It helps if you see religion as a business, its product being followers.

In order to maximise productivity, many religions (particularly the Christian ones) appropriate sexual pleasure. They know that human beings will struggle to resist the urge to have sex, and so they exploit this for the good of the master plan. They put a moral padlock on your genitals, and unless you meet the terms and conditions for unlocking it, you're not allowed near them. The terms and conditions? That you pair for life and breed the largest possible family to follow the same faith and repeat the process when they're old enough.

This is why religion (particularly Catholicism) can't handle things like homosexuality, transgenderism, birth control and even masturbation. In fact, it sees the first two as an extension of the third. People who won't conform by being good breeding stock are of no use to the church. Well actually they are - they can abstain sexually and spread the word. This is why Catholicism has always treated its gays the same way: girls to the convent, boys to the seminary.

Yes, some of the Christian faiths are a lot more relaxed about contraception than the Catholics are. But it isn't a giant leap for an almighty god to put a microscopic hole in a condom. If a penis is entering a vagina, then there's an opportunity for God to press his magic button and bless that couple with a child. What even God can't seem to do is produce life from two males, two females, or someone who has become infertile through the process of transitioning from male to female or vice-versa. And that's why these things are still so controversial in religious circles.

Because primitive mindsets and those whom embrace the supernatural think that enjoying sex makes them uncivilised, since its primary objective is to reproduce. Furthermore, their moral compass is broken - since they lack common sense, education, and an ability to think for themselves, they try to be as lazy as possible when it comes to being morally righteous - condemning sex among various other things is a lot easier for these sheep than actually being a decent person.

I was born and raised Christian. Never heard word sex used at home . I think it's trying so hard to satisfy God that it's getting to some sort of paranoia. I'm Polish so Catholic county. Sex is on their mouth all the time ! It's evil , immoral, dirty ! Should be allowed only for procreation reasons. We have Radio Maria , where you can learn from the man which by their law should have been living in celibate how you should have sex !
My sexual education was the possessed woman with plastic egg with plastic unborn baby , yelling about evil contraception!
That was my last day as a catholic!
This madness in English religion should be stopped!!

Having sex with other Christians. Men tell women they shouldn't enjoy it and make no effort to help them enjoy it. Women buy into this and the hang-ups become like dogma.

I think it hearkens back to the Middle Ages, when dualism gained popularity. Dualism is the belief that the body and spirit are distinct, and that the spirit is of God while the body (as an extension of the material world) is of Satan. The thinking, then, was that the spirit must be enriched through prayer and so forth, while appetites of the flesh were to be neglected and denied. Food was to be consumed for only enough nourishment to sustain life and allow for work. Sex was for procreation exclusively, and married couples were warned of the dangers of enjoying the act. This unnatural approach to sex persisted in puritanical teachings throughout the centuries and, though generally not as extreme as during the Middle Ages, there is an obsession among many conservative Christians with sexual purity. You will still occasionally hear some remark that sex within marriage is about procreation and has nothing to do with enjoyment or pleasure. Talk about perverted sickos!

IMHO, Originally population control.
More sex = more kids = more work = less food

This link will shed more than a little light on the subject at hand [huffingtonpost.com]

They just want to judge when someone else is having it

I have a theory. Christianity is about persuading people from an early age that they are sinful. As a child it's easy enough to promote that idea but as the 'Age of Reason' approaches youngsters get to think for themselves but at that age their hormones start to kick in. Religion capitalizes on this & claim their sexual urges are "sin" just at the point when religious doubts might start to arise. So the sin claim starts to get traction when sexuality is literally 'demonized' & because it's such a powerful instinct it can be passed off as powerful evidence of our "sinful" nature when it's nothing of the sort.

The churches use fear, guilt and shame in order to control the behavior of their members. Sex is a drive and instinct, which if a person is religious puts them under the control of the church for "impure thoughts".

According tp the Bible, Jesus actually said almost nothing regarding sex. It is mroe dogma than doctrine, but it does allow churches to control people by making it a terrible "sin".

Mike, as I see it, it really just boils down to two things when the subject is sex and religion. The answer is... it has nothing to do with either. A church, large or small, is a business. But, it's a business which is made operational by the same two things which drive a great number of businesses and positions of influence. Those two things are... money and power. The difference, here, is the 'power' is derived from a cultish concept to a greater or lesser degree. The irony is that in the cult model of control, the more strict the church, the more devoted the followers. If anyone outside the church is forward enough to mention to one of its members that the church seems overly strict or cultish, the church member equates that comment with persecution, and to that member... 'persecution in any form is proof that what I'm doing must be true and right'. Therefore, the member 'doubles down' on being faithful to the cause, and gives even more money to the preacher, priest, or cult leader. The sly church leader, knowing this concept, preaches passionate sermons about the evils of sex, and other minor infractions, and does so with such a degree as to evoke an emotional commitment from his followers.
Therefore, it's important to remember that... 'it's not the church members'. They are being manipulated, and their responses to you over issues such as sex is nothing more than them following their subconscious programming, which is renewed every Sunday, and usually more often than that. The other irony is that, often, the more strict the church, the more money the preacher makes. (I have no statistics to substantiate that claim.)
So, just remember to be as objective and forgiving as possible when dealing with church people. 'They don't know what they don't know.' They are 'drinking the kool-aid' and totally unaware that they are being 'played' by a church leader whom they consider, good, sincere, with a reputation above reproach.

The Abrahamic faiths are sitting ducks for negative sex-obsession. First of all, the foundational notion that we are inherently sinners and prone to gravitating toward "evil" behavior makes it easy for many to be convinced that behaviors that appear self-indulgent must be less than "holy" Starting to set tons of stupid rules to restrict people's behaviors for arbitrary reasons and calling for punishment for infractions will tend to make some a bit paranoid. Specifically for Christianity, though, Apostle Paul, who is attributed with authorship of over half the New Testament, was famously averse to sexual relationships. Follow that by Emperor Augustus, who set the tone for the church to get quite negative about sex. Follow that further with edicts by middle ages popes to control people's reproduction and inheritance rights, and a culture that views anything natural with fertility symbolism or rituals as pagan and, therefore, Satanic, and, well, there you have it.

Probably because even tho they enjoy it a lot.....(an awful lot) their religion tells them it's a sin and if you do it you'll go to HELL.And so they are torn between the fact that they enjoy it sooo much and the fact that it's a sin...... For them it's a rock and a hard place !!!

It is particularly the evangelicals who focus on sex. Their dogma teachers that sex is original sin.

Just for the record, a close read of OT sex commandments results in the observation that their purpose was to keep track of y-chromosomes. This actually came in handy some years back. After Arthur Koestler proposed that today's Jews were actually Khazars, Arabs had some ammunition on not wanting Jews to return to Israel. A y-chromosome study did, in fact, link the Cohen family y-chromosome to Jewish populations around the world, and established that today's Jews are, in fact, primarily descended from Israelites. As to why Christians kept the hangups, it was probably inertia from Christianity's Jewish roots.