This week we start our new series The Sex Education We Wish We Had and our first guest Doug Brown Harvey, the co-founder of the Harvey Institute, an international education training, consulting, and supervision service for improving healthcare through the integration of sexual health.

Not knowing is an extremely difficult skill to master, especially for those of us who grew up in contexts where knowing and believing will conflated. We’re excited to ask more questions of ourselves throughout our relationship, and on this podcast.

Trauma responses can happen as a result of a one-time incident (acute) or the cumulation of incidents (complex). Laura reflects, “Whereas when we're talking about more complex trauma that has happened over the span of years and decades, such as trauma in high control religion, I have to learn how to integrate that into my life to realize, I literally cannot process every single moment of every single time something happened. because we would be doing that for the rest of our life and then some.”

“I'm thinking about how the theme around the episode is, Don't Say No. What you learned, what I learned, Jeremiah, what you've described that you've learned is that freedom comes from following the rules, which means saying no to all these different things.

Obviously that was not freeing for you, for me, for many people. And then you said yes, and the journey was much longer after that. But what a beautiful moment in which you could connect with yourself and connect with a yes.

We're not at fault for our social conditioning, but we are responsible for it. We have to reflect on how we have developed as sexual beings, how that impacts us and our relationships, and then ask ourselves, am I content with who I am as a sexual person? Or do I want to be more intentional about who I am, who I want to be, and for the sake of our conversation, what I want to consume?

Cayte discovers that approximately two thirds of college age students are using porn to masturbate. She reflects, “Women are challenged so often to be more assertive, but in order to assert your needs, you have to know and at least be on the path to understanding what those needs are.”

What are your goals for the New Year? What word encapsulates what you want to accomplish in 2023?

Answering those questions, be they at the start of the year, midway through a project, or at the conclusion of an event, requires an effective self-reflection process. Ideally, said process happens both individually and in relationship, be that with a partner, a friend or family member, or larger community.

In this episode, Julia and Jeremiah describe three practices, rooted in our Evangelical upbringing, that can provide a structure for having these conversations.

Christmas carols and other types of acapella music and the process of singing harmonies are my continual connection to the church. And I'm okay doing some of the mental gymnastics of singing philosophical and theological ideas that I don't believe in to to draw me closer to home, closer to that sense of familiarity.

With the implicit or explicit messaging that the holidays are a romantic a season, and for many people, not all people, romance and sex occur together, and by default, then, sex has to be filled with some sort of holiday magic.

We're sharing this story because we need to talk about the commitments that partners make to each other around sexuality, and we need to talk about the ways that people break those commitments, and why they break those commitments, because affairs don't happen in isolation.

Marriage symbolizes the union between God/Jesus and the church, as the church describes.

And, according to the Evangelical Church, any relationship with a person of the opposite gender that is not your spouse is a potential threat to the sanctity of marriage

We invite our friends Jake and Sarah to talk with us about how growing up in the Evangelical Church (the same collegiate church as Jeremiah) impacted their relationship with wants as individuals and as a partnership. We describe a three step process that can help people give themselves permission to name their wants and desires,

Jeremiah and Julia continue their series The Seven Deadly Sexual Sins, According to the Church, with the deadliest of the “sins”, as we were reminded over the weekend in Colorado Springs: Don’t be gay.

What happens when you moralize something is not just the statement that something is wrong, but you also develop an action plan to ensure that those who disagree with you either repent and turn to the Lord, or, and this sounds really harsh, but it's quite literal in this case, or are exterminated.

Peggy Kleinplatz names eight components of optimal sexuality. And not a single one of them is “You are married”. The first component that she talks about is the ability to be present, to be focused, to be embodied. And being present and focused on what's happening in the moment actually allows you to move into your body and to be aware of what's happening in your body, to be aware of the physical sensations that you're experiencing.

In connection to this episode, the reason that we don't talk about sex here on Sunday school, the reason that talking about sex is dangerous is because it threatens the dogma, the doctrine, and the belief structure that holds together religious communities. By talking about sex, you threaten the very foundation of an institution.