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Heber13 wrote:DevilsAdvocate wrote:
Think about it, why would God create people in a such way that their bodies are basically full of hormones at such a young age and then expect them to wait until they are married something like 8-15 years later before having any sexual experiences whatsoever?
There is an element of gaining experience in this mortal life through making responsible choices, showing control of the physical body, and having self-worth and pride when setting goals and sticking to them.Especially for youth…It doesn’t make much sense God would create 2 trees in the Garden of Eden either, unless you see the need for choice and experience, amid dilemma and paradox. Eve figured it out. I’m not saying that it’s a good idea for people to just do whatever they want to whenever they feel like it. I can see the value of having some discipline and making more difficult choices as a test of character as long as it is something that is clearly worthwhile and realistically possible to achieve. My point is that in the case of the war on masturbation by Spencer W. Kimball and other Church leaders even the majority of the most obedient young men in the Church are simply not achieving this intended control over their bodies or any self-worth from choosing not to do this, they are basically doing it anyway more often than not in spite of the Church’s best efforts to discourage this.
So in the best case they will simply learn by experience that this didn’t really matter that much and take what Church leaders say about this with a grain of salt and in the worst cases they will take what Church leaders have said about this too seriously and get discouraged by failing to live up to what they think they are supposed to according to the Church. Either way the original stated goal of achieving no sexual experience outside of marriage has already been an epic failure and a waste of time and effort. On top of that, it makes the Church into a source of pointless and unnecessary suffering and inconvenience for many Church members and makes God sound like more of a petty and sadistic tyrant than someone that should theoretically be more fair, benevolent, and worthy of trust than mere mortals at their best.
To clarify this: nibbler wrote:The 8-15 year wait might have more to do with man/society than with god.
I don’t know whether it’s true, it really doesn’t matter, but I remember hearing that a long time ago the Chinese discovered that boiling water made it safer to drink. Drinking tea was introduced into the culture to help people transition to the practice of drinking boiled, and therefore purified water. I imagine if a leader wanted their people to better adopt the practice of tea drinking they could incorporate it into religious rites or make sure all the popular people drank tea in public.
Maybe man recognized the dangers of sexual relationships before the mind was ready to handle them and the law of chastity is our tea.
What I sense you are saying, DA…is that abstinence is too extreme a position for the church to take on something that is totally natural for our bodies…and then when it takes that position, it does not teach it by way of a word of wisdom or guideline, but an absolute rule with eternal consequence and no gray area, and since we are not all perfect, and all will sin…it really is setting the youth up for internal turmoil and in some cases failure. It is almost abusive to go against nature from an organization claiming truth. I understand that point all too well.
My daughter experienced this with a bishop, who made her feel so bad (not intentionally but by quoting rules in the handbook to her), and then not following up with her to explain it more, and then rubbed salt in the wound by giving her the Miracle of Forgiveness to read. My college age daughter basically told me straight out, she will never make it to the CK. She will spend the rest of her life repenting but will always be a 2nd class citizen in the church and in heaven. The damage done to her self-worth was awful, and as a father, I was furious. I have spent over a year to get her to learn more about what the Atonement really means. But I’m working against her faith of what divinely inspired judges of Israel have told her.
Don’t get me wrong…I think what was done to my daughter is worse than the blessings a young person would get by living the virgin life. The damage was so unnecessary and went beyond the morality topic and into faith and teachings of mercy and the eternities. It was handled wrong. Period. And this happens too much in the church, it makes me mad they perpetuate it. They seem to target the teaching on prevention of sin so much to try to bless the faithful and their testimonies of sacrifice, and seem to accept casualties and don’t provide sinners with proper support…when it is such a natural thing.
But as I raise my younger sons who are 11 and 16…despite my disgust on how their older sister was treated…I teach them the same as I taught their older sister. That there is value to being in control and waiting for marriage. But as they get older, the choice is theirs to make when they are out of my home. Just like my son who wants a tattoo. Right now he thinks he wants it. I am telling him to wait until he is 21…and if he still wants it, it is his choice. But not while in my home…not because tattoos are a mark of the devil…they are simply permanent choices that I am not comfortable my 16 year old is ready to make based on his current development.
