Within this community I was handed books at a young age on purity. We were part of the courtship movement that erupted after adolescent dream-boat Joshua Harris published the smash hit “I Kissed Dating Goodbye”. I was entranced by the romantic notion of saving my body entirely for a single counterpart forever. I aimed to save my first kiss for my engagement day.

The church we attended twice a week, which also housed homeschooler community activities in the area.

In our home, nudity and sexuality of any kind on television or in movies was not permitted. I was well trained and knew when I should change the channel — usually when people started kissing passionately and grabbing at clothes. People who let their children watch that “trash” were considered misguided. I’m sure in some ways it was an age appropriateness issue, but there was no such thing as “healthy perspectives” on sex in my youth group, homeschool coalition, or Christian dance studio.

This hiding and shuttling away of sexuality made it impossible to feel comfortable with my developing body and raging hormones.

Around the time AOL came on floppy disks, I wandered into sexuality via the internet, and my parents slept soundly through my brief encounters with verbal and visual pornography and a few IM conversations with what I now understand to be sexual predators.

I remember I liked the attention. I remember the dirty words felt good. I remember knowing it was wrong. Score one for the church, I stopped. But instead of understanding that those men were out of line, I felt like I had to reject everything about the situation, including the positive feelings associated with arousal.

Clothing had to be modest in the homeschool community. It was completely fine, however, for a 10 year old girl to cross-dress as Steve Urkel. Pictured: Me, age 10, attending a birthday party with my sexy AV equipment.

I attended a high school with a dress code that addressed necklines and skirt lengths. I saw the disappointment, gossip, and outrage that tore through the community should a boy and a girl have any kind of physical relationship, and I remember all too well the moral terror of pregnancy out of wedlock.

I remember crying from embarrassment when I got pulled into the Principal’s office and told my skirt was too tight. I had to call my mother to bring me another from home.

After transferring to a public school, I did kiss my high school boyfriend at 17 — two weeks before we broke up. I kissed a series of other boys after that, and then worked hard to find reasons to feel guilty about it in order to have fully repented.

I went to a college where boys and girls weren’t allowed in each other’s dorms. I knew a couple that narrowly escaped expulsion when they were caught by campus security getting steamy in a car. I remember that girl had to resign from her position of leadership in one of the school clubs as a result. I remember the shame we all knew she felt, and felt for her.

This college in Jackson, MS held the record for highest percentage of matriculating homeschoolers in the country and it’s slogan at the time was “Where the power of knowledge meets the power of faith.”

Convicted murderer, Rev. Paul Hill, looking chipper for a convict. Rev. Hill has been quoted as saying he considered himself a martyr and looked believed he would be rewarded in heaven.

It’s range of notable graduates include Elizabeth Spencer, author of the book which inspired the award-winning musical “The Light in the Piazza” and Rev. Paul Jennings Hill who received the death penalty for the murder of Dr. John Britton, an abortion provider in Pensacola FL.

The first close friend I made at that school shared my desire to regain a state of purity. I had enjoyed some hot making out, and she had lost her virginity. We inspired each other, and asked God to help us reclaim the purity we’d lost- but I never could quite feel like kissing Bradley Clements — an atheist, but one of the most warm and compassionate individuals I’d ever met — was wrong.

Christianity had taught me to see inside myself. I understood God to be so pervasive that it could not be deceived. I was held in honest account to my creator. I was taught that God didn’t care only about actions, but about thoughts, impulses and motivations, and was after purity in my heart to it’s very core.

Because of this insight, I lost the ability to lie to myself. I could feel the eyes of God on my depths. It was this very contact with my own inner truth that ultimately confirmed that I didn’t believe in the Bible, I didn’t believe in Jesus, and finally, that I didn’t believe in the very God I thought I felt.

I kissed my religion goodbye over the summer of 2004 due to irreconcilable philosophical differences, but remained at Belhaven College til I graduated in 2007.

In the years since I attended, over half of the men suspected to be gay have come out. A few of them still get unwanted messages from male dance and theater faculty, not-so-subtly encouraging them to turn it around like they did. I’ll never forget the afternoon the dance department aired “I DO exist”: a documentary about men who live as straight men after “overcoming” their homosexuality with Jesus.

Myself (second from left) with three of my closest friends from college attending a Masquerade thrown by the theatre department. Michael (second from right), who challenged norms and prejudices over the course of our four years there by being fearlessly themselves.* Michael does not go by gender specific pronouns, and recently acquired their PhD. Much of Michael’s art, performance, and study revolves around challenging cultural assumptions about gender and sexuality.

During my time there, I watched one of my closest friends struggle with confusion and rejection when their* male friendships pushed the boundaries of intimacy and then spiraled into distance and blame. I watched my friend transition from believing they’d been called to live an asexual lifestyle (the only choice for someone whose natural inclination is described to them as a damnable abomination) through tormented minefields of self-blame every time an attraction would surface.

