A couple of years ago I encountered two female Mormon missionaries at the public library. I surreptitiously eyed the slender blonde. In her prim blouse and long skirt, she was the very definition of “modesty.” I visually stripped her and imagined her in her temple garments. Then I started to fantasize about her.

She was taught that sexual sins are the “most abominable above all sins” except murder and denying the Holy Ghost (Alma 39:5). Yet surely she’s been tempted. I imagined her at night in bed obediently reading the Book of Mormon. She strives to remain chaste. The flesh has its own prerogatives. Her unchaste thoughts about her sister missionary return. Thoughts she can no longer suppress — thoughts about a stolen kiss; a forbidden taste. Her body stirs. Unable to resist, she sets down her holy scripture. She rubs her breast through her garment. She knows she’ll have to confess her sin to her bishop. The shame of having her moral uncleanliness exposed mortifies her. Still, her other hand slips inside her bottom garment….

Once during a trip out West a few years before that, I visited Salt Lake City. I confess I was smitten with the sister missionaries who guided the tour of Temple Square. That night at my hotel I was unable to resist the prospect of a romp with a call girl within sight of the Temple, so I called a local escort service. The lady dispatching the girls informed me that FS was not an option. I hired a brunette anyway. A cute girl arrived at my door an hour later. Among the ground rules we had to abide by was no touching. After she changed into lingerie, I asked her about the restrictive regulations. “This is Salt Lake City after all,” she replied matter-of-factly. “The Church controls everything here. Even sex.”

Growing up in a part of the country with a sizeable Mormon population, I’ve long been fascinated by the exotic beliefs and practices of the Latter-day Saints. And the exotic can become erotic. About five years ago, a newly constructed temple in the area was open to the public before its dedication, and I toured it with a friend. Inside it looked nothing like a traditional church; the rooms resembled the foyers in upscale hotels. There was a certain sensuousness to it all.

The origins of Mormon sexual morality are tangled. While condemning premarital sex and masturbation, the church’s early endorsement of polygamy privileged fecundity and provided the men who practiced it bountiful outlets for sexual pleasure. Joseph Smith argued that because God made women so enticing, men were entitled to more than one wife. Smith said that God told him, “And if he have ten virgins given unto him by this law, he cannot commit adultery, for they belong to him.” As one ex-Mormon puts it, “If you don’t grow up Mormon, you don’t realize there’s all these sexy things about it.” Mormon rituals are tinged with the erotic, as evidenced by the temple garment. This aesthetic coexists, however, within a culture of sexual repression. The Doctrine and Covenants bluntly says, “Therefore, cease from…all your lustful desires” (88:121). The Book of Mormon insists on chastity: “But remember that he that persists in his own carnal nature, and goes on in the ways of sin and rebellion against God, remaineth in his fallen state and the devil hath all power over him. Therefore he is as though there was no redemption made, being an enemy to God” (Mosiah 16:5). “Sins of immorality” are commonly understood to be exclusively sexual in nature. A few years ago, a Mormon therapist came to the conclusion that “masturbation is neither sinful nor even a ‘transgression.’” As a result, she was recently excommunicated from the church.

A religion with erotic overtones coupled with erotophobia tempts its own adherents. The taboo of forbidden sex can itself heighten sexual tension. “All Latter-day Saints must learn to control and discipline themselves” a church-published pamphlet admonishes adolescents. Such self-mastery can be difficult to achieve. Porn star Angela White revealed in an interview, “A lot of my memberships are from more conservative states in America…. Utah is a big one.” She continued, “There are a lot of people condemning masturbation and sexuality while doing it behind closed doors.” And they’re not just watching porn. “You’ve no idea the people I could get in trouble,” a Salt Lake City call girl told the author of a soon-to-be published book. Many of her clients are prominent members of the Church of Latter-day Saints. At its extreme, it produces a sex cult. In the Fundamentalist Church of Latter-day Saints, polygamy is still sanctioned. Emphasizing the Mormon tradition of procreation as a means to achieve godly status in the afterlife, the FLDS mandated that sex with the sister wives were reserved for certain “seed bearers” to ensure the birth of “spirit children.” Since “the Seed Bearer has special authority to spread his seed among the daughters of Zion,” the wives’ husbands were even forced to watch as he copulated with their spouses.

Meanwhile, I await my next encounter with sister missionaries.

Still thinking about the recent Pew survey about the growing acceptance of casual sex among Christians….

This verse from Romans, which I’ve quoted before, sums up my struggle:

I see in my members another law at war with the law of my mind (7:23).

As a believer and minister of the gospel, I am bound by divine revelation, the record of which is disclosed in the Bible. As a young believer, I became firmly convinced that if I were to live my life in accordance with the gospel, I was to abstain from sexual activity until marriage. Religion, in general, discourages unbridled sexuality, and conservative Christianity does so with particular vehemence. Yet I continued to battle these impulses that tempted me to violate my pledge. Living up to the stringent biblical doctrine of my understanding proved to be unattainable. To even look at a woman with lust in my heart was a sin. A bikini-clad girl was enough to stoke arousal and the subsequent guilt that came with it. The harder I fought against lust, the more intense the impulses became and the more frequently I succumbed to them. I sinned in secret, because it violated my religion, and I kept sinning because I couldn’t stop. The “law of my mind” which dictated sexual purity was assailed by those instincts that dwell “in my members.”

A psychologist poses this stark question: “What if revelation and common sense (or biology) diverge?” What if the law in my members contradicts the law of my mind? To put it another way, through my sexual explorations, I’ve encountered a revelation in the flesh.

Despite the heavy guilt I incurred, I excused my initial forays with escorts as youthful experimentation. By the time I was visiting Leigh regularly after college, sexual curiosity had turned into compulsion. Experimentation now yielded to indulgence. It was humbling to observe my capacity for self-discipline diminish every time Leigh let down her brown hair and removed her lacy lingerie. At the time, I was working for a prominent parachurch ministry dedicated to promoting “family values.” Contrary to my principles, I was proving incapable of restraining my sexual impulses. In my quest for purity, I had tried to admonish myself: “Resist the devil, and he will flee from you” (James 4:7). Then I discovered what Hamlet meant:

The Devil hath power
T’assume a pleasing shape.

That pleasing shape had soft, creamy skin. Full breasts. A seemingly voracious sexual appetite. My flesh instinctively responded to her open thighs. “Great sex is apocalyptic,” Norman Mailer wrote. “Apocalypse” (ancient Greek: ἀποκάλυψις) literally means “unveiling.” As my body rocked against Leigh’s, I started to receive the slow but certain revelation that I was incapable of chastity. During an earlier encounter with an escort, she teasingly predicted that my inexperience would soon yield to promiscuity: “Soon you’ll be having sex like a rabbit!” She was prophetic. The law of my members continually impressed itself on me, and I assiduously sought to obey this law. I couldn’t be sated. The more I fucked, the more I needed to fuck. My emerging satyriasis nevertheless uneasily coexisted with my religious commitments. I couldn’t forsake my theological studies or my work in ministry. Nor, despite my rationalizations and theological explorations, could I shake my earlier traditional sexual ethic. I sinned in sex and was convicted by my sin. Each time I penetrated the Deaconess, I experienced a sense of desecration. The law of my mind could not be erased.

Anyway, back to that survey. Perhaps a growing number of self-described Christians have also experienced that law in their members which can’t be reconciled with inherited interpretations of scripture.