Unitarian Universalist Fellowship of the Emerald Coast

“What If Eating Was Taboo?”

Rev. Rod Debs

May 18, 2008

Reading: “More Sex, Less Anguish” from Waking Up the Karma Fairy by Meg Barnhouse, 2003


Message: Many things fill our lives---furniture, cars, houses, and a lot of people busy making and distributing the stuff we depend on. Household chores like cooking, cleaning and laundry are a part of our lives. So industry has developed and marketed household products for convenient home use. Communication is a part of what we do too: conversation, computers, TV, books---and some even study Communication in college. There’s not much we do without depending on others.


In case you haven’t noticed, I’ve got a cold. I opened this book of homeopathy and found that alium cepa is the remedy for burning, runny nose. I also asked Ella, our exchange student from China, for some of her Chinese herbal cold remedies. In fact, I learned from her to chop up ginger, boil it, and drink the peppery broth. And our daughter, Katrina offered another remedy for a cold, a crushed clove of garlic mixed in with my meal. Ginger and garlic are warming medicines, helpful for colds.


You see, I didn’t try to make up my own cold remedies---say, vinegar and chili powder, or milk and cilantro. No. There’s an old saying: The person who acts as his own physician, has a fool for a patient. Whether we go to homeopathic, traditional Chinese, or pharmaceutical healing traditions, we humans almost never act as our own experts. We ask for help. We talk and do research and try proven methods for the best results.


We don’t build our own furniture, our own cars or houses. If you’re wise, you’ll learn to cook, clean and wash clothes from resident experts in your family. Wiser still if you reach out to nutritionists in order to prepare more healthy, tastier meals. Wise, if you use society’s labor-saving devices like a washing-machine rather than doing your clothes in the bathtub. Wise, if you research less toxic cleaning products---in fact, just this week I got the recipe for “Gloria’s All-Purpose Cleaner”---got a pen and the Order of Service---here it is: one pint rubbing alcohol; one cup ammonia; one tablespoon dishwashing liquid, one gallon of water---dispense by a spray bottle or dilute one cup in a bucket of water for floors. Sounds non-toxic to me and inexpensive. I digress.


Name the activity we humans care about, and you will find people talking about how to do it better, universities offering technical degrees in its study, corporations marketing products and professionals offering trainings. Most of all, we talk about those things that really effect our lives.


We don’t talk about sex. We don’t have comprehensive sexuality education, so someone like myself can go into marriage in my thirties knowing nothing about lubrication. Oh, I’ve crossed that line---the taboo. I’ve gone from talking about talking about sex, to actually talking about sex. TMI—too much information. Some things we just don’t want to know anything about. Like sex.


There are two places I know of that sex is openly, blatantly addressed: magazine self-help articles and internet erotica. Where else can Americans engage in communication about sex? Comprehensive sexuality education is excluded from the schools.


Church and schools do talk about sex to this extent. “Don’t do it---unless you’re married to the person.” “What is sex?” “Oh, you know! Don’t tell me you don’t know!!” That’s called “shaming.” Everyone is supposed to know all about sexuality “naturally.” No need to talk about it.


What if eating was taboo? What if eating was considered vulgar and dirty---putting sloppy stuff in your mouth, salivating, chewing, swallowing and licking your lips? Filthy! What if you could only eat in one room of your house at night, with the lights out, never by yourself, but with only one person with whom you must have a government license to eat? What if it was a crime to eat in public, and only the most vulgar would sneak a snack in the middle of the day? What if you could go to jail for giving a college kid a bag of chocolate? What if it was taboo to talk about how you eat? What if the only respectable meal was mac and cheese, other cuisines absolutely scandalous? What if it were shameful to talk about how to prepare your private dinner? With all these social and internalized restrictions, eating would be considered sacred, a holy act! What if licensed couples were walking around with indigestion, others with food poisoning, others stealing food or starving, fixated on food fantasies? What if eating and even talking about eating was taboo? (It is rather yucky if you think about it!)


I think there are two unhappy aspects to the taboo on talking about sexuality. First, religious prescriptions on sexual behavior have defined the sacred ideal as procreation in heterosexual marriage, while condemning everything else as sinful and profane. Then society moved to cast moral judgments on sex outside the ideal, and to write cruel penalties for what they consider illicit sex.