I watched the discomfort ripple through the dance department in our later years when my friend lovingly, brilliantly, and firmly stood up to the disapproval of their sexual orientation. I watched friendships break under the stress. I watched the pain, dried the tears, and stood beside my friend amid the chaos of both inner and external realities. I too was an outcast, I was “out” as an agnostic atheist in a world of Presbyterians.

Pastors preached from their pulpits that the Truth would set you free. I watched a million dances, pantomimes and sermons about the power of the cross overcoming addiction.

Most of the people who worshiped this cross, however, didn’t look very free. They had locks on their minds and mouths. To me, they looked like slaves, being told what they could think and feel.

It’s amazing how many women survive this culture that says the way they dress and behave is to blame for the thoughts in another person’s head. If your left hand causes you to sin, cut it off.

You must deny jealousy of prettier girls in church, because that’s vanity and selfishness. You are judged by subjective estimations of your purity, but somehow big eyes, soft lips, and hourglass figures still turn more heads. Attempts at improving your appearance must be subtle lest people deem you immodest or shallow. I felt destined to fail by the standards of both vixens and angels, as sensuality was condemned, yet naiveté and purity don’t last long in a precocious, curious mind.

Find your very own fair skinned, blonde headed virgin bride! Personality not included.

Over the last ten years I have watched this charade of denial twist and tear well meaning people apart. From the girl I knew who had anal sex to save her “technical” virginity for marriage, who bit her tongue and sucked it up when the husband she saved “it” for never wanted her, to the women who stay with abusers because they don’t believe in divorce, to the ever repeating examples of women who had been molested or raped as children who compromise their marriages and mental health while aspiring to fit a prescription of purity; leaving their psychological wounds to fester and infect their souls, internalizing the blame their predators deserved, feeling unworthy, unholy, and damaged… who is surprised when their craving for a moment of validation leads to cheating on a spouse, manic depression, or worse?

In my time as a sexual assault crisis hotline volunteer I saw over and over the ways a victim can’t own their victim-hood, buried under layers of blame and shame for having any contact with sexuality whatsoever.

My own psyche still harbors rape fantasies and the reason is so glaringly obvious: it’s sex I can enjoy without owning- without risking blame, or judgement.

The impact of this brand of Christianity is far flung. It’s not isolated to tiny Christian schools in Mississippi and Virginia. The Josh Duggar scandal is truly horrific, but to those who’ve seen the insides of this world, horrifically trite.

This book was given out to every student at my school just weeks before the scandal broke.

The men leading the evangelical cause to “cure” men of homosexuality are almost always committing the sin they are trying to eradicate. I could only shrug in 2006 when Ted Haggard, then president of the National Evangelical Association who had recently preached in our Chapel was outed for doing drugs and paying a man for illicit sex, while the copy of his most recent book “Letters from Home: Everything You Need to Know to be Successful In Life” gathered dust on my bookshelf.

Who could be shocked, anyway, after the abuses of the Catholic church were known to be widespread and persistent throughout history? “Not all Christians are good Christians” is what people would say, politely sidestepping the systemic issues at hand and justifying the quiet sweep under the rug.

Scandals be damned, the insistence that sexuality must be contained within strictly drawn lines will not go away. There are still school districts that lobby for abstinence only education despite the data that shows higher rates of teenage pregnancy where it is applied.

This idea - that sex cannot be known in any way outside of heterosexual marriage or it’s wrong and bad -continues to generate split psyches and self loathing, projections of judgement and hatred, and a commitment to ignorance. The refusal to accept sexuality as a very real, important, and complex discussion can result in un-planned pregnancies, hidden porn addictions, extra-marital affairs, sexual abuse, and an inability to provide real psychological care and community support for those affected.

And it’s not just the fringes of our society.

You can still see the reach of the sex-shame mentality on prime time TV. On the current season of the Bachelorette on ABC — a FAR cry from the culture of 18 Kids and Counting — previews show clips of Kaitlyn CRYING HER EYES OUT and feeling horrifically ashamed because, surrounded by 20 of the sexiest men ABC could cast, all competing to offer her a marriage proposal- surprise — she sleeps with one of them.

ABC’s Bachelorette, red eyed and ashamed.

This girl professes no faith, but still can’t justify her actions with the pressures she feels around her. She has been hand selected by ABC as the every-woman avatar of 2015, and she knows she’s damaged the public perception of her value.

Why do we continue to reinforce a public standard of sex-shame while NIH survey data shows that by 2002, 75% of people under the age of 20 have had pre-marital sex?

My story is sideways from these. I lost my virginity in a rather mundane college scenario. I later explored this new area of life with a more experienced childhood friend. I got into a long term relationship with a pot-smoking actor and got my head around sex in a gentle monogamous context.

The road got bumpy after college when I was single again and too curious to stop exploring but lacked options for real connection. In my twenties, performing and bar tending, working for theme parks and restaurants, moving to New York City and then living on a Cruise Ship I gathered quite the cast of partners. I could, in fact, mount a full scale musical if I got them all in a room.

