A Brief History of Mormon Sex
The union of the sexes, husband and wife (and only husband and wife), was for the principal purpose of bringing children into the world. Sexual experiences were never intended by the Lord to be a mere plaything or merely to satisfy passions and lusts.
—Mormon prophet Spencer W. Kimball
The Mormon Psychosexual Pickle
While nearly every religion more or less agrees with “thou shalt not commit adultery,” most leave adherents to mind themselves from there. But some religions set forth stricter, more explicit sex rules, take them way the heck more seriously, keep tabs, and impose penalties. The Mormon Church is of the latter sort. It dictates to members the purpose of sex, when sex is permitted, what sexual activities are not allowed, and what sexual thoughts not to think, which is most sexual thoughts. As for keeping tabs, the church instructs local leaders to ask members in one-on-one “worthiness interviews” about their obedience and encourages members to inform on one another. Breaking the rules can result in a summons to a disciplinary council, which may in turn result in disfellowshipment or excommunication, not to mention gossip and shaming.
An executive summary of the Mormon Church’s history and policy with regards to sex might read something like this:
The Mormon Church, properly called The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, claims to be the only true church, guided by a prophet who receives revelation from above. From the prophet down to the local level, all church leaders are entitled to receive revelation pertaining to their individual assignments. You defy their council at the peril of your church membership and eternal well-being.
For the first 80 years of the Mormon Church’s existence, Mormons vehemently defended polygamy as a commandment from God. It was not a two-way street, however, for only men were allowed multiple spouses. Today the Mormon Church would just as soon everyone forget its polygamy days and excommunicates anyone who practices or advocates it.
Today the Mormon Church presents itself as a defender of one-man, one-woman marriage and “family values.”
Mormon bishops are instructed to hold regular, private “worthiness interviews” with church members age 12 and up. One of the questions they’re required to ask is whether the church member obeys the “Law of Chastity,” which pretty much boils down to this: Procreation is the primary purpose of sex. Do not have sex with anyone besides your lawful, of-the-opposite-sex spouse. Even with your spouse, don’t engage in anything that might shock your nonagenarian prophet. This includes oral sex. From time to time, expect your bishop to check up to ensure you’re not giving your genitals too much leeway. Never masturbate. Dress modestly. Push all inappropriate sexual thoughts from your mind. Violating the Law of Chastity is the third most serious sin you can commit, right after denying a sure witness of the Holy Ghost and murder.
Not surprisingly, Mormon policy regarding the authorized use of genitalia has been known to foster a good deal of sexual repression.
A Prophet Caught with His Pants Down
Mormons believe that Christianity abandoned its roots long before the Roman emperor Constantine got ahold of it in the fourth century CE. It wasn’t until 1820 that Jesus gave it another go. On a spring day in the woods of upstate New York, he appeared to 14-year-old Joseph Smith Jr. and told him that the churches of his day were “an abomination in his sight.” Ten years later, Smith, now a prophet, seer, and revelator, restored the one true church, that is, “the only true and living church upon the face of the whole earth, with which I, the Lord, am well pleased.”
Jesus told Smith to call the restored church The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, “Saints” meaning “followers of Christ,” but outsiders lost no time in dubbing it the Mormon Church. The nickname stuck. “Mormon” comes from the Book of Mormon, which a fellow named Mormon engraved on plates of gold around 400 CE. Mormon was a white, Christian Native American prophet descended from Jews who had left Jerusalem 800 years earlier for a promised land known today as the Americas. The book is a sacred history of God’s dealings with Mormon’s people. In 1823, an angel led Smith to a spot in the woods near his home where the golden book lay buried. Retrieving the book, Smith translated it “by the gift and power of God.” His translation method consisted of placing a “seer stone” in an upturned hat, burying his face in the hat to block out ambient light, and gazing at the stone, which displayed translated phrases for Smith to read aloud while his scribe wrote them down. Mormons accept the Book of Mormon as scripture equal in authority to the Bible.
The Mormons revered their young prophet, figuring that anyone holding regular conversations with Jesus must be nigh unto perfect. So you can imagine their surprise when, within about a year of having founded the church, Smith was caught in flagrante delicto with his wife’s 14-year-old housekeeper.
