Ep. 345: Is Premarital Sex Bad? [REMASTERED]

What is it like to change your mind on something you wrote a best seller on?

Joshua Harris is the author of I Kissed Dating Goodbye, a best-selling book in the late ’90s touting courtship as the superior way to find God’s perfect match for you & avoid the perils of sexual sin. It was a required read for many in the evangelical Christian community. In this episode, Josh shares how he changed his mind about the ideas in the book, how our sex lives & careers are connected, and the pros & cons of old-fashioned dating & sexism in the church.

This episode originally aired October 10, 2022.

If you liked this episode, you’ll also like episode 331: DISINTANGLING FAITH FROM RELIGIOUS TRAUMA [REMASTERED]

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00:00 — The purity culture starter pack

00:51 — Why changing your mind is terrifying

01:46 — When “cancel culture” becomes accountability

03:29 — The theology behind courtship culture

04:32 — The generation that tested the experiment

05:42 — When church certainty started collapsing

06:48 — Leaving the pastor role to question everything

07:46 — Seminary made him leave ministry?

09:33 — Does premarital sex actually help people choose better?

10:54 — Why most churches still reject sexual freedom

12:01 — “We got married quickly because we were horny”

13:00 — How purity culture rewires your relationship with sex

14:17 — The impossible expectations placed on women

15:20 — Marrying in high school to avoid sex

16:09 — Mourning the twenties purity culture stole

17:04 — “That regret is real”

18:11 — The heartbreak of choosing the wrong person

19:00 — Why Joshua wishes he’d traveled and dated more

19:53 — Learning to ask: “What do I actually want?”

20:41 — The divorced ex-evangelical support group

21:18 — Are any ideas from I Kissed Dating Goodbye still useful?

22:06 — Tinder burnout and the return of courtship thinking

23:01 — The real problem with modern dating

23:52 — Freedom vs shame-based control

24:43 — Women who thought tampons threatened purity

25:36 — The “formula” women were sold for happiness

26:41 — Parents trying to control teenage sexuality

28:04 — The 1800s obsession with female ignorance

29:15 — The history of prostitution and Christian morality

30:26 — Why Joshua’s sexual inexperience gave him authority

31:07 — Evangelicalism’s addiction to big movements

31:56 — Why twenty-somethings think they can fix the world

32:40 — How should we talk to kids about sex now?

33:03 — Removing shame from sexuality

33:54 — Sexual freedom also includes saying “that’s not for me”

34:52 — Living with one less regret

35:20 — Books and voices critiquing purity culture

36:22 — Joshua’s pivot into podcasting and business

36:34 — “We’re in the same club”

36:41 — The accidental ex-purity culture reunion club

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Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:00

True love waits. Stay pure until marriage. It's better to marry than to burn. If you were coming up of age in the late 90s in the evangelical Christian community, those were things you heard a lot. You probably also read I Kiss Dating Goodbye, a popular book touting courtship as the superior way to find God's perfect match for you and avoid the perils of sexual sin. The author of that book is my next guest. His life has changed a lot since he wrote that book, including his view on premarital sex. Today he's gonna share his first person account of what it's like to change your mind about something that you wrote a bestseller about. And we're gonna, well, talk about sex. Fellow 90s kid rethought and rebranded Joshua Harris. Thanks for being here.

SPEAKER_00 0:51

Oh, thanks for having me. That was quite the introduction.

SPEAKER_01 0:54

Well, thank you. You know what's funny about all of this that I was thinking about is if we were in our respective communities, two co-eds talking about sex, this conversation would not even be allowed.

SPEAKER_00 1:07

That just made me that'd be true.

SPEAKER_01 1:09

Yeah. And it's really uncommon to see a public figure like change their mind about something unless they're on the canceling chopping block. You know what I mean? It would be difficult, especially I think if your identity was connected to whatever it was you were talking about, like yours was, certainly from people who created a career around it. And let's be honest, men are not really known for being like, you know what? I was raw.

SPEAKER_00 1:39

It's hard. Yeah. It's so hard.

SPEAKER_01 1:41

So tell me how you came to this conclusion about such a major subject for you.

