After a couple days (adding up to twenty plus years) of observation, I have a few thoughts on this.  They are not scientific in any way, just personal observations.

The right wing evangelical movement seems to me to have little to do with God, really.  Even (or especially, I think) among the most fundamental of Fundamentalists, there is little in-depth thought about what it all means.  There is a distinct lack of continuity and coherence present in the rules and regulations of Fundamentalism, and extrapolation outside the strict party line is verboten.  I've read several strong cases that could be made that the uber-religious don't really worship God, even the god of the Bible, but rather the Bible itself.  In that sense, they are idolatrous.  I would go even further, and use the striking tendancy for Fundamentalists everywhere to be familiar with (memorized, usually) the exact same handful of passages from that Bible, and know little or nothing of the passages in between.

What does that mean in terms of Religiosity and Sex?

Show me the passage where the Bible specifically says that sex is not to occur before marriage.  It's tough to do, because nobody memorizes or is even familiar with those passages (some would argue they don't exist, based on the slippery definition of "fornicate").  So where does the militancy come from and why, if there is not a plethora of unambiguous commandments against sex before marriage?

It's about control and it comes directly from the pulpit, not from either God or the Bible.

The human body has a few basic needs and drives that are nearly impossible to overcome.  One is air, one is food, another is sex.  Think about this:  if you can talk a person into going without two of those three, you can pretty much convince them to do anything you want.  And what are the two big indicators of a "godly" life?  "Do unto others" and "Love thy neighbor" invariably take a back seat to fasting and abstinance.  The word "prayer" is almost inseperable from "fasting" in conversation with and amongst the extremely religious, and the obsession with sex drips from their lips like ... nevermind, I'm not going there.

In any event, this is a big simplification, but if I were going to resurrect my little cult of personality days, that's where I would start. If I can talk a girl out of her vibrator, well...  (Speaking of which, did you see that Bug Girl at Skepchick caught wind that the Supremes might take up the Alabama vibrator law ?)

What's really unfortunate is that minority at the extreme end of the spectrum, the one farthest removed from reality and sanity, is also the most vocal and most public face and voice of religion, and that's true of all the Abrahamic religions.  The only people with the power to change that are the religious people who aren't mindless drones of the fanatics.  Until they step up and speak out against the extemely visible fringe, I'm not sure those of us who are closer to the non-religious end of the spectrum even have a way to indentify them, let alone ally ourselves with them.  All we can do is encourage them to open their mouths, which they have so far declined to do in any meaningful way.

Just my tuppence.

Feel free to read whatever's left of my own thoughts at Crowded Head, Cozy Bed
The Boy in JanieBelle's head