Smith fessed up, but not to adultery. He explained that God had ordered him to take multiple wives, just as the Old Testament patriarchs had done. The distraught Smith had begged God to spare him the burden of having to bed lots of women, but God was not to be dissuaded. In the end, Smith had no choice but to do as he was told. Thus, he and Fanny—no kidding, that was the housekeeper’s name—weren’t committing adultery. In the eyes of God they were husband and supplemental wife. Smith explained to his closest associates that they, too, were commanded to take multiple wives. This seemed to go a long way toward quelling their initial outrage and opening their minds to the possibility that maybe there was something to this new polygamy commandment after all. They were, however, to keep the practice secret from the church at large.
The divine edict for Smith to accrue extra wives came as a surprise to a lot of people, none more so than Smith’s lawful wife, Emma. Smith hadn’t told her about the new commandment because, well, God told him not to tell her. God, it seems, was no less afraid than Smith of Emma’s temper.
The prophet continued hustling women until his death at age 38. Hustling is not an unfair word choice. Smith pressured at least two young women into bed with claims that a sword-bearing, invisible angel stood at the ready to hack him to bits unless they complied. Not wanting to witness much less cause the prophet’s dismemberment, the frightened young women capitulated. Nor did Smith’s eye fall only on single women. When he fancied a married woman, he would send her husband on an extended errand and hustle her while the man was away.
Smith’s appetite for young, single women led to his being tarred and feathered in 1832, but it was his appetite for married women that led to his death in 1844. In the nearly all-Mormon town of Nauvoo, Illinois, Smith made the mistake of hitting on the wife of one his closest associates. Enraged, the husband decided to blow the lid off of Mormon polygamy. This the husband accomplished by publishing the aptly named Nauvoo Expositor. Among its compendium of insider accounts was this harrowing description of Smith’s entrapping women into what many were calling “spiritual wifery”:
It is a notorious fact, that many females . . . have been induced, by the sound of the gospel, to forsake friends, and embark upon a voyage across waters that lie stretched over the greater portion of the globe, as they supposed, to glorify God. . . . When in the stead thereof, they are told, after having been sworn in one of the most solemn manners, to never divulge what is revealed to them, with a penalty of death attached that God Almighty has revealed it to him, that she should be his [Joseph’s] Spiritual wife. . . . She is thunder-struck, faints, recovers, and refuses. The Prophet damns her if she rejects. . . . She thinks of the great sacrifice, and of the many thousand miles she has traveled over sea and land, that she might save her soul from pending ruin, and replies, God’s will be done, and not mine. The Prophet and his devotees in this way are gratified. The next step to avoid public exposition from the common course of things, they are sent away for a time, until all is well; after which they return, as from a long visit.
Smith, whom not surprisingly the Mormons had elected mayor, persuaded the city council to declare the Expositor a public nuisance. He then ordered the newspaper and its printing press destroyed, an order that the Nauvoo marshal carried out.
The action didn’t go over well with the state of Illinois. Smith and three associates were arrested and jailed. They occupied an upstairs room with an unbarred window to the outside. A visitor smuggled a six-shooter to Smith, which came in handy when an armed mob stormed the building two days later. Smith and the mob exchanged shots. With three bullets spent and three misfires, Smith ran to the window. Four shots spun him around, two hitting his chest and two hitting his back. Crying out “Oh lord my god,” Smith fell from the window to his death, leaving behind some thirty to fifty grieving widows.
For about six months following Smith’s death, a number of aspiring prophet-successors arose. In terms of numbers, the winner was Brigham Young. Young led the greater part of the Mormons out of the United States into the valley of the Great Salt Lake in Mexican territory. There he brought Mormon polygamy into the open. Seven months later, Mexico ceded the territory to the United States, which lost no time enacting never before needed anti-bigamy laws. The Mormons defied the law, knuckling under in the early twentieth century only when the government began seizing church property and jailing church leaders.
Today the Mormon Church excommunicates anyone practicing or advocating polygamy. “I condemn it, yes, as a practice,” Mormon prophet Gordon B. Hinckley told CNN talk show host Larry King during an on-air interview, “because it is not doctrinal. It is not legal and this church takes the position that we will abide by the law.” King was at the time married to a Mormon woman and living in Provo, Utah.
