At first glance, you’d think that the church’s teachings regarding our approach to human sexuality are pretty simple: no sex outside of traditional marriage, avoidance of arousing sexual feelings outside of marriage through pornography or any prurient entertainment, and keeping our thoughts and language clean and virtuous. Turns out, it’s not that simple.
Ever since my first exposure to the bloggernacle at feministmormomhousewives.org many years ago, I’ve read comment after comment, and several posts, about how messed up members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints are when it comes to sex. Here’s a short list of some of them:
- We think sex is such a sacred, forbidden thing that we don’t dare talk about it, and when we must, we use weird euphemisms (“petting”?).
- We teach our young women that men are incapable of controlling their lust, so they have to be gatekeepers of their purity and dress modestly so as not to arouse them
- We teach our young women that it would be better for them to lose their lives than their purity, and compare those so defiled to a licked cupcake.
- We teach our young men that looking at pornography is committing adultery in their hearts and shame them for their natural impulse to masturbate, thus guaranteeing they’ll develop secret porn addictions. [1]
- With no other resource, our young men learn about sex from their porn addictions, and when our good-girl daughters and our porn-addicted sons wed, disaster ensues.
- We put our vulnerable young people (even girls) into a private room with a middle-aged and potentially voyeuristic bishop and encourage them to talk about their sex lives.
This list is nowhere near comprehensive, and I’ve no doubt many will be added in the comments. I don’t agree with the way all those criticisms are framed, but there’s no denying that there’s some truth there, the consideration of which has led to some improvements in church teachings and culture.
But it’s hardly like the rest of the world is doing it right.
I recently listened to a series of three podcasts from Radiolab called “In the No”. They’d come upon a series of podcasts by Kaitlin Prest, which she’d produced months before the beginning of the #MeToo movement. The topic of interest was the concept of consent within sex, and Kaitlin does a really good job of exploring it, imo. But I think you need to know who Kaitlin is before you can really follow. She introduces herself this way:
“I’m in my twenties. I left my tiny little town for the big city. I live in NYC now. I make an artsy, feminist, sex radio show. Third wave, sex-positive feminism told me I was on to something back in my teens, adopting the same ruthless sexual posturing that boys are encouraged to, would allow me to wield some of their power. If we f*k without feelings, we too could be free. Having slut-pride would subvert the double standard and it would force the world to recognize that women’s sexual pleasure is real.
The only problem is that I hate casual sex…. What I really want is love.”
To keep her sex radio program going, she ended up talking a lot about masturbation (she’s clearly a bit of an exhibitionist) and doing a lot of interviews. But she has also had sex with several men, and one experience in particular was really bad.
She’d been friends with a guy named Jay for nearly eight years. They talked about everything, including the people they were dating, and called each other by pet names. She always thought Jay was hot, but their relationship had always been platonic. Late on the 4th of July, he invites her for a “snuggle party” at her place. He starts kissing her. He admits to being nervous (because they don’t do that sort of thing), but she’s digging it. But then things heat up and he starts doing too much. She asks if it’s okay if they just make out, that she doesn’t want any sexy stuff, and he responds “yeah, fine, whatever,” and quits kissing her. He tells her he’s just going to go to bed. The air is tense, and she feels guilty about that. She knows she should leave, but she doesn’t. She’s frozen. She tells him to come back. They start to make out again and he again makes it sexual, and she again suggests they not, but he talks her into it. Things progress to sexual conclusion.
Afterwards, she feels angry. She hadn’t wanted that. She felt she’d been made to perform for him, that what she wanted didn’t matter. He’d simply forgotten her pursuing what he wanted. He hadn’t exactly forced her to do anything, but she still felt violated.
She wondered if having sex you didn’t want was something she just inherited from her foremothers, so she interviewed some older women. They talked about how it was a status symbol to have men attracted to you, and how they liked the attention. They talked about how you’d give in if you liked a guy and didn’t want to lose him, even though somewhere in your brain you’d know he wasn’t such a great guy if he was that pushy. One of them said it wasn’t until her 40s that a man said to her “are you sure this is what you want?”, and she was dumbfounded. No man had ever asked her that before.
Kaitlin interviews younger women who talked about how they’d give in because they didn’t want to make a scene. Or, they’d try to give the guy what he wanted without making it too horrible for themselves. Her friend posited that women learn to be people pleasers — that’s how they survive. They read social queues to know when someone’s going to be upset, or sad, or happy. They also know when they’re safe and when they’re not safe and they sometimes use sex as a social currency to stay safe, or to belong. That’s the power dynamic — it’s important to be liked by the person who has your fate in their hands.
Two years before the “Jay” incident, Kaitlin had interviewed an ex-boyfriend, Raul, for her radio show and left the recording going after the official interview was over. She and Raul were flirting, started messing around, and ended up having sex. The whole thing was recorded. She has audio evidence that she’d warned him that she didn’t want to have sex, but then she ends up allowing him to give her a bare-chested massage, with the caveat that she told him “you can’t touch the sexy parts”. She even asked him if it were possible for a guy to enjoy what they were doing without it resulting in sex, and he replies that he doesn’t do anything he doesn’t enjoy. Things progress, and she even tells him no explicitly, but in the flirtiest manner possible — she plays the tape so you can judge for yourself — and then she behaves like an engaged participant. She enjoys the sex. She doesn’t sound upset in the post-coital conversation, but she doesn’t spend the night and as she walks home, she becomes angrier and angrier — angry at Raul, angry at herself for not holding the line, and angry at her body for betraying her by liking it so much.
