Top Highlights

• A bishop of North Africa, Tertullian (160-225 CE), had much to say about women and sexuality: And do you not know that you are Eve? God’s sentence hangs still over all your sex and his punishment weighs down upon you. You are the devil’s gateway; you are she who first violated the forbidden tree and broke the law of God. It was you who coaxed your...
• As a necessary evil, the Church Fathers had rules for human intercourse. Only one position was allowed: man on top, woman on the bottom. Any other form indicated that the goal was not procreation, but lust. When later Christian missionaries encountered indigenous people in the Americas, Africa, and Asia, they taught them the 'correct' way to have s...
• Sexual intercourse could only take place in a legal Christian marriage, and intercourse could only be performed when the woman was fertile. Once a woman entered menopause or if she was barren after several years, all sexual activity had to stop.

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