What’s with Mormons and porn?

Comments (79)

1. The key is: “Given the fact that LDS Inc. cant muster any real scientific evidence”. Have they EVER been able to gather real scientific evidence?

   As to why they harp on this? Bottom line, tithing. Porn is probably a ‘gateway’ exit. An individual might think “I looked at porn, nothing really bad happened, I wonder what else the church is lying about?” and soon they are out, no longer paying tithing.

2. Step one: Identify a slightly embarrassing, hidden behavior that a vast majority of all people participate in.

   Step two: Exploit this weakness by having your church leaders pretend they don’t do it, and have them proclaim that nobody should do it.

   Step three: Prophet!

3. More importantly, why did they hire the Watchtower Society to design that website?

4. I think the real issue is masturbation, but LDS leaders are afraid to use that word aloud, in general conference for instance. My husband remembers from his mission that several of his companions had masturbation habits, and all felt supremely guilty about it. (some enough to go home early). I would imagine that maybe 20-30% of LDS men look or have looked at porn, but 90%+ masturbate. And that’s a big number for a church that requires 100% extreme sexual purity (from its single members anyway).

5. @Jenna – your numbers are amusing. 20%-30% might have been somewhat accurate in the 60s, but in the oughts forward that number is surely 75%+.

6. Also not clear that the DN journalist knows the definition of the word “vacuum”…

7. porqsmith, you’re probably right, those fake stats of mine came out wrong. More accurately, like you say probably 75%+ of LDS men have (at one time or another) intentionally viewed porn. I suppose I estimated 20-30% are actively ‘addicted’ to it and look at it on a regular basis. Either way, I’d be very interested to see real statistics on porn use for LDS men vs non-LDS, single vs. married.

8. @6: I’m sure that DesNews stands behind its reporting on the “growing vacuum of demand” for this kind of website.

   Otherwise, why provide a handy link for sharing the story on a site like fark.com?

   FARK? That’s gutsy. Almost like daring readers to not take them seriously.

9. Chino — lol. I didn’t notice that, but you’re right — gutsy! OTHO, they may be hoping the article will get FARKed, in accordance with a strategy we’ve heard about…

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11. I would suggest that porn/sex addiction is a real and painful thing, but it isn’t an addiction like the other more respected addictions. In the case of what so many Mormons have experienced, I think the technical term is mindfuck.

    It’s a worldview disorder. Adjust the worldview, and the disorder goes away. At least in my happy case it did. 🙂

12. I myself was skeptical that sex or pron addiction were real. I was looking for JulieAnn’s comment (it was here on MSP somewhere) about her experiences with a partner who was an addict.

    Anyway, I think that people can be obsessive and compulsive. I think that it is quite possible that people could have problems having sex without pron on – or having sex inappropriate places. Or having multiple partners without the knowledge of a spouse or lots of unsafe sex period. And I’m not talking about a one night stand..it’s hard to explain. For the record, I’m thinking of the character Brenda (from Six Feet Under’s) behavior.

    Personally, I don’t think it is as common as some religions claim. Having an alcoholic drink every month does not make one an alcoholic. I do not believe that the LDS church promotes a healthy sense of sexuality – which is part of the issue IMO. Even within the bounds of legal marriage. I’ve heard (over the years) of bishops asking very private questions of couples about their lives – oral sex, etc. I’m not sure that’s appropriate either.

    So, I believe the addiction exists, but I don’t think it’s as widespread as claimed.

13. I think that the church’s attitude essentially sets up some susceptible members to become “porn addicts.” I think that if the church’s attitude changed — if it took porn much more lightly — its members would have far fewer serious problems with porn.

14. So, possible reasons why LDS Inc. fixates on porn:

    1) Gateway to apostasy, ergo loss of tithing.

    The reasoning here.
    Scenario (A): I watched porn. Nothing bad happened to me (and in fact it felt quite good). Porn must not be bad. My leaders are frauds.
    Scenario (B): I watched porn. I feel guilt. I can’t quit watching porn and the guilt is too much. I can get rid of the guilt if I leave the source of the guilt – LDS Inc. Leave the church.

    Perhaps these are the reasons, but I’d like to know the following: What percentage of people who leave LDS Inc. leave because of porn/masturbation? My guess is that it isn’t that many.

    2) Leads to masturbation.

