...but gross and detestable any time before marriage. If a Witness couple who are engaged to one another, decide to express their love toward each other by engaging in sexual intercourse just weeks or even days before they're officially married, they are considered to be loathsome, unclean people. The Witness girl would be seen by others in the hall as a dirty little whore...and the guy would just be thought of as a horny young man who couldn't keep it in his pants.
Watchtower articles show dramatic pictures of young people filled with remorse and appear to be in anguish over the fact that they didn't "heed the faithful and discrete slave's warning to not be alone with a member of the opposite sex or to have a chaperone present at all outings with your fiance").
Sisters in the congregation will make remarks about how "disgusting it is to go to bed with someone before you're married".
Yet, any time after a couple is married, sex is considered to be a "beautiful expression of love", and a "precious gift from Jehovah". Sex between two unmarried persons and between a married couple is no different. Both involve thrusting one's body up against the other's, exchanging sexual fluids and slopping all around in them, sweating all over each other, and fondling, as well as moaning and sometimes shouts of ecstasy, all the while thinking of "unChristian desires of the flesh".
So..in the minds of a judgemental close-minded typical JW or any other Christian fundamentalist, how does sex go from being a nasty, abhorrent, unclean thing one minute, to a holy and pure act of love and union in the next, simply because of a marriage certificate?
That's always bothered me. When a mild sex scene would pop up on a PG-13 movie, my mom would turn away in horror, cringe, and change the channel. She would be repulsed by it, and say that people are "such pigs" and that it's disgusting that they have sex with someone they're not married to.
She and other prudish JW women would always bash non-JW women who lived with a man before they were married and essentially labeled them as harlots.
Any time a teenage JW girl is publicly reproved for fooling around, giving a BJ or a hand-job or something, they are secretly mocked, whispered about, and looked down on as unclean and inferior.
Whenever JWs hear about something like the above, they all gasp and act horrified, as if the person has done the most repugnant thing imaginable. Yet, they consider these very same acts which they perform with their spouse to be a "sacred provision from Jehovah".
Sex before marriage = evil, vile, repugnant, unclean, unholy, Satanic
Sex after marriage = good, pure, wholesome, clean, holy, Divine
It's so silly when you think about it.