Features Podcasts Family Video Comics Music Tech Science Books Film & TV Games ✚

Jill

Church to (heh) organist: quit selling sex toys, or quit church

Xeni Jardin at 9:06 pm Wed, May 30, 2007

— FEATURED —

THE LATEST

Guatemala: Archive of documents from Rios Montt genocide trial, overturned 10 days after guilty verdict

THE LATEST

Guatemala: Nation's highest court throws out Ríos Montt genocide trial verdict and prison sentence

Feature

Eurovision 2013: An American in London

Book Review

The Twelve-Fingered Boy - mesmerizing YA horror novel

Book Review

Black Code: how spies, cops and crims are making cyberspace unfit for human habitation

— FOLLOW US —

Boing Boing is on Twitter and Facebook. Subscribe to our RSS feed or daily email.

 

— POLICIES —

Except where indicated, Boing Boing is licensed under a Creative Commons License permitting non-commercial sharing with attribution

 

— FONTS —

Tweet
Kindle
Cory Silverberg, the "sexuality" guide for About.com, tells BoingBoing:
The Associated Press is reporting on a story about a Catholic priest in New Franken, Wisconsin, who gave his church organist of thirty-five years a surprising ultimatum; quit her sex toy home party job or quit the church.

Apparently after meeting with Linette Servais, who is 50 and apparently does most of her work for no pay, to express his dissatisfaction with her other work (you know the work that pays), Rev. Dean Dombroski sent a letter to his congregation explaining that "Linette is a consultant for a firm which sells products of a sexual nature that are not consistent with Church teachings" and that she would have to make a decision. Linette, who says she started selling sex toys after treatment for a tumor left her experiencing sexual dysfunction, says the decision was easy; she’s still selling sex toys.

Linette is not the only woman of faith who has made sex toy sales her ministry. And while part of me is wondering where in the Church teachings it says Thou Shall Not Sell Sex Toys, knowing the kind of poor quality merchandise her company carries, I have to wonder, as the kids say, WWJD.

Link

Reader comment: Pete Duniho says,

Reading the quote from the letter by Rev. Dean Dombroski, "Linette is a consultant for a firm which sells products of a sexual nature that are not consistent with Church teachings", it seems entirely plausible that the reason that the "products of a sexual nature" are not "consistent with Church teachings" is that they are of sub-standard quality. Perhaps Servais could have resolved the conflict simply by switching to a different supplier of products, rather than quitting her church job. :)
The Lizardman says,
As you postulated about the organist fired for seeling sex toys WWJD, I think its almost obvious he would opt for biblically inspired sex toys.

Boing Boing editor/partner and tech culture journalist Xeni Jardin hosts and produces Boing Boing's in-flight TV channel on Virgin America airlines (#10 on the dial), and writes about living with breast cancer. Diagnosed in 2011. @xeni on Twitter. email: xeni@boingboing.net.

More at Boing Boing

Eurovision 2013: An American in London

The technology that links taxonomy and Star Trek