Religious Jews: Celebrating sexual repression

In a blog discussing a holiday celebration this line caught my eye :You won’t see them half naked or men and women dancing together." http://lifeinisrael.blogspot.com/2010/04/haredim-do-celebrate-yom-haatzmaut.html


I am struck by the description and fear that the religious jew has of flesh and members of the opposite sex.


What if a religious celebration was described as, groups of sweaty men all dancing close together, touching and hugging each other with no women present?


This is how the religious writer describes how the religious celebrate:"But in many of the yeshivot, special learning connected to the issues of our sovereignty will be learned, stores are closed, and families spend time together and spend quality time in nature."




As if only the religious spend family time together, or shut their stores, or take a hike in a nature preserve. Clearly the author has a bias if the religious are described as celebrating with their family and the secular are described as dancing half naked.


I am further at a loss to understand where the fear of flesh or the opposite sex comes from. Why is it healthy to repress a person's sexuality and then marry them off in their late teens or early twenties? Why is it healthy to force people to have no interaction with flesh or the opposite sex? I submit that the religious attitude to sex and flesh is repressive and unhealthy and damaging. 


If the religious want to celebrate a holiday by keeping the men and women separate, then so be it. But to portray the homo-eroticism of single sex lifestyle as healthy and portray the secular as sexual deviants is not just biased but flat out wrong.