SPEAKER_00 1:46

Yeah. Well, it's funny that you mentioned the the canceling chopping block. And I know you're you're saying that in kind of a facetious way, but there was a sense in which I was on that block, and I don't always think that's a negative thing, actually, because there were a lot of reasons why it took me a long time to actually engage with the criticisms. And it was the large number of voices that were speaking to me, you know, from the internet, which has enabled what we talk about as cancel culture. But really, what is it's enabled in many cases is for people to have the power to stand up to authority figures, you know. And in the in the world of the evangelical church, a lot of times there's not accountability. Leaders and pastors and authors can just sort of do their thing without anyone calling them to account for the result of their ideas. And it really was a large group of people kind of standing up and sharing their stories that helped to change my mind. But it took a long time. And I I understand why so few people do it because it is incredibly disruptive. It's scary. You know, you mentioned identity. There could be a loss of identity, there's a loss of income. There's, you know, this fear that you'll be rejected by the group of people that used to support you if you shift in some way. So it was a really it was a really tough experience. And it wasn't just this like brave, you know, moment for me. Along the way, there were moments that kind of pushed me forward. And then I was like, oh my gosh, should I really, you know, rethink this? And then I did, and then I had to live with the consequences of that. But along the way, I wanted to turn back many times.

SPEAKER_01 3:29

So was it a gradual process or was it like all of a sudden all the voices just clicked with you? And you're like, because I mean, you're talking about not just a social issue, not just like a girl boy issue, you're talking about a theological issue.

SPEAKER_00 3:46

Right. Yeah. So I mean, the the big idea of this book that I wrote when I was 21 was because saving sex was the thing that everyone was talking about in the church, and that was the most important issue. If we wanted to be faithful to God and save sex for marriage, then we needed to back up even further and not put ourselves in the position to have the opportunity to get involved emotionally and sexually and so on. And so I took a lot of ideas that were very popular in the homeschool movement and different parts of the church, and I sort of popularized them. I was this young guy that was saying, hey, actually, this is a good idea. We should stop dating. And the book took off and it was embraced by a lot of people. It took almost 20 years before I could see the consequences of those ideas. You know, a lot of concepts that we have or fads that take place in culture, whether it's religion or just the broader culture, you don't really see the implications of them. A book sells, people do the new diet, you know, they sort of move on with their life. But something like dating and relationships and romance and who you marry has really long-lasting implications, right? And so there was a whole generation of Christians who embraced the ideas of my book, and then they got married. And then time went by, and maybe those marriages didn't go so well, or maybe some of them never got married and time went by, and they started to feel, you know, really upset about the bill of goods that they'd been sold in the purity culture movement and in my book in particular. And so part of what happened was that this whole generation started talking to each other and saying, wait a second, why did we think that way? You know, why did we buy into that? Did this actually work? No, I married someone that I shouldn't have married, or I didn't date people and get to know the different options that were out there, or whatever it might be, all these different very human, in some cases, heart-wrenching stories. And for me, there was there was sort of a breakdown of all the things that I gave my life security. I was a pastor of a large church. Well, that church started to get rocked by, you know, political division and turmoil. We were hit with a sex abuse lawsuit, like all these things that shook my confidence that I was on the right team and I knew you know all the right answers began to fall apart. And I started to see along with other pastors that there were some real problems in our church culture, not just because of my book, but because of many other issues, the way we tried to control people's lives in such a kind of powerful way. And I started to slowly connect the dots, like, wait a second, all these problems in people's lives are tied to the way we've been leading our church, and ideas like my book are connected to that. And so I ended up stepping down from my role to go to seminary on the other side of the continent in Canada. Stepping away from that role as pastor gave me the space to realize I didn't want to be a pastor, gave me the space to question things. I was able to just be a student instead of having to be the leader with all the answers. And so all of those moments led me to that place of being ready to listen to people who said, Hey, buddy, do you know that your book actually had a really negative impact, you know, on our lives? And that was the beginning of a process that became a documentary and this whole, you know, journey of me sitting down and listening to those criticisms and and finally being able to see, no, these are not just one-off things. These are not just people who misapplied my book. These are people who applied the ideas in you know very faithful ways, and the results were not good for them.

SPEAKER_01 7:46

I think I would be remiss if I didn't address the fact that you went to seminary and the end result was that you wanted to leave the ministry. I think that's usually the opposite effect of what happens. Can we touch on that briefly? I know it's not related to our topic, but I feel like it's just the elephant in the room.

