Divine Sex: Liberating Sex from Religious Tradition by Philo Thelos aka Darwin Chandler, published by Trafford Publishing.

I got a copy of this a couple years ago and read it through, and back and forth probably 2 or 3 times. I will say first off that I'm still not completely convinced of all of his conclusions, although I find *some* are *fairly* sound.

TLDR: Swinging is not outlawed in scripture but I'm dubious.

He says that he has been a pastor for a number of years and after following the "party line" for a number of years, he did a lot more research and came to the conclusion that we have been fed a lot of legalism about sex by sex haters. His aim in the book is to examine every passage that deals with anything sexual or marital relationships and decipher what exactly God meant by it then and how it applies to us today.

He gives definitions for fornication and adultery, idolatry, makes conclusions about modest dress and nudity, kinds of sexual activity that are permitted, sexual activity before and during marriage, extra-marital sex, polyamory, porn and related, some about sexual orientation, and even hookers.

The first MAJOR idea that he promotes is that, in the both Old and New Testament, God VERY clearly laid out what was forbidden, AND if it's not forbidden, God has NO problem with us enjoying whatever it is.

The second big idea is about the big no-no: adultery. Adultery is unequivocally wrong, but what is EXACTLY meant by that?

He argues that adultery and marriage in the Old Testament was primarily concerned about things OTHER than just the act of sex AND it strangely applies mainly to WOMEN. Meaning, a man had the right to have sex with any woman UNLESS she was married. Adultery was ONLY possible with a married woman.

First was the Hebrew line of inheritance of the land - if a woman had sex with any other man, the man couldn't be sure if her children were his or not. Somewhat related, divorce was generally a man's right more than women. I seem to remember hearing a woman could sometimes get a divorce, but don't remember where I heard that or restrictions.

Secondly, the wife was legally considered the husband's property, so if another man "took" a man's wife, it was stealing his property.

Third, God used idolatry metaphorically as adultery to describe when our relationship with Him is broken. The frequent mixture of the two sometimes makes it hard to understand which is being referred to, and how much the one rigidly applies to the other.