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Probably better that a male person deals with it. It’s perhaps even more embarrassing for the poor boy if a woman does. Well, I hate that the church makes such a HUGE deal out of it for the men…they don’t really make such a deal out of it for the women. You know, since women don’t have those kind of urges. 🙄 😆 Just yesterday when my VT’s were here we started talking about teaching our kids things to keep them safe from dangerous people. I mentioned how grateful I am that they teach things like “good touch, bad touch” in the schools here, etc. They both went off at how horrible the schools are for teaching that M is normal in health class (5th grade and literally about 2 sentences are spent on it). They said in horror that the kids are taught that it is natural, but they should talk to their parents about it. OH THE HORROR!!!!!
This is one of the topics that make me want to take my kids and run far, far away.
In my home I have told my 13 year old that he does not need to answer the bishop if he is asked about M or P. All he has to say is that yes he keeps the LoC. My DH has supposedly had a talk with him about it being normal. I make an effort to knock on his door before entering.
My 3 year old explores, as they all do, and I just leave him alone. No yelling at him or shaming him. I might tell him to have some alone time in his room or get dressed or something, though.
😆 I wonder if M would become an addiction for a child who felt truly loved and accepted and listened to. One who didn’t feel guilty and shamed for doing M, but that it was just a normal part of their life. I don’t really know what an M addiction would be like anyway??? When it interferes with your life. I mean, are there really people who don’t leave their house and do it all day long..every single day? I doubt it. The law of diminishing returns indicates that at some point it would stop being fun.
OK, not sure if I’m still on topic or not….
Old-Timer wrote:DA, I agree that we simply should let the topic drop. It’s a “don’t ask, don’t tell” solution for me.
My cynicism alarm is going off. Why should the topic be dropped? Either the current teachings/counsel/commandment/whatever regarding M (edited for work-safe-ness) is mostly correct and proper or it’s not. If it’s not correct, the reason is either because ‘times have changed’ or because it was never mostly correct in the first place. Ignoring an incorrect teaching by quietly not mentioning it anymore only sows confusion for those who pay attention, and continues to do harm to innocent people. We have a long corporate memory in the church (anybody here recall hearing or reading a quote from a dead GA lately?). A decision to pretend that an incorrect teaching never occurred is a decision to consign several generations of people to the effects of that incorrect teaching. The upside is that the church doesn’t have to actually deal with the unpleasant realities that incorrect teachings ever existed.
A perfect example of this is the infamous (to me) ‘To the Mothers in Zion’ crap (sorry — can’t think of a better word) that was quietly swept under the rug. In the meantime, lots of people are still wondering what the deal is.
Probably a better example is the church’s position (no pun intended) on sexual relations between spouses. Here’s my take on the (relatively) recent history of this: Someone asks David McKay if oral sex is okay. He reacts with horror that anyone would even ask such a question. Bishops are given free reign to institute a Spanish Inquisition into the private sexual practices of married members in order to root out anything not resembling the missionary position. Married members react negatively to the intrusion. Bishops are confidentially told to mind their own business in the hopes that the whole thing will blow over (again, no pun intended).
I know that this story is incomplete at best, because it
isn’t discussedby the people who actually know what happened … we are simply left to wonder. Anyone care to guess if the ‘typical’ church member believes there is a church position on approved sexual practices, and how long the list is? Just recently there was a seminary teacher in our town teaching her seminary students about what church-approved sex is. 👿 In another 50-100 years, maybe, this will pretty much go away. But what about now?doug wrote:
A perfect example of this is the infamous (to me) ‘To the Mothers in Zion’ crap (sorry — can’t think of a better word) that was quietly swept under the rug. In the meantime, lots of people are still wondering what the deal is.What is it? I don ‘t believe that I am familiar with it.
Butters wrote:doug wrote:
A perfect example of this is the infamous (to me) ‘To the Mothers in Zion’ crap (sorry — can’t think of a better word) that was quietly swept under the rug. In the meantime, lots of people are still wondering what the deal is.What is it? I don ‘t believe that I am familiar with it.