SPEAKER_00 8:06

Well, the interesting thing or the sad thing about the church movement that I was a part of is that they celebrated not having formal education for their pastors. And so I became a pastor before I went to seminary, before I was formally educated. And it was sort of on-the-job training, and there was a real celebration of you know, doing all the theological learning in-house. But it what it ended up doing is it it really gave such a narrow perspective on theology. There was not the opportunity to interact with different theologies and different traditions of the church. So I was a pastor in that in that group for a long time. And when I got to this point of being completely burned out, I knew I needed a broader perspective. I knew I needed to learn in a different context. So I finally went to seminary after being a pastor for 17 years, with just the opposite way that you're supposed to do things. So it wasn't that this seminary that I went to, it wasn't that it made me not want to be a pastor. It just was more a space in my life to be able to ask the question what I actually wanted. And in that context, I realized, you know what, I've been doing this for a long time, and it it actually is really it's draining me emotionally and spiritually, and it's not, it's not what I want. And yeah, so seminary led me out of the ministry, but it uh I think it led me to a more kind of faithful, authentic place.

SPEAKER_01 9:33

It's funny that maybe those two things are connected, uh, premarital sex and you know, choosing a mate and choosing a career, because you do have to make space to think about what you want. And, you know, I am for premarital sex. I'm thinking about having t-shirts made that just say premarital sex and then like one of the Facebook thumbs up. I'll let you know how that turns out. And one of the reasons is because it allows you to figure out what you want. And, you know, one of the other reasons that I would love for you to weigh in on is I feel like if you are dating someone and there's a lot of sexual energy, that is clouding your logical thinking.

unknown 10:14

Right.

SPEAKER_00 10:14

Yeah, for sure.

SPEAKER_01 10:16

And if you are going to legally bind your life with another human for life, you need all of your faculties in order, right? So that's one of the things that I think is a reason for it. But I mean, I definitely would love to know, especially, you know, from a theology perspective, did you come across anything that supported that from a theology point of view? Because that's the argument I mostly hear from people is aside from the practical things, which can be accomplished outside of a marital agreement, it's like, well, that's God's best for our lives.

SPEAKER_00 10:54

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, there are definitely people who are writing works of theology that are arguing for a within the Christian tradition, they're arguing for a much broader perspective on sexuality. They're arguing against this very narrow focus on it only happening within a heterosexual relationship, within, you know, the bonds of marriage and so on. But that is definitely a minority opinion. I mean, I think the reality of the most of the church is that sex is very tied to marriage. Marriage is tied to a you know, the picture of Christ and the church. So there's just all these reasons why free love and you know the freedom to experiment sexually and understand what you want and so on, is not celebrated by most churches or, you know, kind of backed up by most theologies. And I mean, that's part of the reason for me, I've really stepped away from the church. So I'm not trying to justify my ideas about sex or my affirmation of my LGBTQ plus friends within Christian theology. I've just really stepped away from it and said, listen, I'm not at the same place. I'm not trying to play by all these same rules. But what you're describing earlier is absolutely so true. When you make this rule or when you believe this rule that sex has to happen within marriage, it creates tremendous pressure on unmarried couples who are considering marriage. So many people I've talked to would say, yes, we got married quickly because we were horny. You know, like we wanted to have we wanted to have sex, and this was the only way to do it. Or there was so much pressure because everyone around us was so afraid that if we didn't get married quickly, we were going to have sex. So much of even like the Old Testament teaching about sex and virgins and so on was so tied to a view of women in particular that was so property-based. It was, you have to make sure that your offspring are really your offspring. So that you know, the woman has to be a virgin because you want a family succession that's pure and you know, all those kinds of things. So many of those very ancient ideas have informed what the way that I think many religions, but Christianity in particular, function. And then I would just say there are so many hangups in in so many religious contexts about sex. It's become such a massive deal, and then it's been reinforced, you know, as a kind of key part of the culture wars and so on. So there's just incredible pressure. And I think that pressure leads to real problems, problems in the way we relate, problems in the way we even approach sexuality and experience sexuality. I've really interacted with so many couples that have that kind of story that their sex life is really marred by the guilt that they felt for so long around sex, holding off all those desires and then getting married. And suddenly they're supposed to just turn themselves on sexually and be completely open and comfortable. And it's really a difficult thing to do because your mind has been programmed. This is such a bad thing. It's so terrible. You know, the joke is sex is such a terrible, you know, dirty, nasty thing. You should save it for the one you love.

