Candace Cameron Bure Gets Candid About Sex Following Backlash From Photo With Husband

Candace Cameron Bure is still reflecting on the fallout from the handsy photo with husband Valeri Bure she shared on Instagram in September. While on the podcast Confessions of a Crappy Christian, the Fuller House star opened up about the backlash she received from the Christian community and openly discussed sex with her husband after their marriage. In the playful, but the controversial photo, Bure and Cameron Bure smiled while her husband had his arm around her shoulder with his hand on her breast.

Cameron Bure, 44, said the photo was taken while the couple was out to lunch with their son Lev, 20. She noticed how “pretty” it was outside, so she wanted to pose with her husband for a photo. “At the very end of it, he had his arm draped around my shoulder, and then the very last picture he grabbed my boob,” Cameron Bure said on the podcast, reports PEOPLE. “And I said, ‘Oh my gosh, this is so funny, can I please post this?’”

She originally only shared the photo on her Instagram Story, but later published it on her main Instagram grid on Sept. 11. “Sweet and spicy… 24 years and counting,” she wrote, adding a winking emoji. While the post received positive messages, others told her it was “so inappropriate” for her to publish it as a Christian. Some people told her she should “be more modest.”

“I’ve been married for 24 years. I’m a Christian, my husband’s a Christian and I’m really proud that we’ve managed to stay married for 24 years. And the fact that we have fun and we flirt together, this is part of what makes our marriage work,” Cameron Bure said. “This is something to be celebrated as a Christian.” She later pointed out that sex does not stop “once you get married.”

“Sex is the blessing of marriage and I hate when Christians are like, no, you have to pretend like you’ve never had sex, and we only know that you’ve had sex three times because you’ve had three children,” she explained. “If we are to promise ourselves for one another and preach saving yourself for marriage, then sex needs to be celebrated within marriage.”

Even after marriage, Cameron Bure said she struggled with her sexuality. She thought God would “think negatively” of her for having sex or “doing things or fooling around.” After getting married, she did not know “how to adjust my brain.” Eventually, she learned to embrace it. “It has taken years to work through it and then understand it and enjoy it and then embrace it,” she said. “Now I embrace it so much that my kids are like, ‘Mom, please stop talking about sex. Please stop.’”

In an interview with PopCulture.com a few days after publishing the photo, Cameron Bure said she supports public displays of affection if it is “done tastefully,” adding: “After 24 years of marriage, I mean, you hear more about people saying, ‘Ah, you’ve been married. Ah, you stopped having sex. Oh, it’s so boring.’ And I’m like, ‘No, but it doesn’t have to be that way.’ So the fact that I’m still having fun and it’s spicy and it’s sexy and we have a good time, I mean, that’s a huge part of why we’re still married.”