In a nutshell: In 1987 ETB gave a talk at BYU, later to become the text of a church pamphlet entitled ‘To the Mothers in Zion’. Women (not just mothers) were strongly discouraged from entering or being in the workplace, except ‘in extreme circumstances’. Two incomes raise the standard of living beyond that which is proper. Women can find fulfillment in washing their husband’s socks. Seriously. “To the Mothers in Zion” was quietly dropped from the list of stuff you can get from the church distribution center a few years ago.
To be fair, there was more to the talk. Some good stuff about the value of mothers being with their children, etc. My wife wasn’t offended by the talk. She took away that she was justified in staying home with our kids because that’s what she wanted to do, and I’m happy with how that all turned out. The part that I was not okay with was that being a stay-at-home-mom/wife was now the officially sanctioned, God-and-prophet approved one way of living. Except in extreme circumstances.
Anyway, as I say, it’s all gone now. Officially. But the effects linger on. Believe it or not, there are a lot of people still dealing with this issue.
Doug, your last comments, is my very favorite post I’ve read here in a LONG time. Very funny – and true and insightful, and certainly pinpoints the cause of many of the cultural issues I personally have with the church. :clap: HOWEVER, before Ray get’s on here and reads it and freaks out, let me ask you the same FAIR question that I asked The DA. What do you want or expect the church to do about it? Do you really think we can say that Mbing is okay to a bunch of sexual repressed, TBM, LDS teens? OMG – can you imagine what would happen!
This is as completely honest an answer as I can give you. I both want andexpect the church to do nothing about it. ‘Expect’ for obvious reasons. ‘Want’ because if, in some alternate reality such a thing really happened, I would then have to completely reevaluate all of my notions about the church, God, life, etc. and that would be a lot of work. More cynicism, I suppose.
doug wrote:Old-Timer wrote:DA, I agree that we simply should let the topic drop. It’s a “don’t ask, don’t tell” solution for me.
My cynicism alarm is going off.
Why should the topic be dropped? Either the current teachings/counsel/commandment/whatever regarding masturbation is mostly correct and proper or it’s not…Ignoring an incorrect teaching by quietly not mentioning it anymore only sows confusion for those who pay attention, and continues to do harm to innocent people. A decision to pretend that an incorrect teaching never occurred is a decision to consign several generations of people to the effects of that incorrect teaching. A perfect example of this is the infamous (to me) ‘To the Mothers in Zion’ crap…that was quietly swept under the rug. In the meantime, lots of people are still wondering what the deal is. Probably a better example is the church’s position …on sexual relations between spouses. Here’s my take on the (relatively) recent history of this: Someone asks David McKay if oral sex is okay. …Bishops are confidentially told to mind their own business in the hopes that the whole thing will blow over.
I don’t know about the idea that either the current teaching about masturbation is proper or it’s not. Personally I think it’s a matter of opinion that not everyone is going to agree on so there isn’t much of an advantage for the Church to take sides and continue to pull dogmatic answers to almost everything out of thin air because it can easily hurt their credibility either way. For example, if people get the impression that the Church didn’t know what they were talking about in this case then they could start to wonder what else they have lied about.
My original point was not so much that they should pretend this was never taught at all as much as simply that I think they should stop emphasizing it in lessons and talks and especially stop suggesting that members need to confess this supposed sin to priesthood leaders in order to be forgiven. Then if people specifically ask about it the Church could just say that it’s between you and God and if you are worried about it then you can pray about it and do what you feel most comfortable with. Seriously, what’s the worst thing that could happen if they took this approach? I really doubt it could be much worse than what is already happening with the current hard-line policies.
Personally, I don’t really see any negative consequences of them simply not talking about oral sex or the ideas in this ‘To the Mothers in Zion’ pamphlet rather than publicly admitting they were wrong about these things before. The end result is that many younger members don’t even know about these previous teachings at all and aren’t given an unnecessary guilt trip about these things. It seems like most rank-and-file members have very little idea what was taught in the past other than what the Church is still actively teaching in lessons, talks, etc. For example, very few TBMs know about the Adam-God theory, blood atonement, etc. and many don’t even know that Joseph Smith practiced polygamy at all.
