And God Created Sex

Let's clear up some confusion. God created sex. Unless you believe that Adam and Eve, two young fully-formed stark naked humans spent their entire time naming the plants and animals, then it's pretty clear that they were having a really good time. But God did not create marriage. There is no record of Gabriel or any of the other angels coming down and performing a ceremony: "By the power invested in me by the Garden of Eden, I now pronounce you man and wife." So Adam and Eve were - ahem! - living in sin, which means the Catholics were wrong about pride being the Original Sin. Unless, of course, you accept that sex between two consenting adults - and boy, were they ever consenting - is not a sin at all. It's true that in Genesis 3:16-17 God speaks of "your husband" and "your wife," but it's hard to see this as anything other than nomenclature. Adam is more precise when he speaks in Genesis 3:12 of "the woman whom You gave to be with me." Then there is this mysterious passage (which I bet you never heard read from the pulpit) in Genesis 6:1-4: "When people began to multiply on the face of the earth, and daughters were born to them, the sons of God saw that they were fair; and they took wives for themselves of all that they chose...the sons of God went in to the daughters of humans, who bore children to them. These were the heroes that were of old, warriors of renown." Whoever the "sons of God" were, it's clear that their "wives" were simply women whom God gave to be with them. So "marriage" is a ritual invented by the Pharisees and the Sanhedrin to stabilize and regulate society. It's a legal construct, but hardly a holy or sacred one.