SPEAKER_01 14:16

I haven't heard that. That's good. That's really good. Oh my gosh. And when you said it put so much pressure on them, let's be real. By them, we mean her, because I don't know what your experience was, but my experience in my community was it was definitely the woman's job to dress modestly, swim in a t-shirt and shorts, and really protect the man's purity because boys will be boys. And then when you got married, it was like you were expected to also carry the burden of sexual satisfaction and be some sort of super sexual, awesome, knowledgeable person. But we weren't even allowed to masturbate. Like there was no discussion of education, no discussion of pleasure. And you're absolutely right about the, you know, getting married too soon. I even knew someone, and they're still married, amazingly, but they married in high school. They were children because their parents didn't want them to have sex before they got married. But for most of us from my community, we are not married to the person that we first got married to. Like that first marriage, either they're married and maybe it's not the right fit and they're struggling and they're unhappy and or they parted ways. So it definitely leads to a lot of problems. Hey there. It looks like you're enjoying this episode so far. But you know what's strange? Apple tells me that 19% of you who listen on this app aren't actually following the show. To guarantee that we stay connected in this busy world of podcasts, double check that you've hit the follow button on your podcast listening app. And if you have already, I'd like to invite you to my private Facebook group. Just search MFR or Curious Insiders on Facebook or click the link in the show notes to request to join. It's free. Okay, back to the show. I think for anyone who looks back, and let's say they're our age, 40-ish, and they look back to their 20s. As long as we didn't write a best-selling book about it, it's pretty easy to go, you know what? I was a moron. But what's hard, and I would love if you have any like incredible insight on this, what's hard is to look back and mourn lost opportunity. So for those of us from that community, you know, we're mourning the lost opportunity to be young and carefree in our 20s without daily guilt and shame. We're mourning the lost opportunity of moving away or, you know, different things that were interrupted by marriage, maybe parenthood before they were ready. So if that's something that you experienced and have worked through, please share with the class.

SPEAKER_00 17:04

Yeah. You know, I'm so hesitant to just give kind of pat answers or wrap it up all, you know, wrap it up with a bow kind of answers, because that is what we get in so many contexts that want us to just sort of shut up and deal with it and move on. And I I think the thing that I would just want to say is that regret is real and it's completely valid. And people who have experienced that are you're not alone. There are so many others who have experienced that kind of regret that comes from a very restrictive community, family, religion, whatever it might be. And I think that's what makes something like purity culture in my book such a flash point, because some decisions you make, like you got bad advice and you bought the wrong car. Okay, well, you know, get rid of that car and you buy a new one. Well, something like marriage, it just touches so many parts of your life. You know, if it's an unhealthy marriage, extricating yourself from that is so difficult, so painful relationally. If there are kids involved, you know, whatever it might be, or not having gotten married to someone that, you know, I hear that story from people. Like I was dating this person, and then because of the standards that everyone had, I ended the relationship. And I look back now and I'm like, I think that was my person, you know, and it's like there's no way to easy way to fix that. That's just incredibly hard and and painful. And I think for me personally, all the ideas of my books I completely believed in. It wasn't like I was trying to sell that to other people, but I didn't believe it myself. I fully believed it. I lived by it, and I experienced the bad consequences of those very flawed ideas in my own life. And so I can relate to that. I can relate to thoughts of like, why didn't I, you know, go travel the world when I was 21? Why didn't I date, you know, lots of different people and understand myself better? Why was I so fearful? And the only thing that I can do now, you know, as a result of that, is to try to live a more honest and free life today. That's the only thing I can do. I've found that endlessly just living in the past doesn't serve me in terms of living in that regret, but I do need to try to take those lessons. And it's it's not easy because honestly, you'd think, oh, okay, well, you live through that. Well, now you won't make that mistake. Well, a lot of those patterns are very deeply ingrained. It takes a lot of work for me to actually kind of quiet myself and to, I mean, it's almost like a meditation to be like, what do you actually want, Josh? Like, not what anyone else is saying, not your kids or your friends or the expectations of people. What do you actually want? Like, that's a very difficult muscle for me to exercise because I I haven't used it for much of my life. And so it's a learning process. But I I have, you know, I'm grateful that I have so many friends. I mean, I've got this little like club of bros that are like all these guys that have gone through divorces and we're like outcasts for a lot of our you know old community. But we just we have these conversations and we talk about what we're learning and we laugh at how we're like, you know, experiencing new things in our lives, and we're kind of like so awkward, like these teens that have never you know done certain things. But we're you know, we're growing and we're learning and we're we're figuring out what gives us life.

