating the relations of the sexes may be justifiable.