Harry's Blog

Now here's an interesting site I came across (ahem!) when reading The Register today. WhollyLove is a remarkably tasteful British website selling sexy products such as lingerie, vibrators, massage oil and the like. Nothing unusual there you might say, but the big difference about this particular website is that it is run by, and aimed at, Christians.

The secular opinion is often that Christians have a very negative view of sex and sexuality. That's not wholly true view, there's a booming business these days in Christian books about sex, many of which go into some depth in explaining what exactly a married couple can get up to (pretty much anything it seems). Okay, it's part of the great US Christian money making scheme that tries to fleece the sort of folks that would buy anything with "Christian" on the packaging over something that doesn't. But yes there are now Christian sex manuals and the like. Believe me, it's not all Puritanism and sitting on penitence spikes anymore.

Now as you might have guessed from the previous paragraph, the focus of the WhollyLove website is on sex within a married context. Fair enough, that echoes the viewpoint of those that run the site. In my opinion, it is great to see a Christian website that shows the lighter, happier side to sexuality that the usual fundie nonsense about it all being evil. I doubt I'd agree with everything on the site's advice section and discussion forum, but I'm pleased to see this sort of thing there.

The shop doesn't sell certain items, neither sado-masochism products or items related to what Two Pints of Lager fans may know as "Bum Love" can be found there. Clearly the owners have some limits, but judging by Christian sexual literature I saw at Spring Harvest last year, the limit doesn't stop there for many writers. And why not? If it's consensual, isn't harming anyone and all about love, who can see anything wrong in that. But I digress.

Actually the thing that surprised me most about WhollyLove was that it is a Christian website that is well designed and not something that looks as if there was an eleventh commandment that said "thou shall make sure you have a migraine inducing animated background on your website and annoying midi music that can't be turned off."

I should warn you, although WhollyLove is a very tasteful website, you probably shouldn't look at it at work. There's an entertaining discussion about the site over at Ship of Fools.

Update: A deeper investigation shows it's not all a bed of roses at the store though, with preachy books on homosexuality showing a fundie tendency amongst the more innocent items.