cody.lowe@roanoke.com 981-3425
   If there is one topic that will consistently fire up religious folks, it's sex.
   These days, of course, the dominant theme of discussion on the subject is homosexuality. That discussion isn't over, of course, but it must have been something of a relief for some people to have Janet Jackson's breast to talk about.
   It says something about us, I suspect, that it took Jackson's exposure during the Super Bowl to turn our national discussion to heterosexual behavior.
   Context is everything, of course. Even people who don't have any particular qualms about seeing naked bodies don't necessarily want somebody to force them to look at one. And parents were understandably upset that Jackson usurped their responsibility to decide what was appropriate for their children to see.
   But the religious objections raised in the hours and days after Jackson's stunt are more complex than those two reactions. At the end of this column, I'll ask you to take a minute to offer your two cents' worth on the subject.
   
   Shocking behavior
   More than a decade ago, when I was just beginning to cover religion in our region, one of my favorite sources was Raymond Lawrence.
   Ray was an Episcopal priest, a counselor and the author of a book titled "The Poisoning of Eros." The book's thesis, vastly oversimplified, was that biblical literalism and its resulting irrational cultural hang-ups have ruined sex.
   Ray, who has since moved away, loved to shock, which made him a great source. More than that, though, he sincerely believed that people needed to talk more openly about sex and to discard what he saw as outdated or misinterpreted religious conventions including monogamy and prohibitions of homosexuality. Even those who disagree with some of Ray's more extreme positions are likely to concur with the idea that human sexuality is a legitimate topic for religious discussion.
   What Ray saw, however, was that we often react to sexual situations out of our biblical heritage.
   What is the first thing Adam and Eve do once they discover sin? Put on clothes to cover their nakedness. The Bible depicts God as instructing the ancient Hebrews not to build an altar where they would have to climb steps to approach it "lest your nakedness be exposed on it."
   When Ham accidentally came upon his father, Noah, passed-out drunk and naked, God cursed Ham's descendants for his indiscreet look (and for telling his brothers about it).
   Lot managed to escape destruction in Sodom but ended up living in a cave with his two daughters. The women feared they would never find husbands, so they waited until their father was (you guessed it) passed-out drunk and had sex with him - without his knowledge, the Bible says - to extend the family tree. They both got pregnant, and there is no condemnation of their action in the story.
   
   What do you say?
   Ray Lawrence saw these kinds of stories as contributing to an unhealthy view of our bodies and of sex. He surely could have predicted the kind of reaction we heard from religious leaders to Jackson's antics.
   I am curious, however, about how much we would have heard had Jackson simply refrained from that final act. In the aftermath, religious pundits spoke at length about the entire halftime show's sexual overtones. But I would bet that we would have heard little or nothing about that without the bare breast.
   So, maybe Janet Jackson did us a favor. She shifted the discussion to heterosexuality - a subject of far more interest to most of us than homosexuality; and she provoked us to consider the boundaries we want to set on sexual displays.
   It seems unlikely that we will ever return to the innocence of the Garden of Eden where, Genesis says, Adam and Eve "were naked, and they felt no shame." So, how do you think we should deal with the increasingly common nudity and sexual expression in popular culture?
   Was the Super Bowl display evidence of shameful behavior? How should religious individuals respond?
   Send your responses - keep them short - to cody.lowe@roanoke.com or The Back Pew, c/o The Roanoke Times, P.O. Box 2491, Roanoke VA 24010-2491, by Feb. 23. We'll publish a selection of your responses.