The part I agree with you is…the church does a terrible job finding the right balance to teach sexuality correctly to parents and youth. I really think it does. And so I am teaching differently in my home. There is nothing any of my kids can do that will keep the Lord from loving them. They should wait to have sex, but never think their worth is based on their choices. I just tell them the consequences (missions, temple marriages, who they meet at church, reputations, diseases, unwanted pregnancy, etc). So the discussion is practical based as to why they should wait…not spiritual abuse and threats of fire and brimstone.
DevilsAdvocate wrote:It’s easy for Church leaders to act like dogmatic answers such as that sex is only for marriage and it shouldn’t be that hard for single members to get married ASAP are a one-size-fits-all solution for everyone when they don’t have to live with the long-term consequences of decisions based on bad advice like this. Basically I think many Church leaders and members are looking at this backwards because they start with the answer that there shouldn’t ever be any sexual experience before marriage and then try to fit everything else around that as if marriage is nothing more than some kind of crude sex-permit and take it for granted that health and happiness will automatically follow from this approach when in many cases it just doesn’t work out that way.
What I take from this DA is that the church has a prescribed path to happiness. The problem is that life and relationships are difficult and happiness does not always result. That is not necessarily the churches fault as there was never any gaurantee of happiness either way. OTOH, even when I know that happiness can be a crapshoot sometimes – I wish for people to at least make their own best attempt at happiness – to make thoughtful life decisions. It still may end terribly but at least the individual was in the drivers seat. Too often the church usurps the driver’s role and/or people abdicate this responsibility in favor of the sure thing of happiness. I seem to remember Brian Johnson’s wife feeling that way about deciding to stay home and have several children – she did it because that was what was prescribed for her and it didn’t make her happy. By the time she realized that perhaps this was not an ideal path for her some of the consequences from those life choices were permanently affixed.
I am rather disapointed in the church’s relationship advice. I feel that at least half of it is intended to increase commitment to the church as an instituation – and pretty much ignores such important issues as needs and communication styles.
Overall I see the church directing a relationship that is very conservative and safe and may work out great for the majority of members (at least 51%
Roy wrote:I just wish that there were more skills taught about how to navigate life’s waters if you don’t fit squarely into that prescribed path.
I agree.
The church teaches the ideal to inspire people to reach it…but is weak on knowing what to say to those that are in process of working towards things, or have different paths to happiness.
nibbler wrote:To clarify this:
nibbler wrote:The 8-15 year wait might have more to do with man/society than with god.
I don’t know whether it’s true, it really doesn’t matter, but I remember hearing that a long time ago the Chinese discovered that boiling water made it safer to drink. Drinking tea was introduced into the culture to help people transition to the practice of drinking boiled, and therefore purified water. I imagine if a leader wanted their people to better adopt the practice of tea drinking they could incorporate it into religious rites or make sure all the popular people drank tea in public…
Maybe man recognized the dangers of sexual relationships before the mind was ready to handle them and the law of chastity is our tea.Well it certainly makes sense why pre-marital sex would have been much more serious before people had convenient and effective birth control available. Basically, in the past, marriage typically meant people were ready to start a family. In fact, it looks like the increased popularity and widespread acceptance of pre-marital sex in the US roughly coincides with the introduction of the birth control pill in 1959. Marriage is still mostly about people planning to have long-term committed relationships but the expectation that there shouldn’t be any sex before marriage has been increasingly left behind in recent decades quite simply because there just aren’t the same practical reasons for it that there used to be before.
Basically I think the Church is largely stuck in the past regarding a few points like this and has had an especially hard time adjusting to the current reality in part because of overconfidence in looking to scriptures and Church leaders for answers when to me it looks like revelation has never really been nearly as reliable as the Church continues to claim, if at all. So we basically have scriptures that were mostly written before 1844 and over around 2000 years ago in the case of the Bible and Church leaders that are typically relatively old and old-school simply based on the way they are selected telling people what to do when so much has changed from the way it was when most of these Church leaders grew up much less in 1844.
All good points – To me, it is about teaching what I think will help make my kids the happiest and letting them understand the practical consequences for decisions. I have a sister who is early 30’s and single. She can’t find any LDS guys and so she is single because non-LDS guys aren’t really down for the no sex before marriage clause in the dating world. It really does put her at a huge disadvantage. Not that I am advocating that she does something she doesn’t want to do, just pointing out that it’s not an easy “law” for older singles and IMHO almost perpetuates singleness.
