The Sex Offenses and their Treatments

There are many things in this world that we can properly classify as important, but there are only five items that we must classify as essential to survival. Survival is the bottom line and the first purpose of all human activity. These five essentials are air, food, water, sleep, and sex. This book is written about the last item in its more aberrant manifestations. As television host Dick Cavett said when he introduced Masters and Johnson, the famous sex researchers, on his program June 7, 1979: “After all the attention given to sex all these years, you would think there’s not much left to be said.” But there is much to be said, and scientific studies are still proving that much of what we “knew” about sex was wrong. There is also much that we still do not know. Pubic hair, for example, we all have, so it must be important for something; yet, does anyone really know what its purpose is? Our young people know far more about their automobiles than they do about their own reproductive systems. We are just beginning to come to grips with an understanding of the immense power of our own sex drive, which is so essential to the survival of our species. The pleasure of sexual intercourse is the bait that lures us into the pain and expense of the birthing, feeding, clothing, and rearing of children. It is also the forbidden fruit of the tree of knowledge in some, but not all, interpretations of the story of the biblical Garden of Eden (Genesis 2:16–17).

Plato (c. 300 BC) depicts the nature of male sexuality when he states, “... in men the nature of the genital organ is disobedient and self-willed, like a creature that is deaf to reason, and it attempts to dominate all because of its frenzied lusts.”  Our bodies are at constant risk for temptation, sin, and disease. Even the strongest men are repeatedly overcome by the power of the sexual urges; their bodies are often uncontrollable and a source of betrayal when the sight of a woman, a dream, or a sex object elicits a spontaneous erection.

The ancient wisdom about good and evil has been told to us many times in the Bible and in the Talmud for thousands of years. Since the Garden of Eden, when the serpent tempted Eve and Eve led Adam to Sin (Genesis 3), we have learned there was something sexual about evil. God cleansed the earth via the great flood because men became sinful (Genesis 6, 7). Two of God’s Ten Commandments deal specifically with sexual sinning (Exodus 20:14, 17), and the Talmud nicely explains why God created this impulse, as well as the impulse for goodness. God made the evil impulse for the preservation of the human race.  The Koran (17:37) also commands that you shall not commit adultery, for it is foul and indecent.

The New Testament provides an answer to sexual sinning in the words of Christ Himself in Matthew: “... if your right hand causes you to sin, cut it off and throw it away; it is better to lose one of your members than for your whole body to go into hell” (Matthew 5:27–30, the New Revised Standard Version), and “... there are eunuchs who have made themselves eunuchs for the sake of the Kingdom of Heaven” (Matthew 19:12). The Talmud provides us with additional details so we can recognize eunuchs and their pictures down through the ages: “He has no beard, his hair is soft, his skin is smooth, his urine is not excreted in an arch ... and the semen is thin like water. If a man has no beard or pubic hair by twenty years of age, one must assume that he is a congenital eunuch” (Tosefta Yebamoth, 10:6). Eunuch attendants are frequently pictured with the high and mighty on ancient wall carvings because they were the most trustworthy servants in most old cultures.

In the fifth century before Christ, the Greek Sophists recognized that there were three main types of the sexual appetite. They called them epithumia, eros, and mania. Epithumia is sexual desire of more or less manageable strength. Eros is more urgent, passionate, pleasure-directed life instinct, which underlies libido. Mania is a highly excited state of energy that often makes the world seem made for the individual experiencing it. Socrates explained that epithumia doubled in eros, and eros doubled in mania, so we have known for a very long time that our human sexual urges can be very powerful and potentially dangerous. In the sexual psychopath laws of the 1990s, we recognized some men’s “utter lack of power to control their sexual impulses,” and this became the basis of many civil commitment laws, which kept sex offenders locked up even after they had served the sentences for their crimes.

I do not wish to mitigate all that is good about sex, for “God created humankind in his image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them. God blessed them, and God said to them, ‘Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth and subdue it ...’” (Genesis 1:27–28), and this has been good for the past 50,000 years or so. But, in recent years, we have become more aware that there are many hazards connected with our sexuality, and I believe that we must somehow come to grips with this reality. Some of us have developed excessive levels of testosterone (T), which has resulted in many serious problems. T gives us sexual desire, excitement, pleasure, physical strength, and violence at even minor provocations. T also causes us to abuse women, children, and those weaker than we are. In ancient times, it caused the Nephilim to mate with the daughters of men and their descendants to become wicked, so that the earth became corrupt in God’s sight, and He destroyed it with the flood (Genesis 6).

Today, sex is a principle focus for many of our thoughts, words, and deeds. Much about sex appears each day in our newspapers, magazines, and books. The Library of Congress has more books on sex than on any other subject. We hear about sex on our radios, and we see it on our televisions and in movies. Sex sells, excites, titillates, and often leads us into trouble. It is more than a coincidence that the United States is also the most violent nation in the industrialized world with over 1.7 million people in prison and more than 3 million people on probation and parole.

Sex can be compared to guns and explosives. Guns in the hands of our police and soldiers defend us from criminals and enemies of our country, but in the hands of criminals, they take our property, lives, and money. Explosives in the hands of the miners and workmen allow wealth to be extracted from the rocky depths of the earth and open tunnels through mountains, but in the hands of the depraved, they slaughter innocent people and destroy property.