Heather wrote: "It may be misguided to think that all religions oppose sexual expression for pleasure." But it may not be misguided to think, as I did/do and I as I wrote about as the subject of my above postings, that almost all religions have been adversaries to the goal of understanding and accepting the full range of human sexual expression. Your own message shows just how much religions tend to define within qualified, circumscribed, and delimited boundaries the range of acceptable human sexual expression. Such restrictions on understanding human sexuality are contrary to a scientific approach to understanding human behavior and often contrary to the best interests of therapy clients whose own sexual interests may diverge widely from the circumscribed boundaries of acceptability of their religious tradition. This discrepancy between one's interest and one's religious tradition is not infrequently a cause of human suffering that could be avoided by taking a much more scruntizing and skeptical approach in assessing any possible value in religious boudaries delmitied the range of acceptability of human sexuality. Psychotherapy, in my opinion, should be a profession of applied psychological science--which is implied by licensing laws purported to exist in order to protect public health in sofar as therapists present themselves as health professionals. If they are a profesion of quasi-religious advocates for religious traditions and relgious concepts, they don't need licenses because they are not enaged in a health profession (of applied science) but a religios profesion. We don't have licensing laws to protect the public from religion; we have freedom of religion. We don't have freedom of science or feedom of public health professionals--and that's why we have licensing laws for therapists. I am open to being persuaded, however, that "spiritual growth" has some useful meaning that I am unaware of apart from religion. It is especially important that applied psychological scientists not be advocates of religious proscriptions on human sexual expression since sexuality is an area of human behaivor fraught with misunderstanding and religiously inspired narrow constrictions on one's ability to think clearly and objectively. Obfuscation is exceptionally undesirable in trying to understand matters of human sexualtiy.
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