Dr. Jill McDevitt is a professional sexologist. Aside from owning a women oriented sex shop and education center, in West Chester, Pennsylvania, she also conducts sex education programs on college campuses across the country. Thanks in large part to an article that has appeared in Glenn Beck’s “The Blaze” website on March 5, she is getting a lot of harassment from fundamentalist Christians.
McDevitt is no stranger to religious harassment. She had to fight off the local Catholic Church in order to open up her store. She documented that fight in her book, “Fighting the Crusade Against Sex: Being Sex-Positive in a Sex Negative World.” You can read my review of the book HERE.
On March 2, McDevitt conducted a program at Yale University called, “Sex: Am I Normal?” A video explaining the program is in the sidebar. The general idea of the program is to get people to be less judgmental of other people who have different sexual desires and experiences.
For example, in the Yale program of 37 students, 3 said that they had taken money for sex and about half have participated in “consensual pain” or S&M play during sex. Glenn Beck’s “The Blaze” insinuates that McDevitt's program encourages incest, bestiality, prostitution, and consensual pain during intercourse.
In addition to "The Blaze" article, articles have appeared on several Christian blogs and news sources. The Drudge Report even reported that 1 in 10 Yale students engage in prostitution and cite McDevitt’s program as the source. To be clear, 37 students voluntarily attending a sex education workshop is not a proper sampling of Yale University students. Yahoo News refuted the story.
One website called, “The Hawks Perch: Expressionist Children's Books” claims that McDevitt teaches bestiality and incest and insinuates that she engages in bestiality personally.
The comments section on many of these websites have been pretty threatening and McDevitt has also received threatening e-mails and harassing phone calls as a result of these articles. Many of which are inaccurate and misleading. A talked to Dr. McDevitt about the harassment and she told me that the local police will be writing up a report in case any of the harassment escalates.
To learn more about Dr. Jill McDevitt and her work, check out her website at thesexologist.org.
Please check out the Atheism 101 Series for frequently asked topics.
If you enjoy this article, please share the link. Also join my new Facebook community. Be notified by e-mail about the latest articles by the Philly & National Atheism Examiner using the "Subscribe” button.
Comments