Sexual Ethics and Law

Is it possible for conservative Protestant groups to survive in secular institutional settings? Here, Bramadat offers an ethnographic study of the Inter-Varsity Christian Fellowship (IVCF) at McMaster University, a group that espouses fundamentalist interpretations of the Bible, women's roles, the age of the earth, alcohol consumption, and sexual ethics. In examining this group, Bramadat demonstrates how this tiny minority thrives within the overwhelmingly secular context of the University.

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Sexual Defilement in Early Christian Texts

10.1093/oso/9780198791959.003.0007 ◽

2017 ◽

Author(s):

Moshe Blidstein

Keyword(s):

Hebrew Bible ◽

Second Temple ◽

Second Century ◽

Sexual Ethics ◽

Christian Community ◽

Early Christian ◽

Greco Roman ◽

The Family ◽

Main Target ◽

Christian Society

Chapter 7 demonstrates that sexual sin became the main target for purity discourse in early Christian texts, and attempts to explain why. Christian imagery of sexual defilement drew from a number of traditions—Greco-Roman sexual ethics, imagery of sexual sin from the Hebrew Bible and Second Temple texts, and both Jewish and pagan purity laws, all seen through the lens of Paul’s imagery of sexuality and sexual sin. Two broad currents characterized Christian sexual ethics in the second century: one upheld marriage and the family as the basis for a holy Christian society and church, while the second rejected all sexuality, including in marriage. Writers of both currents made heavy use of defilement imagery. For the first, sexual sin was a dangerous defilement, contaminating the Christian community and severing it from God. For the second, more radical current, sexuality itself was the defilement; virginity or continence alone were pure.

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Prostitution

The Oxford Handbook of New Testament, Gender, and Sexuality ◽

10.1093/oxfordhb/9780190213398.013.30 ◽

2019 ◽

pp. 644-660

Author(s):

Carly Daniel-Hughes

Keyword(s):

Roman Empire ◽

Sex Workers ◽

Sexual Ethics ◽

Early Christian ◽

The Social ◽

Female Prostitutes ◽

Female Prostitute ◽

Negative Representation

This chapter shows how slavery informed the social realities of and rhetoric about prostitution and prostitutes, which informed the negative representation of female prostitutes in early Christian sources. Following Paul’s rhetoric, many Christians used sexual virtue to legitimatize themselves and bolster their triumphalist claims over others in the Roman Empire. To this end, they employed the degraded and debased female prostitute as a powerful symbolic figure as that which stood outside communal boundaries or as a threat that could undermine boundaries from within. In so doing, they marginalized prostitutes and enslaved persons, who could not, by virtue of their enslavement, sustain the sexual ethics that early Christians were promoting. The chapter concludes with debates about contemporary sex workers, arguing that it is critical for feminist historians to resist the rhetoric of the early Christian texts, which obscure the presence of prostitutes (and vulnerable slaves) in ancient Christ-believing communities.

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Macho Buddhism: Gender and Sexualities in the Diamond Way

Religion and Gender ◽

10.1163/18785417-00101005 ◽

2011 ◽

Vol 1 (1) ◽

pp. 85-103

Author(s):

Burkhard Scherer

Keyword(s):

Tibetan Buddhism ◽

Gender Stereotyping ◽

Sexual Ethics ◽

Tibetan Buddhist ◽

Historical Source ◽

The West ◽

Cultural Attitudes ◽

Continuity And Change ◽

And Performance ◽

Previous Scholarship

Western Tibetan Buddhist movements have been described as bourgeois and puritanical in previous scholarship. In contrast, Ole Nydahl’s convert lay Karma Kagyu Buddhist movement, the Diamond Way, has drawn attention for its apparently hedonistic style. This article addresses the wider issues of continuity and change during the transition of Tibetan Buddhism from Asia to the West. It analyses views on and performances of gender, sexual ethics and sexualities both diachronically through textual-historical source and discourse analysis and synchronically through qualitative ethnography. In this way the article demonstrates how the approaches of contemporary gender and sexualities studies can serve as a way to question the Diamond Way Buddhism’s location in the ‘tradition vs modernity’ debate. Nydahl’s pre-modern gender stereotyping, the hetero-machismo of the Diamond Way and the mildly homophobic tone and content of Nydahl’s teaching are interpreted in light of Indian and Tibetan Buddhist sexual ethics and traditional Tibetan cultural attitudes on sexualities. By excavating the emic genealogy of Nydahl’s teachings, the article suggests that Nydahl’s and the Diamond Way’s view on and performance of gender and sexualities are consistent with his propagation of convert Buddhist neo-orthodoxy.

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SEXOLOGY IN THE YISHUV: THE RISE AND DECLINE OF SEXUAL CONSULTATION IN TEL AVIV, 1930–39

International Journal of Middle East Studies ◽

10.1017/s0020743810000036 ◽

2010 ◽

Vol 42 (2) ◽

pp. 231-249 ◽

Cited By ~ 5

Author(s):

Liat Kozma

Keyword(s):

Gay Rights ◽

Reform Movement ◽

Sexual Ethics ◽

Tel Aviv ◽

Community Or ◽

Magnus Hirschfeld ◽

Lecture Tour

In late 1931, German sexologist and gay-rights activist Magnus Hirschfeld, quoted above, visited Palestine for a lecture tour that attracted hundreds in Tel Aviv, Jerusalem, Haifa, and kibbutz Beit Alfa. By this time, the Jewish settlers' community (or Yishuv) in Mandate Palestine had already been exposed to the science of sexology and to the reform movement it inspired. Sexual-hygiene manuals had been translated into Hebrew and Yiddish in both Tel Aviv and Warsaw. Hebrew readers had access, for example, to translations of Auguste Forel's Sexual Ethics and Max Hodann's A Boy and a Girl. Finally, in the fall and winter of 1931–32, three sex consultation centers were opened in Tel Aviv.

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