Over the last few weeks, pastor Ed Young and his wife Lisa, of Fellowship Church in Grapevine, have received a lot of international attention for their book, Sexperiment: Seven Days to Lasting Intimacy with Your Spouse, and their 24-hour bed-in on the church roof–promotion for said book. Most of the coverage has been relatively positive, because who doesn’t want to see a Southern Baptist preacher encouraging more sex? Well, the writer of this Salon book review, that’s who. The reviewer, Tracy Clark-Flory, is a self-described “arrogant, unrepentant atheist and fornicator” and she has major problems with both the content of the Youngs’ book (and another Christian “sex advice” book released this month) and with the way the media has covered them.
Says Clark-Flory: “Having actually read these books, I can tell you they are not the wild sex manuals the media frenzy suggests – in fact, they are treatises against homosexuality, pornography and premarital sex. None of this is exactly surprising, but amid the sexy buzz surrounding these books, it’s important to underscore just how sexually stunted they are.”
That’s just the beginning. She goes on to rip several Sexperiment metaphors as well as the anti-porn message. But she concludes the books “also answer questions that most Christians are too afraid to ask their pastors about whether particular sex acts are God-approved and, according to them, masturbation, anal sex, oral sex, menstrual sex and sex toys are A-OK (again, within the context of straight, married sex).” She sees that as “a slam against the Santorums of the world.”
