Green Oasis

She is a petite, delicate, blue-eyed blonde, while he is a strapping young man with auburn hair and soft brown eyes which never stray for long from her face.

They hold hands, they kiss, they stroke each other’s arms, they listen attentively to each other. They are totally besotted.

What makes this scene so disturbing, however, is the fact that Danielle and Nick are half brother and sister.

Danielle and Nick only met as adults. Danielle says of their first meeting “I was nervous about meeting Nick because although he was my brother, he was also a stranger,… We just clicked straight away. It’s impossible to explain. I just felt drawn to him, as if he was the person I’d been waiting for all my life.” Three weeks later they became lovers.

They might be suffering from genetic sexual attraction:

Genetic sexual attraction is a recognised psychological phenomenon, which sometimes affects siblings or blood relatives separated at birth, who then meet later as adults.

The term is believed to have first been coined in America in the 1980s by a woman called Barbara Gonyo, who wrote about the unexpected lust she felt for the adult son she’d given up for adoption 26 years earlier.…

According to research, first published in the British Medical Journal in 1995, by Dr Maurice Greenberg and Professor Roland Littlewood, 50 per cent of people seeking post-adoption counselling “experienced strong sexual feelings in reunions” with their real family.

This can happen between siblings, mother/son and father/daughter and is believed to be the adult response to the absence of “bonding” in childhood.

The natural repulsion brothers and sisters often feel for each other as children is a safeguard against incest and those who miss out on that bonding, according to psychologists, can develop obsessive feelings for their sibling as an adult.

Those feelings may or may not become sexual, but those that do take that course challenge our notion of incest because there is no coercion or abuse between consenting adults.

Do we treat them as perpetrators of a disgusting crime against nature, or victims of hardwired sexual attractions to inappropriate individuals?

Luke Dittrich at Esquire magazine has written an excellent, provocative article about the death of Bill Conradt at the hands of To Catch a Predator. (via kottke.org) I mentioned this case last July in Jailbait, a post that generated some wonderful discussion. The article poses these questions, echoing some of the ideas expressed in the previous discussion:

Is it possible that Bill Conradt, an adult pretending to be a teenager, might have suspected, correctly, that “Luke” was also an adult pretending? Yes: Everybody knows that the Internet is a swamp of false identities. And is there any evidence that Conradt had ever acted on the longings that his chats illuminated? On the contrary, he chose not to when presented with the opportunity. Was it morally wrong for Bill Conradt to engage in online sex chats with an apparent child? Of course. But did his actions merit the response to them? Before answering this question, a man should take stock of the history of the desires he’s never acted on, and whether he should ever have to defend that history in court, or see it detailed on television.

If I only ever pointed out what I believe to be the shortcomings of the LDS church without praising the positive, I would prove myself to be nothing more than a partisan. With that in mind, I must praise the LDS church’s latest pamphlet on homosexuality, God Loveth His Children, which I found out about through the Sunstone blog. This pamphlet acknowledges that people may be born with homosexual attractions (i.e. just like other people are born with heterosexual attractions) and encouraging members of the church to treat those with homosexual attractions with love.

The pamphlet is not perfect, but it’s a good step toward a healthier view of homosexuality.

Years ago while driving to work, I saw something that made me want to cry.

All over town in Las Vegas, there are little metal boxes along the sidewalks. In other cities, these would dispense your run-of-the-mill newspapers. In Las Vegas, many of them dispense advertisements for adult entertainment. Naked women with stars or hearts covering strategic portions of their anatomy sell their wares. It is Sin City after all. We wear our vices on our sleeves for all the world to see.

While waiting at a red light that morning, I glanced over at a mother walking down the sidewalk holding her daughter’s hand. The girl was probably only four years old. When they came to some of those notorious boxes, the little girl’s eyes went wide as she stared at something that I couldn’t see. She kept her eyes glued to that something as they walked past. I had a pretty good idea what she saw.

I had a newborn daughter of my own. It struck me that my little girl would probably see those same things as she got older. It broke my heart to realize what that little girl was learning and what my daughter had ahead of her.

When I saw the following video from Dove’s Campaign for Real Beauty (the same people who brought us evolution), I immediately remembered that little girl on the sidewalk.

Masturbation (and more) is on my mind again.

I just read a comment by “struggling” about his struggles with masturbation. I can feel echoes of my own life in his story.

