The aim of the Party was not merely to prevent men and women from forming loyalties which it might not be able to control. Its real, undeclared purpose was to remove all pleasure from the sexual act. Not love so much as eroticism was the enemy, inside marriage as well as outside it. All marriages between Party members had to be approved by a committee appointed for the purpose, and — though the principle was never clearly stated — permission was always refused if the couple concerned gave the impression of being physically attracted to one another. The only recognized purpose of marriage was to beget children for the service of the Party. Sexual intercourse was to be looked on as a slightly disgusting minor operation, like having an enema. This again was never put into plain words, but in an indirect way it was rubbed into every Party member from childhood onwards. There were even organizations such as the Junior Anti-Sex League, which advocated complete celibacy for both sexes. All children were to be begotten by artificial insemination (artsem, it was called in Newspeak) and brought up in public institutions. This, Winston was aware, was not meant altogether seriously, but somehow it fitted in with the general ideology of the Party. The Party was trying to kill the sex instinct, or, if it could not be killed, then to distort it and dirty it. He did not know why this was so, but it seemed natural that it should be so. And as far as the women were concerned, the Party’s efforts were largely successful.

He thought again of Katharine. It must be nine, ten — nearly eleven years since they had parted. It was curious how seldom he thought of her. For days at a time he was capable of forgetting that he had ever been married. They had only been together for about fifteen months. The Party did not permit divorce, but it rather encouraged separation in cases where there were no children.

Katharine was a tall, fair-haired girl, very straight, with splendid movements. She had a bold, aquiline face, a face that one might have called noble until one discovered that there was as nearly as possible nothing behind it. Very early in her married life he had decided — though perhaps it was only that he knew her more intimately than he knew most people — that she had without exception the most stupid, vulgar, empty mind that he had ever encountered. She had not a thought in her head that was not a slogan, and there was no imbecility, absolutely none that she was not capable of swallowing if the Party handed it out to her. ‘The human sound-track’ he nicknamed her in his own mind. Yet he could have endured living with her if it had not been for just one thing — sex.

As soon as he touched her she seemed to wince and stiffen. To embrace her was like embracing a jointed wooden image. And what was strange was that even when she was clasping him against her he had the feeling that she was simultaneously pushing him away with all her strength. The rigidlty of her muscles managed to convey that impression. She would lie there with shut eyes, neither resisting nor co-operating but submitting. It was extraordinarily embarrassing, and, after a while, horrible. But even then he could have borne living with her if it had been agreed that they should remain celibate. But curiously enough it was Katharine who refused this. They must, she said, produce a child if they could. So the performance continued to happen, once a week quite regulariy, whenever it was not impossible. She even used to remind him of it in the morning, as something which had to be done that evening and which must not be forgotten. She had two names for it. One was ‘making a baby’, and the other was ‘our duty to the Party’ (yes, she had actually used that phrase). Quite soon he grew to have a feeling of positive dread when the appointed day came round. But luckily no child appeared, and in the end she agreed to give up trying, and soon afterwards they parted.

…

He saw himself standing there in the dim lamplight, with the smell of bugs and cheap scent in his nostrils, and in his heart a feeling of defeat and resentment which even at that moment was mixed up with the thought of Katharine’s white body, frozen for ever by the hypnotic power of the Party. Why did it always have to be like this? Why could he not have a woman of his own instead of these filthy scuffles at intervals of years? But a real love affair was an almost unthinkable event. The women of the Party were all alike. Chastity was as deep ingrained in them as Party loyalty. By careful early conditioning, by games and cold water, by the rubbish that was dinned into them at school and in the Spies and the Youth League, by lectures, parades, songs, slogans, and martial music, the natural feeling had been driven out of them. His reason told him that there must be exceptions, but his heart did not believe it. They were all impregnable, as the Party intended that they should be. And what he wanted, more even than to be loved, was to break down that wall of virtue, even if it were only once in his whole life. The sexual act, successfully performed, was rebellion. Desire was thoughtcrime. Even to have awakened Katharine, if he could have achieved it, would have been like a seduction, although she was his wife.