The Jay incident motivated Kaitlin to dig up that audio with Raul, and she listened closely both to what she said and especially to the way she said it. Her conclusion? She sounded “just like a girl who wanted to f*k” this guy.” She realized she probably sounded the same way to Jay. But then she wondered whether this isn’t exactly the way most girls sound who are trying to make sure their boundaries don’t get crossed but who don’t want to ruin the flirtatious vibe, or who don’t want to make the guy peevish [2], or who are just trying to stay safe. They say no in a sweet seductive tone and try to be nice and not hurt anybody’s feelings.
Kaitlin tells us that eventually she stops feeling so angry at herself and starts feeling angry at Jay. She wasn’t that mad at Raul, because they weren’t that close, but she considered Jay a best friend, somebody she really trusted, and he’d really betrayed her. She expected him to care about the way she felt, just as she she cared about the way he felt. Even though Jay messaged her repeatedly, she ghosted him. She completely shut him out and became consumed with the idea of consent (remember, this is months before #MeToo). She says “almost every woman and queer I know has a story about being pressured or coerced into sex by a dude”. That made her wonder, “does that mean every man I know has a story about pressuring or coercing someone into sex?” So she started interviewing men, including her father and her first love, and sure enough, they both had stories that had hurt the girls’ feelings enough to ruin their relationships.
The climax of the podcast was when she contacted Jay and asked him to do an interview, on the record. He clearly didn’t want to, but he felt obligated to help her out, so he agreed. She hadn’t spoken to him for years, and during that time she’d built him into a monster who represented all the men through her life who had sexually traumatized her. But when she saw him through her computer screen, he reminded her of the Jay she’d known and loved. It was an awkward conversation, punctuated with her nervous laughter. He listened quietly for 10 minutes as she tried to explain her feelings, and then he admitted he’d messed up. He said he’d wished they would have had this conversation right after it happened, and that he’d tried to reach out to her. He said they were both drunk and he did a dumb, stupid thing that he never should have done, but he felt like their relationship had been such that he should have gotten a pass for one stupid incident. He felt like it was bad, but that she’d made too big a deal out of it. He wanted to know how much he was supposed to pay. He’d lost her friendship for years because of it, and she’d only reached out to him now because she wanted something from him. They talked for about an hour and a half and neither were satisfied afterwards. She especially resented his qualified “apology” and wished she could have gotten angry and told him how she’d been conditioned from birth to put what he wanted before what she wanted, that it was his job to be sensitive to that, that he had all the privilege cards, and basically, that he had treated her like <expletive>.
The next episode is just as interesting, and introduces Hanna Stotland, an independent educational consultant, who specializes in educational crisis management. In other words, she’s the one moms call when their kid has been expelled from college. About a third of her business is young men involved with Title IX (sexual harassment and violence). She and Kaitlin had an pretty vigorous discussion about consent and weren’t entirely in agreement. Hanna introduced a lot of grey areas from her work: (1) a couple is messing around, he touches her, asks her if she likes it, she says she does, fakes an orgasm, and later says she only did it in order to make a graceful exit; (2) a couple goes to a dorm room to hook up, takes off their clothes, and she approaches him and performs oral sex on him, later saying she felt intimidated into it once their clothes were off (he was a large black man, and he was expelled because he hadn’t gotten verbal consent, even though she had initiated the action); (3) the guy gets verbal consent but then during sex the woman starts to cry, and she says he should have stopped right away and he says he did stop as soon as he realized she was crying. Hanna doesn’t feel that those situations are sexual assault just because the women felt bad afterwards. Kaitlin says there’s more going on besides what was verbalized in those stories, and argues that if a woman feels violated, she was violated. Hanna suggests to Kaitlin that their different way of thinking comes from a generational divide within feminism. Younger women talk about how they’ve been socially conditioned such that they can’t say no, but her generation rejects the idea that women don’t have agency. She says she can’t see how “they put me in a pink dress when I was a girl and now I have to give a blowjob” kind of thinking is good for women. Kaitlin responds that there’ve been studies done that show that women often decide how good sex was by how satisfied her partner was. She doesn’t see the young men in her life understanding the power they have and that they constantly abuse, and she feels there has to be some kind of consequence in order for them to change. [3]
Anyway, there’s much more in the rest of part 2 and part 3, including the fear men feel in being expected to make the first move but requiring verbal consent before making out [4], the different languages men and women use when talking about sex, woke men who turn down drunk girls inviting them home, and even how BDSM kinksters have explicit rules to prevent violations of consent (spoiler: it doesn’t work either).
While abrasive to my usual sensibilities, I thought these podcasts did an excellent job of describing the discussion of consent in the #MeToo era. But I kind of viewed them anthropologically. In other words, I found them fascinating, but they reflected a completely foreign culture and it wasn’t immediately clear how they related to mine.
Kaitlin’s argument that men didn’t understand the power they wield when it comes to sex reminded me of a similar argument I’d made in the past that the way women dressed had a powerful effect on men, and that they should therefore be taught modesty so as not to abuse that power. [5] The feminist response was that men had their agency, they could control their reaction to the way women dressed, and that they can’t blame women for their bad behavior. This was consistent with Hanna’s response to Kaitlin that women had their agency and that if they agreed to participate in sexual activity, it wasn’t the man’s fault if she felt taken-advantage-of later.
