What is Mormon Open Forum?
Mormon Open Forum is a Steve EM (Evangelical Mormon) production. It is a completely open, unmoderated forum for discussing anything directly or tangentially related to Mormons or Mormonism. Coarse langauge is welcome. There are no prohibited subjects, words, or thoughts in the discussion. No user will ever be banned.
Mormon Open Forum requests that if you want to comment off topic that the comment be prefaced with a request the comment be turned into a new post. Then Admin will come along at their convenience and make a new post from the comment. So anyone can start a thread. Thats right, anyone who wants to can start a Bloggernacle thread without creating their own blog.
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Enjoy!
steve. you commented on my rant on millenialstar under LDS DATING. You commented that Admin blocked your comments due to talking about personal experience and sex. So what were your “salacious” comments? I’d like to give it a read.
Comment by Jen — August 17, 2006 @ 5:28 am
Hi Jen. Glad you dropped in. I neglected this blog for a long time as I really need a few co-bloggers to keep things going, but I’m trying to resurrect it now.
My comment wasn’t anything that bad, but M* deletes a lot of my straight talk comments. I really did appreciate Geoff’s response, even though I don’t understand where he’s coming from. I’ll add that M* has never banned me. Whereas I’m perpetually banned from T&S and even “liberal” BBC put me on a “temporary” ban months ago for comparing some un-named GAs to W (as all asleep at the switch). So M* is pretty good.
Anyway, the gist of the deleted comment addressed a few things you said, and I’ll confess I didn’t read every line of your comments. I can say much more here than I did there. Please accept the following as my unvarnished male perspective. I fully appreciate we may not agree.
I concurred with your widespread porn use charge as likely valid, because printed porn was somewhat common with men at BYU back in the late 70’s early 80’s, and given the in-your-face availability of internet porn now, I’d be surprised if what you said wasn’t true. But healthy men are horn dogs and I think you need to look past porn use, especially for guys not in a sexual relationship. For the record, I have no issue with the church preaching against porn, as it corrupts the “actors”, producers, etc, in addition to the user. But I think we all have our baggage, and for some guys it’s porn. The odds are it won’t carry into a healthy marriage, as no matter how much energy a guy has in that dept, there is a limit. My advice to a woman bothered by porn and in love with a porn user is say you don’t want it brought into the marriage and you need to be the sole recipient of his sexual attention (Don’t say he can’t or…………. That’s creating a forbidden fruit/challenge that most guys will eventually eat). Add that you expect open communication in the marriage if you two need to make more time for each other in that regard, etc.
If part of the concern is the way much porn focuses on activities that don’t always pleasure women and creates disappointing male sex dolts, open communication should fix that too. If you find the man you’re dating is teachable and open to learning new things, he’ll learn in the bedroom too.
The related masturbation issue you brought up seems to be something the church has moved on from. None of my five kids, two now grown, have ever been asked about it. If it bothers you, it too, like porn, shouldn’t be an issue in a healthy marriage. Now many couples self pleasure during phone sex when one is traveling, but most don’t view that as masturbation. Likewise with mutual vibrator/toy use.
In the end, masturbation and porn are poor substitutes for the real thing, and I think the issue gets overblown in the church.
On your comments of male LDS unrealistic expectation of marrying a virgin. I would have figured such antiquated notions were long dead, but maybe you’re right as I haven’t lived in Utah for decades. For background, I was a sexually active teen and unfortunately fell back into LofC and WofW problems at BYU shortly after my mission in the early 80s. Thus, I had no such expectations regarding a future wife. I’ll add the “pagan” BYU cliques I hanged with back then were quite numerous, and most of us were still believers and really had nothing against the church, but we knew there was no place for people with our weaknesses in the church. I don’t recall any of the guys having a virgin spouse expectation, given that wasn’t something they could bring to the table. But I also had plenty of with-the-program Joe Mormon friends too, and I number of them thought considering a potential wife’s past sexual history was silly given that love is a prerequisite to even contemplate marriage. Bear in mind I didn’t hang with mama’s boys who needed family approval of a potential spouse.
Ironically, my active LDS wife-to-be and I were introduced by my live in gf at Univ. of Michigan. I missed sharing my thoughts with LDS women and she ended up replacing the latter. Things were so good I asked her to marry me and she dragged me back to church to confess. If I could be brought back into the light, many other men can too.
In short, I’m not saying I’m right, but that’s where I’m coming from.
Lastly, thank you too for the comment on my dating advice to LDS single men. If you want to draft similar advice for LDS single women, you’re certainly welcome to post here.
Comment by Steve EM — August 17, 2006 @ 5:56 pm