In 1976, a best-selling American sex manual proclaimed a new era of mutual pleasure for men and women. Deriding “the old Victorian nonsense that a ‘nice lady doesn’t act as if she enjoys sex,'” the book’s authors gave careful instructions for making sure that she did enjoy it: communicate openly, take things slowly and stimulate in all the right places.
Sex therapists William Masters and Virginia Johnson? Nope. Playboy founder Hugh Hefner and one of his bunnies? Guess again. The sex manual was written by the conservative evangelicals Tim and Beverly LaHaye, who described shared sexual satisfaction — within marriage, of course — as a God-given right.
It was a huge step forward for millions of devout people who had been taught that sex existed only for procreation, not for pleasure. And it reminds us that the LaHayes were sexual revolutionaries as well as warriors for the Christian Right. Indeed, they made it alright for the Right to like sex.
It’s easy to lose sight of this progressive legacy when you look at the long life of Tim LaHaye, who died this week at the age of 90. From his start in 1958 as a fundamentalist minister in San Diego, LaHaye helped make Southern California one of the hotbeds of postwar religious conservatism. Thundering against abortion and homosexuality, LaHaye became a key organizing force for the Moral Majority and other groups aiming to rescue America from the wages of sin.
But LaHaye also embraced many aspects of contemporary life, departing from fundamentalism’s traditional emphasis upon the life thereafter. Even his enormously popular Left Behind novels — focused on the epic battle between Christ and Satan, preceding the end of the world — drew upon the very worldly themes of Hollywood action films: blood and gore, hero versus villain, guy meets girl.
Likewise, Tim and Beverly LaHaye’s sex manual echoed popular culture in its new emphasis upon frankness — and, especially, satisfaction — for both sexes. In his broadsides against pornography and homosexuality, Tim LaHaye depicted America as a corrupt fleshpot that had forsaken its spiritual core. But the LaHayes’ sex book also taught believers to take pleasure in their bodies, bringing the sexual revolution into the conservative bedroom.
It was all right there in the Bible, the LaHayes said: God created man and woman, and He clearly wanted them to satisfy each other. All they needed was a little nudge. In one passage, the LaHayes even cited the Song of Solomon — “His left arm is under my head, and his right arm embraces me” — as a guide for the manual stimulation of a woman by a man.
The LaHayes weren’t alone in their drive to get more married Christians to get it on. Three years before their book hit the shelves, born-again author Marabel Morgan published her own hugely successful sex manual, “The Total Woman.” She encouraged housewives to greet their husbands in seductive costumes and to introduce domestic props — such as backyard trampolines — into sex.
The best-selling book of 1974, the year that Richard Nixon resigned, “The Total Woman” even outsold the Watergate pot-boiler “All the President’s Men.” Mocking Morgan’s book as a guide for “fundies in their undies,” liberal critics decried the traditional gender roles that undergirded it. For example, Morgan suggested that the lady of the house get all of her chores done early in the day, so she had more time — and energy — for you-know-what when evening rolled around.
Similarly, the LaHayes’ critics noted how their own sex manual — entitled, revealingly, “The Act of Marriage” — stigmatized any acts that occurred outside of it. Tim LaHaye routinely referred to homosexuality as a disease, which could be “cured” by spiritual counseling.
But we shouldn’t underestimate the radical force of the LaHayes’ book, either. Their open discussion of birth control offended some of their fellow fundamentalists, who continued to insist that sex was just for making babies. Others were scandalized by the LaHayes’ explicit descriptions of intercourse positions and even Kegel exercises, which the book recommended as a way to enhance pleasure for both partners.
In the end, though, “The Act of Marriage” helped bring sexual knowledge and pleasure to millions of conservative Christians. The book has sold at least 2.5 million copies, including a 2000 edition that focused on sex and aging. New topics included menopause, erectile dysfunction and diminished sexual desire; nothing was outside the bounds for the LaHayes, so long as it stayed within the bounds of heterosexual marriage.
Since the LaHayes’ book appeared, evangelical Christians have evolved considerably in their views about gays: Last year, for the first time, a majority of surveyed evangelicals agreed that homosexuality should be accepted rather than discouraged by society. Tim LaHaye never went that far. But his straightforward approval of sex for married, straight people put conservative America on the road to accepting it for everyone.
Zimmerman teaches education and history at New York University. He is the author of “Too Hot to Handle: A Global History of Sex Education.”