But I felt a considerable amount of sympathy for Kaitlin. She sounded very damaged. There seemed more to it than a couple of guys pushing her boundaries — more even than feeling violated. What she said she really wanted was love, and with her approach to sex, she certainly hadn’t found it.
I think that’s the main point that the whole discussion of consent entirely misses. There are apparently a lot of men who predate women for sex, and requiring them to get verbal consent definitely helps protect women. But whether or not a woman agrees verbally to sex can be utterly irrelevant to how she feels afterwards. The protest that “regret does not equal rape” may be true legally, but not necessarily emotionally.
I’d argue that for sex to be healthy, a person needs both
#1) self-determination — the ability to choose how, what, when, and with whom one participates, and
#2) love — a sense of bonding and connection with the person one’s having sex with.
I think Kaitlin was badly hurt by Jay because she felt she’d lose #2 if she didn’t cede #1. As she said, Raul didn’t hurt quite so badly because she didn’t have as strong a relationship with him, but perhaps the cumulative effects of such meaningless liaisons have hurt her just as deeply over time, even if she participated willingly.
By the way, people assume that men generally have #1 covered and don’t really need #2, but neither is true. Men struggle with #1 a great deal, just in a totally different way, as they can become rather fixated when sexually aroused. [6] This makes them extremely susceptible to becoming creeps, criminals, and crappy dates. I also think the cumulative effect of missing #2 is also hard on them, but again, maybe not quite the same way as with women.
Which brings me back to church teachings. Growing up in the church in the 80’s, I was taught that sex outside of marriage was never okay, and that a “real man” protects women, especially from himself. Consent wasn’t an issue, because engaging in <insert sexually charged activity here> with a girl would be hurting her. In other words, I had the strong sense that even if she allowed or wanted it at the moment, she (and I) would regret it afterwards. To seduce or (worse) force her into it would only doubly damn me.
My sister received the “guardian of virtue” messages at the time, including the attitude of, if not the actual, “licked cupcake” message. She says that while the lack of emphasis on the atonement was unfortunate, the lessons were a strong deterrent to being unchaste. The expectation wasn’t just that she wouldn’t cross any boundaries, but that she’d help keep the young men in her life from doing so as well, because, you know, guys sometimes had a problem with that. Whatever pressure she might have felt to please was counter-balanced by her responsibility to help them toe the line. Consequently, she wasn’t a victim of the social conditioning Kaitlin describes — it was easier for her to say no.
There’s a great deal of protection that comes from accepting the responsibility to live the law of chastity. We may be as pitiable as a cat in heat, mewling big-eyed against the glass of the living room window, but I do think it prevents a lot of sexual assault and a lot of regrets. The way we were taught chastity at church wasn’t perfect, and I’m well aware of how many members and former members resent it. [8] But my sister and I both came out with a rudimentary sensitivity to the other sex and the understanding it was on us to make sure our relationships were chaste.
I don’t want to leave the impression everything went perfectly. While the sexual experiences I had before marriage were pretty tame, I did push a little too far on one occasion and had the girl write me an angry note after the incident. Fortunately, my transgression was relatively mild (wandering hands that never crossed the boundaries of her undergarments), my apology was genuine because I knew I had hurt her, and she frankly forgave me. There was nothing in me that said “well, you sure didn’t seem to mind at the time”, because her consent was irrelevant. If she felt I had gone too far, I had. Period. [7]
Consequently, when old guys like me hear progressives talk about how we need to teach consent to our young people within the church, we think to ourselves “Why? Isn’t that just a lower law that gets taught to the people who reject the gospel?” It’s true that consent is applicable to marriage, just like elements of the Law of Moses are still applicable to living the gospel, but it’s really subsumed in the basic struggle of two people learning to love, understand, and be sensitive to each other’s needs. Presumably people intend to do that or they wouldn’t get married. Marriage is a type of consent — not necessarily of “right now”, or “in that way”, but certainly of “with you”. Forgiveness, repentance, and self-sacrifice all play a role too, because married people mess up. If a marriage can be improved by understanding the need of a verbal yes, then by all means teach them. But if it’s that helpful, it strikes me that somebody in the marriage has a poor understanding of gospel teachings, or really poor communication skills. If verbal consent is the difference between rape and consensual sex, then I’ve raped my wife more often than not and she me.
Don’t get me wrong, I’ve nothing against teaching youth about consent, just as I think it’s a good idea to teach them how to use a condom. I also think the #MeToo movement was long overdue. I just think that the progressive idea that “as long as there’s consent, it’s all good”, is pretty much bogus. The hook-up culture is an abomination, and any attitude that allows it isn’t going to be fixed by talking about consent, because that’s only part of what’s broken.
[1] As evidence, they cite (with typical headline distortion) this much publicized report that lists Utah as having the highest per-capita porn subscriptions. Of course, that report (you can’t call it a study) references a single, unnamed, “top-ten seller of adult entertainment”. There are plenty of reasons to question that’s it’s evidence for abnormally high numbers of LDS pornaholics. Pornhub, the world’s biggest porn aggregator, subsequently reported that Utah is close to the bottom for per capita porn traffic in the US.
Incidentally, Utah has also been reported to have by far the highest per capita rate of serious illness due to vaping. Is that a church-related problem?
