Growing up, I heard this all the time from my fellow Mormons. It was basically the same thing: social custom at the time meant that it would have been commented on if Jesus had not been married. Nobody ever gave a cite, though.
I wrote a term paper for a religion class at BYU titled “Was Jesus of Nazareth Married?” I wrote another on another Mormon oddity: the literal and divine Sonship of Christ; i.e. did God the Father come down and have sex with Mary?
Crazy, crazy stuff.
I’m starting to wonder whether a general social custom would apply to a “minister.”
If If Jesus was accepted as a “man-of-God” would it be acceptable to remain unmarried?
It’s pretty much mandatory for a rabbi.
However, for an itinerant prophet (and Judaism does not recognize prophets nowadays), the situation is a bit more complicated.
Judaism does not accept the idea that “Sex is dirty.” (Neither, for that matter, does small-o orthodox Christianity.) However, pretty much any religion can accept the notion, at least in theory, “What I have to do with my life leaves no room for marriage.”
(By the way, one of the reasons that “The DaVinci Code” is utter garbage is that the Cathars did believe that sex is dirty. They would be the last people to believe that Jesus had a child.)