Taking the church’s capitulation to the U.S. government as a sign of apostasy, polygamy-practicing splinter groups immediately began popping up. They are still to be found in Utah, Idaho, Colorado, Texas, other U.S. states, Mexico, and Canada. Lilly, a Chinese-American who owns an Asian massage parlor in downtown Salt Lake City, told me of a customer who had four wives and 24 children. At the conclusion of his massage, the man proposed to her. He was in the market for Wife Number Five and, having met Lilly, suddenly felt that God wanted him to take a Chinese wife.
Lilly declined, if you can imagine.
A Madam Partners with the Salt Lake City Council
While polygamy was making Mormons infamous, prostitution thrived in late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century Mormon towns as much as it did in all other cities with the population to support it. The sex trade in America was an open secret, tolerated as a necessary evil. Most states and municipalities had no laws against it.
Commercial Street emerged as Salt Lake’s red light district in the 1870s. By the turn of the century, concern about its proximity to the city’s business center led to proposals not to shutter but to relocate it. In partnership with Belle London, the town’s leading madam, the Salt Lake City Council set aside Block 64 for the profession’s new home. Block 64 sat about a mile west of Commercial Street, bounded by the streets 500 West, 600 West, 100 South, and 200 South. The locale seemed ideal because:
there were railroads on three sides of it, it divided two school districts [so children wouldn’t have to walk past it], and because, “the ‘foreign element,’ [Greek and Italian workers] had so destroyed the area that establishing prostitution there would not harm it any further and could even be rationalized as catering to the immoral foreigners.”
No less than the Mormon Church–owned Deseret News praised the proposed relocation as “commendable,” questioning only whether the move would prove “practicable.” Perhaps the editor knew better than to rail against prostitution while defending polygamy.
The new brothel was by no means modest in size. A downtown Salt Lake City block takes in 435,600 square feet, about ten times the area of a city block in, say, downtown Portland, Oregon. Nor was it inconspicuous, less because of its numerous parlors, cribs, bars, and gambling establishments, and more because of the largely taxpayer-funded stockade surrounding the block:
The stockade consisted of nearly 100 small brick “cribs” which were ten feet square with a door and window, and built in rows. . . . Within the stockade there were also larger parlor houses and storehouses for liquor—an essential component of the stockade operation. The stockade had three entrances, each guarded to both keep children and “undesirable” guests from entering as well as to warn of the periodic police raids.
The stockade opened for business on December 18, 1908, and for three years served as the proud home of Mormontown’s red light district. Each month, London visited police headquarters and paid fines on behalf of the stockade’s inhabitants. The fines were more akin to a tax, representing a considerable and dependable source of municipal revenue. In return, police tipped off London before conducting the occasional, perfunctory raid.
It’s unknown why London shut down the stockade a mere three years after opening it. Some sex workers returned to Commercial Street, while a good many took apartments across the street on 200 South, colloquially called Second South. Today, locals make humorous references to Second South as a red light district, but most have no knowledge of the street’s history, much less that a stockade-enclosed brothel once stood there.
Brothels in Other Nearby Mormontowns
Belle London wasn’t northern Utah’s only well-known madam, nor was the stockade its only in-your-face establishment. At about the same time London was building her reputation in Salt Lake, another madam was building her own in nearby Park City. Perched on the Wastach Range of the Rocky Mountains about 43 miles southeast of Salt Lake City, Park City today sports world-famous ski resorts. Visitors spend a fortune on lodging, food, ski equipment, skiwear, and, of course, lift tickets. If you stroll Park City’s historic Main Street, you’ll pass expensive art galleries, numerous restaurants, and no shortage of gift shops. Visit Park City in January and you may run into celebrities attending the Sundance Film Festival, founded by the Sundance Kid himself, Utah resident Robert Redford. Had you visited in February of 2002, you would have found yourself amid crowds attending the Winter Olympic Games.
But when Rachel Beulah stepped off the train in Park City in 1878, Park City was a mining town. Six years earlier, a newly completed arm of the Transcontinental Railroad had begun bringing record numbers to the area. In those days, where there were railroads and mining there was prostitution, and Park City was no exception.