[2] Kaitlin’s word was “pissy”, but I don’t like that word. If anyone knows an adequate synonym, please let me know.
[3] If you’re interested in the topic of consent, this episode is probably worth listening to yourself rather than relying on a dude to summarize a discussion between feminists.
[4] There’s an app for that! You hold up your phone and record her verbal consent. With that out of the way, you can get down to business!
[5] I actually tried to find that discussion, but apparently feministmormonhousewives.org doesn’t allow Google to search it’s pages (I mean, I’m sure Google does, it just doesn’t share the results with the likes of me). Since when did that happen? Anybody know anything about this?
[6] A couple decades ago I heard a drive-time radio show interview a pair of strippers. They were asked how much money guys spend at the club, and they said $20 was enough to have fun. But then, they both kind of lowered their voices and said “but a lot of guys get really intense and spend a LOT of money — it’s kind of scary.”
[7] Get this — after my mission, I even decided I wouldn’t kiss, let alone make out with, a girl I wasn’t considering marrying, because I was afraid if I didn’t love her enough, I might not have the wherewithal to keep from “hurting her” (that is, going a little too far). That worked until I was flirting with my future wife and she grabbed me and started kissing me, so I had to marry her.
[8] There’s obviously a lot of variation in how it was taught and internalized. What my sister and I got isn’t necessarily the same as what others got. Two different teachers could put vastly different emphasis on the same lesson, and two students could interpret the exact same lesson through totally different personal lenses.
Wheat & Tares 
Martin – Very well written and an interesting topic. I remember listening to those podcasts and they did leave me thinking quite a while. Certainly all of the licked-cupcake, nail in the board object lessons certainly have caused issues. The same with the “guys must be controlled and girls must control the guys”. It may be unintentional, but it does seem the church is more worried about pre-marital sex than married couples having a good and loving sex life.
But having said that, “the world” in many cases is also really a mess. A friend of mine (not a member) was sending their daughter off to college and they were really scaring her to death about drinking and getting the date rape drug slipped into her drink (even with no alcohol). The state school had had a few publicized issues with this in the news. I certainly understood my friends fear.
What is the answer? THAT is a good question.
Loved the post. I think Mormons get myopic and think we’re the only group that struggles with certain issues. It is good to point out that others struggle in different ways on the same issues.
An interesting, challenging, and even difficult read. We will see how much of this make sense.
Perhaps an interesting read from the other (man’s) side of this, is an article I read years ago by a Hugo Schwyzer called The Accidental Rapist (https://goodmenproject.com/featured-content/the-accidental-rapist/ ). Basically, a guy talking about some of the guilt he feels for having sex with his girlfriend even when she was less than enthusiastically wanting it. What is our standard of what consent really is? Is enthusiastic consent really the only acceptable standard (and what do we mean by enthusiastic consent)?
The difficult part for me is that, after years in a sexless marriage, I have reached the point where I never expect to ever get enthusiastic consent again. If we ever have sex again, it will be — at some level — begrudging. At what point does a man/woman (because the genders can be reversed) simply give up (and take care of himself/herself if decided that is allowed) rather than “impose” on the begrudging spouse? And, at risk of raising the specter of the despicable Incel movement, I am reminded of Sister Brotherson’s article on her blog called “Involuntary Celibacy” (https://www.strengtheningmarriage.com/involuntary-celibacy/ ). It is kind of on the other side of this consent topic, but how do we feel about those who have celibacy imposed upon them because a spouse refuses to engage in the sexual relationship?
I agree with what Happy Hubby says, it seems that the Church is way more worried about what might happen outside of marriage and shows little to no concern over what is happening in the marriage bed (and many would claim that is exactly as it should be, and some days, I agree with them).
My own conclusions: Consent is essential, and consent should often be enthusiastic from both sides. I can leave room for some encounters where one spouse is not “feeling it”, but goes along to get along out of love and generosity (but such encounters should not be the norm). I don’t have answers for how to negotiate sexual differences, but I often wish we spoke more about the importance of learning how to deal with those differences.
My 2cents worth, and probably not even worth that much.
“Presumably people intend to do that or they wouldn’t get married.” That is exactly how I thought until I got married. I wish someone had sat my husband down and given him a consent talk. We had a healthy sex life until our first child came. My husband counted down the days to 6 weeks and expected everything to go back to normal. But it was so painful it took my breath away. When he realized that, he asked if I wanted to stop. I didn’t answer, because I thought it went without saying that pain is undesirable. I truly believed he wouldn’t want to hurt me, so I was unpleasantly surprised when he kept going. Everything went downhill from there. When I told him afterward that I needed more time to recover, he was more concerned about his pain from abstinence. We had screaming matches late into the night. Sometimes I would feel terrible and initiate sex to apologize. More often than not I would acquiesce so I could sleep rather than stay up for hours fighting. If I hinted I didn’t want it (moving his hand away, turning around, saying I was tired), he’d ignore me until I became forceful and direct about it, and then he’d scream at me for being rude and hurtful.
