Yes, the Christian Side Hug has finally reached Amplify. Its been circulating around the blogosphere for a while and now I would like to put in my 2 cents. So in case you have not heard of this the Christian Side Hug is a supposed abstinence only song with the chorus "Gimmie that Christian Side Hug". This song is alleged satire on the fundamentalist Christian, abstinence-only practice of the "Christian Side-Hug" which is a more holy form of hugging that will prevent crotch-to-crotch contact or boob contact between young teens. And as the song says side hug hug "leaves room for the holy spirit".


The creator of the rap Ryan (last name unreleased) was recently interviewed by Stereo Truth,  a Christian music blog,  where he proclaimed that the Christian Side Hug Video should not be taken literally and was actually a blatant satire:

ST.net: What is the real story behind your now world famous “Christian Side Hug” video?

Ryan: A couple of us would go to our friends house after our youth group on wendsday night and have dinner and watch TV, and my friends wife came out of the kitchen so i went to welcome her with a hug, but she had a big bowl of salad in her hands. so i “turned to the side to pat her on the back” and this spontaneous rap came out of me, ” gimme dat christian side hug …” and from there it caught on as a inside joke about the religious “christian side hug”. we sang it to eachother as a joke for like a week untill it caught on to some of our youth. it became such a “hit” around the church we decided to take the mockery of the side hug to the next level. so two of my friends (who are also rapping in the video) and i made it into a full song where we performed it at our anual summer camp. the kids went crazy for it, so decied to do it again at our EG confrence in 2009 where it was filmed and later put on youtube.

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ST.net: What kind of positive or negative reaction have you receive?

Ryan: Haha almost all negative. we posted the song almost a year ago and all of the sudden it blew up. We all find it sad that the public doest believe a church can be fun and use self-deprecating humor. We also find it extremely funny to read all the rumors about us being a “real rap group traveling to promote purity at churches”, which is not true at all, and would be completely obvious if people would stop getting their info from other peoples opinions and come to the source.
 

And yes it did recieve a negative reaction. Everyone from the Huffington Post, to  Miriam at Feministing to the awesome Amanda Hess at the Washington, DC City Paper (DC stand up!) has commented on this video. I don't blame them, it has sexist lyrics potraying girls as sex-hungry vixens and the weird sirens and gunshots are grossly innapropriate.  I don't think making a mockery of inner city violence is really moral thing to do for fundamentalist Christians or anyone else. It seems that there was some confusion at first as to whether or not this was satire or real abstinence only rap. In an piece in the Chicago Tribune Steve Johnson says the joke is on the blogging community that could not see this is blantant satire. 

I have to respectfully disagree with Mr. Johnson on this one. Activists have been fighting abstinence-only miseducation in the US, and although we have made significant progress with in getting abstinence only education out of schools the fight still continues. After President Obama left out abstinence education from his budget, Blue-dog democrats restored funding to abstinence only education and there is still additional funding needed for comprehensive sex education.  This is not the first time we have seen extremely misguided and draconian laws for teens and their sexuality. From the myth of slutty girls asking to be-raped and guys who are weak and stupid and are basically unable to keep their hands off of women Not to mention the liesthat are also perpetrated via abstinence only education and the homophiba and gender normativity so inherent in it. 

 Although yes these Christians admit they are making fun of the chrisitan side hug, but let's not kid ourselves into believing that a fundamentalist Christian right does not exsit with an agenda that is sex-negative, anti-choice and homophobic. There is really nothing funny about abstinence only education. Let this serve as an example of what we want our sex education NOT to look like, regardless of whether it is a joke or not.

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Let's get dedicated funding for Comprehensive Sex education and eliminate federal funding for abstinence only education.

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