YWs New Value "Virtue".

[_Ray A]

A young man who fathers a child is not allowed to serve a mission-period.

Unless, of course, he's God.

[_harmony]

Unless, of course, he's God.

*snort*

[_Jason Bourne]

This was 10 years ago. I hope you're right, about what happens now.



I hope you're right

Harmony,

The raise the bar was to prevent exactly what you describe and I am right. I have had to apply these rules. They are not messing around and in some cases may have swung to hard along the lines of not letting young men that may have messed up but truly repented.

The direction is if the YM has done things that prohibit missionary service (mainly sexual sin but drug and alcohol abuse may also prohibit mission service depending on degree. Emotional instability can also prevent a YM from serving) that local leaders should help them repent and then find local service opportunities. I helped with a young man that had fathered a child at 16. The child had been put up for adoption. The YM had lived a fairly exemplary life from that point on, had repented but still was not allowed to serve. So we were able to get him involved as a church service missionary ( he really wanted to do some sort of service).

Another YM had confessed some minor petting issues and other sexual activity. After a period of time he was able to submit his papers and received a call. He went into the MTC. But it seems that between the time of the call and his entrance into the MTC there were some additional encounters (not intercourse) with his girl friend. He ended up telling this to the MTC MP and they sent him home and told him he could reapply in a year assuming he behaved himself.

So yea the Church is serious about YM and sexual sin and missions. So they get told about this all through their AP years.

[Guest]

Repentance/offences? This means there is something wrong with sex. You can call it anything you want - no need to label it or teach lessons. The entire notion that sex is anything other than something almost every human being does and is healthy and normal (while being careful, taking precautions, etc...) is where I just go away from this culture.

I am just stunned by some of the thought processes here.

Sex= baaad. We must shame someone for it and we gotta tell them they should seek repentance for sex?

That is beyond bizarre, to me.

Pretend moment for those that don't believe in God anymore or even those that do.

Let's pretend I have a special magic decoder ring. This special magic decoder ring I put on my finger makes me sparkle. Now, I put this special magic decoder ring on and do a chant and a dance that makes me super sparkly. After I do this special chant and dance and wear this special ring the sex is ooookay. Now, I remove the special decoder ring, don't do the chant/dance and sex is not under the special magical twinkly sparkly mist of being okay.

Cuckoooooo!!!

~edited to add~

I think committment is good and being in a loving long term relationship is perfectly fine, too. I think when children are involved this is optimal and am NOT against marriage as it's (in my view) a way to stabilize society. I'm just commenting on the sex outside of marriage bit.

[_Jason Bourne]

You can see a summary of the 2002 letter about Raising the Bar from our own Rollo T here:

http://www.exmormon.org/Mormon/mormon181.htm

Note that this letter is now expanded and part of the GHBI.

[_Jason Bourne]

Well Moniker religion, not just LDS view sex and where it is appropriate much differently than you do.

That said I have tempered some of what I think were my more rigid views about sexual issues. But it is tough to cast off 45 years of indoctrination and goodness knows that the LDS leaders of the 70s when I was young were pretty tough about sexual sins.

[_Ray A]

Another YM had confessed some minor petting issues and other sexual activity. After a period of time he was able to submit his papers and received a call. He went into the MTC. But it seems that between the time of the call and his entrance into the MTC there were some additional encounters (not intercourse) with his girl friend. He ended up telling this to the MTC MP and they sent him home and told him he could reapply in a year assuming he behaved himself.

So yea the Church is serious about YM and sexual sin and missions. So they get told about this all through their AP years.

I'm kind of wondering if Joseph had to pass a PPI with God about his "petting" with Fanny Algers?

[_Jason Bourne]

I'm kind of wondering if Joseph had to pass a PPI with God about his "petting" with Fanny Algers?

[_Scottie]

Repentance/offences? This means there is something wrong with sex. You can call it anything you want - no need to label it or teach lessons. The entire notion that sex is anything other than something almost every human being does and is healthy and normal (while being careful, taking precautions, etc...) is where I just go away from this culture.

I am just stunned by some of the thought processes here.

Sex= baaad. We must shame someone for it and we gotta tell them they should seek repentance for sex?

That is beyond bizarre, to me.

Pretend moment for those that don't believe in God anymore or even those that do.

Let's pretend I have a special magic decoder ring. This special magic decoder ring I put on my finger makes me sparkle. Now, I put this special magic decoder ring on and do a chant and a dance that makes me super sparkly. After I do this special chant and dance and wear this special ring the sex is ooookay. Now, I remove the special decoder ring, don't do the chant/dance and sex is not under the special magical twinkly sparkly mist of being okay.

Cuckoooooo!!!