    So, the reasoning here.
    Scenario (A): I watched porn. Porn aroused me. I masturbated. It felt good. My church says not to masturbate. I feel guilty.

    This seems to just move the need of an explanation back one step: What is the Church’s problem with masturbation? If what couples do inside their own home is their business, which seems to be the current position on sex in Mormonism, then mutual masturbation is fine, and that is just barely removed from self-masturbation. So, theoretically, if you’re partner is willing, masturbating together could be considered a form of sexual expression shared within the bonds of matrimony. Ergo, what’s the problem with masturbation in marriage if your partner knows about it?

    This is probably more compelling if we think about it from a male patriarchy perspective: Women masturbating increases the odds of them enjoying sex. And since we don’t want women who actually enjoy their lives, er, rather, who actually make demands on their male sexual partners to satisfy them (those damn, uppity women), masturbation is right out. If women can’t do it, sorry men, you can’t do it either? Hmmm… still not very compelling.

    3) Control – exploiting a weakness.

    I’m not sure I like this one. Why is masturbation/porn viewing a weakness? This argument seems to buy the underlying assumption that LDS Inc. is making – that these activities are inherently immoral and therefore can be exploited to control the sheep. Since I don’t think there is anything inherently immoral about viewing porn or masturbating, I don’t buy this one. Unless you want to suggest that the underlying assumption is a social construction and that the social construction is used for control. That may work. But is this really a control issue? What does LDS Inc. get out of this? Or is this a “poison/antidote” scenario: Mormonism creates the idea of poison and the illusion that you’ve been poisoned (porn) and then offers the antidote (Mormon repentance process), which is actually an addiction (per researchers at BYU)? Hmmm… Intriguing.

    4) Legitimate addiction.

    We’ve discussed this before to some degree (http://mainstreetplaza.com/?p=307), but I’m inclined to agree with the actual experts (i.e., the APA) – porn, sex, and masturbation are rarely, if ever, actual addictions. There are probably some cases, but given the low, low frequency of actual compulsion to watch porn or have sex or masturbate (almost seems to be a variant of OCD rather than warranting it’s own DSM classification), why the fuss among Mormons? If greater than 50% of Mormon men (just pulling that number of out thin air) have seen porn and/or frequently view porn and similar numbers are frequently masturbating, maybe the issue isn’t the porn or masturbation but the demonization of porn and masturbation? I mean, seriously, how much it is affecting their lives? For a very small percent, perhaps it has a massive affect on their lives. But you can’t tell me that ~50% of Mormons are incapacitated because all they can think about is porn or masturbating. That’s simply absurd. Ergo, what’s the problem?

15. Well, here’s my theory.

    The church’s attitude towards pornography worked well enough before the internet. Pornography was a Very Big Deal. It was Evil. It was also kind of rare and exotic. It took a certain amount of effort, and the risk of public exposure, to get it. You had to go somewhere and find it, and maybe someone you knew from church would see you buy that magazine or come out of that forbidden store. So porn was easy to avoid. It was easy for church members to feel set apart from “the filthy things of the world.”

    If a Mormon did indulge, then the furtiveness, guilt, and shame that the church teaches would usually make him quickly throw away the porn. He’d feel sad and pray a lot, but since getting more porn required an effort, it was easy enough not to. “Repentance” was pretty easy.

    But now porn is always available. If you have internet — if you live an ordinary life, iow — porn is never more than a few seconds away. You can’t throw your porn away anymore. There’s always more. And, unless there’s someone monitoring your computer use, there’s little worry of getting caught. Those are important changes.

    Because the furtiveness, guilt, and shame that the church teaches obviously prevents Mormons from casually enjoying porn, but it also prevents them from casually not enjoying it.

    By that I mean that it’s hard for Mormons to simply indulge once in awhile and feel a little guilty but not really worry about it. They’ve been taught that porn is a Very Big Deal and its Evil. So not only can they not think, “That was fun” and go on their way, they can’t simply think “Oops!” and go on their way either.

    Now they’re faced with this Very Big Evil Deal, but they can’t get away from it. Porn is always there waiting for them. And there’s a whole culture of “porn addiction” surrounding them. There’s no one there to tell them that it’s actually pretty normal behavior, that pretty much everybody does it, and almost no one has a problem with it, so don’t worry if you do it once in awhile. Everybody acts like it’s a horrible sin and a Danger rather than a mild self-indulgence at worst, and no one believes that more than the poor wankers themselves.

