In a recent article published by the Guardian, research has found that lesbian women report higher levels of sexual satisfaction than heterosexual women. These findings are based on a wide range of factors but the guardian has largely focused on the almighty orgasm as the lead indicator. According to the Guardian, research findings from the Kinsey Institute report that lesbian women experience orgasm 86% of the time while heterosexual women only experience orgasm 65% percent of the time. …

Many Christian websites offer text-based sermons and outlines and other resources for pastors and counselors. As I was weeding through sermons and resources I stumbled across a sermon published by Lifeway.com produced by Dr. Rick Ezell, the pastor of the First Baptist Church in Greer, South Carolina. Dr. Ezell holds a Doctorate in Ministry in Preaching and a Master of Theology in Preaching, so we can consider him something of an expert on a whole host of theological subjects and skills.

This particular sermon struck my interest as it discussed Proverbs 7, one of the most notorious passages related to…

The quest for comprehensive abstinence-only sex education

Within the Christian community, the majority of the conversation around sexuality is focused on sexual purity. We encourage our children to abstain from sex before marriage; men are encouraged to maintain pure minds and bodies by abstaining from masturbation; and women are encouraged to keep their thought lives pure by avoiding sexual fantasy. In essence, the Christian perspective of sexuality, apart from the confines of marriage, is total abstinence. …

Recently, I have been encountering the ever-present gender debate in a very interesting and specific way that makes me think that a bit of clarity might be needed. So, I wanted to take a moment and briefly address this. It seems that many people, Christians included, are trying to make the case that there are only two genders as a way to defend against the gender equality movement we are in the midst of.

Sex vs Gender

There is a serious flaw with this that stems from a lack of understanding of the terminology being used. The people trying to resist the modern…

I have recently become captured by a story written by the mother of sexual abuse victim. The girl, who remains unnamed, was sexually assaulted in 2006 at the age of 11 by a then 22-year-old male. The crime happened in Port Orchard, Washington. So often, we tend to think that parents have something to do with a child becoming victimized; they should never left the child alone with a man twice her age or they didn’t pay enough attention to her, allowing her to become groomed by a pedophile. In this story, though, things are different. …

The debate about open information sharing is nothing new. From the time I was a kid in the early 90s, I can recall hearing discussions about how information and software should be free. Activists and hacktivists standing up on soap boxes and declaring for the freedom of information across the internet. I always disagreed with them, holding on to my beliefs that the world is best served by capitalism and that developers and producers of knowledge have every right to reap a financial reward for their work. …

One of the many things I hope to accomplish with my column is to challenge the Church and support a greater discussion of the issues surrounding sexuality in the Church. We live in a time and culture when sexuality is pervasive and so often manifests as a twisted version itself that becomes pathologized in America’s churches. It is very difficult to develop a healthy, God-given perspective of sexuality in a church which refuses to talk about it openly, teach people about it, and provide tools and skills to help them identify the blurring lines between good sex and bad sex…

Every scholar, at their core, is searching for something, some answer that reveals the truth of those burning questions that live in our souls. We spend countless hours performing the basic human functions of reading, writing, and thinking and for such long periods at a stretch that very often we find ourselves forsaking human connection; in the case of social science scholarship, the perversity is that we often forsake the very things we seek to understand. But it all starts with a question; some burning drive to understand some…thing. For some scholars, that genesis question may find its roots in…