I was just leafing through Barbara Walker’s Women’s Encyclopedia of Myths and Secrets, and she goes into this whole thing about how St. Paul may have not had a dingaling (ie, he was castrated).

Even more interesting than that though, is Paul’s views on marriage. Now, your average fundamentalist Christian would have you believe that marriage is this beautiful sacred thing that was ordained by god, and needs to be protected against those nasty skanky gays. But, when you get down to it, Christianity was essentially made in Paul’s image, rather than Christ’s, and Paul’s views on sexuality and marriage were anything but friendly.

Check out 1 Corintinians 7:1-9 in particular. First two lines, Paul explicitly says:

…It is good for a man not to touch a woman. Nevertheless, to avoid fornication, let every man have his own wife, and let every woman have her own husband.

And in line six, he says that marriage is given “by permission and not of commandment.” How the fuck come Christians never bring this up in their arguments? Oh wait! I know, its because it doesn’t support their narrow view of the world. But wait, I thought their views were based on the Bible? Right, but only where convenient.

Here’s a nice bit I found online about Paul’s view on marriage in this passage:

Christianity, and more particularly St. Paul, introduced an entirely novel view of marriage, that it existed not primarily for the procreation of children, but to prevent the sin of fornication…. (I Cor. vii. 1-9.) St. Paul makes no mention whatever of children; the biological purpose of marriage appears to him wholly unimportant.

… he thinks it may enable the weaker brethren to withstand temptation; he does not suggest for a moment that there may be any positive good in marriage, or that affection between husband and wife may be a beautiful and desirable thing, nor does he take the slightest interest in the family; fornication holds the center of the stage in his thoughts, and the whole of his sexual ethics is arranged with reference to it.

I also think its hilarious how fundamentalist Christians always accuse more modern thinkers and New Age people of practicing “buffet-style spirituality” where they only take teachings that are convenient to them - seeing as Christians do this exact same shit all the time.

Oh, going back to the castration thing: Paul’s Christianity generally favored radical ascetism and that the flesh was evil. Cutting off your penis in this case would give you a direct defense against fornication, so you wouldn’t even need to get married as a container for your lustful urges. The other cool thing that Barbara Walker mentions in this section of her book is that there is supposedly some symbolic connection between the olive branch and castration. The idea being that the severed penis of the sacred king was an offering of peace in pagan goddess-worship contexts. Therefore, she claims that the dove holding an olive branch in its mouth is actually the “emblem of the goddess Aphrodite, who castrated sacred kings.”