Likely having worked as a prostitute in her native Ohio, Beulah resumed her profession in Park City, unaware that she would soon become one of the town’s most prominent citizens and, eventually, one of its most colorful historical figures. Her star began rising shortly after her marriage to George Urban in 1898. About that time, locals had decided they didn’t care for having a red light district close to their homes. Seeing this as an opportunity, George and Beulah built “the Row,” sixteen cribs in an adjacent area now known as Deer Valley. As the Row’s madam, Rachel Beulah Urban picked up her endearing nickname, “Mother Urban.” Park City Museum volunteer Chris McLaws wrote:
Rachel had a big heart, giving generously to the poor and needy. She was a large woman, weighing about 200 pounds, with a peg leg and a pet parrot that swore at passersby from the front porch. As a madam, Rachel took good care of her girls, which is likely how she got her nickname “Mother Urban.” She wanted them to be cultured and educated. They weren’t allowed to walk the streets and if they broke the rules, she bought them a one-way ticket on a train out of town.
In her book Red Light Women of the Rocky Mountains, Jan MacKnell wrote, “One old-timer recalled that if there was a death in the family, Mother Urban would discreetly visit in the night and give money to the family.”
Urban died from stomach cancer in 1933 and was interred in the Park City Cemetery. There is some disagreement regarding her send-off. Citing Gary Kimball’s book Death and Dying in Old Park City, McLaws states that the city threw Urban a lavish and expensive funeral. By contrast, MacKnell writes that “by then there was nobody left to pay for her headstone.”
Utahns have an easier time reconciling prostitution as an open secret in Park City as opposed to Salt Lake. With its millionaire-owned vacation homes in the surrounding mountains and year-round tourism, Park City tends to be more liberal than the typical Utah town. Though that’s an admittedly low bar, locals facetiously characterize Park City as “in Utah but not of it,” a play on a common admonition among Christians to be “in the world but not of it.”
No less colorful and no less known than London and Urban was madam Rossette Duccinni Davie, whose Rose Room brothel flourished during the 1940s in Ogden, Utah. Like Park City, Ogden was a railroad town. It sits about 40 miles north of Salt Lake and about 50 miles southeast of Promontory Point, where the Golden Spike marks the celebrated completion of the transcontinental railroad. Author Tyler Hoffman wrote that Davie “was an affluent member of the community and would regularly be seen walking the streets with her pet ocelot—a dwarf leopard.”
According to Associated Press, “Rose Davie, as she was known, pulled down $30,000 a month in her prime and withstood several prostitution charges before she was ultimately done in by a federal tax evasion charge.” Davie and her husband were thought by some, including historian Val Holley, to be police informants, or at least to have bribed sheriffs not to mind the goings-on at the Rose Room.
Rose Room clients entered the building from Ogden’s 25th Street, exiting onto perpendicular Lincoln Avenue. During Prohibition the brothel was also part of an underground system of tunnels used to run bootlegged alcohol. Today, the building houses a nightclub.
Like Salt Lake’s Second South Street, Ogden’s 25th Street has a persistent reputation and provides fodder for innuendo. And like their neighbors to the south, few Ogden residents who joke about the street know its real history.
Turnaround
By the 1970s, the image of the Mormon Church had undergone a remarkable turnaround. With the specter of polygamy fading, Americans had begun associating Mormons with wholesome values and strong families.
The church may have uptight parents to thank for its transformation. Teenagers and young adults in the 1960s and ’70s were challenging social norms. Many parents were beside themselves at the sexual revolution, long hair on boys, bralessness, environmentalism, equal rights, career women, unisex fashions, and other affronts to once-accepted norms. In Mormons, these parents saw an encouraging contrast. Mormon boys had short haircuts. Mormon girls dressed modestly. A Mormon woman’s place was in the home. Mormons didn’t sleep around, swear, use tobacco, drink alcohol, abuse drugs, or even consume coffee or tea. They were law-abiding and respected authority. They were all about family. They were consummate patriots. They preached against premarital sex and stood for the sanctity of—this time around—monogamous marriage.
The church lost no time in capitalizing on the turnabout. It produced and ran heartrending, pro-family commercials tagged with, “A message from The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. The Mormons.” At the same time, church leaders drilled into members that, as representatives of the true church, they were to present a good example of righteous living. Sermons told tales of Mormons who sinned and regretted it because a non-Mormon had witnessed it and now would never join the church.
The combination of post-hippie parental angst, clean-cut Mormon kids, pressure to show a good example, and a strong public relations campaign worked. More and more, non-Mormons were praising the exemplary Mormon family that lived on their street.