Fun fact: I slept with not one, but TWO actors who each made a one time appearance on the same episode of 30 Rock (Season 4: Episode 4 Audition Day, 2009).

There were times when my behavior was healthy and times when it wasn’t, but I’ll never forget being slut shamed on a cruise ship by a girl who was cheating on her fiance. The only difference between her and I was that I wasn’t lying.

I have engaged in risky behaviors. I definitely have HPV. I have two volumes of professional grade digital photographs of my naked body on a hard drive, and more in the possession of men I hope I can trust. But I needed every moment of those experiences to learn and understand sex coming from a culture that said nothing about it but no.

Pictured: Me, age 30, and fearless.

Christianity, and even public opinion in suburban america still wrapped in the tendrils of repression would call me salacious. I know what I want, what I like, and how to get it. I am the woman in the red dress.

The confidence that state of mind gives you may as well be a scarlet letter. More innocent women fear you, and insecure men avoid you or attempt to diminish you. I am a witch among angels in Pat Robertson’s hometown-though by the standards of many a sorority girl, big city dweller, or those with a more sex-centered identity, my experiences seem mild. To me, I am simply an adult.

Truthfully, sex is complicated for everyone. After leaving religion I questioned whether I liked men or women, or both, because the lines between respect, affection, and sexuality are blurry to me no matter who it’s pointed at. I’ve dealt with the ethics of open relationships and polyamory, and genuinely questioned whether or not monogamy could truly be right for me.

For the last three years my relationship to sex has been healthy and honest, as has my relationship to myself, so I’ve been able to address those questions with a clear head.

Today, I’m happy in a monogamous relationship because my partner and I don’t feel the need to hide anything from one another — including past relationships and fleeting impulses. We treat our inner world with curiosity, not fear, and that has produced a miraculous level of intimacy. After jettisoning fear, I am known and more deeply known than I could ever have felt shaming away my truth.

I think I questioned monogamy because I doubted that anyone could possibly look at and love all of me honestly, so whatever part of myself I had to cut off or keep from a partner I felt the need to go validate somewhere else.

Doesn’t that motive sound familiar??

You do, in fact, have to love — and that means face, and accept — yourself before love can fully come alive.

From my Psychology degree, this I know:

Any idea, social norm, pressure, or belief that requires you to lie to yourself is going to result in a coping mechanism.

Sure, maybe you can stop masturbating or pursuing sex with a certain gender, or use other holes and pretend that makes it ok, but those energies you suppress must go somewhere. Maybe you get addicted to going to the gym, or to overeating. Maybe you become OCD and clean things neurotically, or you hoard. Maybe you can never be by yourself and you always have to be with friends. Maybe you have to cut yourself to feel alive.

Armed for battle against pathogens and internalized self rejection!

But the closer a person can come to aligning their behavior with their honest values — the ones that come screaming out of your heart and your pores — the more functional they become and the less you see these crazy lopsided behaviors take them over and whip them around like a dog with a rope in his teeth.

I won’t lie, sex was a coping mechanism for me while I was trying to put my world back together after a divorce from an entire culture, lifestyle, and faith. I hurt myself many times, in learning who I am, and I used sex to ignore the lack of self respect I created by sidelining my intelligence in my career.

The gains I’ve made in my life, however, from the moment I took responsibility — the moment I asked myself why I was doing what I was doing and heard the answer — the moment enshrined in my memory as the day stopped feeling like a child — are astonishing from my point of view.

It’s fine, to me, if people out there disagree with my journey or opinions. I have no regrets. I feel confident, healthy, loved, and more readily able to empathize with people from every walk of life than I ever have before.

If there’s one belief I can share that points down this path it’s this:

Lose the denial.

Pastors were right. The truth WILL set you free, but you’ll never find it if you can’t be honest with yourself, and a desire for sex is built right into the human hardware, just as a desire to be loved is written in our code.

This is the problem with religious fundamentalism, with the Duggars, with televangelists and with priesthoods. It’s the same problem with every worldview that refuses to embrace the complexity and the nuances of what it means to be a human.

In the places we try to meet blanket expectations of purity, evil grows in the shadows of the light.

The life-giving soul of a person’s sexuality — their internal connection to love and pleasure — becomes a crippled, vile, twisted, withered horror when it’s treated that way from the start .

When you define purity and sanctity through denial and ignorance, you’ve already lost.

The fruits of salvation, defined as the ability to love others as yourself, come only when you relinquish shame, relinquish judgement, and accept yourself as fully human and accept others as just the same. This love for one’s inner life breeds the strength and fortitude that it takes to honestly negotiate communion with another — it is the door to the holy of holies — a place where you can stand honestly, self and other, eye to eye, soul to soul, and exchange healing, acceptance, freedom and pleasure. It is the fountain of youth, the wellspring of joy. To me, it looks like salvation itself.