SPEAKER_01 20:41

Oh Josh, we're all in your club. Okay.

SPEAKER_00 20:46

All in the club.

SPEAKER_01 20:47

There is a huge, there's a huge bunch of us from the Midwest uh in the United States who are also in your club. Um, something that was brought up when I was talking to one of my club members, I'm gonna start calling them that. Uh anyway, then my thoughts have gone in a million directions about what we would call the club, and I need to reel myself back in. But she brought up something interesting that I wonder by you. She said that some aspects of your book she felt were still valid. And I wanted to know if you felt that way.

SPEAKER_00 21:18

Yeah, I mean, I that's a very tricky question to answer because it'd have to be very specific about which parts of it are are still valid. I I would say, you know, it's funny. I have conversations with my son, who is single, lives in New York City, and he laughs with me, and he's basically like, I could see there being a revival of the ideas in your book, I can't go by now, because people are so burnt out on online dating and you know, that whole world. And I just laugh at that. I'm just like, are you kidding? But I I think that some of the things that are relevant in the book is that it's trying to address this question. Of you know endless experimentation and kind of short-term relationship after short-term relationship can really be extremely draining for people who are looking for that long-term commitment with one person. And I mean, I just read an article about how Tinder is 10 years old, and now there are so many people that are just like so burnt out on the, you know, the online dating app game. And they just like can hardly take any more of it because they've just come to this place where they don't have any hope of actually finding someone, and yet they're just like swiping through countless, you know, people and so on. So I guess what I'm saying is that there are parts of dating that are quite broken today. I think there's a lot of frustration about it. I think my book was one expression of trying to find a saner, healthier way to approach that. Now, the problem with my approach, it was very control-based. It was very guilt-based and shame-based and so on. But I really think it's important from my own standpoint. I want people to have the freedom to do whatever they want. You know, if there are people who say, I want a very restrictive, you know, my family is involved in who I marry kind of experience of courtship, you know, more power to you. What's important to me is that people are making that decision themselves. It's not being forced on them from anyone else. The same goes with online dating. It's like if you're enjoying that, you're having lots of different sexual experiences and you're having a great time. Wonderful. You know, but I hope that's not because there's this pressure from all your friends that you have to be doing this, you know. I just want to encourage people to be free, to know what they want themselves, to be making decisions that are informed by what's best for them and what they kind of feel good about in the way that they're relating to other people. So I I think that ICAS dating was trying to ask some questions. I think the answers that it came up with were wrong. But I think every generation is going to keep having to ask those questions. And as we lose a community-based support system, as we lose the ability to get to know others in contexts that are supported by family and extended community and so on, I think a lot of people feel quite alone and quite frustrated and maybe even scared a little bit by the whole process. And so I worry at times that you know the ideas like you're sitting a bye will be recycled by someone new. I'm almost positive that's going to happen. But it's because there's there's a lot of frustration when it comes to finding a partner, especially in a culture that's quite liberated sexually and so on.

SPEAKER_01 24:44

So much frustration. I had some very interesting conversations as part of my research for our discussion. You really? I really did. And, you know, I can tell like some of them were I was just like asking, I had like three questions I pulled the audience with, and some of them just answer the questions. And then others, they were like, actually, I really want to dig into this. Can we have a Zoom call? I'm like, yeah, I haven't talked to you in 20 years. Let's do that. And and it was like therapy for us. I love that you say deciding what you want. And for me, that's so key because that's the difference. Because for us, for the ladies of my community, it wasn't about, let me just be a little TMI for a minute. There were women in my community who didn't use tampons because they felt like that it would diminish their virginal qualities.

SPEAKER_00 25:33

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 25:34

And so, and that wasn't because they had biological, you know, anatomical information about virginal qualities, clearly. It was like a spell. Like, if I'm really pure, if I don't hold hands, if I don't kiss, if I don't think about sex, if I don't masturbate, then I have created the perfect formula that will equal happiness. There was definitely no discussion about, like, you know, I will have a good sex life. That wasn't even surprisingly, I think that maybe got taught on the dude side, but on the girl side, it was about I will be happy, I will be safe, I will be like all the things that you would want from a marriage will happen. And so it create obviously created a lot of disappointments because that has nothing to do with anything. Um, so I love the idea of sitting with yourself and deciding what you want, whether it is in this more traditional, tender online app dating format, or if it has some elements of traditional courtship. So I think that's that's really powerful.

