By Bob Allen
Men and women in sexless marriages are asking for trouble, the president of the nation’s second-largest faith group behind Roman Catholics said in a sermon the week after the hacking of an online dating service exposed the identities of millions of users looking for illicit sex.
“A couple that is not active with each other sexually is heading for problems,” Southern Baptist Convention President Ronnie Floyd said Aug. 23 at Cross Church in Northwest Arkansas. “It’s proven.”
That’s why the Apostle Paul wrote in First Corinthians that husbands and wives should not deny each other their conjugal rights except by mutual agreement for a “season” of prayer, Floyd said in the first of a five-week series on sex kicked off the weekend after the hacking of the Ashley Madison website with the advertising theme: “Life is short, Have an affair.”
“You know the reason he tells you to be active sexually in your marital relationship?” Floyd asked. “Because if you’re not, you are opening yourself up to the attack of an enemy, and that enemy is going to take your spouse away from you.”
“Both men and women will have their sexual needs met by someone, somewhere, somehow,” Floyd said.
Floyd offered five examples of when “sex is right,” including, for husbands, “when your wife’s body satisfies you.”
“I want to make something very clear to every woman and every young girl here today,” Floyd said as an aside. “You be wise in your dress publicly. Men are drawn to the breast of a woman. Boys are drawn to the breast of a woman. And a woman’s desire or a girl’s desire should be to be adored and loved by one man, not the object of many men and their lust because you don’t know how to conduct yourself in the way you dress.”
Floyd said that’s why advertising companies use “gorgeous women, somewhat undressed” instead of “wrinkly old men” to market their products.
“Let me ask you, do you want to be the object of every man in this world, or do you want to be loved by your husband, and your future husband, as holy?” he asked.
Floyd alluded to the Ashley Madison scandal a couple of times.
“Could you imagine it, 28 million unique users on a website looking for adultery and sexual immorality?” he asked. “Ten million of those 28 million are now exposed due to the hacking of that website. Just think of the trauma that many families will unpack for the next months and even years to come.”
One of the names exposed early on is Josh Duggar, a member of the Jim Bob and Michelle Duggar family in the recently cancelled TLC reality show “19 Kids and Counting.” Duggar daughter Jill is an active member of Cross Church and married her husband there in June 2014.
Some are predicting that fallout from the Ashley Madison storm will not spare churches and denominations, including the Southern Baptist Convention.
“Seeing one family after another torn apart by the Ashley Madison scandal,” Russell Moore, head of the SBC Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission, tweeted Aug. 25. “Another one tonight. Awful and wrenching.”
On Aug. 26 the ERLC website carried a first-person article written by a woman who learned her estranged husband’s name was on the Ashley Madison list.