Well, kind of sort of but not really. I'm always amazed by how little Christians know about the texts that churches formed the religion with.

In that passage, Jesus was talking about the importance of following the Jewish law, but not just blindly or in form.

He was pointing out that it's the spirit behind the commandments that hold the most meaning.

And many Christians get that, but that's where they stop. They don't recognize that Jesus was talking about adultery, which was a property crime. Having sex with another man's wife was adultery. Because it violated the property rights of the other man.

There's nothing in there to talk about masturbation, or even extramarital sex with an unmarried woman. The Bible is full of stories about men who had sex with unmarried women ... and facing no particular opprobrium. In fact, see the Song of Solomon for the highest poetic praise for a romantic, sexual affair of that nature. It's practically textual pornography!

It's really awful how Christian churches have twisted their theology to condemn all sexual expression outside of marriage, and a call sexual expression inside marriage a sacred act.

That is such horseshit. Sex doesn't have any special magical powers. People who think it does are superstitious fools.

It's one of the reasons I despise Christianity. Of course, as a gay man I have lots of excellent reasons to despise the traditional religion, although I should add that I'm grateful progressive Christians are working to reform their institution's heinous teachings.

Of course, I reserve my most particular contempt for Roman Catholic, Evangelical Protestant, and Mormon Churches — because they treat people like me like shit.

To Catholics, I'm depraved and disordered. To evangelical Protestants, I'm an abomination, and to Mormons, I'm not fit to enter the temple unless I deny my nature and never have sex.

That's bad enough, but I guess that argument doesn't make a big impact on most people, because most people are perfectly fine with tolerating us queer people being treated like shit.

But I do reserve a lot of compassion for people like the man in your story, who had to deal with this kind of asinine Christian nonsense over his sexual nature.

He suffered for no reason — because of idiotic, ill-informed, twisted theology.

Personally, I think Christianity is one of the worst things that ever happened to the world.

For several reasons, but one of the main ones is because of how Christians treat people like shit over healthy sexuality.