Here, a couple of links with references to some of the ECF’s who espoused that view, found with a google search.
http://www.godrules.net/articles/earlychurch-on-sex.htm
http://whychurchfatherswerenegativeaboutsex.blogspot.com/
There are other indicators as well. For one thing, the way celibacy is held up as the ideal, especially for the priesthood.
Not to mention that married couples who give up sex have been lauded. There was at least one thread that I recall recently about a married couple who agreed to be celibate and it drew mixed reactions, but there were those who supported it.
And the reactions of Catholics when it’s even suggested that Mary had sex with Joseph. Catholics are just aghast at the thought.
I’ve heard people state that Mary couldn’t have had sex with Joseph because she was sinless, or rather that she couldn’t have been sinless if she had had sex with Joseph.
The authors at "godrules" are so ignorant as to refer to "Saint Tertullian". It may seem like a mere detail, but it's a telling error which shows a real unfamiliarity with the subject, like a sportscaster who persists in talking about home-runs in football. Tertullian write a huge amount of valuable stuff, for instance refuting the Gnostics, and also he originated the term "Trinity" --- that's a biggie! --- but he was never honored as a saint because a number of his later writings directly contradicted the teachings of the Church.
Even St. Augustine, who IS a canonized saint, and a very great one, is not accepted uncritically or in toto. For instance, some of his writings can be interpreted as denying free will as well as asserting total depravity: this the Catholic and Orthodox churches reject.
People who try to conflate "early Church Fathers" totally with Catholic doctrine, as if they were one and the same, never quote St. John Chrysostom, who wrote in a beautiful and positive way about the embrace of marital love. They also manage to miss the entirety of Catholic Sacramental theology, which holds Holy Matrimony to be a sacred sign, a "Mysterium Tremendum" imaging the union of Christ and the Church, and sexual intercourse to be a constitutive element of that Sacrament.
So it is not only not considered a sinful, dirty or depraved act, it is considered an outward sign of the inward life of grace.
Catholics know this.
Propagandists who comb the ECF's for obsolete "gotcha" texts do not.
Please be wary of such distorted misuses of early Christian writers.
As for Mary, what do you think --- that God just used her as a Hagar, a reproductive concubine, and then passed her off to Joseph: "Here, I got what I wanted, now you can have her"?
We know from Scripture that God the Most High chose May as his dwelling, a marvel foreshadowed by the Ark of the Covenant.
The Ark carried manna; Mary carried Jesus, the Divine Bread of Life. The Ark carried the Tablets of the Law; Mary carried the Divine Giver of the Law. The Ark carried the staff of Aaron, which symbolized God's life-giving power; Mary, in a way far excelling this, carried the Living God Himself. Thus Mary is untouchable and inviolate for even stronger reasons than the Ark of the Covenant or the Holy of Holies would be untouchable.
If only the High Priest could enter the Holy of Holies, certainly no man could enter Mary: the idea here is inviolability.
In the NT, Mary herself bears witness to her commitment to virginity. When the Archangel Gabriel tells Mary she will conceive and bear a son, she seems astonished --- revealing that she was not only a virgin, but committed to virginity.
Imagine this: You are at a bridal shower for a friend and somebody remarks to the bride, “You are going to have such adorable kids!” Everybody laughs, but the bride draws back in astonishment and says, “But...but...how shall this be? I know not man.” **Huh?** For a woman who is engaged to be married, there are only two possible explanations for such a reaction: either she has no idea where babies come from—--or she has every intention of remaining a virgin after marriage.
Why else would Mary be astonished? She’s a woman betrothed to Joseph, she knows about the birds and the bees. Yet she reacts with amazement at the news that she, a woman betrothed, will bear a son.
Notice that the angel does not say “You are pregnant.” He says “You will conceive in your womb and bear a son” (Luke 1:31). This is a promise that has been made to other women in Jewish history such as Sarah and Hannah. All of them understand the promise to mean, “You and your husband will conceive a child.” So why should the same promise astonish Mary, a young woman who also plans to marry—--unless she had already decided to remain a virgin throughout her life?
Lastly, the “ever-virgin” argument boils down to, “The Church believes this because the Church has always believed this.” All the ancient churches –Coptic, Chaldean, Assyrian, Arabic-speaking, Greek-speaking, as well as Latin --- which existed from Apostolic times --- refer to Christ’s mother as "Our most holy, pure, blessed, and glorious Lady, the Theotokos and Ever Virgin Mary," Aeiparthenos in Greek, or the equivalent in Syrian or Coptic or whatever. Our martyrs who were killed by Nero and Diocletian believed this. You can find an inscription in the Catacomb of Priscilla in Rome: “Beata Maria Semper Virgine”, "Blessed Mary Ever Virgin.”
This same truth was firmly held by Luther, Zwingli, and other Christians until well into the Reformation --- even Calvin rejected arguments against Mary's perpetual virginity based on the mention in Scripture of “brothers of Jesus,” whom Calvin understood to be other close kin, e.g. half-brothers and cousins. The Anglicans in the 16th, 17th, even the 18th century, (John Wesley) hailed Mary as ever-virgin.
This idea that Mary was NOT ever-virgin, is a Renaissance-era innovation. So you can either think that the ancient churches and the devout and learned Christians for 15 centuries were right; or you can think they were all wrong. I, myself, would think it rash to presume that most Christians in most places have been wrong about most things, most of the time, but that a handful of breakaway Renaissance-era Europeans all-of-a-sudden and for the first time grasped the meaning of the ancient texts.