    And that’s where some of them fall into a sort of porn death spiral. They feel guilty and ashamed, and what makes them feel a little better? Porn. But that makes them feel guilty and ashamed again. So they need more porn. More guilt and shame. More porn. A vicious circle results, and something very like addiction does occur.

    And this is going to continue until the church finally comes to its senses and lightens up. I think the church’s treatment of porn will eventually, after many years and a lot of suffering, come to resemble its treatment of youthful masturbation. It has to go from its current 1950s-Mark-E-Peterson-tie-your-hand-to-the-bedpost attitude to something more realistic. It has to treat porn the way it treats youthful masturbation: the church won’t come out and say “Everybody does it, so its no big deal.” But everybody does do it. So it’s no big deal. That’s how every sensible bishop treats it now. (I realize that there are probably plenty of not-sensible bishops out there, but the mainstream attitude now is that it’s just not that big a deal.) The church has to realize that porn is no big deal either. Until it does, it’s going to go on creating “porn addicts.”

16. Thanks, Prof. Whatever the scientific evidence may be, to the brethren it is self-evident that pornography is a bad thing.

    I would not look for a hidden meaning.

17. I’m with Hellmut. I think the old guys in charge actually just think it’s immoral and therefore their duty to save their flock from sin.

    Kuri, I couldn’t have said it better.

18. Authoritarian religions have a deep need to control the sexual behaviour of their members. My source is unimpeachable: it’s 1984. Long, but worth reading in the context of this discussion.

    Unlike Winston, [Julia] had grasped the inner meaning of the Party’s sexual puritanism. It was not merely that the sex instinct created a world of its own which was outside the Party’s control and which therefore had to be destroyed if possible. What was more important was that sexual privation induced hysteria, which was desirable because it could be transformed into war-fever and leader-worship. The way she put it was: ‘When you make love you’re using up energy; and afterwards you feel happy and don’t give a damn for anything. They can’t bear you to feel like that. They want you to be bursting with energy all the time. All this marching up and down and cheering and waving flags is simply sex gone sour. If you’re happy inside yourself, why should you get excited about Big Brother and the Three-Year Plans and the Two Minutes Hate and all the rest of their bloody rot?’

    That was very true, he thought. There was a direct intimate connexion between chastity and political orthodoxy. For how could the fear, the hatred, and the lunatic credulity which the Party needed in its members be kept at the right pitch, except by bottling down some powerful instinct and using it as a driving force? The sex impulse was dangerous to the Party, and the Party had turned it to account.

    And after you’ve given them your sexuality, that most personal part of yourself, what else would you then refuse them?

    Maybe also ‘porn’ is a codeword for ‘Internet’. When they say “Don’t look at porn”, they’re saying “don’t use the Net”. You know what you find on the Net, don’t you? Damaging information and sensible people with other viewpoints. Gasp.

19. I think that there is a lot to this, David. For one thing, Joseph Smith and Brigham Young both used polygamy to dominate the members including Emma Smith.

20. Given that sex is essential for life, Mormon GAs might as well be spouting off about addictions to air and water. Unfortunately Mormons arent the only intellectual masturbators out there: http://www.thatsfit.com/2007/02/10/is-food-more-addictive-than-heroine/

    But on Masturbation, as I commented on another blog recently, Im pretty sure Mormon masturphobia will die w/ BKP. Hes the only apostle who still even hints about it, apparently muzzled from using the word masturbation by the 1st Presidency. You have to go back almost two decades to cite a GA even using the word. None of my kids Bishops have asked about it and that includes my 3 grown children. The CHI is silent on the matter. Also given the crimes committed by pedophiles in leadership positions that many churches, including LDS, have had to deal with, the church would be foolish to keep up the sexual interrogations of youth behind a closed door that were common place a generation ago.

21. I think it’s partially a control issue (as explained @17) and partially due to the particular personalities in charge (as explained @19).

    The guys in charge are from an earlier generation in which the situation was very different (see @14). This is compounded by the fact that their own youthful memories are from so long ago that they’ve probably morphed into a fuzzy golden “the way we [never] were.” So it’s difficult for the leaders to give useful counsel on this issue.

