Green Oasis

[This post is an imagined guest post on the Good in Bed blog. I just had to get this out of my head, so here it is. Some of what I say will only make sense if you keep that in mind.]

Part 1

I curled up under the sheets and earnestly prayed that I would die. I had never prayed more fervently. The thought of facing even one more day terrified me.

I had come home that night from spending time with my fiancée and absently turned on the television. A Frontline show about the pornography industry was on PBS. Before I knew what was happening, before I had a chance to change the channel, I saw familiar sights and heard familiar sounds. A yearning fire was lit inside my brain. I prayed for deliverance from my temptation. Perhaps my prayer wasn’t very sincere. The thing that I had battled against all of my youth drew me inexorably toward itself.

Thoughts of all that I stood to lose flashed through my mind. Chief among these was the temple marriage that was scheduled only weeks away. None of this mattered enough in that moment to dissuade me from succumbing to my addiction and masturbating.

Immediately afterward, a crushing weight of shame pressed down on my shoulders. What could I tell my fiancée? I was positive that she would cast me off. I didn’t want to face my bishop. I was certain that he would call off the marriage. I had no doubt that I was irredeemably lost. I didn’t want to face God. I felt that He should end my life because I had failed my test in life. I saw no reason to continue my miserable life. If ever I understood the scripture that said “mountains and rocks, Fall on us, and hide us from the face of him that sitteth on the throne, and from the wrath of the Lamb”, it was that horrible night. (Revelation 6:16)

I slept very little that night, and only fitfully. In the morning, I slowly worked up the courage to call the bishop and confess. I could hear the pain in his voice as he asked me to come to his office immediately. Later that day, I also confessed to my fiancée. To my great relief, she was ready to forgive me. After much discussion and prayer and with the bishop’s blessing, we still went on to be sealed in the temple.

Part 2

I am the happy husband of that forgiving young woman and the proud father of two beautiful, intelligent girls.

I enjoy my relationship with my wife, including our sexual relationship. However, some nights when I want to have sex, she is too tired or stressed from a day of corralling our girls. In general, I seem to be the more interested partner, at least at this point in our lives. This used to be hard for me. I would feel disappointed and rejected. I felt sexually thwarted. It was easy to feel resentful. I wasn’t very sympathetic.

Things have changed since then. When my hopes for sex with my wife aren’t in the cards, I may feel disappointed that I can’t be with my wife, but I sympathize with the reasons that she can’t be available to me at that moment and I take my sexual needs into my own hands. (Sorry, I couldn’t resist.)

For various reasons, I have become convinced that masturbation is not a sin. For one thing, it is never mentioned in the Standard Works. Some think that the story of Onan was about masturbation. The truth is that he was struck down for failing to live up to his obligation to his new wife and her deceased former husband, his brother.

Secondly, I learned about the history of attitudes toward masturbation in and out of the church. It seems clear to me from what I have learned that the attitudes toward masturbation that I was taught were based on people’s opinions. These opinions originally came out of popular culture, not as a revelation from God. Please bear with me as I paint the picture.

1700s Masturbation is first erroneously connected to insanity and disease in popular and medical literature—anti-masturbation sentiments rise in response—homosexuality and pederasty are erroneously linked to masturbation—hysteria becomes widespread and leads to the popularization of male circumcision (which was previously only a religious rite) in an effort to curb masturbation

1830 Joseph Smith organizes the Church of Christ

1800s Smith remains publicly silent on masturbation leaving no record of any statements on the issue—Brigham Young is also silent on the issue of masturbation leaving no record of any statement on the issue—in the absence of official guidance, members of the church tend to go along with the baseless popular opinion of their day

1870–71 The subject of masturbation is addressed in meetings of the School of the Prophets by Apostles Daniel H. Wells and Lorenzo Snow and President George A. Smith, First Counselor in the First Presidency—polygamy is seen as a cure for masturbation by church leaders—Elder Wells echoed the common sentiment that masturbation would lead to insanity and an early death

1883 Masturbation lumped together with excessive marital coitus as a cause of disease in a meeting of the First Presidency

Late 1800s increased acceptance of the bacterial causes of disease undermines the idea that masturbation leads to disease

