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If A Tree Falls In A Utah Forest, Is It Having Sex With The Ground?

by warren stone

My Park City friend keeps urging me to move from Nevada, and I keep begging off. I’ll tell you why. It’s the Religion/Sex thing.

I’ve got a Religion avoidance policy. I was molested when I was a child by a seemingly devout person. As George Carlin has said, “When Jesus said ‘suffer the little children to come unto me,’ that was not his intent.’”

Now, I would never suggest that religious repression of the natural sexual urges is responsible for all sexual, emotional, and criminal misbehavior in the world... but on the other hand, I’ve never heard of an alter boy being buggered by a Pagan chieftain.

The problem with Religion in a country that has a Bill of Rights is that many citizens confuse Freedom of Religion with the Freedom to have Undiagnosed Mental Illness— an unofficial, but apparently still-protected side-effect of our system of government. This proud tradition explains The First Church of Elvis, and all those unquestioning trailer-park residents who really think Charlton Heston IS Moses. Remember, there’s only one letter’s worth of difference between Waco and Wacko.

Catholics have the worst reputation in this regard. This is the religion that tells you not to practice birth control, not to masturbate, and not to have sex unless you’re married. Now, if you’re ugly or in some other way undesirable, these restrictions pretty much condemn you to a life of watching Showtime movies and whimpering while you struggle to keep your hands on the remote and off yourself.

However, Catholics have done some fine things... there’s the Crusades, non-intervention in the Holocaust, and... well, George Carlin WAS a Catholic, and he’s really funny. That should count for something, right?

Then there’s the Protestants, who produced me. While the original intent of their branching off from Mother Church was obviously the allowance of more liberal thinking, this has never filtered down very far in their religious doctrine when it comes to man/woman logistics. As the old joke goes, “Why don’t Baptists like Sex?... Because it leads to Dancing!”

While I know next to nothing about Judiasm (except that most Hoosiers thought I “looked like one” when I was a child), I notice that the required guilt quotient for membership makes the average Catholic look like Charles Manson. Why the faith that kept beseeching for it’s people to be “let go,” won’t do so itself, I can’t fathom.

I don’t even have any faith in the Unitarians, the party animals of the devout. Just because they allow John Denver and James Taylor songs to be strummed across the alter doesn’t mean they don’t lay enormous guilt trips on pregnant teenagers or teens who’re having doubts about their sexual identity. I’ll respect a religion on the day it actually insures someone who has made a mistake that everything will still be OK, and they’re not immediately going to Hell.

I don’t even like the Scientologists, even though their only visual sexual repression appears to be the requirement of sleeping with Tom Cruise. I used to live near their Portland, Oregon headquarters and would get hit up almost daily to take their “personality test.” If Cruise’s acting is any indication, those without a personality are immediately accepted.

I’ve never heard anything bad about the sex lives of tree-worshiping Druids... except for the nasty rumor that Dutch Elm Disease is a venereal blight they started after stumbling upon a particularly accommodating knothole.

Now, after all this rambling, I’m embarrassed to say that I deeply believe that the impulse to worship SOMETHING is a requirement of the human condition. I’m even more embarrassed to admit that I have a personal God... and it’s Hugh Hefner. Merely the fact that he made it possible (for the first time in recorded history) for Hoosier youth to view a vagina that they weren’t related to... I can’t believe that a guy who looks like a birch tree wearing a hairpiece and red jammies gets all of the world-class branch-buffing he’s gotten!

But back to my immediate problem and fear: Should I move to Utah, and what would it mean to my sex life? I know nothing about Mormons other than the fact that they’ve got their own special add-on Bible, and their marriage counselors have to work in teams.

I’ve heard however, that while sex is somewhat covert in your environs, Mormon women have mouths that most self-respecting blowfish would kill to posses. Is this true? If so, contact this paper, and forward me a map, phone numbers, and the name of a reputable knee-pad manufacturer.