Madonna of Orgasm Church

Flimsy and I should absolutely perform a Faith Infiltration on this church:

The Madonna of Orgasm Church (Orgasmens Madonnas kyrka) took an important step toward official recognition in Sweden last week when a court ruled it had the right to be registered as a faith community.

Originally, the Legal, Financial and Administrative Services Agency (Kammarkollegiet) had refused the church’s registration application on the grounds that its name may offend Christians.

But the church’s founder, artist Carlos Bebeacua from Lövestad in southern Sweden, won his appeal to the county administrative court.

If the agency does not appeal the court’s decision within three weeks, then it must process Bebeacua’s application to register the church, which he founded in the early 1990s.

According to the Skånska Dagbladet newspaper, the idea for the church came to Bebeacua, who is the church’s self-appointed cardinal, after a painting of his entitled 'The Madonna of Orgasm' sparked protests requiring police action during the 1992 World’s Fair in Seville, Spain.

“The orgasm is God, the orgasm should be worshiped,” Bebeacua told the Kvällsposten newspaper.

“The orgasm is the ultimate feeling of lust, it shouldn’t be limited to ejaculation. You can reach it through art or by looking at a landscape and thinking ‘Wow!’”

According to Bebeacua, the church has a few hundred followers, and he hopes that registering the Madonna of Orgasm Church will get more people to consider the orgasm as God.

The church only has priestesses and its scriptures are called the Catechism of the Orgasm. The only gospel peached is the gospel of sex.

“It’s so we do what we know is right and good,” Bebeacua told Kvällsposten.

During ceremonies, the priestesses read verses and eat fruit and drink juice. Sex isn’t the focus, but it’s not forbidden either.

“It’s never happened. I don’t know how we’d react if it happened,” said Bebeacua.

He deflects allegations that his church is all about orgies and sex, claiming its purpose is to help people see orgasms as a metaphor for a love of life.

“There’s nothing dangerous in what we say, we’re harmless. It’s just that we have our doubts about established religions,” he told the TT news agency

 Obviously I don't think the orgasm is god, but I like that this church recognizes the fundamental spirituality of sex.

I know a few people in this world who think they are somehow "above" sex. They think that sex is some kind of animalistic instinct they have risen up above, and so they are better people for not wanting or needing or partaking in sex. I'm not making a blanket statement about people who are Asexual, I completely understand asexuality - someone who does not experience sexual attraction or desire for sex - but I do not understand explaining or justifying asexuality in terms of having risen above or being too good for sex. If you don't like sex, that's perfectly fine, and I totally get it. My friend The Alien is Asexual, and I find myself defending her all the time - I don't get why people care so much that she doesn't want sex. Pretending you've evolved above sex, and thinking that you are better than the sexual people around you because you don't need sex - I don't get that.

Sexuality, to me, is fundamentally spiritual. It's also an expression of ubuntu. I know sex may seem like a basic instinctual function, and they may think that rising above one's own instincts is a way to be a more evolved person, but I think that recognizing that sex is instinctual and thus embracing it as part of being human is being much more true to oneself. I'm not talking about raping and being unsafe, I am talking about accepting one's own innate sexual drives as being healthy.  Obviously, there is a point when sexual drives can be unhealthy - say, if you endanger yourself or infringe upon the rights of others. Sexual instincts themselves are not unhealthy. They don't prevent people from attaining spiritual fulfillment or enlightenment. On the contrary, I think healthy sex can be used to obtain spiritual fulfillment.

Sex to me is more about trust and intensity of knowing than anything else. It is about letting go of walls and fears. Of course, it's also about pleasure - being able to pleasure someone else, having someone else give you pleasure, and experiencing mutual pleasure.

Our society, especially the religious half of it, has this idea that denying yourself pleasure is somehow a good thing. Do religious people really think they can know god intimately without knowing another human intimately first? To me, it seems like breaking down the walls between other human beings is the first step in breaking down the walls between yourself and some universal transcendent entity.

In addition to the population of people who think they have risen above sex, there is a population of people who society somehow thinks are below sex. Why is it that society thinks people with disabilities are somehow innately asexual or that they don't need or want sex? Why is it that able-bodied society thinks people with disabilities are "being exploited" when they engage in sex or internet pornography? It absolutely blows my mind that I even have to bring this up - people with disabilities are people, and as such they have the same sexual drive as anyone else. If you think people with disabilities don't desire sex and are incapable of making their own descitions with regard to sex, that says a lot more about your perception of people with disabilities than it says about the people themselves.