"1984" – George Orwell

If the theocrats every take total control, this book will be one of the first to take the express ride straight in the bonfire, along with those of us who have taken it’s message about totalitarianism to heart.  Never mind how Heather Has Two Mommies glorifies homosexuality…Orwell got it dead right about why totalitarians have waged war on that most elemental, essential part of the human experience: Desire…and especially desire which brings people together into a bond of human love.  Reading it, you really see how theocracy is no different in kind from the Stalinism Orwell was warning against.  For all their bellyaching about the primacy of the family, and so-called family values, the dirty truth is that the fundamentalism that animates the American Christianist movement hates the bond of human love that is the bedrock of family life, as much as any secular police state that ever existed.  And there is no better place to see that hatred, ironically enough, then in the essential message of the ex-gay movement:

Sex is not about desire.  It is not about love.  Sex is about duty to God.  Replace ‘God’ with, ‘The Party’ and you see it all, with sickening clarity.

Via Ex-Gay Watch, comes this link to the Christianist web zine Boundless, and Exodus Youth Ministry’s Mike Ensley’s advice to young people "struggling with same-sex attraction…

There are many powerful stories out there about men and women whom God has delivered from the gay lifestyle. It touches the heart and certainly glorifies God when we see these people getting married and leading godly lives free of homosexuality.

But in all honesty, what about the rest of us who deal with this issue and haven’t come to our "happy ending" yet? What about those of us who continue to struggle with same-sex attraction (SSA), even after choosing to follow Christ? We’re caught in a sort of identity limbo, unsure whether we can or even should hope to experience heterosexual desire, get married and start a family someday.

Ensley has an answer for them…but first he has to slay a strawman…

"But, Mike," you might say, "they’re allowed to follow their feelings and urges, and marry whoever they want."

Um, no they’re not. Every man deals with feelings and urges that pull him away from God’s explicit will for our sexuality. Or did you think other Christian men’s sex drives always cooperate with them in abstaining until marriage, and then staying faithful? They too struggle with wandering and lustful eyes, curiosity about other people, the fleeting infatuations. They have to crucify the flesh daily, just like you and me.

But this is dishonest.  The essential cruelty of the prison fundamentalism puts homosexuals into is that they are forbidden from having that intimate body and soul love that it seems to be willing to grant to heterosexuals.  A heterosexual can at least marry and have sex with someone they are naturally attracted to sexually.  Sure, they may be tempted to stray from the rigid boundaries imposed upon them by their church.  But at least within those boundaries the possibility of intimate romantic love still exists…or seems to.  But for homosexuals it is simply not a possibility.

In recent years, ex-gay rhetoric has seemingly come to a grudging acknowledgment of this fact.  All the promises of change and healing via prayer just don’t work.  Rather then continuing to beat these people over the head about their lack of faith, ex-gay rhetoric began to hold chastity (celibacy) as a virtue that gay people could aspire to, in lieu of the impossible change.  But this is a barren promise.  A life of struggle against ones inner nature, achieving nothing more noble then an empty desolate loneliness in exchange for, maybe, grudging acceptance in the pews. 

Ensley wants gay youth to know that they’re not being singled out unfairly.  The inner desolation they are experiencing is in fact, the price of admission that heterosexuals must pay too, for the glory of The Party God.  Marriage is not about love…it is about duty.  Go ahead and marry someone of the opposite sex Ensley tells them.  The fact is that you shouldn’t expect to desire your mate.

Stop obsessing about how much you will (or won’t) enjoy heterosexual sex

You’ve thought about it, and so have I. What if I don’t enjoy sex with my spouse? What if I still want to have sex with other men (or women, if you’re a woman)? The skeptics certainly say all the time that we "ex-gays" only have sexually frustrated lives ahead of us.