Whether it was my body ‘s natural aging process or the psychological effects of his behavior, our intimate life has never gotten back on track. I don’t know how he could possibly undo the damage of teaching me that sex is about what he wants, not me. The intensity of the fights has slowly decreased, and he’s apologized for his behavior a decade ago, but saying no is still a risk. At best, it comes with sighs of irritation and heavy pouting. It’s usually easier to comply. Even then, I might be criticized for not wanting it, or not initiating it. My husband says we’re married, so what’s my problem? I don’t mean to paint him as a horrible guy because he’s not (and I’ve done my share of insensitive things to him), but whatever vagueries he’s hearing in Priesthood session about being a good husband isn’t helping.
Really interesting post, Martin. Thanks for getting into the complicated details of these issues. I especially appreciate how careful you are to represent fairly those who you don’t completely agree with. I will have to mentally chew on what you’ve said more before I can come up with any kind of a response, but I did want to quickly say thanks for the post.
(Regarding your note 5, I’ve run into this issue with fMh too. I’ve just given up and used the search tool on their site (very upper right corner of every page) and it has generally worked well.)
I really appreciate Laurel’s and Dave’s comments. I agree that the church has emphasized chastity and neglected marital intimacy. I can’t help but think that one of the reasons for the first is to facilitate the latter. Sex is really loaded with emotions and emotional wounds, both within or without marriage, and the scars can be really tender. But there’s not a whole lot in the scriptures specific to sexual intimacy, and the idea of the church giving direct instructions on the topic to the general populace without direct revelation is a little scary to me (some of you are aware of how it’s been botched in the past). Just like so many things in life, sex can be powerfully good or powerfully bad, and either way I think it can powerfully shape our souls. Consequently, (and I say this as a fervent believer, so it might sound crazy to some), I can’t think of anything the atonement is better suited to. Anything involving that much struggle, pain, and frustration needs divine reconciliation. Exactly how that begins could vary, but might start with couples therapy for some. I just feel that as we’re rolling around in our marriages, wounding each other with our sharp edges and getting our sharp edges knocked off, we just decide that some edges are never going to fit together, so we just turn that part of ourselves away from each other. It’s a loss.
Most LDS members assume that pre-marital sex is a serious sin. Indeed, we have been taught that “sexual sin” is 2nd only to murder in seriousness. But I am questioning whether that is so black and white. I believe that extramarital sex is a very serious sin, especially when one considers the consequences to a marriage and family. But I’m not sure that two teenagers in the back seat of a car who go to far are committing the same degree of sin. Yet, this is what our youth are often taught and as a result everyone in the Church grows up thinking that they are tempted to practically commit murder. That’s not healthy is it?
Agreed, josh harrison. We have a tendency to lump all sexual sin (from occasional solo masturbation [assuming that is even a sin] to getting a little handsy when making out to consensual sex and on up to rape) into one category and it is all 2nd to murder. And then throw in Matt 5:28, and even thinking about sex becomes the same thing as doing it. It seems clear to me that it is not correct to lump it all into one 2nd to murder category, because there is a clear (IMO) range of severity here, and a lot of it is no where near the same severity as murder. I don’t know how to change the rhetoric, but it seems like we need a better way to talk about the range of sexual sins and how to deal with our sexuality.
Sometimes it is hard enough to agree on what is included in sexual sin. Some of the most contentious internet debates I’ve come across are arguing over whether solo masturbation is a sin.
Book of Mormon curricula are out — maybe look up what the current manuals have for the week of July 27 to Aug 2 and see what they say about Corianton and the severity of sexual sin and maybe think about how we can improve the discussion.
This is a great, thought-provoking post, Martin. A few points of feedback (not criticism, just alternative perspectives):
1) I agree that it’s not clear that any one group (whether in the church or out) has perfected sexual education and practice–I think we all can do better and should be open to learning how to be better stewards of our sexuality and respecting that of others around us.
2) As you highlight, our purity-focused approach to sex and marriage can protect us from many damaging things (compared to a casual sex approach), though you do not give much discussion about the costs of our
purity-focused rhetoric. Specifically, I’m thinking of the guilt / anguish / social rejection that one who fails to meet the purity standard is subjected to. This is a very real thing–even intentional–in order to make those who don’t conform to either change or leave the community. Perhaps we might say that the guilt is warranted (because they sinned), but we can think of many circumstances where these consequences are offered even without it being warranted (e.g., victims of sexual assault). There are many adverse consequences of this shaming behavior that we don’t often acknowledge — from strained relationships, mental health conditions, even suicide. Also, we are exceptionally bad at moral reasoning when it comes to sexual sin–because they’re all next to murder–thus, things as petty as masturbation (and for older generations, oral sex and the use of birth control–none of which, for the record, I would include in the “sin” category) can all get lumped in with child trafficking and violent sexual assault.
3) Before marriage, I genuinely believed that saving myself for marriage (which I did, by repressing any and all thoughts of sexuality until right before our marriage) ensured that I’d have a healthy sex life. Boy, was I surprised to learn that my wife was not a willing participant in everything I wanted to try once my sexuality was unleashed. Yes, part of this is learning what our partner likes and navigating differences in sexual appetites, but if a person is not really awakening to their sexual desires and needs until after marriage, we’ve made a (hopefully) permanent marriage decision with incomplete information about what would even make us happy/satisfied in that relationship. In the extreme case, sexual incompatibility could be a permanent drag on marital happiness and will likely be traumatizing to one or both partners. Though I’ll spare the details of my own marriage, suffice it to say that I think many hours of fighting (and thousands of $$$ in counseling) may have been avoidable in my marriage with a more open dialogue / exploration of sexuality before getting married–since many of these tensions came to a head within a few months of getting married.