22. Since porn these days often takes the form of a set of pictures that links to another set, to another set, etc, a thousand windows of porn can seem pretty terrible. But I think this is just the nature of the beast. I’d be interested to know how people psychologically make their decisions to stay within a frame of “preferred material” or if they wander outside and beyond that frame. Wandering strikes me as curiosity more than compulsion, particularly if you say to yourself “Oh my goodness” and let go of your *ahem* rather than “Oh, wow” and lean closer toward the screen, drooling. =p

    I agree with Daniel@18 that it’s an intergenerational technology phobia, and Jonathan@11 that porn compulsion is a worldview issue rather than an addiction.

23. I’m a closet apostate — I don’t believe the Joseph’s Myth — but I do go every Sunday (shudder)

    But with that said, I think part of it is about enjoying sex. Most LDS women haven’t had an orgasm. With the preaching about masturbation, most members who have masturbated feel guilty (i.e. all the guys) and most womens don’t know what good sex feels like. Liberating sex is something that is foreign to the LDS Church, especially the women. Sex is utilitarian in that it is used to pop out a half dozen kids.

    Porn, methinks, causes people to get aroused and to experiment with themselves. Masturbation leads to understanding how you like to be touched and what it feels like to have a powerful orgasm. A women who has brought herself to orgasm knows how to guide her man and how to get pleasure out of sex.

    In contrast, the Church wants you to drop the “natural man” and to “submit to Christ.” An active and fulfilling sex life leads to a sense of well being and happiness. And through personal experience, having a fulfilling sex life leads to less need for the spiritual stuff. By harping on masturbation/porn, the membership is made to feel guilty and return to praying instead of enjoying the “forbidden fruit” of the loom; the membership basically transforms the sexual frustration into prayer, fasting and scripture study. Besides, too much time knocking boots means not enough time doing Church stuff.

24. Alastor Moody — I think the experience for women in the LDS church varies quite a bit.

    The message that “masturbation is something that only concerns the boys” naturally makes some girls feel just that much more freakish for doing what comes naturally. (Read the novella Youth Conference for more on that perspective.)

    For others, the situation is very much the way you describe it — the church “morality” lessons cultivate an attitude of “don’t know, don’t want to know” when it comes to girls/women and their own sexual desires and responses.

    And speaking of porn teachings, early reports indicate that is has already some up in the priesthood session of conference:

    Perhaps it was the father in me or maybe the grandfather, but the tears in those young womens eyes brought tears to mine and the questions they asked left me askingwhy is there so much moral decay around us and why are so many individuals and families falling victim to it, being tragically scarred by it?

    Oh great, more encouragement to the ladies that they ought to be devastated about other people’s intimate bodily functions. I know, he’s not addressing the women, here, but he’s helping create the expectation that ought to be traumatized (tragically scarred?) by learning that their husbands (or sons) have masturbated to porn…

25. My preference would be that the GAs just periodically say avoid porn as a corruption of what human sexuality between husband and wife is meant to be and move on. It shouldnt be the focus of a twenty minute talk, which probably creates more LDS porn viewing. And when they get into ridiculous talk about scarred minds and addiction, they lose all credibility and people start dismissing any valid stuff they have to say.

    Alaster,
    From my BYU experiences after falling off the LofC wagon post mission, Id say LDS women in general are quite good at it. My motto was In Long Island ice tea, veritas. Everyones experiences are different.

26. It’s gotten so bad on the Internet front that even never-mo bloggers are now following along:

    http://www.americablog.com/2010/04/mormons-are-now-combatting-pornography.html

    Blowback and bigger fishbowl bought and paid for by Prop 8 supporters.

27. And, yeah, I think Steve EM’s experience is supported by the data:

    58% of LDS women report premarital sex

    http://www.postmormon.org/exp_e/index.php/discussions/viewthread/20621/

28. “Sex addiction” and “porn addiction” are recent social constructions that reflect another merging of religion and science…The Society for the Scientific Study of Sexuality (SSSS) conducted a comprehensive review of porn research and has provided a nice summary on their website. Overall, porn doesn’t change people’s sexual repertoire much. Furthermore, frequent porn use has not been shown to cause increased violence or negative attitudes toward women. Most Americans seem to spend much more time watching television than “sex addicts” or “porn addicts” do with their “addictions.” Perhaps most of us would be healthier and happier if we got off the couch and got down with it a bit more often!

