Why did God make sex so overwhelmingly imperative for humans, and then declare our interest in it sinful?

Because people who made that particular god didn't think it through.

It is just all right to have sex with your legitimate wives. Extra marital sex is a sin.

This is for so many obvious reasons. Cannot you see the hardship and life of single mothers? Don't you realise what it would be like to raise someone else son/daughter in your family, as yours? And for the rest use your imagination.

He didn't declare our interest in it sinful: read the Song of Solomon and Proverbs 5:16-23.

God did not declare interest in sex sinful, only dwelling on forbidden sex is sinful.

Like most other things, it is to be used in its properly intended way. Look at all of the pain and suffering in our society because people don't have any self control. There is rape, fatherless children, broken families, babies thrown in dumpsters, jealousies, dysfunctional situations, heartache, destabilization, diseases, child predators, and all kinds of other stuff.

God's intention for sex is to bring together a man and woman, and to have something special, intimate, and unique. He wants stability, commitment, and a healthy home for children, rather than all the insane stuff we see out there now.

I understand your point, because sometimes I struggle with it myself. I just know things are not the way they were intended. We now live in a sex charged world, and there is all kinds of painful brokenness because of it.

There is no god there is however the IDEA of god. If you want to make people feel sinful tell them their deepest instincts are wicked & offer the solution in the form of a solution: Jesus. You don't need Jesus if there is nothing wrong with sex (& there isn't).

sex is not "imperative"

many lead lives of abstinence and not one has ever self-destructed from lack of sex

Rev 14:4 These are they which were not defiled with women; for they are virgins. These are they which follow the Lamb whithersoever he goeth. These were redeemed from among men, [being] the firstfruits unto God and to the Lamb.

and it is our specific interests that bring us under God's judgment when they do not match his expectations of sex only within the confines of marriage

God didn't declare anything about sex. Being nonexistent kind of makes that impossible. But because sex is so overwhelmingly imperative for humans, religious and political entities who want to control others would find it extremely easy to do so if they held authority over human reproduction.

Hang-ups about sex are man-made...they came about due to men resenting the way women had power over them through sexuality. They didn't want women to have that sort of power over men, so over time imaginary rules were invented about sex and how bad it was.

That is not what he done.

We should be interested in sex, in fact, we should truly enjoy sex. Just have to be married to have sex.

Maybe God didn't actually say **** about it? And people just decided that?