1920s and ’30s the Church’s response to masturbation changes to reflect the available evidence—masturbation shame linked with mental health concerns—official church manuals encouraged parental guidance rather than repression of masturbation—church warns against parental overreaction to masturbation

1940s the idea that masturbation leads to insanity fades from professional opinion and is soon all but forgotten in popular thought

1950s several church leaders publish opinions which encourage total abstinence from masturbation—church reverses previous moderate stance, the first time that church policy diverged from the common medical opinion of the day

1958 Elder Bruce R. McConkie publishes Mormon Doctrine with a statement that directly condemns the psychiatric opinion that masturbatory shame is a mental dysfunction thereby creating the impression of an authoritative denunciation of masturbation because of his position as an Apostle

1969 Elder Spencer W. Kimball (still just an Apostle at the time) writes The Miracle of Forgiveness which denounces masturbation and states that religious authority trumps any empirical evidence on the matter

1972 the American Medical Association declares masturbation to be normal behavior—Boy Scout manual is rewritten to affirm the normalcy of masturbation and its positive role in sexual development—25,000 copies of the manual are destroyed at the behest of the Catholic and Mormon churches—revised edition advises boys to counsel with parents and spiritual leaders regarding masturbation—Mormon health care professionals come under increased pressure to condemn masturbation in contravention of their professional oaths and standards

1976 the church distributes pamphlet To Young Men Only, a reprinting of an speech by Elder Boyd K. Packer in which he promoted his personal ideas about sexual physiology and desire which contradicted contemporary empirical medical evidence—the pamphlet promotes the erroneous idea that sexual desire would be almost absent during puberty if it were not incited, that masturbation causes sexual desire

1980s Elder Mark E. Petersen authored Steps in Overcoming Masturbation targeted to young, male missionaries—his pamphlet advocated harsh psychological control methods and aversion therapy techniques to control masturbation—Mormon psychiatrist Cantril Nielsen pays a large settlement in the wrongful death case of 16-year-old Kip Eliason whom he advised to follow his bishop’s counsel to abstain from masturbation in order to be worthy (contrary to the standards of his psychiatric profession)—Kip Eliason committed suicide due to overwhelming feelings of unworthiness while trying to abstain from masturbation—medical experts in the case confirmed that masturbation posed no risks to mental or physical health, but that attempted abstinence from masturbation had a documented history of suicidal risk

1990 LDS church publishes For the Strength of Youth pamphlet which continued to denounce masturbation as morally unclean

1994 Is Kissing Sinful?, a book by church member Grant Von Harrison, is published which promotes the extreme position that “If you allow yourself to become sexually aroused prior to marriage, you commit a moral sin”

1995 In a study of 103 married Mormon women (91% of whom attended church services weekly, 5% monthly), 43% reported that they masturbated currently, 54% when they were younger

2001 The church publishes a highly revised For the Strength of Youth which no longer mentions masturbation by name

2004 And They Were Not Ashamed: Strengthening Marriage through Sexual Fulfillment by church member Laura M. Brotherson aims to counteract some of the sexual shame in popular LDS culture—she admits to suffering from psychosexual shame which caused marital dysfunction—she advises that masturbation is permissible when intended to promote marital health

Most of this timeline comes from Historical Development of New Masturbation Attitudes in Mormon Culture. I no longer feel guilt in connection with masturbation. I cannot tell you how much gratitude fills my heart for that. Based on my own experience, I must conclude that the guilt that I used to feel was misplaced. The guilt that made me long for death that night was a chimera that I had conjured in my own mind.

So now, the naturally differing levels of sexual desire between my wife and me are much less of a stress in our marriage. I think we’re both happier. Masturbation hasn’t distanced me from my wife. Quite the opposite is true. And as a bonus, regular masturbation/ejaculation helps prevent prostate cancer.

When I read some of the comments on this blog, it reminds me of me the way I used to be. It hurts me to think of the people who struggle with guilt about masturbation, the guilt my experience has taught me to believe is unnecessary and unhealthy. My addiction was created by that guilt. Now that the guilt is gone, so is my addiction. The guilt was my problem.

