Anal Sex: Love or Harm?
By Julio Severo
A very common argument against anal sex among homosexuals is that there are a number of health risks involved. These risks are presented by Christian pastors and pro-family leaders as a powerful reason to discourage people from homosexual anal sex.
The risks are real and true, but not limited to homosexuals. Any individual engaging in anal sex runs the same risks. A woman, married or not, who receives anally a man’s penis is so vulnerable to these risks as a homosexual. In her book “Sexual Sabotage” (WND Books, 2010), American-Jewish author Judith A. Reisman, addressing what she labeled varied deviant behaviors, quotes that “11% of married individuals participate in anal sodomy at least once.” This percentage probably is much lesser, because, as Reisman makes it clear, its source, the Kinsey Institute, exaggerates in its sexual claims and inflates its sexual numbers. This institute is notorious for its blatant advocacy of homosexual acts and behavior.
Exaggeratedly, only 11 percent married women have engaged in anal sex at least once.
Probably, the Christian married men who require their wives to submit to this kind of sex are silent in the church and in their Christian testimony about risk factors of anal sex for homosexuals. They are right about their silence. After all, what is the point for married men who do it to condemn it among homosexuals if the risks are just the same for non-homosexuals?
In both cases, they are involved in sodomy, which, according to the Macmillan English Dictionary (2nd Edition, 2007), is defined as “a sexual act in which a man puts his penis into another person’s anus.”
So anal sex, by homosexuals or not, is sodomy.
There is a number of health risks with anal sex, and anal intercourse is the riskiest form of sexual activity for several reasons, including the following:
· Unlike the vagina, the tissues of the anus are not stretchy. This means that the anus can easily tear, which puts the receiving partner in danger of anal abscesses, hemorrhoids, or fissures (a very large tear). Penetration can tear the tissue inside the anus, allowing bacteria and viruses to enter the bloodstream. The fragile nature of the anal tissue makes it easier for STDs and bacteria to enter into the bloodstream. A very tiny tear may provoke, among many other bacterial infections, infective endocarditis, by taking fecal bacteria through the bloodstream into heart valves.
· The tissue inside the anus is not as well protected as the skinoutside the anus. Our external tissue has layers of dead cells that serve as a protective barrier against infection. The tissue inside the anus does not have this natural protection, which leaves it vulnerable to tearing and the spread of infection.
· The anus was designed to hold in feces. The anus is surrounded with a ring-like muscle, called the anal sphincter, which tightens after we defecate. When the muscle is tight, anal penetration can be painful and difficult. Repetitive anal sex may lead to weakening of the anal sphincter, making it difficult to hold in feces until you can get to the toilet.
· The anus is full of bacteria. Even if both partners do not have a sexually-transmitted infection or disease, bacteria normally in the anus can potentially infect the giving partner. Practicing vaginal sex after anal sex can also lead to vaginal and urinary tract infections.
Anal sex can carry other risks as well. Oral contact with the anus can put both partners at risk for hepatitis, herpes, HPV, and other infections. For heterosexual couples, pregnancy can occur if semen is deposited near the opening to the vagina.
Even though serious injury from anal sex is not common, it can occur. Bleeding after anal sex could be due to a hemorrhoid or tear, or something more serious such as a perforation (hole) in the colon. This is a dangerous problem that requires immediate medical attention. Treatment involves a hospital stay, surgery, and antibiotics to prevent infection.
Dr. Stephen Goldstone, an open homosexual and author of “The Ins and Outs of Gay Sex: A Medical Handbook for Men” (Dell: New York, 1999), said in his book, “Just as your internal sphincter muscle involuntarily relaxes when feces enter your rectum, it involuntarily contracts when a penis or other object attempts to enter from the outside…An anal tear can occur during the initial phase of anal sex precisely because your partner pushes his penis through a closed sphincter. Think of his penis as a battering ram, one for which your internal sphincter is no match.”
Dr. Goldstone is an Assistant Clinical Professor of Surgery at The Mount Sinai School of Medicine and an expert on “gay men’s health” and “anorectal disorders.”
The Medical Institute for Sexual Health, founded by evangelical author Joe S. McIlhaney, Jr., M.D. (a prominent obstetrician/gynecologist and infertility specialist), says about anal sex:
“It is very damaging to your health and quite possibly life threatening.”
