Dogface is speaking of an extremist group among the Old Believers, which a person more familiar than I with the Russian Orthodox would have to describe. The OB themselves were just strong traditionalists rebelling against the church reforms of Peter the Great, but they grew a couple of fringe groups.
Other than that, the Shakers, as pointed out by Amarinth, were perhaps the only group to espouse celibacy as a “lifestyle.”
The Cathari (Albigenses) of 14th Century Aquitaine are an interesting case in point – they were structured in two groups. According to their opponents (so take this with significant quantities of salt) they were structured into an “outer group” of not-yet-perfect who practiced sexual license and an inner group of “Perfects” who pledged celibacy.
The overall idea that Christianity has a problem with sex is one that sprung up a few decades ago, and has its roots in a total misunderstanding of responsible behavior and freedom in the context of commitment to God.
Quite simply, Christians are called to be as nearly perfect as possible, by the explicit words of Christ. (And we all fall short of that goal.)
Okay, then, as an ideal, nearly everyone concurs in the idea that the best such relationship is a lifetime commitment to one partner whom one loves with every fiber of one’s being, with lots of good hot sex between them.
Anything else is “sinful,” not in the sense that it’s an evil, forbidden thing, but in the sense that it falls short of that ideal. (The word Paul and the other N.T. writers use for sin, hamartia, literally means “falling short.” It’s not a “this is good; this is evil” thing, but rather a quest for the best, and a refusal to take even B+ sex when A+ sex is possible.
Being focused on those for whom a lifelong committed relationship sanctioned by church and state is possible, this concept does of course cause some injury to others for whom such a relationship is not possible, or not yet: teens, who are told that they’re not ready for marriage and that sexual desire outside marriage is sinful – and some church leaders with common sense are reforming that outmoded concept to take into account that teens are possessed of strong sexual desire as God’s gift; it’s our society that has defined the time of marriage as beyond their reach; and, of course, gays and lesbians. I’d rather avoid the question of what Christian ethics has to say about polyamory right at the moment, since I’m trying to present a consensus view and not merely my own in getting into this.
Just for the record, applying the conditions of the Baptismal Covenant to how I and CJHoworth are expected to look at a transgendered person, I’d have to say that we owe them the respect and compassion to regard them as people who know themselves, in their inner spirits, to be something that their bodies do not express, and that we’re therefore called by our own beliefs to treat them as they wish to be treated, F2Ms as men and M2Fs as women, regardless of whether they’ve begun or completed a course of treatment. That’s not merely courtesy but a direct command of Christ applied to our call to follow Him and to their situation.