It seems that many of us are upset at the majority of California voters harshing the collective buzz over the Obama victory.

Today is bittersweet… Obama got elected but it looks as though Proposition 8 will pass, banning gay marriage in California. Fuck you, California. (kottke.org)

While I am disappointed, I have reason to hope. Many people are celebrating the election of the first U.S. president of African descent (and I believe the right president) and find it unbelievable that we’ve come so far in so short a time. The days of segregation and poll taxes are part of living memory.

Like them, I look back to the attitudes that surrounded me when I was a child. I remember when it was unthinkable that a person would be openly homosexual. It was an aberration, a perversion, a disease. Being openly gay was to relegate yourself to the fringes of society. I am not that old; that wasn’t so long ago. I am deeply heartened that only a slim majority of California voters hold on to their apprehensions that recognizing the innate rights of homosexual people will somehow lead to the downfall of civilization, that somehow the gayness will infect them. We’ve come a long way.

Yet we still have some maturing to do. We are not yet comfortable in giving full expression to the American ideals of equality, life, liberty, and justice for all. We’re still easing ourselves into the pool of liberal democracy. Someday, I hope we can leave the security of the shallows and strike out for open waters.

“I think being shy basically means being self-absorbed to the point that it makes it difficult to be around other people. For instance, if I’m hanging out with you, I can’t even tell whether I like you or not because I’m too worried about whether you like me.”—David Foster Wallace

This has been rattling around in my brain, a subject of subconscious meditation, bobbing to the surface of consciousness from time to time. Shyness as a kind of self-absorption.

Never Say Die brought me clarity about why it is so hard to believe that my awareness ceases when I die.

It seems to have become an odd tradition to inadvertently overhear a single General Conference talk that makes me want to deconstruct its message. This time it was Robert Hale’s talk on Sunday morning.

He spoke about how to respond to those who criticize the LDS church or its teachings. By the end, I felt slandered and deeply misunderstood. To illustrate why I felt this way, I combed the first half of his talk (the work got too tedious so I stopped there) for words describing members of the LDS faith and their actions and similarly for words describing its critics and their actions.

My unscientific list shows the essence of how Hales (and many other Mormons) see themselves and the people who disagree with them. Mormons often see themselves as long suffering martyrs. They tend to perceive any religious disagreement as an attack. Perhaps this results from the circle-the-wagons mentality that protected Mormon pioneers.

I am a critic of the LDS church, yet I hope that those of you who know me can’t recognize me in Hales’s stereotypes. If you can, it is because you’ve seen me on my bad days. I’m not always like that. Some days, my criticisms come from a pure concern for the truth and for the well being of my family, friends, and neighbors. I can disagree and criticize while being civil and, in a word, Christlike.

Hales’s talk represents a failure of communication. It demonstrates that he has failed to reach out to understand the ideas and motives of critics like me. He assumes that behind every criticism is ignorance and hatred. He believes that if we disagree we must not truly understand or that we want to pull down and destroy. He assumes that we fit his stereotypes without taking the time to verify his assumptions.

The sad thing is that he wants the world to listen to him. Why should they be expected to if he doesn’t extend the same courtesy to the world? He must have missed the fifth habit of highly effective people: Seek First to Understand, Then to be Understood.

The common Mormon vision of themselves as martyrs in a war against evil isolates them from seeking to understand their neighbors. This mindset reminds me of North Korea’s view of the United States. North Koreans have been taught that the U.S. is pure evil. Many North Koreans probably believe that they live in the noblest, strongest, most virtuous nation on Earth. The truth is that they live in relative deprivation and ignorance where electricity is a luxury. Their cloistered lives prevent them from learning the truth about themselves and their enemies. If they were allowed to see for themselves, they might not call us paragons of virtue, but they would confess that we aren’t all that evil.

Hales’s talk is the equivalent of a North Korean propaganda poster designed to create a bigoted us-versus-them attitude.

I confess that I am not immune to retreating to the mental ghetto of prejudices and tribalism. So let’s live bigger than that. Let’s listen to each other before we retreat into stereotypes and ignorance. Let’s break free from our personal North Koreas.