Victor Hawley was a thirty-year-old dental assistant with a passion for collecting butterflies, who fell in love with Mary Jones, another colony member. Because of the community's unique social and sexual practices, however, the two were kept apart and denied their request to have a child. In the eyes of the community, their love was unsanctified. Instead, on the order of colony founder John Humphrey Noyes, Jones was subsequently impregnated by Noyes's son. Fogarty effectively uses the diary to illuminate with particular clarity the largely ignored darker side of the community. Thus this rare chronicle opens for radical reinterpretation the Oneida Community's plan on procreation and the central role that sexual domination played in its history. Hawley's intense struggle to reconcile individual and community needs and desires illustrates a fundamental tension that characterized the community in the years immediately preceding its dissolution. In 1877, after twenty-three years at Oneida, Victor Hawley left the community with Mary Jones after he nursed her through an agonizing pregnancy that ended in stillbirth. They married, had five children, and lived on their own, outside the embrace of Eden. From numerous entries in Hawley's secret diary, which were written in an arcane shorthand, Robert S. Fogarty successfully extracts some astonishing personal details, which include descriptions of areas of community life never before revealed on such matters as religious commitment and experiments in eugenics. Special Love / Special Sex will be specifically of interest to scholars in utopian and communitarian studies and to social historians.

After a decade apart, childhood sweethearts reconnect by chance in New York Times bestselling author Christina Lauren’s touching, romantic novel Love and Other Words…how many words will it take for them to figure out where it all went wrong? The story of the heart can never be unwritten. Macy Sorensen is settling into an ambitious if emotionally tepid routine: work hard as a new pediatrics resident, plan her wedding to an older, financially secure man, keep her head down and heart tucked away. But when she runs into Elliot Petropoulos—the first and only love of her life—the careful bubble she’s constructed begins to dissolve. Once upon a time, Elliot was Macy’s entire world—growing from her gangly bookish friend into the man who coaxed her heart open again after the loss of her mother...only to break it on the very night he declared his love for her. Told in alternating timelines between Then and Now, teenage Elliot and Macy grow from friends to much more—spending weekends and lazy summers together in a house outside of San Francisco devouring books, sharing favorite words, and talking through their growing pains and triumphs. As adults, they have become strangers to one another until their chance reunion. Although their memories are obscured by the agony of what happened that night so many years ago, Elliot will come to understand the truth behind Macy’s decade-long silence, and will have to overcome the past and himself to revive her faith in the possibility of an all-consuming love.

Sex matters, and at MuslimMatters.org, want to talk about it. There are many evidences that clearly demonstrate Islam's realistic and pragmatic view of human sexuality. Sexuality, like all human emotions, is a natural instinct that should be satisfied in a permissible manner. The emotion itself is not evil or filthy; abusing it and trying to satisfy it outside of the permissible bounds of marriage is evil and filthy." -Dr. Yasir QadhiJoin Dr. Yasir Qadhi, Imam Omar Suleiman, Shaykh Yahya Ibrahim, Shaykh Yaser Birjas and other writers, scholars, and Muslim leaders in this critical MuslimMatters collection. In it, we discuss same-sex attraction, sex addiction, adultery, secret second marriage, and issues facing the Muslim community. Excerpts from the book: "Many women are likely to be blamed for not keeping their husbands happy, even at times by their own families. This approach, of course, is completely devoid of any Islamic precedent or Prophetic tradition. The Prophet ﷺ never chastised the spouse of an adulterer for not doing enough to stop them from cheating." - Shaykh Omar Suleiman"Sex addiction festers in darkness. People can go about their "normal" everyday lives on the surface but in the claws of compulsion leaves them surrendering to the lure of desire. Coupled by the deep rooted belief that they are doomed destined for hell and they can't be cured/ saved, this is of course only a trap from Shaytan..." - Abeda Ahmed "The entire concept of "proof of virginity" is alien to the Deen and completely absent in the Shari'ah. The only Islamically acceptable way of knowing whether someone has committed Zina (fornication) is by confession, or having been caught fornicating by the required four witnesses, making the whole idea of physiological "proof" redundant." - Zainab bint Younis "Asking for a 'virginity test' is something new in the Muslim society. It's hard to find anything regarding this issue in such a straight forward manner in classical works of fiqh, for such a request implies suspicion in the chastity of the woman and hence falls under 'Qadhf' - meaning false accusation. This request is not only a violation to her body, but also to her innocence and to her honor." - Sh. Yaser Birjas "Contracting secret/temporary marriages reduces marriage to sexual relations in an ugly sort of rental arrangement, that is profoundly demeaning, especially to women." - Dr. Shaykh Mohammad Akram Nadwi