4) As I’ve re-examined my own beliefs about the law of chastity, in the wake of a faith transition, I genuinely do not see the harm in consensual relationships between committed people. My new sense of morality places love and mutual consent over the details of whether people are married or not.
With respect to extramarital sex being “the sin next to murder” in seriousness, I think that’s a misinterpretation of scripture. I was always bothered by that, because to me, slavery seemed worse, child abuse seemed worse, etc. Then I read this article (https://www.sunstonemagazine.com/pdf/143-34-43.pdf) by Michael Ash, and the pieces fit together. I think the “sin next to murder” in seriousness is to be in a position of stewardship and lead people away from Christ through your willful selfishness or rebelliousness. Corianton forsook his ministry to pursue a harlot. That qualified. That doesn’t mean sexual sin isn’t still very serious, though.
Just reviewed the lesson Dave, I’m going to have to skip out that week…
Great post, eye opening as man.
I agree that sexual sin is NOT next to murder. I’m pretty sure what was next to murder was going to harlot in front of everyone while you’re out preaching the gospel causing the missionary work to be shut down… after you’ve been bragging about how wise and strong you are (verse 2).
Plus in verse 5 he says “these things” meaning more than one thing. So not just having sex.
That’s my two cents.
Really interesting discussion, Martin. I couldn’t help but think about the Netflix series 13 Reason Why as I read your post. **SPOILER ALERT**
Season one of the series is about a girl who is raped who then commits suicide. She confronts her rapist (and his enablers and others who contributed to her getting to this point) by leaving behind a series of cassette tapes, one for each of these people, explaining how they affected her and led to her decision to kill herself. The series is somewhat graphic and lots of profanity as well as sex scenes (just a parental warning for you there). I read the book after watching Season One, and one thing that was very different in the book was that the rape scene was much more nuanced in the book. She didn’t consent, but he wasn’t physically violent with her like he was on TV. He just did what he wanted and she let him, feeling dead inside. Season 2 which isn’t nearly as good really deals with subsequent issues and whether a rapist can be redeemed, how a rape victim can recover (obviously not the dead girl), etc. It’s not nearly as good, but does deal with these themes.
I would add some things to your list of what the Church isn’t great about when it comes to sex:
1) It’s not just about consent, but also understanding and addressing the various reasons for consent. You allude to that in your post, but this is something nobody is really getting in or out of the church. There was an article I read a while back that listed something like 252 reasons women agree to have sex. There are many psychological reasons that go into it, and unfortunately, men are more prone to coerce and women are more prone to relent. As one male comedian said (about teaching his son), “I don’t condone rape, but I’m not raising you to be a quitter.” That’s the heart of the matter. Boys are taught to pursue their own gratification, and girls are not.
2) we don’t talk about female pleasure as any kind of desired requirement. Too many Mormon men assume that women feel pleasure because they do, but women’s pleasure is often unconnected to the events that cause male pleasure. We commoditize women when we make them the source of male pleasure but don’t see their pleasure as equal. Dirty little secret: female pleasure generally doesn’t risk anyone getting pregnant.
3) the modesty rhetoric is seriously garbage. Everything we say to women about sex is from a male perspective, never from an actual female perspective. Women aren’t dressing immodestly to seduce men, at least very seldom are they doing so. Often it’s for completely unrelated reasons: economic limitations, innocent mistakes, body type differences, cultural reasons, personal comfort, peer pressure, available choices, etc. The notion that male desire is the main reason women do or should make clothing choices is crap. It results in women being slut shamed for things that are unrelated, and it doesn’t even address male desire–it just makes “modesty” sexy to Mormon men. It needs to stop.
4) Can we quit vilifying attraction and arousal? These are normal human responses. Acting on arousal, fine, whatever, but feeling it is normal.
5) Rather than seeing women as possessing a mind, the church sees us as vessels for their seed. The church wants fertile couples raising the next gen in the church, and the role of women is to bear and raise those children. The role of men is to impregnate them and provide financially for them and their children. That’s got plenty of historical precedent, but it’s just not enough for women. It’s not our full potential, and it’s not challenging and stimulating enough. We have brains just like men do. We have desires and needs.
A main issue with consent inside and outside of marriage surrounds entitlement. The casual sex culture fosters male entitlement by objectifying women. While it can be argued church culture does this as well, by making women pedestalized sex objects, I think the bigger issue is that sex inside marriage is seen as a reward for keeping the law of chastity.
So when you tell men and women (mostly men since female sexuality/desire isn’t really discussed in our culture) that having sex once married is a righteous reward, you have something that can look like this:
Sex inside marriage for men = access to their wife’s body = reward they earned + complete deprioritization of female pleasure/needs = consent issues and overall disaster.
I’m not saying that most LDS men consciously think this way. There are going to be inevitable disappointments that result from unmet expectations for both parties in a marriage when trying to navigate a sexual relationship. But I do think the deprioritization of female needs/desire and frankly lack of anatomical understanding can create consistent negative experiences for women with sex in their marriages. This in turn creates negative experiences for men in their marriages when their wives don’t want to engage in sex.
I have had medical issues myself that have led to great disappointment for my husband and me with sex in our relationship. My husband has always been loving and supportive. But this is not the case with all husbands. To illustrate the above point, I’ll share what a pelvic floor physical therapist told me. This therapist was in Utah. She treated women with my condition and others with similar conditions.