We often say the opposite of homosexuality isn’t heterosexuality, it’s holiness. That means God is calling us away from a me-centered life, including a me-centered sexuality. We’ve spent a lot of time programming ourselves through fantasy, masturbation, pornography and encounters to be utterly selfish with our sexuality. Marriage is the absolute antithesis of that.

The Bible tells us that once we are married our body actually belongs to our spouse. If you haven’t lived with that attitude in singleness, it’s not going to come naturally once you say your vows. The best way to be ready is by following this other Biblical command: to offer your body as a living sacrifice to God, because it ultimately belongs to Him.

People often ask me if I have sexual fantasies about women now, because that’s what the world would consider change. But God wants me to change not into a man who still wraps himself up in self-absorbed fantasy, but one who’s ready to put my wife before myself — and put Him first.

Afraid you won’t enjoy the sex? Well, if your priority is your own satisfaction and the living out of your overly-developed obsessions, no, you won’t enjoy the intimacy of sex within marriage. You know what? Neither would an "ever-straight" with the same mindset. They might be able to marry according to their worldly desires, but it will never fulfill the endless hunger of selfishness. Real closeness grows out of commitment to a person, and following God’s will.

Don’t worry; sex God’s way will be the best.

Again…replace "God" with "The Party" there it is…in all its sickening, stomach churning human hating glory.  The fundamentalist ideal of family life: two people having ritual sex for the sole purpose of making babies, without regard for the intimate needs of one another, or even their own feelings for the person they have in their arms.  What does it mean to put your wife first, if the act of taking her into your arms is barren of any real desire for her?  What does it mean for her to love you, if she’s supposed to regard your feelings as irrelevant?  The grotesque answer is: the essential emptiness of the act is proof of their mutual devotion.  But not to each other.  By their willingness to fuck someone they have no desire for, or to be fucked by someone who has no desire for them, they are proving their devotion to The Party God.  They are meat, enacting a few brief, barren orgasms utterly devoid of healthy human desire in a way that even the most random of sexual assignations in a gay bathhouse, or a highway rest stop, could not hope to sink to.  The next time you hear a fundamentalist nutcase yap, yap, yapping about how homosexuality is barren, remember that this is what they consider righteous.

And this is the ideal, make no mistake, for heterosexuals too.  Whether or not you actually desire the person in your arms does not matter.  Time and again you hear this from the talking heads of the religious right.  Marriage is not about love.  It is not about desire.  What matters is duty.  To God.  To the Party…

"I could have stood it if it hadn’t been for one thing," he said. He told her about the frigid little ceremony that Katharine had forced him to go through on the same night every week. "She hated it, but nothing would make her stop doing it. She used to call it — but you’ll never guess."

"Our duty to the Party," said Julia promptly.

"How did you know that?"

"I’ve been at school too, dear. Sex talks once a month for the over-sixteens. And in the Youth Movement. They rub it into you for years. I dare say it works in a lot of cases. But of course you can never tell; people are such hypocrites."

She began to enlarge upon the subject. With Julia, everything came back to her own sexuality. As soon as this was touched upon in any way she was capable of great acuteness. Unlike Winston, she had grasped the inner meaning of the Party’s sexual puritanism. It was not merely that the sex instinct created a world of its own which was outside the Party’s control and which therefore had to be destroyed if possible. What was more important was that sexual privation induced hysteria, which was desirable because it could be transformed into war-fever and leader-worship. The way she put it was:

"When you make love you’re using up energy; and afterwards you feel happy and don’t give a damn for anything. They can’t bear you to feel like that. They want you to be bursting with energy all the time. All this marching up and down and cheering and waving flags is simply sex gone sour. If you’re happy inside yourself, why should you get excited about Big Brother and the Three-Year Plans and the Two Minutes Hate and all the rest of their bloody rot?"

That was very true, he thought. There was a direct intimate connexion between chastity and political orthodoxy. For how could the fear, the hatred, and the lunatic credulity which the Party needed in its members be kept at the right pitch, except by bottling down some powerful instinct and using it as a driving force? The sex impulse was dangerous to the Party, and the Party had turned it to account.