Waiting For Sex

What? know ye not that your body is the temple of the Holy Ghost which is in you, which ye have of God, and ye are not your own? For ye are bought with a price: therefore glorify God in your body, and in your spirit, which are God's. 1 Corinthians 6:19-20

I have been having a series of extended conversations about sexuality and scripture from both a Christian and Buddhist perspective. When you add in the fact that I am a gay man - this can be dangerous territory.

Most of my gay friends wonder why I bother, and at least one of my more fundamentalist (straight) friends does too. Why don't I just say things that you're liable to read in the Bible ain't necessarily so?

First of all, I am not looking to understand those pieces of scripture typically used to condemn homosexuality. I refer to Jesus himself, "Moses suffered [this law] because of the hardness of men's hearts: but from the beginning it was not so."

But secondly, I don't think I want to throw out whole texts because of things that are politically incorrect or inconvenient for myself. Some of these texts are quite magnificent without their offending curlicues. And so I have been listening to as many liberal and conservative commentators as I can, as well as studying the texts myself.

Up until this past week I wasn't entirely sure that the Bible actually prohibited sex outside of marriage, although it that it prohibited adultery. Enter Paul. It becomes clear to me that St. Paul was a very human male with a both a peculiar view of sexuality to start with. He also seems, unlike Jesus, very comfortable saying who will go to heaven and who will burn. He is also quite clear that those that are just like him and abstain from sex altogether are best of all.

The third Wonderful Precept of Buddhism prohibits sex outside of a committed, loving relationship. If you take out Paul's condemnations of adulterers, prostitutes and whoremongers he seems to be saying somewhat the same thing.

The idea, looking into both traditions, seems to be that the human body, as part of the One, is too important to subject to casual sex. Judgement aside, the Buddhists say that sex outside a committed loving relationship is more likely to be emotionally or otherwise painful to one or the other party. Both traditions are speaking explicitly about heterosexual bonds.

But waiting until you are actually married? I do know people who waited until they were married and I can respect that. I also know people who rushed into marriage because they had to wait until they were married - and that seems natural, but not quite right. I am not sure I am going to wait until I get married (I should note that I haven't been waiting all my life, just a year or so).

Free love was fun when I was younger, but now seems empty. Is there anything in either of these traditions to shed light on this issue?