Jehovah's Witnesses and the Picnic Extinction (page 2)

Half banana

Terry, I like your 180 degree turn on oral sex! I concur that the hormones boiled away under the veneer of religious devotion but from a UK perspective I never heard of or actually knew of chaperones in the sixties (which was fortunate for advancing my education in the matter of the opposite sex!) Perhaps it had been mentioned by the org, but nobody of my acquaintance practiced having chaperones back then. USA was different?

ttdtt

TerryWalstrom2 days ago2 days ago2 days ago2 days agoThe pushback (re oral sex) was a gigantic tsunami back in the 70's and I'm pretty sure it must have scared the crap out of the GB.

Terry - what pushback are you talking about? I was to young to really know what was going on, but I can not imagine ANY of the married couples in my hall - openly opposing the GB on that?

I am interested to know more about what you may know about that time?
Also why did it take them 30 years to do the 180?

Interesting to Note:
As an elder I did notice in the 2000's that any time Oral or Anal sex was mentioned at Assemblies - that it was only in relation to Pre Marital Sex - and that if "you dont think that counts as sex your wrong".

It was obvious to me that they made an effort to not link it to marriage in a way they did in the past.

TerryWalstrom

The "push back" came in the form of an avalanche of phone calls and letters to Watch Tower headquarters with every manner of counter-argument, rebuttal, and alternate lines of query.
A couple of examples are in order. Brothers who could not perform sexually because of injury were anguished at having their only means of satisfying an otherwise deprived wife denied to them. It was not a matter of "cheap thrills" for them.
Another example. JW wives with unbelieving mates were placed in a double blind which threatened to destroy their marriage. Who were they more obliged to listen to, the head of the house, the husband--or the opinions of old men in Brooklyn twisting scriptures with dirty minds?
(Presented more elegantly, of course :)

Tens of thousands of letters signaled a BIG problem at a time in which the Watch Tower was on thin ice having gone too far in predicting the End of 6,000 years of human history in 1975. They were overreaching in broad daylight and they suddenly knew it.
Fighting a battle on two fronts is suicide. So, they back peddled.

eyeuse2badub

Hi Terry,

We have a lot in common including our age, our jw past, and our non jw present. I did my 2 years time for 'draft evasion' also. However, I was married. My wife wavered a bit during my incarceration but we are still together (51 years). I'm sure it was very hard on her to be a beautiful 20 year old being 'hit on' everyday at work during the sexual revolution of the late 60's.

You tell a very beautiful and colorful story of yesteryear. It took me nearly 55 years to learn ttatt but it's never tooo late to start living.

3rdgen
Ah yes, Terry, the memories of growing up in cult culture! I was a teen in the middle and late 1960's in California. Your post rang a very familiar bell.

I wonder if I ever ran into you at parties in the LA area in the mid-late 60's. I was mostly in the Whittier, Huntington Beach area.

just saying!

3rdgen

Hi, Eyeused2badub,

The many parties I attended were in the Central Valley and East Bay area, and one or two near San Francisco. I never went to a party in SoCal so unfortunately we probably didn't meet unless you made it to the famous huge (250+people) Modesto party in 1967. I was the happiest, dancin'est 15 yo in the place!

Remember when there was a party after EVERY assembly? Then there were graduations, weddings and more. There were parties for no other reason than the parents were willing to throw it.

TerryWalstrom

I was a Fort Worth Texas boy who later (1974) moved to Redondo Beach for 10 years. I'm back in Fort Worth.

ttdtt

Terry I still dont get why it took 30 years if there was such an outpouring?

tiki

Damn...you guys were lucky. We never had picnics or anything remotely suggestive of socialization. It was a very uptight cong...the only time you got to see fellow teenagers or young 20s was at circuit assemblies.

I remember the notorious papal bull about oral sex well. My elder father got the privilege of having to read it to the cong. I recall thinking next they'd ban kissing all together as it involved oral aperture...and could be a lead in to sex.

How they stifled us.....no wonder so many developed anxiety disorders

TerryWalstrom

What dates are you using to bracket "30" years?
The change came inside of one decade

Vidiot

Terry - "...Brothers who could not perform sexually because of injury were anguished at having their only means of satisfying an otherwise deprived wife denied to them..."

I remember reading the COC chapter about this; Ray really felt bad for these folks, and couldn't wrap his head around how unsympathetic other GB members could be about stuff like this.

He'd try to remind these guys that "the Bible is silent on this subject" (paraphrasing, but that's the gist), but they'd essentially held the view that they couldn't give the R&F too much wiggle room.

Jehovah's Witnesses and the Picnic Extinction

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