Count the Shakes after You Pee
Of the Mormon Church’s many sexual don’ts, masturbation enjoys frequent mention. Possibly the most infamous example is found in the late Mormon apostle Boyd K. Packer’s 1976 sermon, “To Young Men Only.” Likening testicles to “a little factory” and nocturnal emissions to a “release valve,” Packer cautioned against tampering with said valve. “For if you do that,” he warned, “the little factory will speed up. You will then be tempted again and again to release it. You can quickly be subjected to a habit, one that is not worthy, one that will leave you feeling depressed and feeling guilty. Resist that temptation. Do not be guilty of tampering or playing with this sacred power of creation.”
More recently, the church produced and released a video teaching that if you know of someone who masturbates, failing to inform that person’s bishop is like leaving a wounded soldier on the battlefield.
So constant and so emphatic is the church’s anti-masturbation rhetoric that some Mormon boys grew up terrified that exceeding three post-urination shakes counted as masturbation. When I first heard that, I thought it was a joke. I later heard from a number of Mormon men who grew up with precisely that fear.
Besides masturbation, Mormon kids are taught the evils of fornication and anything remotely approaching it. For Mormons, “anything remotely approaching it” covers a wide range of behaviors. “Immodesty, necking, and petting,” wrote Mormon apostle Bruce R. McConkie, are “a form of sex immorality.” Letting a romantic interest touch “any part of your body covered by your bathing suit” is “a form of fornication” requiring repentance and confession to a bishop. “Immorality does not begin in adultery or perversion,” taught Mormon prophet Spencer W. Kimball. “It begins with little indiscretions like sex thoughts, sex discussions, passionate kissing, petting and such, growing with every exercise.”
In a well-known Sunday school lesson for teenage Mormon girls, a teacher arranges sticks of gum on a plate and invites each of the girls to take one. One stick, however, has been opened and chewed. When no one selects the chewed piece, the teacher explains, If you’re naughty with boys, you’ll be like that chewed piece of gum. No one wants to marry a chewed piece of gum. There is no corresponding lesson for Mormon boys.
Some Mormons take not fornicating so seriously that they perform marriages for their pets before letting them breed. At first I thought that was a joke, too. Nope.
Modest dress is another frequent Mormon topic. At Mormon youth dances, chaperones will turn away any girl who shows up in a dress that’s sleeveless, doesn’t reach the knee, or is “too form-fitting.” Other chaperones hover about the dance floor, guarding against too-sexy and too-close dancing. I spoke with a Mormon bishop who boasted of patrolling youth dances, armed with a teddy bear. If he couldn’t fit the teddy bear between a boy and girl, they were dancing too close.
Church-owned Brigham Young University’s dress code states that women’s attire “is inappropriate when it is sleeveless, strapless, backless, or revealing; has slits above the knee; or is form fitting. Dresses, skirts, and shorts must be knee-length or longer. Hairstyles should be clean and neat, avoiding extremes in styles or colors. Excessive ear piercing (more than one per ear) and all other body piercing are not acceptable.” Female students living in BYU dormitories have been made to line up and kneel on the floor, and young women whose hems didn’t touch the floor were sent back to their rooms to change.
For men, the code states, “Clothing is inappropriate when it is sleeveless, revealing, or form fitting. Shorts must be knee-length or longer. Hairstyles should be clean and neat, avoiding extreme styles or colors, and trimmed above the collar, leaving the ear uncovered. Sideburns should not extend below the earlobe or onto the cheek. If worn, moustaches should be neatly trimmed and may not extend beyond or below the corners of the mouth. Men are expected to be clean-shaven; beards are not acceptable. Earrings and other body piercing are not acceptable.”
All of which may explain why, in 2014, the Mormon blogosphere exploded when attorney Kate Kelly, excommunicated for challenging the church’s refusal to ordain women to its priesthood, was photographed in a sleeveless dress!
Kelly dubbed it “dressgate.”
What’s That You’re Doing in Your Bedroom?
The Mormon Church has sex rules for married couples, too. Though leaders talk more often about the don’ts, they will on occasion concede a do or two. In those rare instances, they manage to make sex sound not quite as appealing as paying a parking ticket.
