Sex, demons and children in the Jehovah's Witnesses
The Jehovah's Witnesses, who have received a lot of negative publicity over the last year because of the sect leaders' unwillingness to deal with sexual abuse of children, is basically founded on a publishing industry. Its output in books and magazines is impressive. The content of the printed products is, as anyone who has even been persuaded to actually read a Watchtower will know, not that impressive.
The sect also has published a lot of publications targeted at the children so unfortunate as to grow up in the sect, a grisly display of nightmare-inducing propaganda that should give psychiatrists work for decades (see e.g., this page and scroll down to look at the pictures and text of the 1958 book From Paradise Lost to Paradise Regained).
This summer, the sect published Learn from the Great Teacher, a new book directed at young children.
The book is designed for thorough indoctrination, as explained in the foreword (p. 7):
You will notice that the book calls for a response on the part of children. Many well-placed questions are provided in the printed material. When you come to these, you will see a dash ( -- ). This is a reminder to pause and encourage the child to express himself. Children like to be involved. Without the involvement, a child will quickly lose interest.
So what do they want to teach young children? Like many other sects, the Jehovah's Witnesses have an unhealthy obsession with sex (especially, not having it) and demons. In this latest work, they combine the two, hoping to scare the children into leaving their sex organs alone by putting the fears of demons in them. In chapter 10, pp 60-61, we find the following chilling paragraphs:
It is important that we know what bad things the demons will try to get us to do. So think about it. What bad things did the demons do when they came to earth? -- Before the Flood, they had sex relations with women, something that was not right for angels to do. Today the demons like it when people do not obey God's law about sex relations. Let me ask you, Who only should have sex relations? -- You are right, only married people.
Today some young boys and girls have sex relations, but this is wrong for them. The Bible talks about the male "genital organ," or penis. (Leviticus 15:1-3) The female genital parts are called the vulva. Jehovah created these parts of the body for a special purpose that should be enjoyed only by married people. It makes the demons happy when people do things that are forbidden by Jehovah. For example, the demons like it when a boy and a girl play with each others' penis or vulva. We don't want to make the demons happy, do we? --
I grew up in this sect, and I remember very well the chapter in the 1976 book Your Youth -- Getting the Best Out Of It that told me that if I masturbated, I would turn gay. Luckily, where I grew up, parents and other adults were about as emberrassed by the tripe as us children. Others were not that lucky. And I, remembering how badly affected I was at the generic demon scare stories I picked up in the JW environment, shudder at the thought of children growing up associating their genitalia with demons.
How can anyone expect them to ever grow up and have a healthy sex life with their mates later in life?
This article was first posted on my blog June 3, 2003.