SPEAKER_00 26:41

Well, it's it's so tied to the family context, right? Like as you're talking about it, the experience of a late 20s single or you know, a mid-40s single after a divorce or whatever is completely different than the teenager who is making decisions for the first time, whose parents care about them, want to protect them from real life consequences that can come from the decisions that are made when it comes to sexuality at this age, that age, that kind of thing. So even as I look back, like I kissed it in a bye was targeting teenagers. I had just gone through the teen years myself. I was writing to try to inspire teens. And the reasons those very restrictive ideas were so embraced is because there was a whole generation of parents in particular, and youth pastors that were wanting to protect their kids from premarital sex because that would lead to unwanted pregnancies and possibly abortion and AIDS and other sexually transmitted diseases. You know, like that was like that was the focus of that that era. So the the answer was control. But I was so fascinating because literally last night, my youngest is in AP Euro class in high school, and I start flipping through this textbook, and there's a whole section about like this person writing about views of sexuality in the 1800s.

SPEAKER_01 28:04

Really?

SPEAKER_00 28:05

And it was it was talking about the fact that in the upper class, in this era, the the men had all this freedom. Boys will be boys. It's exactly what we talked about. They're like, of course, guys are gonna want to sow the wild their wild oats and you know do those kinds of things. But in the upper class, the women were protected with ignorance, like they couldn't know how babies were made, they couldn't know anything about their own bodies, all these kinds of things. Like that was the ideal of feminine virtue. The lower classes were out like screwing around and you know, doing having sex and and so on, because there wasn't the same ability to keep them from that and so on. But I'm just reading this going, oh wow, like you know, these ideas have shaped the Western culture hundreds of years before my silly book showed up on the scene and shaped different parts of Christianity and and so on. And they're just out there circulating. And so we're still it's like we're still dealing with the the after effects of the tsunami of certain ideas, and and it's hard to change those things. It's hard to change those things at a cultural level.

SPEAKER_01 29:15

I got on a rabbit trail of a podcast about the history of prostitution, naturally.

SPEAKER_00 29:20

Oh, fascinating.

SPEAKER_01 29:21

Yeah, and as one does. And all the way back in when the Roman Empire was at its peak, they were really known for sexual exploits. But when the I'm gonna mess this up, when the emperor became a Christian, they were like, no more human trafficking, because they we trafficked a lot. And so that was like a positive thing that came through it. But then it turned into exactly what you're discussing as a means of power. And although you said my silly little book, I do think your book, the popularity of your book, I should say, really illustrates the disparity between the men and the women. Because how is it that a, I'm gonna assume you're 21, so don't take this wrong way. I'm gonna assume you're sexually unexperienced, like not maybe a virgin, but maybe not like a dynamo. How is that a sexually unexperienced 21-year-old man writes a book and it becomes like the basis of so many sermons? You know, and the I think the answer is it's because that's how the system works.

SPEAKER_00 30:26

Yeah. And it well, the fact that I was inexperienced sexually was was actually a badge of honor and authority. You know what I mean? Like if I if I had sexual experience, then it would be like, oh, well, you've kind of gone and done your thing, and now you're coming back to being, you know, pure, but in that kind of work world, that's actually a badge of authority in a ridiculous way. Yeah. But yeah, to think about the fact that someone that's that experience, just even relationally and life experience-wise, is writing something that people are shaping massive decisions by is quite ridiculous. But I think it's a common pattern in evangelicalism that, first of all, evangelicalism is very movement-based, it's very prone to big waves of ideas that sweep through. You know, everybody buys the book, churches are excited about something. We love like our Billy Graham crusades and promise keepers and, you know, all those types of different things. And oftentimes at the forefront of those movements are young adults because young adults have so much passion and fervor. And a lot of times, that passion fervor is, I would say, ignorant. You know, they're young people that are looking for identity and security. And when you're in your early 20s, you have the world figured out. You're arrogant and you're like, what? Why have you guys taken so long to fix this part of the world? You're looking at the previous generation, you're like, you guys are losers. Like, we're gonna be the ones to fix this. This is not that complicated. We just need to be more hardcore. You guys aren't hardcore enough. That pattern is actually repeated in so many different like social movements, not even just religious, in so many different social movements. There's something about that age where you have so much boundless energy, so much optimism, and you're naive. You're naive about human nature, you're naive about your own self. And so, you know, my book, I think, was an example of that. I was at the forefront of that because I was this young guy who was saying all the things that the parents and the pastors wanted somebody to say, and I had more credibility because I was, you know, a single person myself.