    Dr. DJ Williams, Author, “Playing Dangerous Games”

29. Copycats.

    Generally speaking, we tend to approach sexuality as if it is the most important thing on earth and, therefore, we should know as little about it as possible.

30. That sounds pretty definitive. Thanks for stopping by, Dr. Williams.

31. While porn isn’t a problem per se, becoming convinced that you’re addicted to it and feeling shamed by your desire for it is a problem. I may make light of it, but perhaps I’m compensating for the years of misery I experienced because I was convinced that I was addicted to a pernicious influence.

    If there are any researchers listening, it would be helpful to study the phenomenon from a different perspective: instead of asking “is this an addiction?”, ask questions like “what leads to the perception of sexual addiction in the self?”, “what are the effects of believing oneself to be sexually addicted?”, and so on.

32. Here’s the SSSS website. I did not see the specific article mentioned @28. However, here’s Playing Dangerous Games.

33. chanson, try this link:
    http://www.sexscience.org/uploads/media/071079_SSSS_D_rev2_lo.pdf

    Jonathan, I agree that is an interesting question, but I don’t think sex researchers have taken it up for the most part because they wanted to establish the fact that there is no addiction. Also, I think the answer is somewhat obvious, generally, though the specifics and may not be: religion is generally the cause, but how it does it specifically through psychology has not been specified.

35. Two comments on the video:
    Doesn’t Elder Holland seem like he knows just a little too well what this “addiction” is like? Wouldn’t it just be hilarious if he was assigned to speak on this because he was caught looking at porn?

    Second comment – Where the hell did the “therapist” get his numbers? 60% of porn “addicts” relapse after their first attempt to get “off” porn? Seriously!?! I love how they are trying to create a disease out of something that the scientific evidence pretty clearly states is not a disease.

    Why can’t people realize that we have evolved to want sex? Most people (not all – some people are, in fact, asexual) really want sex. Unless you’re going to spend all of your time pursuing actual sex, getting off every so often with the help of porn is basically just doing what evolution has led us to want to do.

    News Flash for Mormon GAs:
    The “natural man” (a.k.a. humans as a result of evolutionary selection pressures) wants to copulate! Unless you’re going to subsidize lower working hours so people can spend more time screwing at home, lay off the anti-porn BS. You sound retarded really stupid and you’re going to lose this battle!

36. Hey Prof, I love you, man, but that reference to disabled people is probably not useful. 😉

37. Sorry, no offense to disabled people intended. I was just using it in the “slow” or “not very bright” sense. I fixed it. 😉

38. I’m wondering who exactly is putting together this material. Combating pornography takes a level of “professional” nuance, so I’m wondering if there are specific individuals from AMCAP that the GAs turn to and trust. (Just so you all know, as of November of last year, the AMCAP Journal, which has been renamed Issues in Religion and Psychotherapy has made all its issues public; I’d imagine that it’s great resource to stay on top of trends in LDS Social Services). Anyhow, is “Where to Turn for Help” a common LDS phrase? Because the Foundation for Attraction Research used the similar phrase for the their first book on SSA last year: “Where to Turn and How to Help.”

39. Did I mess up those links? O_o Here they are again:
    AMCAP
    Issues in Religion and Psychotherapy
    Foundation for Attraction Research

40. I thought I’d peruse the site a bit and see if they were giving any sort of fundamental premise for why porn is bad.

    What I found was this article where the author, Donald L. Hilton, Jr., a neurosurgeon who now works for LdS Family Services counselling those with porn/sex addiction tries to tie the actual proven phenomenon of drug addiction to the supposed phenomenon of porn addiction. He legitimately describes how a real addiction happens, but totally fails in showing that porn is actually addictive. The research he cites in trying to prove porn is addictive are about drug addiction (Structural Abnormalities in the Brains of Human Subjects Who Use Methamphetamine,) what he calls the natural addiction of obesity (Brain abnormalities in human obesity: A voxel-based morphometry study.) and then cites research which he says is about sexual addiction but is actually about paedophilia (Structural Brain Abnormalities in the Frontostriatal System and Cerebellum in Pedophilia,) He concludes by then saying “Studies are currently underway to examine shrinkage specifically in pornography addiction.”

    Basically he completely misrepresents what research he’s actually citing and then says even though there’s no research that says porn is addictive in the way he’s saying (basically that it’s just like heroin) – because porn is in the same category as sexual addiction (even though the research was about paedophilia not sex addiction – which aren’t even at all the same thing) therefore porn must be addictive – regardless of the lack of evidence.

