Sex and culture mark CA speech

Referring to sex as "part of being human," Reverend Beverly Dale, the executive director of the Christian Association, spoke Tuesday night on church and society's perspectives on sex in American culture. "My passion is to help liberate Christians and the church from the dehumanizing views of sexuality in our culture," Dale said. "[I am[ striving for positive sexual, sensual alternatives." Dale said that her "job as an educator is to try to provoke people to think internally about their own sexual standards." Dale, who spoke to an intimate audience in the Christian Association, discussed the psychological damage created by the adamant rules of the "patriarchy" regarding sexual behavior. "The patriarchy is about establishing external controls of the individual in order to maintain power over that individual," she said. According to Dale, the patriarchy has a habit of repressing an individual's emotions and destroying an individual's will power. Dale, who has a fundamentalist background, also spoke of how her beliefs concerning sex and religion have drastically changed throughout the years. She said she now views "God as sensual not asexual, the body as a means to connect with the spiritual, [and believes that] life is to be lived fully not hesitantly and that which alienates us from our bodies' senses is probably sin." College senior Angela Cooley said that the program was extremely useful. "Penn's community would like to know that there are places where one can question authority that's safe," Cooley said. "I think that it's important to walk away with positive feelings about the church such as community, grace and justice rather than just speak of its faults," Social Work graduate student Kathleen Crowley said.