She commented how so many LDS women she worked with and others she talked to only had sex to make their husbands happy, had sex that was uncomfortable and painful, or had husbands that forced them to have sex despite their painful condition because according to the husband, the wife’s pain was all psychological. If this doesn’t represent entitlement and consent issues, idk what does. But it’s quite disturbing. Of course this story relates to women with specific medical conditions, but I think the overall principle plays out in LDS marriages even when both partners are healthy.
The opportunity for pain, discomfort, and therefore a negative sexual experience seems vastly higher for women than for men. This isn’t really talked about much, and when it is, an expectation is basically set for women that “yeah your first sexual experience won’t be great because it will hurt.” If this hurt continues, I think a lot women and men think that this is just how sex is for women. If one or both parties in a marriage think this is normal, then their sexual relationship is on an unsustainable path. So to help LDS marriages, we need more sexual education and an equal prioritization of women’s pleasure and needs.
Adding to Mary’s excellent comment, I think it’s common that when men discover that, for whatever reason, their wives aren’t nearly as eager for sex, they start developing a transactional attitude towards it. That’s not quite the same thing as entitlement, but close. They figure, “oh, she doesn’t want sex, but if I do all these other things for her that I don’t want to do but she wants, then she’ll want to accommodate me.” Sorry guys, you’re only going to feel cheated.
Rather than teach young men they only have to feel repressed until they get married, maybe we should tell them it’s never really going to get better except maybe for short periods, and even then only if they’re really in tune with their wives. That way, everything good will just be a bonus!
I say that in jest (sort of), but I don’t think we should ever be promising a happily ever after. That’s not usually how life works.
Thank you for the post. It’s caused me to think about consent in new ways. The church just needs to stay out of the law of chastity business except to say “use wisdom with something as powerful and life changing as sex.” Anything more just causes problems.
A close friend of mine got a girl pregnant in high school in the 70s. He had to get permission from a well known GA to serve a mission, who told him to never tell his future wife that he was a father. My friend gladly (and too willingly) took this advice which worked great until his wife found out – and basically ever since he’s been in a sexless marriage. My wife and I both got really crappy information about sex from our parents and church leaders and after 25 years of marriage it’s mostly better but the issues still become apparent sometimes. One of the causes of my faith transition was the resentment I held towards my parents and the church as a result of the debilitating shame I felt as a teenager for “self abuse.” I actually thought I’d be burned at the 2nd coming (no pun intended).
Without getting too graphic, my first intimate experience was with the girl who became my wife. She sort of took control and I went along with it not totally understanding what was happening. Afterwards I felt this strange sensation of wow that was awesome and scary and guilty all at the same time. If the gender roles were reversed it might be called sexual assault, but after all, you can’t rape the willing, right??
It makes me feel slightly better that I think crappy attitudes about sexual relationships are not unique to the LDS church. In NYC I was in a hospital with sign in the maternity wing that said “A gentleman will refrain from sex after the water has broke until the placenta is delivered.”
I wonder who’s doing it right? Are there any mormon women out there for whom this all really worked? Maybe women who come from strong communities of women who have valued and enjoyed their sexual relationship?
We have really struggled with this in our family and as a couple. We’ve tried to run a sex positive house and accept their sexuality, but church has impinged upon that , and our kids have turned their backs to that conflict. I get that, and a part of me is glad although I hate to say it.
By the same token, their lived experience of not living the law of chastity has been brutal. I don’t think that casual sex is the answer – maybe serious sex is.
Sexual issues are not only a female thing, nor just a female Mormon thing. Mormon men have their own hang-ups. A few years ago, I was visiting a Freudian psychologist for therapy. A brilliant man. He told me, “It’s all sex.” He was referring to the entire husband/wife relationship, from sitting on a couch after dinner to talk about the problems of the day, to working on house renovations together, to what goes on in the bedroom. It is all sex.
Sex is about a lot more than just a penetrative act. The entire husband/wife relationship is a sexual act – every aspect of it. A mutual giving and taking, sharing, opening, etc. It is, indeed, all sex.
There is a lot of conversation, and rightfully so, about “toxic masculinity.” The gig is up for a lot of men. We are witnessing a long-awaited “changing of the guard.” It is time for the sixty year old men who think they can call a 20-something “cutie” to simply go away.
It will be interesting when we are willing to also talk about another form of toxicity: toxic femininity. This will take a good deal of courage and bravery because it strikes at one of the core myths of civilization: the myth of the mother. The Beowulf story touched upon it. Hamlet dealt with it. Pink Floyd made a fortune singing about it. D. H. Lawrence described it perfectly in Sons and Lovers. It is an old story. Just as old as the stories which show us toxic masculinity.
Psychologists are talking about it, and publishing books about it. They call it “covert sexual abuse” or “emotional incest.” In cultures where women are given very few opportunities to do much outside the responsibility of being a mother, the problem runs rampant. It is a deeply embedded issue, therefore, within Mormonism. I was a victim of it.
