Development

It would be nice to have a clear understanding about the magic of sexuality--how development occurs, how it can be variously a life-saver and life-destroyer, what goes on in the heart and mind... but I'm a bit skeptical that anyone can ever have much understanding in this area. There are plenty of well meaning and successful researchers chipping away at questions in the field, but ultimately I believe sex is a black box that no scientific reasoning or probing can get into. The subjective nature of it--the fantasies, the deep visceral desires and needs that are being offered and taken--make it impossible to measure without disrupting the process. "How does that feel? What are you thinking RIGHT NOW!?" All the probes and sensors, equipment, and measurements in the world won't really nail it down.

Which supports the plausibility of the view that God's take on the subject is of value.

My conjecture is that masturbation and pornography are obstacles to achieving the best sex possible. I wonder if one who successfully avoids masturbation altogether and whose first sexual experience is with a committed life-long partner is blessed with a powerful aid in psychological fidelity as well as a supernal sexual satisfaction that can only be achieved when comparison to outside sexual experiences is avoided altogether.

This seems consistent with the distracted and even bored appearing demeanor of models in amateur porn videos. The pros put on a better show, but I suspect they hide the same mental gymnastics I see attempted by those boys who actually have to WATCH porn in the background to get excited enough to MAKE porn. It's like an admission that everything they do is disappointingly average. They may be in their physical prime, alarmingly attractive, and virile to the gills, but when the climax comes it's an empty thrill. A moment of pleasure here and then gone leaving them only to lust for the next possibility for an equally fun but ultimately meaningless expression of physical pleasure... like ice cream.

If sex can be something more transcendental, as I believe and hope it can, it's not going to be achieved by sowing wild oats. I think it would be achieved through fidelity and discipline--avoiding porn and masturbation as well as any form of what Christ called committing adultery in the heart.

That masturbation was thought to cause "a perceptible reduction of strength, of memory and even of reason; blurred vision, all the nervous disorders, all types of gout and rheumatism, weakening of the organs of generation, blood in the urine, disturbance of the appetite, headaches and a great number of other disorders" but is currently understood in medicine to be a healthy and normal practice is commonly cited as evidence of the ridiculous nature of religious sexual purity. But for reasons based on my thinking here, I can imagine how masturbation could have ill effects, and apparently God has some ideas as well.

I know homoemotional feelings develop before puberty. I've heard reports that homosexual feelings can too, but I wonder if that's an artifact of our society's sexual preoccupations, as I think few sexual feelings of any kind should develop before puberty. But once puberty hits, I imagine sexual desires search for an anthropological structure on which to drape themselves. If that skeleton involves pornography and/or masturbating to fantasies of the same gender, I can see how that would lead to a developmental chain that after years would have established an inexorable intuition that one's sexual feelings are innate and unchangeable. But, it would be a mistake.