If you’ve read any of my posts or talked to me in person, sex is always a very present topic. Religion is something I don’t talk about as often even though it has always been a significant part of my life. What you have to know is that I’m from a minister’s dynasty. Not only my great-grandpa and both of my grandfathers but also my dad used to pursue the ‘godly profession’ not too long ago.

I get that this brings up many stereotypes and that you’ll have a specific picture in mind, like that my family forbade me to ever drink, smoke or, horror of horrors, have intercourse. That I’m either the good girl saving herself for marriage or the rebel that one day decided to break out and become a stripper. Shockingly, my story is different. I guess your relationship to both religion and sex is largely manifested in the way your parents have raised you.

I was educated in both very early. Everything related to church always felt very natural to me. I never had the feeling my parents were forcing me to believe in something specific or that I had to go to church. I wasn’t raised with the strict denial of evolution. My parents are people that question everything concerning religion a lot and most of the time have opinions somewhere in-between religious, spiritual and realistic. I learned about the birds and the bees when I was around three. Only that I never heard the ‘birds and bees’-crap. A penis is not a wee-wee and sex is nothing you can’t talk about openly. It’s true that we had a cat called Pussy and that when I was 16 my parents got me a book about sex that explained everything from cunnilingus to STDs – Mum, Dad, honestly…it’s all your fault.

So it’s no wonder I’m close to both sex and religion, because it has always been a present topic, to be discussed at family dinner. But how do they mix? Isn’t it a sin to have sex with someone you’re not married to? Well, if I followed that belief I wouldn’t be allowed to do half of the things I do in my life. (I might have to add that I’m a protestant, we’re the awesome, liberal ones and we don’t believe in sins – lucky me, huh?). But besides my personal melange of religion and sex it baffles me how the strict church says that it’s a sin to have unattached sex. Aren’t we all supposed to love god’s creatures? And isn’t sex the most revering way to admire that creature? Didn’t god create me the way he wanted to? I’m not here to solve that. I can’t get into the minds of people ‘blaming’ everything they do on religion. And I won’t try. The church is put out there as a place for everyone to be accepted and welcomed, so what?! That only applies to chaste people praying five hours a day? Love your next – but only the ones who are (pretending to be) innocent? Just because it seems to be more socially acceptable for people to share their religious views in public than their sexual ones it doesn’t make anyone stronger or better.

I won’t feel bad for having sex and I won’t be judged by anyone. I will have sex on a Saturday night and go to church the next morning. Not because I believe that if I’m just sitting there my sins will be washed off (it would be too late for that anyway). I’m not on the ‘Jesus is my lover’-bandwagon. I’m not that slut trying to convince everyone of how good I am. I go to church for me. I like it. Maybe because it reminds me of my childhood or my parents. If you don’t get that it’s okay. I guess it’s because you weren’t raised by my parents and you probably don’t have my sex life…that would make a lot things clearer to you – interpret this the way you want.

You might not be okay with how I’m mixing my sexual and my religious lives but nothing to worry, I talked to god and (s)he’s okay with that.

For more of my column Nomen est Omen, click here!