The other issue here is that while on my mission there could have been no time in my life where I was more dedicated to abstaining or avoiding sexual thoughts or activities. Furthermore my days were always completely planned and scheduled so it is not like I was not busy and being idle. I had never masturbated until the near end of my mission and that seems really quite odd to me. It nearly destroyed me. I thought I would be sent home from my mission cuz I had read the statement that no young man should go on a mission who engages in such an activity. I fell on my knees in some disgusting foreign country bathroom and weeped excessively while expressing the most intimate of feelings with my Father in Heaven and promising never to do it again. After that I tortured myself mentally and emotionally…maybe even physically. I constantly fasted for strength(once for 48 hours), prayed, confessed, memorized scriptures, wore tight clothing, went without sleep to avoid being in bed where the “temptation” was strongest and all the while trying to serve as the EQ president in my singles unit while battling thoughts of failure, inadequacy, and at times suicide.…

I was just trying to do what the church leaders kept telling me to do. I looked for relief. I read a lot and I read from Miracle of Forgiveness, To the Young men only, talks by Featherstone, some article which may or may not have been from Elder Petersen, my scriptures, skousen books and many more that were not directly correlated to the topic on tab; to what end I am not sure. All I wanted was relief not anxiety. That is what I was searching for. One could argue that I was anxious because I continued in the practice, maybe so, but I fought with everything I had. Every ounce of energy was dedicated to winning this battle every night and after weeks of battling, struggling, enduring, the battle would extend to two fronts as “tension” would infiltrate my daily activities. The funny thing is that I would not even consider myself a “Peter Priesthood” type of guy. Most of my friends were not even LDS but I cant help but feel bad for what those “pristine” mormon children feel when they cannot overcome masturbation or anything that one could logically call an even more grave mistake.

Then there’s Sister Mary Lisa with her painful, touching story of being pregnant out of wedlock and later married to a non-Mormon. She speaks of the pain and humiliation she endured for 13 years.

A couple months later, I realized I was pregnant. All I could think about was my high priest dad’s words from my childhood: “Any daughter of mine who comes home pregnant out of wedlock is no longer my daughter.”…

Being in the primary presidency for years, I was expected to teach all those diverse children about eternal families and what they should strive for in their own lives, because anything less is not what righteous people do. I remember teaching about how families can be together forever while looking into the hurt and wounded eyes of Brother Z., the teacher whose impending divorce had just been announced the week before, and whose daughter was crying in the back row. I hid my own pain well, I thought. Until later that night when my son asked me, “How come WE’RE not sealed together forever?” How do you explain such a nasty concept to a child? Your father doesn’t believe the church is true, honey, and if we don’t go to the temple, then we aren’t sealed together forever. “But why not? He loves me, and I love him!” I know. I know. It’s God’s plan. “But where will we GO when we die? Who will I be with??” If you are really righteous, and marry your own sweetheart in the temple someday, you’ll be with her and your children! “But what about you and Dad?” Oh, don’t worry about us. It’ll all work out in the next life. I’ll be OK. “But will I see you there?” Pain like that eviscerates and is impossible to hid from your children.…

Imagine my horror in finding out that the beloved prophet Joseph Smith (whom I had admired enough to name my son after, along with Joseph in Egypt) had married over 30 women, some of whom were still married to men he had sent on missions! Imagine my horror in reading the accounts of how he convinced Heber C. Kimball to give his 14 year old daughter to him in plural marriage by promising her entire family eternal salvation if they said yes! Imagine my horror when I found out that he did his plural wife thing behind Emma’s back, and denied it publicly when someone called him on it!!

I had been made to feel low and dirty and worthless for my two weeks of sex and my lifetime of keeping an “illegitimate” baby out of wedlock, all by the very church that had been founded by a guy like Joseph Smith???

You know, I can think of only one way to express how I feel about teaching children to be ashamed of their sexuality:

Fuck… That… Shit!

Don’t even come near my daughters with that poison. You seem like a nice person. I don’t want to have to beat you down.

I’m fed up. The shame implicit in the way the Law of Chastity is typically taught is mental and emotional child abuse. I know you’re trying to keep them clean and pure (nobody wants to be a chewed up piece of used bubble gum), but your delusional good intentions would pave the way to a hell full of self-loathing for my daughters. I can’t let that happen.

If one of my daughters comes home pregnant outside of marriage or—heaven forbid!—she masturbates, she will be received as always with open arms and heartfelt kisses. She will never be less than my beautiful, my priceless, my incomparable daughter.

You can call me a sinner if you want. You can blame my non-belief on my not-so-secret sins if that makes you feel justified in your beliefs. But leave me and mine alone. I’m happy to be rid of you and your hateful ideas.

So put down your copy of The Miracle of Forgiveness and nobody gets hurt. Close the door on your way out.