What do you personally believe in? Should sex be for procreation or recreation purposes as well? What are your influences for your views on this matter?

Reaction to Topic number 1: Textbooks state that sexuality has biological, psychological and social dimensions and that people engage in sex due to differing views. However, many individuals and religions take the position that only procreation justifies engaging in sexual activities. What do you personally believe in? Should sex be for procreation or recreation purposes as well? What are your influences for your views on this matter?

Sexuality is multidimensional. To view sex in terms of procreation alone is myopic and totally disregards the rich texture of human sexuality. To my mind religion has usurped huge chunks of human existence by putting morality over things that are clearly outside its realm. I am a catholic but even then I can’t help but feel the mounting tension between science and religion or between science and morality. It is like the old debate between evolutionists and those who believe in creation. Before real knowledge can be had, morality and religion must allow the unfettered search for the truth. The truth cannot be ordained. Science supports a multidimensional view of human sexuality. Religion does too, for human existence but stops at the gates of sexuality where new rules are applied to make dogma fit. We don’t have all the answers but we will have less answers to our eternal questions if we wear blinders so as to accommodate our biases and constricted modes of thought. We are all afraid. Human life is too tentative, too fleeting but this is not a license for moralists to wave the wand of dogmatism to erase our spontaneity. Sexuality is a living, active, fire-breathing dragon. It is the driving force of our lives. In nursing and the other health professions we are taught about gonadal hormones, courtship, sexual development, maturity, etc. As a student nurse I believe that these are proofs of the multidimensionality of human sexuality. We cannot afford to view it in the narrow confines of religious tenets. Have we forgotten how Galileo was excommunicated when he put the sun at the center of our planetary system? The church has a long history of ultra-conservatism. It is just a matter of who sees things first and who takes up the slack and admits centuries later that the heretics were after all correct. We may speak like heretics today