The invisibility of asexuality
It can be hard for some to fathom that sex just isn’t important for some. “They are the friends and family members who don’t express any desire to pursue sexual intimacy, who don’t often or ever seem interested in conventional dating, and who get pushed to the sidelines in any conversation about sexual health,” Kate Sloan writes in a recent article in the Walrus.
“Much like same-sex attraction decades ago, this nonattraction was initially (and is sometimes still) conflated with a sexual-desire disorder, worthy of pathologization and medical treatment with pharmaceuticals or therapy. But scientists have confirmed asexuality isn’t a medical issue; it is a sexual orientation on the same plane as heterosexuality, homosexuality, and bisexuality,” Ms. Sloan writes.
“If someone is gay, as an example, it’s pretty easy to say, ‘Okay, well, I experience the same type of attraction that everyone else does, it’s just pointed at a different gender,’ ” says Brian Langevin, executive director of the nonprofit organization Asexual Outreach. “For asexual people ... they might not even know that sexual attraction exists, and to them, the whole world could seem very confusing.”
Meanwhile, a 2013 study in British Columbia showed that asexual individuals are more likely to be socially isolated, depressed, and anxious.
“True emotional intimacy is created, according to psychology, by honesty, empathy, and listening,” Ms. Sloan writes. “When we oversimplify relationships by insisting, on a sociocultural level, that sex is the ultimate key to and only sign of a profound connection, we deprive ourselves of the more holistic affinities available to us if we look for more.”
Fundamental churches face allegations
Joy Evans Ryder was 15 when she reportedly was raped by Dave Hyles, youth director at her Baptist church in Hammond, Ind. She was not the youth director’s only alleged victim. He never faced charges; in a scenario strikingly similar to that of hundreds of Roman Catholic priests, he escaped local prosecution by being moved on to other assignments.
An investigation by the Fort Worth (Tex.) Star-Telegram has unearthed a decades-old cover-up of more than 400 cases of sexual abuse at independent fundamental Baptist churches across the United States.
Former members of congregations point to the cultlike power of many independent fundamental Baptist churches and the constant pressure to never question pastors or leave the church.
“We didn’t have a compound ... but it may as well have been. Our mind was the compound,” says a former member. Some of the abused believed that if they disobeyed the pastor or left the church, God would kill them or their family.
Some independent fundamental Baptist churches preach separation from the world, nonbelievers, and Christians with other religious views. A natural outcome, according to Josh Elliott, a former member of Vineyard’s Oklahoma City church, is that for any issues, “even legal issues, you go to the pastor first, not the police. ... You don’t report to police because the pastor is the ultimate authority, not the government.”
“I see a culture where pastoral authority is taken to a level that’s beyond what the Scripture teaches,” says Tim Heck, who was a deacon at Faith Baptist Church in Wildomar, Calif., and whose daughter said she had been abused by the youth pastor there. “I think the independent fundamental Baptists have lost their way.”