When mothers are not able to find emotional fulfillment in their marriages, they often turn toward a son to find that fulfillment. This won’t take on an obviously sexual quality, but it is quite sexual in a subtle, covert way. But a young boy is not in any position to provide the kind of emotional fulfillment that an adult needs. These kinds of relationships chip away at the growing masculinity of that young boy. When he becomes an adult, he faces what is called a “disloyalty bind.” If and when he finds a romantic partner, the disloyalty bind is triggered. He finds himself, usually without knowing what is going on, unable to form a close emotional bond with his partner, because all that he has to give emotionally is still being directed toward his mother, who demanded it of him to fulfill her own needs when he was growing up.
These men long for real emotional connection with a woman, but they are unable to give it to their spouse. They become addicted to porn looking for it. They commit adultery looking for it. They become sex addicts. If they do settle down and start a new life with a mistress, they soon come up against the disloyalty bind again, and then the cycle repeats. Their mothers may be long dead and gone, but only physically. In the mind of that man, the only love and affection he truly has to give is to his mother, because that was what was demanded of him in his earliest years. The mother continues to live on in his subconscious, still asking for that monopoly on his love and affection. Until the men are able to understand that this was a form of covert sexual abuse, or a form of emotional incest, they will have a hard time breaking their self-destructive cycle. And they will continue to harm the lives of the woman they come into contact with.
Toxic masculinity is obvious. It rears its head in awful and ugly ways. Toxic femininity takes place quietly, in the walls of homes, and enjoys a protection as a result of the high esteem we have for mothers in our society. Especially in the church, where this esteem is often used as a means of placating women to keep them in their places.
The male/female relationship is symbiotic. We evolved together out of the ooze. Unless we each look inwardly to determine the ever-rippling ramifications of our behaviors on others, especially on those members of the opposite sex in which we come into contact, we will never truly become united.
This post and the responses to it have seriously humbled me. I thought as a gay man that a lifetime of celibacy required of me in order to ‘partake’ of the full blessings of the Gospel was akin to a death sentence. And honestly, I have experienced periods of great anger and resentment toward straight, married people for being able to enjoy the sexual freedoms I cannot. However, after reading all this, I am beginning to think that even in a marriage, full sexual expression/availability is not as easy as it seems. I am fully trained in a celibate lifestyle now and it’s really not so bad after all. It’s easy to sleep at night and I’m not worried about the unfulfilled needs of a partner. Now if I could just get that coffee drinking habit under control, I’d be back in the temple! God bless the married folks, especially those in the Mormon Church!
The original post and the comments thread have been excellent, and have really set me to thinking. Thanks to all concerned. A few thoughts of my own:
1. Some of the comments express skepticism about prevailing interpretations of Alma 39:5 and the “sin next to murder.” I have long felt that to hang Church teachings and attitudes toward chastity on such a slender thread ad Alma 39:5 will eventually invite re-examination. I hope so. I am confident that there are many private skeptics, far more than the limited number of people who contribute to Wheat and Tares. It was Boyd Packer (of all people!) who cautioned Church members about taking isolated scriptures out of context to build doctrinal castles of sand.
2. Sexual morality is necessary and important, and the consequences of trying to evade it are awful, as seen in adultery, a culture of casual hook-up sex, and the common occurrence of rape. But we have created a Mormon culture in which it is the MOST important thing. It is not! Loving God and our neighbor as are ourself are. But if I were to point this out from the pulpit in a Fast and Testimony meeting, many Bishops would panic and tackle me to the ground.
3. If we go overboard in trying instill sexual morality in our members and our children, then we will not leave enough room in their hearts for faith, hope, and charity, which 1 Corinthians teaches us is the most important of all, and on which everything else is based.
4. Agree that our current emphasis on modesty is overdone. Bearing the brunt of this has, unfairly, fallen on the women of the Church. For Goodness’ sake, there has to be some middle ground between dressing like a lumpy sack of potatoes and dressing in a way that incites hordes of uncontrollable Mormon boys to lustful thoughts. How about dressing the way one wants? I might not care for the way Sister Smedley dresses, but that is MY problem. The average teenaged boy lives in a semi-permanent state of erection, anyway, and I don’t think how women dress has all that much to do with it.
Another element of sexual satisfaction for Mormon couples is wearing the garment night and day throughout [our] lives. As one friend sardonically commented many years ago, clinging to a doorway in your garments isn’t sexy.
Can we give “permission” to a young couple getting married to leave garments home during their honeymoon?
How long after a (mutually anticipated and satisfying) act of physical intimacy must a couple put their garments back on?
If “shirts and skins” is acceptable for a pick up b-ball game in the church gym, is “skins” a fair guideline for married couples in the bedroom?
Overall on this vein, have we become fundamentally obsessed with a rigid application of the guideline given in the temple? (But not necessarily for families of those in upper echelons, who, I’m pretty sure, don’t bother with garments when they’re on jet setting vacations.)(Expectations should be consistently expected or not be expectations.)
Thanks, Martin, for a great post. It breaks my heart to hear of all the marital sexual dysfunction recounted here. But it also sounds familiar. So…
Public Service Announcement:
There is medical treatment (individual and couples therapy) available for couples struggling with their relationship (including their sexual fulfilment) . Yes, the Atonement has a big role to play, but if you’d see an oncologist for leukemia, you should see a therapist for dysfunctional relationships. Most people have no idea how much they are doing wrong (Laurel’s husband is a great example). Almost everything you learned from TV, for example, is TERRIBLE, and much of it will destroy your spouse. There is a better way to love someone, and most people can learn it.
Find a *good* therapist, and you’ll be amazed at how much easier repentance can be.