On the not-to-do side, Mormon couples are counseled to avoid anything that’s “unnatural” and, in a feat of circular reasoning, anything that’s “inappropriate.” Mormon prophet Spencer W. Kimball wrote, “If it is unnatural, you just don’t do it. There are some people who have said that behind the bedroom doors anything goes. That is not true and the Lord would not condone it.” He also said, “Married persons should understand that if in their marital relations they are guilty of unnatural, impure, or unholy practices, they should not enter the temple unless and until they repent and discontinue any such practices. . . . The First Presidency has interpreted oral sex as constituting an unnatural, impure, or unholy practice.”
Birth control is both on and, more recently, not on the not-to-do side. In April 1969, Mormon prophet David O. McKay said, “We believe that those who practice birth control will reap disappointment by and by.” Six years later, Kimball declared, “Sterilization and tying of the tubes and such are sins, and except under special circumstances it cannot be approved.” Married Latter-day Saints took statements like McKay’s and Kimball’s as orders from God not to use birth control. As a consequence, many Mormon couples felt it their duty to crank out as many kids as they could, as fast as they could. A mother’s physical health was sometimes a consideration, but until recently her mental health was less of one. Others, loath to risk adding to however many mouths they were already struggling to feed—Mormons take the whole “multiply and replenish the earth” thing literally and seriously—rationalized abstinence as not birth control and kissed their sex life goodbye.
Some Mormon men sought another solution. “When I first moved to Utah I worked at Planned Parenthood,” a now retired social worker told me. “Many Mormon men who didn’t want more kids would come in for a vasectomy and didn’t want to tell their wives.”
Today the church allows that “decisions about birth control and the consequences of those decisions rest solely with each married couple.” There is, however, a proviso: “Those who are physically able have the blessing, joy, and obligation to bear children and to raise a family. This blessing should not be postponed for selfish reasons.”
On the to-do side, you won’t hear anything approaching encouragement to enjoy sex. This is about as close as it gets: “Sexual relations within marriage are not only for the purpose of procreation, but also a means of expressing love and strengthening emotional and spiritual ties between husband and wife.” Hot stuff.
So it is that many Mormons arrive at their wedding night not just sexually inept but sexually confused if not afraid. The transition from don’t use your genitals to now that you’re married you can use them is not an easy one. In order not to do anything “unnatural, impure, or unholy,” many Mormons err on the side of caution, avoiding anything more adventurous than a quick execution in missionary position. Many Mormon women experience difficulty transitioning from only sluts do it to you’re married so now it’s okay. Some raised on only bad girls like it feel guilty if they happen to enjoy marital sex at all.
To be fair, the church has come a long way since the late Mormon apostle J. Reuben Clark taught, “Remember the prime purpose of sex desire is to beget children. Sex gratification must be had at that hazard.”
Mormon sex, it appears, is not for the faint.
Abuse, Cover-ups, Victim Blaming, and Bishops Who Teach Lasciviousness
Mormon bishops and other leaders conduct regular, one-on-one worthiness interviews with adults and with youth age 12 and older. The church’s General Handbook lists interview questions bishops are required to ask. One of them is, “Do you obey the law of chastity?” While that’s intrusive in its own right, some bishops have been known to wax more explicit, creeping out some kids and sending others home with new ideas they can’t wait to try. A Mormon apostle once admitted over the pulpit, “One of the General Authorities once interviewed a young man who . . . made confession of a transgression. . . . The General Authority was amazed at the sordid nature of what the young man had done and asked, ‘Where on earth did you get the idea to do things like this?’ He was shocked when the young man answered, ‘From my bishop.’”
While the majority of Mormon leaders act within the bounds of propriety, there are some who do not. As I write, a Mormon who had presided over thousands of missionaries stands accused of having sexually assaulted young women in his charge; multiple bishops stand accused of fondling children in private interviews; as many or more bishops stand accused of putting sexually explicit questions to children during private interviews; a number of bishops stand accused of counseling battered wives to “stay with their abusers for the sake of the marriage”; a Mormon general authority stands accused of fondling his grandchild, offering to pay her father—his son-in-law—for silence, instigating and facilitating the father’s divorce, and, working with fellow general authorities and local leaders, orchestrating a cover-up that included witness tampering; accusations have arisen of abuse of Native American children under the church’s now shuttered Indian Placement Program; a prominent Mormon filmmaker has admitted to fondling a 13-year-old in his home during a son’s sleepover; and more. Each case has come with the usual complement of cover-ups, clandestine legal settlements, and bullied silence. Abuse and cover-ups are not the exclusive domain of the Roman Catholic Church.
