Wow – I grew up Christian and fell away from it later on. A lot of this stuff I heard growing up. The stories of having sex before marriage being like giving away your present – that you’d be damaged goods after the fact. As I’ve gotten older and have embraced my own sexuality, I realize more and more how damaging this was for me. Fortunately, I found a group of people who helped me learn how to talk about important topics like sex, sexual identity, gender identity, etc. If you’re at all interested in the intersection of sex and christianity, I highly recommend this. The way they examine race amongst all of this is also incredibly on point with how I was taught it’s frightening:
Also I’m so beyond Christianity at this point that it felt weird to say “I grew up Christian” as I now just see “Christian” as a name these days.
agm 