DevilsAdvocate wrote:Personally, I don’t really see any negative consequences of them simply not talking about [it]
None?
In the case of the seminary teacher, for example, damage is still being propogated. Who is responsible for stopping it?
doug wrote:DevilsAdvocate wrote:Personally, I don’t really see any negative consequences of them simply not talking about [it]
None?
In the case seminary teacher, for example, damage is still being propogated. Who is responsible for stopping it?
Well, yeah, you’re right. I argued this as well when I said that until the Apostles, or Monson himself address some of these sticky cultural and traditional issues in detail IN GENERAL CONFERENCE, the membership in general is not going to listen and change.
To be fair though, DA, I have not heard mention of oral sex or masturbation at church in at LEAST 20 years. I know the church still has it’s taboos, and a couple of years ago I had a good friend argue with me that oral sex was a sin and against church policy. He would not listen to reason – like – the church has not said a word about it in over 20 years — but, Doug is right, damage is still being done and I agree with him – it is the church leadership responsibility to stop it. After all, they are in charge of the monster that created the damage to begin decades ago. I just don’t have any good answers on how to do it without damaging and harming the testimony and faith of millions of good TBMs.
BTW – this friend of mine has since gone through a messy divorce, was exed for having “relations” with his now wife, and has since changed his opinion on many issues regarding the church, including the stuff we are discussing here.
doug wrote:DevilsAdvocate wrote:Personally, I don’t really see any negative consequences of them simply not talking about [it]
None?
In the case of the seminary teacher, for example, damage is still being propogated. Who is responsible for stopping it?
I guess what I meant to say was that I doubt that openly admitting they were wrong about oral sex or ‘To the mothers in Zion’ would really make that much of a positive difference over just not talking about these points anymore as far as the majority of active members are concerned. Sure there are still stay-at-home moms that think this is expected and maybe some members will wonder what the Church’s official position on oral sex is but I just don’t think that it would have really helped much if they had made a big deal about discontinuing these previous policies instead of just sweeping them under the rug like they did.
The fact that they have stopped emphasizing these things as much as they did before is already enough to say that these things are not that important to the Church at this point to anyone that cares enough to pay attention to what the Church has been saying and when they said it. In the case of the seminary teacher teaching outdated ideas I think he is responsible for stopping it and if he doesn’t then the students are responsible for not automatically believing everything they are told. There are so many questionable ideas being spread through the Church that I doubt they will ever be able to correct them all even if they wanted to. That’s why think they should pick what they want to focus on a little more carefully on not be so concerned about trying to answer every question once and for all.
Some things need to be repudiated, and some things just need to be dropped, imo. Discussing masturbation and oral sex just needs to be dropped – again, imo. It would be nice if materials that reference them were excised, as well – but I’m not holding my breath on that one – although I think that’s more of an issue with masturbation than with oral sex, since I can’t remember seeing anything in writing about oral sex in any official Church publication since the time I was married 24 years ago.
Oh, and “before Ray freaks out”?? Dude, you cut me to the core!!
:clap: 😮 Old-Timer wrote:Oh, and “before Ray freaks out”?? Dude, you cut me to the core!!
:clap: 😮 Yeah, that was my lame attempt to play good cop/bad cop.
🙂 Also, just for the record, I believe the common interpretation of the OT verse that talks of “spilling his seed on the ground” is horribly wrong. The dude wasn’t killed for masturbation or incorrect ejaculation! “Merciful heavens,” as my friend growing up used to say. I wish people would read the entire passage to understand what was going on. He was killed for refusing to follow the LAW that required him to marry her and provide children so the family line would continue. He was killed for rebelling against the law of the land and figuratively killing that genealogical line.
I don’t like that law or punishment, and I certainly don’t believe the punishment was correct or divinely inspired – but it wasn’t because he was masturbating. That’s just a stupid, Victorian, apostate interpretation that, unfortunately, LDS members and leaders accepted and promulgated.
Maybe some day I’ll tell everyone how I really feel about it.
😈 As for now, that’s the extent of my freaking out.😆 You’re a cop? Never knew. 
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