By 2018, after victims had surfaced in sufficient numbers to raise sufficiently loud protests, the church made a concession: parents were now permitted to sit in on bishops’ interviews with their children. The same year, carefully worded and sandwiched in the middle of a General Conference talk, Mormon apostle Quentin L. Cook tiptoed to within several hundred miles of publicly acknowledging the incidence of sexual abuse within church ranks:
During my lifetime, worldly issues and concerns have moved from one extreme to another—from frivolous and trivial pursuits to serious immorality. It is commendable that nonconsensual immorality has been exposed and denounced. Such nonconsensual immorality is against the laws of God and of society.
Critics were quick to point out that Cook had understated if not trivialized the problem, that the passive-voice “has been exposed and denounced” failed to note that it wasn’t church leaders but outraged members who did the exposing and denouncing, and that “nonconsensual immorality” was a downright wimpy choice of words leaving room for victim blaming. Their fears were not without precedent. Like many organizations and society in general, the church was no stranger to victim blaming. Mormon apostle Richard G. Scott said in April of 1992:
The victim must do all in his or her power to stop the abuse. Most often, the victim is innocent because of being disabled by fear or the power or authority of the offender. At some point in time, however, the Lord may prompt a victim to recognize a degree of responsibility for abuse.
Like many religions, the Mormon Church seems to place greater priority on protecting the organization than on justice and healing for victims. A 2019 Vice News article revealed that the church’s hotline for reporting sex abuse didn’t ring at church headquarters but at a church-retained law firm, whose priority was not victim support but containment. And the church’s 2006 General Handbook stated, “To avoid implicating the church in legal matters to which it is not a party, church leaders should avoid testifying in civil or criminal cases or other proceedings involving abuse. . . . Church leaders should not try to persuade alleged victims or other witnesses either to testify or not to testify in criminal or civil court proceedings.” A more recent edition says, “Church leaders should not involve themselves in civil or criminal cases for members in their units, quorums, or organizations without first consulting with Church legal counsel.”
Meddling in Gay Sex
In 2004, about two-thirds of Utah voters approved an amendment to their state constitution banning anything that looked, walked, or quacked like gay marriage, civil unions included. The amendment’s passage was not surprising. The church publicly urged members to vote for it, and Utah is about two-thirds Mormon.
In 2008, the church launched a massive, would-be incognito effort to ensure the passage of California’s proposed anti-gay marriage amendment, Proposition 8. The extent of the church’s involvement remained under the radar until Wikileaks revealed just how much the church had meddled. “Mormons tipped scale in the ban on gay marriage,” trumpeted the New York Times and other media. Revelations soon followed as to the extent of the church’s prior meddling in Hawaii, Alaska, Nevada, and Nebraska, sparking outrage across the nation. For the church to tell its members how to vote on marriage laws may have been defensible as a moral stand, but its meddling with non-Mormon voters was seen as an overstep. Some saw it as a possible violation of the Johnson Amendment, which bars tax-exempt organizations from endorsing or opposing candidates and attempting to influence legislation.
To some, the Mormon Church was once again rebranding itself, this time as an anti-equality, anti–human rights organization. Mormon apostle Dallin H. Oaks likened the Proposition 8 backlash against the church to intimidation inflicted upon African Americans in the American South during the Civil Rights era. His remark was not well received.
Beyond offensive, the Mormon Church’s public condemnation of homosexuality may well be deadly. Author Gregory A. Prince dedicates a chapter to suicide in his book Gay Rights and the Mormon Church. Here is its sobering opening paragraph:
The tragic connection between homosexuality and suicide is well-known, as is the dramatic (eightfold) reduction in risk of suicide if LGBT youth are accepted within their families. Yet the incidence of teenage suicide in Utah, the most Mormon state and country, is rising at the highest rate in the country.
