“The privilege of joining with God in creating life is an essential part of the plan of salvation. … The law of chastity given by the Lord is that we are to have no sexual relations with anyone except our husband or wife.”
Eternal Progression: Discussion 4, pg. 4_14
“Curse the straight answer; praise be wiggle room.”
Middling folk muse on what is meant by No—
like Laman and Lemuel, who hear then fume,
angered by angels who state things just so.
Child, don’t you see I’m daring you? Say, “No
thanks.” You want the mystery back, but it’s gone.
Here ends your mansion tour, all things aglow—
the old wing, the new wing—all yours. I’ve drawn
the outside curtains open. Move in or move on.
Poet’s Notes:
Keep in mind, I’m an agnostic, not a true believer. This poem draws from the Uniform System for Teaching the Gospel, published by the Church. I taught these discussions to investigators on my mission in the mid-1990s. The featured image is of my personal copy. You can also read these:
Wheat & Tares 
Praise be the wiggle room, indeed-another really great poem, Jake!
I’m finding myself horrified at the same matter-of-fact statements I confidently and flippantly threw at the weak ones. How do I take them back?
Yesterday I made the mistake of reading comments on a church FB post, “This should complete the sifting of the wheat and tares!” said one relentless commenter, regarding something about following the prophet of course.
What kind of a parent or deity thinks in absolutes like that? The kind I used to fear and follow.
Very nice. “You want the mystery back but it’s gone.” Very either-or.
I remember the eternal progression discussion. A thinly veiled “we can all become gods” teaching apparent to believers, but not so much to investigators, memorized and taught by every missionary for decades. Now the Preach My Gospel manual mentions eternal progression but only buried in text, not as a heading, or subheading, let alone a whole chapter. The very gradual but very apparent mainstreaming of Mormonism is quite fascinating. The earlier Evangelical critics really did get under the skin of Mormon leaders and its leading thinkers when it came to theological questions. Sometimes I sense a yearning of just being able to be a good old-fashioned American Protestant church among leaders. They need to wait for the old generation McConkie-ite rank-and-file Mormons, who still see Mormonism as being in a battle with Protestantism and other “false” and “half-true” Christian doctrine, to pass. The battle is with secularism now and the old-school narrative is just not equipped to deal with that.