The Intersection of Sexuality and Religion (2023, 4 CE Hours)
$160.00
4 CE Hours
Presenter: Larry Siegel, M.A.
Recorded workshop available via video on demand
AASECT Category:
Human Sexuality Education, Section C
Description: This course will offer an introduction and overview of the complex relationship between religion and sexuality. This complex relationship has been a source of stress and conflict for millennia and has been most often based on varied and conflicting opinions about what different religious traditions does and does not say about sex and sexuality. Participants will explore a number of challenges that contemporary sexual culture poses for those struggling to understand traditional religion and how they might regard such issues of sexuality as marriage, sexual identity, pleasure, reproduction and contraception, and gender roles. Participants will also explore how sex-religion conflicts often present themselves in therapy and develop strategies to best address them within the individual’s or couple’s value systems.
Learning Objectives:
- Describe basic tenets of sexuality among world religions
- Describe how 3 world religions view gender roles and sexual identity
- Analyze how conflicts between sex and religion are expressed in sexual and relationship problems
- Apply understanding of religious sexual tenets to a sex therapy approach
Activity Schedule:
1 hr: Introductions and personal understandings of sexual tenets participants’ their own religion
1.5 hrs: Gender roles, sexual identity, relationships, and pleasure as seen through the lenses of Judaism, Christianity, Islam, Hinduism, and other world religions
1 hr: How sex and religion conflicts are expressed in sexual and relationship problems
30 min: Integrating clients’ religious and sexual views in developing effective sex therapy strategies
Speaker Bio:
Lawrence Siegel, MA, CSE, is a Clinical Sexologist, certified by the American Association of Sexuality Educators, Counselors, & Therapists (AASECT) as a sexuality educator, and is a Fellow with the American Academy of Clinical Sexologists. In addition to being former President and current Director of Education & Training for Sage Institute for Family Development, Larry serves on faculty at Nova Southeastern University, Burnett International College, Kaplan University, and Palm Beach State College. As an educator, trainer, and consultant for the past 28 years, Larry has traveled extensively – both around the US and abroad – training all levels of health and mental- health professionals and is recognized as a leading educator in the area of sexuality, sexual medicine, and sexual therapies. Larry is also widely published, in both popular and peer-reviewed media, in such areas as problems with the “sex addiction” model, sexual changes in aging adults, sex and drugs, relationships, and enhancing sexual experiences.
Larry has been honored numerous times in Who’s Who of American Teachers and has received several honors for teaching excellence. As president of a non-profit organization, he has also been recognized in Who’s Who of American Executives and has consulted with other non-profit organizations on developing effective practice models and training programs. He is a regular guest on radio and television shows and can be found as an expert advisor on such websites as SexualHealth.com and iFriends.net, in addition to numerous guest blogs and podcasts.
Most recently, Larry has joined the faculty of Modern Sex Therapy Institutes, providing sex therapy education and training to mental-health and medical professionals. He has also formed a collaboration with Senior Solutions to present a series of trainings and workshops on senior dating, sex and relationships while working with elder-care communities to develop policies and procedures to effectively address these issues.