Roy wrote:I do not generally see athiests making the argument that 12 yr old girls should be sexually active. It may require some deep thinking about why we do what we do, but in the end I believe that there are many valid reasons (and approaches) to choose the good.
Not so long ago, the age of consent in Holland/the Netherlands was 12.
Do teachings of sexual morality and approved behaviors or standards change with age? Is it different for youth being taught in the FSOY pamphlet, vs an adult in their 30s never married, vs an adult after marriage (divorced or widowed)?
Or is there no gray area?
Heber13 wrote:Do teachings of sexual morality and approved behaviors or standards change with age?…
Is it different for youth being taught in the FSOY pamphlet, vs an adult in their 30s never married, vs an adult after marriage (divorced or widowed)?…Or is there no gray area? No, that’s one of the worst things about so-called sexual “morality” in the LDS Church in my opinion; it doesn’t really take individual circumstances into account other than maybe the idea that some sexual sins (adultery) are more serious than others (masturbation). Basically if someone is gay, not married, or has a much stronger sex-drive than their spouse then they are just out of luck and are still supposed to simply go without any sexual outlet whatsoever for extended periods of time if not indefinitely according to the Church. So whatever simplicity and consistency there is to make this principle easy to explain on the surface is complicated by the fact that it just doesn’t sound very realistic or fair to expect out of people in many real-life situations nowadays.
SamBee wrote:Roy wrote:I do not generally see athiests making the argument that 12 yr old girls should be sexually active.
It may require some deep thinking about why we do what we do, but in the end I believe that there are many valid reasons (and approaches) to choose the good. Not so long ago, the age of consent in Holland/the Netherlands was 12.
To me these age of consent laws look like they are mostly about trying to protect children/youth from being victimized or taken advantage of more than trying to say there is some universal standard of when people are really ready for sex or not that everyone should agree on. So it doesn’t surprise me that the Dutch would do things differently from the Americans, British, etc. at different times. On the other hand, trying to understand why God would expect people to be completely celibate year after year apparently for no other reason in many cases than simply because he supposedly said so is hard to make much sense of the more I think about it. In fact, many finer points of the current LDS Law of Chastity look like they are largely based on left-over puritan/Victorian era notions about sex that have become largely obsolete for practical purposes in recent decades rather than some divine law that will ever manage to withstand the test of time very well.
Heber13 wrote:Do teachings of sexual morality and approved behaviors or standards change with age?Is it different for youth being taught in the FSOY pamphlet, vs an adult in their 30s never married, vs an adult after marriage (divorced or widowed)?Or is there no gray area?
It has also been my experience that these standards are taught to be universal. I don’t know that this is necessarily intentional. The phamplet is called “For The Strength of Youth” but then there is nothing else provided for mature adult singles.
I understand that when the spouse of an apostle passes they are encouraged to remarry quickly. There could be many personal reasons for this but I wonder why the church would give this advice. Perhaps having a long term bachelor apostle in the dating world would prove a distraction. Perhaps even apostles have sexual urges and not being married would increase the chances of a scandal/distraction. Perhaps a confirmed bachelor would give the impression that bachelorhood is an acceptable lifestyle choice. Perhaps all of the above.
In many ways the apostles are supposed to model the ideal. I liked how hawkgrrrl said that many see the “individual adaptation” clause in the Proc. on the Fam. as code for “You suck at having a family.” (it is funny cuz it is kinda true
😆 )Roy wrote – Quote:I understand that when the spouse of an apostle passes they are encouraged to remarry quickly.
That is one of the things I like about Richard G. Scott, he didn’t remarry. He speaks often of the love of his wife. There is no other. I lean on that when I watch our herd mentality. He didn’t line up and get a youngster when the moment presented itself.
Generally I think smaller number of sexual partners is better and older age of 1st sexual experience is better. I understand the church’s desire to want missionaries who are “chaste” and who seem to live what they are preaching. That being said I think one of the unfortunate side effects of church policy is people getting married at a young age and a culture of guilt. It’s also just presumptuous to still formally state in Handbook 1 that a vasectomy is strongly discouraged. Not really anyone’s business. I think President Uchtdorf should wear a blue shirt in general conference while stating “I got a vasectomy” just to liven things up.
When I interview youth I don’t ask about masturbation at all, I do ask if they seek out pornography, and I rarely ask if they are sexually active. I will say I’m not a huge fan of teenages banging like rabbits because teenagers are stupid and can ruin their lives in a big hurry when they aren’t careful, which they aren’t.