    It’s really sad how an obviously intelligent person who has at least some scientific training is totally unable to operate scientifically in his “research”.

41. Science will always be in service of doctrine, and if there is no exact science, then metaphor will suffice.

42. The latest email broadcast from NOM just landed in my inbox and oddly enough, it was mostly about porn and directed to this link: The Social Costs of Pornography

    Looks like a vehicle for bringing together Opus Dei and LDS (e.g., Jill Manning).

43. That list of presenters looks like a who’s who of bad scholars who have, somehow, made it big. The worst part about this is that the conference is legitimized by including participants from prestigious, legitimate universities.

44. Just noticed this over at r/exmormon: LDS church has called 2,500 missionaries to fight porn and sex addiction

    Bizarro world.

45. I’m still not married, but if my bishop ever begins asking details about the sex life I have with my wife, I’ll just tell him it’s none of his business. I’ve always been taught that the church does not look behind closed bedroom doors and what goes on there is between husband and wife.

    Sadly this doesn’t stop people from asking what’s “appropriate” behind closed bedroom doors. For the love of the Lord, isn’t that also something to be discussed with the spouse? I know people who have prayed before intimacy and then said that it was much more fulfilling afterwards and they felt they were able to express themselves intimately, appropriately, and were not ashamed.

46. Everyone commenting seem to be of the It’s No Big Deal mentality when it comes to porn. Afterall, viewing porn Doesn’t Hurt Anybody Else! I have a pearl of Wisdom to share with you.

    As a matter of fact, viewing porn actually DOES HURT other people, many other people. Young men viewing porn keeps them from growing up and being a man, starting a career/business/etc, and worst of all keeps them from pursuing a girl to marry (for the purpose of having sex and releasing those strong sexual feelings). When a boy can go home every night and release his sexual feelings to the endless endless endless concourses of bodies, boobs, butts, crotches available on the computer, there is no motivation for him to pursue a nice girl to actually marry. Then the result of this is that all the girls in his age group (who have sexual feelings of their own, btw) have no one pursuing them to marry them. This is a sad epidemic. Porn is not just a little thing. It really is a Very Big Deal. It keeps families from ever even getting started in the way I just described. It separates men from their natural ability to chase after a girl to marry for the purpose of having sex within the safe bonds of marriage. It keeps women from getting to have their secure social role, that of wife and mother. How many of us know extremely nice single women who would love to get married? Where are the men their age? AT HOME GLUED TO THEIR COMPUTERS LOOKING AT PORN EVERY NIGHT!!!!!

47. All too true. Since 1996, when internet porn became widely available, no male who owns a computer has gotten a job or gotten married. Google it if you don’t believe me.

48. Ginny, really? Basically what you’re saying:
    1) Jerking off to porn is better than sex with a partner, which means no more sex with partners
    2) Women cannot pursue men but must be the passive sex waiting to be pursued
    3) Jerking off to porn prevents social/psychological/emotional maturation
    4) Only men masturbate to porn

    Oh, and as kuri said, this is clearly an epidemic – no one is having sex today. Everyone’s just sitting in front of computer monitors masturbating! 😉

    Again, Ginny, really?

49. Ginny, the point is not that porn is alright. The point is the more we obsess about porn, the worse it gets.

    In the army, I could always tell who grew up in the most repressed environment because those guys had their noses in porn magazines all the time.

    By contrast, in my family my parents talked openly about biology and procreation. As a result, I could care less about pornography. Although the attraction of a naked woman isn’t lost on me, I think porn is silly and ridiculous.

    If porn is an issue, the worst thing that you can do is to turn it into a big deal.

    Less Mormon males would consume pornography if we cultivated a more rational attitude about sex.

50. 5) The only reason to get married is to have sex.

    I go back and forth about porn. Ginny, you may be right in at least one aspect: growing up means getting beyond the adolescent obsession with sex and porn. Adult sexuality is much more balanced, and less angst ridden. Not that adults are never interested in porn, but that it finds an appropriate place in their lives, depending on personal interest.

    If that’s true, it’s one more reason that Mormon culture with its obsession with and legalistic approach to sexuality is stuck in adolescence. Fowler’s Stage 3 anyone?