Patriarchal Monogamy

SUMMARY

The equating of sex, sin and death in Patriarchal Judeo-Christian religions continues to affect the social and moral consciousness of Western societies. The concepts of the impure body, the inferiority of women, importance of monogamy and marriage, and the negative ideas of sexuality have been so absorbed into all cultures that their origins as mainstays of patriarchal religions have been obscured, and these ideas have become accepted as the natural phenomenon of human relationships. Lesbians, already out of the mainstream of heterosexual life, still structure their own lives around these archaic and restrictive codes.