When the Sex in the Pews podcast first started, we received a letter from a young Ohio woman named Kiersty Correll. She had discovered the show after a brief encounter with Owen Rivers at a concert she was performing.
She wrote, “Sex in the Pews saved my life from sexual suppression”.
Kiersty is bisexual. Her mother had told Kiersty she would be disowned if she ever came out as gay. You see, Kiersty loves and is engaged to an amazing guy named Derek Black but she is more attracted to women. Derek knew this. By her own testimony, Kiersty had “killed the part” of her that was attracted to women all because of the twisted religious morality she was raised in and because of what her Mom had threatened her with. Then she heard Sex in the Pews. Kiersty began to understand what she was feeling was natural and healthy, that she was righteous no matter where her sexual proclivities laid.
When Kiersty Correll came on the show to tell her story, she said, “I wouldn’t want to be with someone who wouldn’t want to be with someone else, too, because I get such pleasure from seeing the people I love enjoying themselves”. Hence, the term to “Kiersty Correll” a situation was born. This quality, seeing other people enjoying themselves, can also be called “compersion”.
In the meantime, Kiersty and her Mom have reconciled and Derek starting listening to the show and embracing the concepts shared therein.
Then Kiersty and Derek came to Tampa on vacation and stayed with yours truly. We went to the Sun Bar for a visit. Our next door neighbor there is Hot Box Tattoos. Derek saw the shop and said, “I think I need some ink therapy”. So, we walked over. When asked by the tattoo artist on duty, Tyler, what he wanted, Derek said “I’m not sure”. I half-jokingly said, “Why don’t you get the Sex in the Pews logo”? Derek responded, “That’s what I want”. Tyler, clearly a caring professional artist, responded in a skeptical yet, thoughtful sort of way, “Why would you want that? What does Sex in the Pews mean to you”? Derek’s response choked me up a bit. “To me, Sex in the Pews means the freedom to be who you are.” Trey said, “Cool. Let’s do it.”
And that’s how the Sex in the Pews logo became a tattoo. Ink therapy indeed.