~edited to add~

I think committment is good and being in a loving long term relationship is perfectly fine, too. I think when children are involved this is optimal and am NOT against marriage as it's (in my view) a way to stabilize society. I'm just commenting on the sex outside of marriage bit.

Personally, I don't believe teenagers are emotionally mature enough to engage in sex. This is why I am all for teaching chastity.

[Guest]

Well Moniker religion, not just LDS view sex and where it is appropriate much differently than you do.

Right, that's because they believe in God and think sex is a sin.

YET, my mother was Methodist and she had sex before marriage. My father was raised something and he had partners before marriage. My paternal grandparents had boyfriends/girlfriends before marriage. My paternal grandmother was a model in NY and grew up in the great depression and she had relationships before she met my grandfather.

Most people I grew up with went to Church and they were all having sex as teens and went nuts in college and I can't recall any talk of repentance. I don't have one female friend that didn't have boyfriends before marriage and it is just no big deal.

I have lived in different states in America. Sometimes I lived in affluent areas and sometimes I slummed it. The norm is not what is being portrayed here from my experience.

Most of the people I've worked with and gone to school with said they were a Christian, yet, I don't know one of them that thought sex outside of marriage was something to gasp at or was taboo. Now, infedility is one thing, yet, being in a sexual relationship outside of marriage is just as American as apple pie.


http://seniorjournal.com/NEWS/Sex/6-12-21-AlmostAll.htm

Almost all Americans Have Sex before Marriage and Have for Decades

Even 9 of 10 of today's senior women born in 40's did it

December 21, 2006 - When you were young and thought you were the only one that didn't do it – have premarital sex, that is - you were probably right. Almost all Americans have sex before marrying, says a new study. Contrary to the public perception that premarital sex is much more common now than in the past, the study shows that even among women who were born in the 1940s, nearly nine in 10 had sex before marriage. Unfortunately, the study did not include much about senior citizens born before 1940.

Public opinion polls over the last 20 years have consistently shown that about 35% of adults say premarital sex is always or almost always wrong, according to the author. In the same vein, there is a common popular perception that most or all of those who came of age before the “sexual revolution” of the 1960s and 1970s waited until they married to have sex, and that it is necessary to revert to the behaviors of that earlier time in order to eliminate the problems of unintended pregnancy and sexually transmitted diseases.

However, research has questioned whether such a chaste period ever existed.

According to this analysis, by age 44, 99% of respondents had had sex, and 95% had done so before marriage. Even among those who abstained from sex until age 20 or older, 81% had had premarital sex by age 44.

The vast majority of Americans have sex before marriage, including those who abstained from sex during their teenage years, according to “Trends in Premarital Sex in the United States, 1954–2003,” by Lawrence B. Finer, published in the January/February 2007 issue of Public Health Reports.

The study uses data from several rounds of the federal National Survey of Family Growth to examine sexual behavior before marriage, and how it has changed over time.

“This is reality-check research. Premarital sex is normal behavior for the vast majority of Americans, and has been for decades,” says study author Finer, director of domestic research at the Guttmacher Institute.

“The data clearly show that the majority of older teens and adults have already had sex before marriage, which calls into question the federal government’s funding of abstinence-only-until-marriage programs for 12–29-year-olds. It would be more effective to provide young people with the skills and information they need to be safe once they become sexually active—which nearly everyone eventually will.”

Indeed, while the likelihood that Americans will have sex before marriage has remained virtually unchanged since the 1950s, people now wait longer to get married, so they are sexually active and unmarried for much longer than in the past. During this period, Dr. Finer concludes, young adults have an especially great need for accurate information about how to protect themselves against unintended pregnancies and sexually transmitted infections.

Highlights

● The results of the analysis indicate that premarital sex is highly normative behavior.

● Almost all individuals of both sexes have intercourse before marrying, and the proportion has been roughly similar for the past 40 years.

● The increase seen beginning with the 1964–73 cohort may be partly due to increased availability of effective contraception (in particular, the pill), which made it less likely that sex would lead to pregnancy; but even among women who were born in the 1940s, nearly nine in ten had had premarital sex by age 44.

● Among those who did not have sex at all during their teen years, eight in ten eventually had premarital sex.

● Premarital sex as normative behavior is not surprising in an era when men and women typically marry in their mid-to-late twenties. Indeed, not only is premarital sex nearly universal by age 30, but it is also very common at much younger ages.

● Evidence from the past 50 years suggests that establishing abstinence until marriage as normative behavior is a challenging policy goal.

● Instead, these findings argue for education and interventions that provide young people with the skills and information they need to protect themselves from unintended pregnancy and sexually transmitted diseases once they become sexually active.

[/quote]