Update 2017: this is one of those blog posts that I really regret writing – at least regret writing in this way. Bear in mind it is a very old one, and the views in it may well be shit. I don’t write these ‘beware’ intros for many posts, because I figure you can see the date stamp and realise I may have been ignorant years ago. But this one is insensitive to people of a variety of different religions, and as an atheist it’s probably not my place to get all publicly pervy on stuff like this.  

It’s not always the obvious things that get you off. Unless you hadn’t realised it already, I’m an atheist. Organised religion alternately bemuses and horrifies me. I find the suppression of sexuality (which seems to come packaged with most major religions) terrifying. The idea of taking a large group of people and forbidding them to act on their sexual instincts seems to me a recipe for misery and trouble.

Yes, we should exercise some sexual restraint. We are, after all, highly evolved enough that we don’t need to go around rutting on street corners and killing each other over who gets the biggest share of antelope. But by cutting people off completely and telling them that their sexual desires are not only sins but some of the worst sins we can commit, we end up with groups of people who have a warped and not entirely healthy attitude towards the perfectly natural contents of their pants.

That’s the tedious moralising over and done with, let’s get onto the sexy stuff. Alongside my worry that sexual repression causes untold misery and heartache, is my genuine conviction that religious paraphenalia can not only be sexualised but that religious fetishes can be deeply, cunt-wettingly hot.

It’s obscene in one of the truest senses, because some of the things that I masturbate over are things that I have a genuine moral objection to. Take this as your disclaimer for this entry – some of the things I am about to describe are horrible.

My secret shame – I don’t love God, but in the degraded fantasy playworld inside my own head, I love some of the things he makes people do.

Mormon underwear

Did you know that Mormons are required to wear what are called ‘the garments’? Long underwear beneath their clothes, with special stitching and markings to remind them of their duties to God?

Well, I only know this because I also know that there are a number of websites dedicated to explicit shots of Mormons in these garments.

Why is it hot? Well, boys in their underwear are especially sexy anyway, but with the Mormon garments there’s the added thrill that they’re not supposed to be thinking of sexual things. The garments themselves are ones of purity and chastity. And there’s nothing quite like a garment of purity and chastity stretched to almost splitting point by a nice thick dripping erection.

Christian spanking

Oh yes. There’s a group of people who believe that the man’s role in the house is to maintain order and discipline by physically chastising his wife. My initial reaction on discovering this was one of disgust – is it domestic violence? In some cases perhaps it is, and that’s horrific – something that is less likely to arouse than to terrify me.

However, having come across quite a few of blogs, forums and discussions about it, it seems that it’s mostly a front for Christian couples who really like a bit of corporal punishment play. And men spanking women who deliberately play up because they want to be spanked? Couples that do it feeling so guilty that they need to invent special reasons to justify it to their imaginary god? That is hot.

Many of the women’s posts read like the posts on BDSM forums – anticipation, delight, the joy of submission. One woman even asked “does God think it is wrong that I am sexually aroused when my husband spanks me?” the resounding answer from the boards: no. God loves that you’re in a loving relationship, and as long as you don’t disobey your husband just to get a spanking, God’s pretty happy with the whole situation. No doubt he gets an excellent view of your nice pink arse from his throne somewhere up in the sky.

Inappropriately cut burkhas

I once had a 4 hour stopover at an airport in Hong Kong, at the same time as a large group of people who were obviously travelling to or from a strongly Muslim country – burkhas everywhere. Usually the burkha is a sign of oppression – women are forced to wear them so that men don’t see any of their good bits. Or, in fact, any of them at all.

But on this occasion I saw a burkha-clad lady who shattered all of the rules. Her burkha was a light beige in colour, and slinky as fuck. Cut from beautiful silky material that skimmed her slim hips and showed a waist Cosmo would hold up as a shining example of womanhood, she sashayed down one of the airport walkways in 4 inch heels like she was on her way to fuck a superstar. Her husband, a suave, rich-looking gent, couldn’t help but hold the smuggest grin in the entire world.

I got wet just looking at them and imagining the filth they’d get up to as soon as that burkha was off.

The silver ring

The ultimate. The final. The key ingredient in all religious pervery – the silver ring. The ring represents a pledge someone has made to Jesus – a pledge not to fuck before marriage. Some young ring-bearing couples take it even further – to avoid temptation they don’t give handjobs, they don’t kiss, they only cuddle from the side (to avoid that awkward moment when the guy pops a boner because he can feel his lady’s tits smooshing against his chest).

These are hot because they represent a challenge. They represent the desperate, trembling need of young twenty-something virgins to fuck and be fucked. They represent the beauty and joy of instant ejaculation on first touch. To Christians they might look like symbols of chastity and purity, but to me they look exactly the opposite. A silver ring says not ‘I love Jesus’ but ‘I am positively bursting with sexual anticipation. Touch it. Go on. Touch it. Pretty please.’

I won’t, of course, but I’ll have a good wank about it later.