You are absolutely right, DonInKansas.  In early Christianity most priests, deacons and bishops were married. [This included popes, who like St. Peter, were married as well]. The origins of celibacy go back to the Spanish Synod of Elvira, meeting in 306 AD, had to content itself with requiring married clergy not to engage in sexual relations with their wives.  Pope Damasus [366-384] taught that spiritual fatherhood was more important than biological fatherhood, and thus prohibited priests in Rome from marrying.  Pope Damasus spoke to preserving priests' "cultic purity."  He thought that sexual intercourse made a man unclean and unsuited for priestly service.

Gnostic dualism was completely contrary to the gospel, based on the idea that God had become man.  The Incarnation meant that the body was just as good as the soul.  To say that sexual intercourse in marriage interferes with someone's holiness is not a Christian ideal