“Anal sex is clearly a dangerous form of sexual activity.”
According to Dr. David Delvin, of NetDoctor, “Anal (rectal) sex used to be referred to in English law as ‘the crime against Nature,’ and this alarming term is still used in the legal statutes of about nine American states. Anal sex has always been a highly controversial subject, and the controversy that surrounds it looks set to continue for years to come because evidence is accumulating that this practice may sometimes lead to anal cancer.”
He also says:
The American Cancer Society states that having anal sex is a risk factor for anal cancer in both men and women.
Our impression is that during the 21st century anal sex has become more common in heterosexual couples, partly because they have watched porn in which this activity so frequently occurs.
One small study carried out in 2009 suggested that in the UK, around 30 per cent of pornographic DVDs feature rectal intercourse. Often, it is presented as something that is both routine and painless for women. In real life, this is not the case. Anal intercourse is often very painful for women, particularly the first few times.
Many point that because the Bible is silent on anal sex, it is allowed. Yet, the Bible is also silent on a number of today’s important issues, including pot and cocaine. So are they allowed too? Of course, they are not, and the critics are fast to emphasize the health risks of drug use, but many are very slow to recognize that a man and a woman engaging in anal sex run the same health risks as two men engaged in the same sexual activity.
Let us see the Bible “silence”:
“Let marriage be held in honor among all, and let the marriage bed be undefiled, for God will judge the sexually immoral and adulterous.” (Hebrews 13:4 ESV)
This verse implies that, besides adultery, the marriage be can be defiled by an unspecified number of immoral acts, making clear that God is going to judge those who defile their marriage beds.
God is not silent also in this instruction:
“For this is the will of God, your sanctification: that you abstain from sexual immorality; that each one of you know how to control his own body in holiness and honor, not in the passion of lust like the Gentiles who do not know God; that no one transgress and wrong his brother in this matter, because the Lord is an avenger in all these things, as we told you beforehand and solemnly warned you. For God has not called us for impurity, but in holiness. Therefore whoever disregards this, disregards not man but God, who gives his Holy Spirit to you.” (1 Thessalonians 4:3-8 ESV)
About “that each one of you know how to control his own body in holiness and honor,” the Expanded Bible (published by Thomas Nelson) says this passage can also be put this way: “He wants each of you to learn to live with your own wife in a way that is holy and honorable.”
About “that no one transgress and wrong his brother in this matter,” the Expanded Bible says this passage can also be put this way: “Do not exploit or take advantage of your sister” in this sexual matter.
Is there exploitation in regard to anal sex? Some years ago, a prominent Brazilian lawyer told me that she had divorced wives from their husbands, who were evangelical ministers. The women were suffering anal and other anus-related ills and, to avoid the causes by their insistent and uncooperative husbands, chose divorce. How many women, unwilling to sacrifice their marriages, sacrifice their health to satisfy the anal lusts of their husbands? This lust, with his aftermath on the health of Christian women, seems a major silent problem in the church today — more silent than the alleged silence of the Bible on the issue.
Even though the First Command of our hedonist culture is ENJOY SEX, God’s First Command, which includes pleasure, has other priority.
Married people engaged in anal sex are not collaborating with God’s First Command to the first married couple: Increase and multiply. Vagina and uterus are proper channels to increase and multiply and bring babies. An anus has nothing to do with this command. Anal sex brings diseases, health problems and no babies. So husbands are cooperating against this command when they choose the wrong channel and potentially harm their wives’ health.
Besides, because a Christian’s body is the temple of the Holy Spirit, lovers of anal sex should face the reality that this sexual activity can damage this temple. Yet, if they do not want reasons from the Bible, there are abundant medical reasons to avoid this activity and focus on the proper sexual channel created, planned and blessed by God.
If they do not want to give attention to common sense in God’s Word, by appealing to a supposed “silence,” the megaphone of medicine shouts in their ears the consequences of sodomy.
Perhaps the 11 percent of the married people, according to the inflated numbers of the deceptive Kinsey Institute, do not care about health risks in sodomy, but the 90 percent deserve to know them.
If homosexuals deserve to be warned about the health risks of sodomy, why should Christian wives and their husbands be deprived of it?
With information from NetDoctor, Medical Institute for Sexual Health, Peter LaBarbera and WebMD.
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