With my own kids I’ve openly told them that I don’t care if they masturbate as long as it’s private and doesn’t become an unheathly distraction. My wife and I walk around naked or nearly naked just to hopefully show the kids that we shouldn’t be ashamed of our bodies.
DevilsAdvocate wrote:Heber13 wrote:Do teachings of sexual morality and approved behaviors or standards change with age?…
Is it different for youth being taught in the FSOY pamphlet, vs an adult in their 30s never married, vs an adult after marriage (divorced or widowed)?…Or is there no gray area? No, that’s one of the worst things about so-called sexual “morality” in the LDS Church in my opinion; it doesn’t really take individual circumstances into account other than maybe the idea that some sexual sins (adultery) are more serious than others (masturbation). Basically if someone is gay, not married, or has a much stronger sex-drive than their spouse then they are just out of luck and are still supposed to simply go without any sexual outlet whatsoever for extended periods of time if not indefinitely according to the Church. So whatever simplicity and consistency there is to make this principle easy to explain on the surface is complicated by the fact that it just doesn’t sound very realistic or fair to expect out of people in many real-life situations nowadays.
SamBee wrote:
Not so long ago, the age of consent in Holland/the Netherlands was 12.To me these age of consent laws look like they are mostly about trying to protect children/youth from being victimized or taken advantage of more than trying to say there is some universal standard of when people are really ready for sex or not that everyone should agree on. So it doesn’t surprise me that the Dutch would do things differently from the Americans, British, etc. at different times. On the other hand, trying to understand why God would expect people to be completely celibate year after year apparently for no other reason in many cases than simply because he supposedly said so is hard to make much sense of the more I think about it. In fact, many finer points of the current LDS Law of Chastity look like they are largely based on left-over puritan/Victorian era notions about sex that have become largely obsolete for practical purposes in recent decades rather than some divine law that will ever manage to withstand the test of time very well.
The British and American takes on sex and sexuality, and nudity, are far closer to each other than that of the British and the Dutch (even though the Netherlands are a few dozen miles from England). A person from either place will often be quite shocked at the open displays of p*graphy on display in shop windows in places like Rotterdam and Amsterdam. One of the more disturbing aspects of legality in much of northern (continental) Europe is that acts with animals are allowed, and that sale of films etc portraying the same are on open sale.
I believe the Dutch law has been changed to a later age, btw, Most countries seem to go for 15-18 as a lower limit, and some until recently had differing laws for homosexual activity.
In many countries, however, activity between minors of roughly the same age is not treated the same way as between a minor and an adult. In fact, in many places two 14 year olds would likely be kicked out of high school, but not prosecuted. (Needless to say, Islamic nations are very strict about sex outside marriage and will prosecute. However, child marriage is unfortunately not uncommon in many of them.)
Roadrunner wrote:Generally I think smaller number of sexual partners is better and older age of 1st sexual experience is better.
There are studies that say such and some that even say the chance of a marriage lasting is correlated to how long it was until sex entered the relationship.
Roadrunner wrote:That being said I think one of the unfortunate side effects of church policy is people getting married at a young age and a culture of guilt. It’s also just presumptuous to still formally state in Handbook 1 that a vasectomy is strongly discouraged. Not really anyone’s business. I think President Uchtdorf should wear a blue shirt in general conference while stating “I got a vasectomy” just to liven things up.
We need to start some kind of fundraiser that would go to a charity if Deiter would wear a blue shirt in conference. I wonder what his charitable hot buttons are? I for one would pledge quite a bit to it. I think the “I got snipped” on the shirt isn’t going to happen.
Roadrunner wrote:When I interview youth I don’t ask about masturbation at all, I do ask if they seek out pornography, and I rarely ask if they are sexually active.
Same here. I feel no need to go there.
Roadrunner wrote:With my own kids I’ve openly told them that I don’t care if they masturbate as long as it’s private and doesn’t become an unheathly distraction.
I have told my sons not to go crazy with it and never do it with porn as that causes issues. I have told them that porn is 100x worse than masturbation.
Roadrunner wrote:My wife and I walk around naked or nearly naked just to hopefully show the kids that we shouldn’t be ashamed of our bodies.
Now with you here. I would be fine, but the wife doesn’t even like to be seen by me in anything but fully dressed.
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