Have Real Conversations With Your Kids About Sex The old ways of having the "sex talk" just won't cut it anymore. Sadly, the number one place today's young people go to for answers about sex is Google. Meanwhile, kids view nearly 14,000 sexual references a year on television, and 70 percent of teenagers have encountered pornography on the Internet. If we want our children to know the truth about healthy sexuality, we need to create a comfortable climate of continual conversations. Jonathan McKee will show you how to move beyond the initial awkwardness of this subject into an ongoing communication with your kids about God's amazing gift of sex. He equips you with what you need to talk openly about dating, temptation, porn, and purity, and you will find answers to tough questions and relevant Scripture on sexual issues. It's normal for kids to be curious about sexuality, and they need to know that their parents are the most reliable source of information. Be the one your kids turn to on this crucial topic. "In a world full of explicit lies, today's kids need parents who aren't afraid to tell them the explicit truth. This book provides parents with the tools they need to have these candid and continual conversations."--Dr. Kevin Leman, New York Times bestselling author of Have a Happy Family by Friday "Jonathan McKee is one of America's premier youth specialists, and this book will help you navigate the rough waters of teaching your kids healthy sexuality."--Jim Burns, PhD, president, HomeWord and author "Parents, take a deep breath. This book pulls no punches. But it will give you exactly what you need to walk alongside your kids at this time when they most need it."--Shaunti Feldhahn, social researcher, speaker, and bestselling author "A thorough, straightforward, and engaging resource that will both equip and inform a parent for effective, culturally relevant, and God-honoring conversations about sexuality and all its implications. It is a critical read in critical times."--Brian Berry, generation ministries pastor, Journey Community Church, La Mesa, California; and author "SO many parents I know don't feel equipped to talk to their kids about sex. This book helps you overcome the (guaranteed) awkwardness of conversations like that, and provides both tools AND motivation. I wish every parent would read it."--Scott Rubin, director of middle school ministry, Willow Creek Community Church "Jonathan McKee provides clarity and practical knowledge so that you and I can do more than just give a nervous 'talk' to our kids; we can be loving and consistent parents for them as well."--Terry Linhart, PhD, educator, author, Bethel College--Indiana "Kids need parents who are educated, aware, and relevant when it comes to sex. Thankfully, Jonathan McKee gives us powerful, poignant, and practical tools to help us win in this delicate and scary parenting arena."--Doug Fields, co-founder of DownloadYouthMinistry.com, youth pastor for thirty years at Saddleback & Mariners Church, speaker, and author "McKee is a frontline youth worker with current and regular interactions with Christian teenagers wrestling with the intersection of their faith and their sexuality. Never condescending, Jon brings his writing style to a subject I wish more parents were talking about with their teens."--Mark Oestreicher, partner, The Youth Cartel and author "Jonathan McKee's book helps us to remember that 'the talk' is a myth at best, and a terrible strategy at worst. A lifestyle of preparation, a strategic series of discussions, and a proactive commitment to conversation is what our kids need, and this book will help any parent to walk with their kids in confidence."--Chap Clark, professor of youth, family, and culture, Fuller Theological Seminary

A fascinating and unusual chapter in American history about a religious community that held radical notions of equality, sex, and religion---only to transform itself, at the beginning of the twentieth century, into a successful silverware company and a model of buttoned-down corporate propriety. In the early nineteenth century, many Americans were looking for an alternative to the Puritanism that had been the foundation of the new country. Amid the fervor of the religious revival known as the Second Great Awakening, John Humphrey Noyes, a spirited but socially awkward young man, attracted a group of devoted followers with his fiery sermons about creating Jesus’ millennial kingdom here on Earth. Noyes established a revolutionary community in rural New York centered around achieving a life free of sin through God’s grace, while also espousing equality of the sexes and “complex marriage,” a system of free love where sexual relations with multiple partners was encouraged. Noyes’s belief in the perfectibility of human nature eventually inspired him to institute a program of eugenics, known as stirpiculture, that resulted in a new generation of Oneidans who, when the Community disbanded in 1880, sought to exorcise the ghost of their fathers’ disreputable sexual theories. Converted into a joint-stock company, Oneida Community, Limited, would go on to become one of the nation’s leading manufacturers of silverware, and their brand a coveted mark of middle-class respectability in pre- and post-WWII America. Told by a descendant of one of the Community’s original families, Ellen Wayland-Smith's Oneida is a captivating story that straddles two centuries to reveal how a radical, free-love sect, turning its back on its own ideals, transformed into a purveyor of the white-picket-fence American dream.

IT'S NOT JUST SEX. IT'S NOT JUST LOVE. IT'S SOMETHING MORE.... But what could be better than sex? How about lovemaking that sweeps people into new realities, producing altered states of consciousness a thousand times more powerful than the most earth-shattering orgasm? Lovemaking so spectacular that it truly is a religious experience? Transcendent Sex is not about the "Tantric method." It is about the best-kept secret in human history: that ordinary people, with no special training, can find themselves in different spiritual realms when making love -- an experience so profound that nothing will ever be the same. It is about sex that triggers episodes identical to the highest spiritual states -- as described in the annals of shamanism, yoga, Buddhism, Christianity, Judaism, and Islam -- including visions, channeling, reliving past lives, transcending the laws of physics, and seeing the face of God. This revealing book tells of lovers who engaged in sex as usual and suddenly found the veil between the worlds torn open. Transcendent Sex, like any other spiritual awakening, changes lives. Atheists have become believers; long-standing psychological wounds have been healed; and the sexually abused have become whole. These are the inspiring, incredible true stories of people who experienced an ecstasy and fulfillment beyond the borders of this world.

Collected from her groundbreaking series of relationship books, THE LOVING RELATIONSHIPS TREASURY distills the core teachings of Sondra Ray's unique approach to finding, achieving, and maintaining the deepest, most fulfilling relationships possible. Ray's timeless writing continues to inspire us to begin our personal journeys toward integrating intimacy and spirituality within every significant relationship-with ourselves, our mates, our parents, our children, our colleagues, our world.

Gay spirituality represents a hidden strand in Western thought that was only publically declared from the Gay Liberation of the 1970s. Since "coming out", expressions of gay spirituality have proliferated in both number and diversity. Beginning with gay theology within Christianity, the phenomenon has now reached as far as Buddhism and neo-paganism. But, so far, critical analysis of the movement has been very limited largely because gay spirituality has been treated as a political and social movement arguing for rights and acceptance within religious circles. 'A Special Illumination' offers an indepth analysis and argues that gay spirituality should be placed at the heart of religion.