SPEAKER_01 32:40

Yeah, that's so true. So much to unpack. We've covered a lot of ground, but as we wrap up, I would love for you to speak to how you might wish that the world talked to those young people about sex and sexuality, having kids yourself and having gone through this experience. I'm very curious about your perspective.

SPEAKER_00 33:03

Well, I think the thing that I would I would hope, I'd hope this for my own kids, I'd hope this for others, is just when you take shame and guilt out of the conversation and when it comes to sexuality, that I think is the healthy place. Where people understand, where they're able to be educated, where they they're able to learn about what gives them pleasure, how they want to interact sexually with other people, where things like masturbation and all those kinds of things are there's no shame around them. And people are able to learn about themselves and about what they want consequentix to look like. That I think is a really powerful place. I would include with that though, kind of an understanding of listen, this is such a powerful, incredible way to connect with other people. You need to be feel that you're in control of this, you know, you need to understand long-term the kind of the pros and cons of all these different paths, whether it comes to marriage and commitment or not commitment or whatever. Like our our culture is experimenting with so many different types of things. And not all of that is for everyone. And so for people to have the freedom to say, I'm not really into that, you know, like I don't really want that. I think that's an important freedom as well. And so it's I I would hope that people could be freed from the shame and guilt of saying sex is bad, but also from the shame and and guilt of saying, that's not for me. I actually want this over here. Like there's a there's a certain choosing that takes place. And sometimes people will be like, well, why would you want that? And that judgment can come from so many directions. But in that safer place, that's where I think people can be informed, they can learn about themselves, and then they can make decisions knowing that I made these decisions myself, not because someone else was pushing me or forcing me to.

SPEAKER_01 34:52

I love that. And I think a life lived with at least one less regret is probably a positive one on either side. If someone wants to continue this train of thought, I know your book is no longer in active printing. You're no longer receiving any financial benefit from the book or from the uh documentary. What's the best way for people to kind of explore the subject more or keep in touch with you?

SPEAKER_00 35:20

Yeah, well, first of all, I would say it's not about keeping in touch with me, honestly. There are so many other people that are writing about this, women in particular. I don't have all the book titles in my mind. There's a great, there's a great book named Pure that's out there that that talks about this in detail. If you just Google purity culture uh and books on purity culture, you'll find some really powerful voices that are critiquing these ideas, that are writing about these things. So that's where I'd encourage people to go for for more information. It's not me.

SPEAKER_01 35:54

Okay. That's fair. That's fair. Well, maybe I can link those in my the Saturday email that comes out in this episode.

SPEAKER_00 36:00

Oh, that'd be great. Yeah. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 36:02

So we can talk, you know, afterwards and you can be like, okay, I thought of the book, and then I'll link these. Exactly. So if you're listening to this now and you are not part of that email list, all you have to do, if you're in the US, you can text real to 66866. And if you're outside the US, just go to MeredithFore.com and you can get on the list. So that'll be awesome. And you have a website, joshharris.com, correct?

SPEAKER_00 36:22

Yeah, that's right. Yeah. I do a little podcast where I just interview people about business and and marketing and and different kinds of things like that.

SPEAKER_01 36:30

Perfect. Thank you so much. This was really awesome.

SPEAKER_00 36:34

Oh, Meredith. I'm I'm glad we're in the same club. We'll definitely have to have a chapter meeting one day.

SPEAKER_01 36:39

And think of a great name. So to be continued.

SPEAKER_00 36:42

Okay. Sounds great.

SPEAKER_01 36:44

Thanks for listening. Since you've made it this far, I'd like to invite you to be a part of my private Facebook group. In there I post content that I don't share anywhere else. You can talk to me directly about past and future episodes, and I even do occasional giveaways. Search MFR Curious Insiders on Facebook or click the link in the show notes. And if you liked this episode, you'll also like the one with the mental health counselor who specializes in religious trauma. That's episode 331. Stay tuned next week when I talk with a functional dentist asking if our spit could be the secret to optimum health. Until then, keep it curious.