A second unhappy aspect o the taboo: When mutual and meaningful physical intimacy is defined as illicit sex, being “bad” has come to mean good sex. With the taboo on public discussion of sex, society is confused and subsequently ambivalent concerning being “bad” which really means good, and being “bad” which is really hurtful. The religious judgment idealizing heterosexual marriage provides for no further moral evaluation when the ideal, so-called legitimate sexual relationships in marriage are actually hurtful.


When physical intimacy is idealized as sexual ecstasy, forget marriage, we still have a problem. The ideal is that you look like Kate Winslet and Leonardo DiCaprio and that you have the temperaments of Jimmy and Rosalyn Carter---no, take that back, the temperaments of Kate and Leonardo in the movie. Oh, if life were just like the movies. Oh, if I were less like W.C. Fields and more like Bill Cosby. The media idealizes relationships and physical intimacy is idealized as sexual ecstasy.


No one ever tells us that physical intimacy is really about affection and kindness and appreciation? How many men think they can have sexual ecstasy without behaviors of affection and kindness? If a prospective partner should see a man treat others without kindness, that partner will always wonder whether they might cross the line, and the kind affection will cease. When the ideal is simply getting married or hitting the hay, there is no real social conversation that rude, self-centered, crudeness will not magically land you on the heights of sexual ecstasy. It doesn’t happen. It’s a turn-off.


There is no public discussion that relational intimacy is really about courage to see the best in other persons, the courage to invite your better selves to emerge. It’s not only with your loved one, but with each person you meet---that you make a habit of it. Blessing our life’s companions is a matter of character and commitment, not a strategy to get security or sex from the one we target.


What is the foundation of good sex? Consider our Unitarian Universalist Principles. Growing into living our Principles of mutual trust and support, I think, is really foreplay that works. Let me explain. If you and I don’t treat those around us as if they have “inherent worth and dignity” (#1), why do we think a partner would feel safe enough to share the vulnerability of physical intimacy with us? If we don’t affirm “justice, equity and compassion in human relations” (#2), “acceptance of one another and encouragement to spiritual growth” (#3), if we don’t affirm others’ “free and responsible search for truth and meaning” (#4), others’ “right of conscience” and are not willing to honor the “democratic process” of mutual discussion and decision-making as opposed to authoritarian power and threat of violence (#5), then why would anyone feel safe sharing intimacy with us?


If our companions do not see in us an affirmation of “world community with peace, liberty, and justice for all” (#6) including “the interdependent web of all existence of which we are a part” (#7), why would a partner dare to trust our good will? Finally, if we do not celebrate or even tolerate differences of perspective in others, if we are not “grateful for the religious pluralism which enriches and ennobles… (whereby) we are inspired to deepen our understanding and expand our vision,” and if we are not willing to make a commitment, a covenant to our prospective partner, “promising to one another our mutual trust and support,” why on earth would we ever think someone would want to share physical intimacy with us?


I know that simply taking others seriously---as if they had inherent worth is not as romantic as infatuation and falling in love. Yet, I want to begin anew a conversation about interpersonal intimacy, despite the taboo on talking about sex. And I want to suggest that it’s not about the ecstatic ideal as much as it is about the common courtesies of taking one another seriously, as if they have worth. There is no more exotic nor mystical secret to good sex than common affection, kindness and appreciation for other human beings. Alice Walker wrote: “This could be our revolution / To love what is plentiful / As much as what is scarce.”


I’m not going to hold my breath about getting comprehensive sexuality education into our schools, or even until we get the UU sexuality curriculum OWL (Our Whole Lives) here for our teenagers, but I am confident that as long as the members and friends of the Fellowship “covenant to affirm and promote the inherent worth and dignity of every person,” each of the UU Principles, “promising to one another our mutual trust and support,” we will become more loving and more lovable. Then we will be able to trust one another enough to---as they say---do the “dirty” with commitment, tenderness and mutual love.


I have merely opened this taboo subject, dancing around the land mines. During Second Hour, you will have an opportunity to break the taboo and share your thoughts on interpersonal intimacy---“sex” for short---in small groups of “mutual trust and support.” Please join in the Second Hour.