According to the Public Health Indicator Based Information System,
The Utah suicide rate has been consistently higher than the national rate. In 2018 (the most recent national-level data year available, data from the National Center for Health Statistics), the age-adjusted suicide rate for the U.S. was 14.78 per 100,000 population, while the Utah suicide rate was 22.13 per 100,000 population during the same year. Utah had the 6th-highest age-adjusted suicide rate in the U.S. during 2018.
It seems likely, even obvious, that Mormon Church policy contributes to Utah’s unusually high LGBTQ suicide rate, but the data are insufficient to assert as much with certainty. Death certificates tend to list the means of suicide, not suicide itself, as the cause of death. Death from a self-inflicted gunshot wound, for instance, might be listed as “death by accidental shooting,” and a self-hanging might be listed as “death by asphyxiation.” Moreover, Utah medical examiners are not required to note or ask about a deceased person’s sexual orientation or gender identity. Privacy-minded, bereft families often prefer that official reports omit such details.
Fuzzy data are one reason that many organizations concerned with the wellness and safety of the LGBTQ community avoid accusing the Mormon Church outright. Another is that bluntness can backfire from a public relations standpoint. Church sympathizers and defenders raised an outcry when comedian and talk show host Ellen DeGeneres read this statement on air in 2018: “The leading cause of death for Utah kids, ages 11–17, is suicide. Suicide in Utah has increased 141 percent because of the shame they feel from the Mormon Church.” One response, a guest opinion in the Idaho Statesman headlined “No Correlation between Youth Suicide and Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints,” claimed:
Michael Staley, who works for Utah’s medical examiner and ranks among the most respected researchers on this topic, said in an interview with Q Salt Lake, a Utah LGBT magazine, his initial findings do not support the narrative that Utah youth suicides are rising as a result of the Church’s traditional teachings on sexuality or LGBT issues. “There’s no data to show that, period,” Staley said. “The people who are driving that narrative are going to be disappointed.”
To claim “no correlation” and “no data” is an exercise in intellectual dishonesty. The Mormon Church has been unabashed in its anti-LGBTQ messaging, especially targeted to youth; the relationship between the LGBTQ community and suicide is established; and suicide is the leading cause of death of Utah children between 10 and 17 years of age. Moreover, only in the majority-Mormon state of Utah has the incidence of LGBTQ-related suicides increased, even as church leaders have doubled down on their anti-gay rhetoric and policies. To be sure, correlations do not establish causation, but they are data and can suggest causation—as the above most certainly do.
Another reason that some organizations avoid hitting the Mormon Church head-on is that doing so tends to make church leaders dig in their heels. If the goal is to effect change, patience and tact may prove better tactics. The gentler approach has yielded some positive results, for the church’s policies regarding the LGBTQ community have evolved. Past church leaders refused to acknowledge homosexuality as an orientation, whereas most today have either come around or learned to avoid the subject. The church no longer holds that identifying as gay is de facto sinful. In 2012, the church pulled quite the surprise by publishing an official church website, mormonandgay.org, which among other messages states, “LGBT people who live God’s laws can fully participate in the church.” In 2010, the Mormon Church expressed support for a Salt Lake City ordinance banning housing and employment discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation or gender identity, ending the city council’s internal debate and allowing the measure to sail through. In 2019, the church reversed its four-year-old policy against baptizing children of married gay parents.
Yet for all steps forward, there are inevitable steps backward. In 2021, the Mormon Church excommunicated a mental health professional for her “conduct contrary to the law and order of the church,” which consisted of “repeated, clear and public opposition to and condemnation of the church, its doctrines, its policies, and its leaders.” Her alleged contrary conduct was that “she supports same-sex marriage, counsels that masturbation is not a sin and insists pornography should not be treated as an addiction.”
In other words, she chose the standards of her profession over dogma. How dare she!
Naughtiness, Mormon-style
You have to feel for Mormons. They’re told not to obsess about sex by a church that obsesses about sex. They’re told not to indulge in sex that’s unnatural or inappropriate by a church that defends a founding prophet who married and bedded some thirty to fifty women, not all of age, not all single, and some under threat. They’re told what they can and cannot do in the bedroom, and what they should and should not think about pertaining to sex.
If there are Mormons who hunger for a bit of naughtiness, the church must bear some responsibility. Its continual harping on sexual don’ts cannot but place sex front and center in more than a few Mormon minds. Oppression and shaming may bolster the effect. So may the pressure to be good when non-Mormons are watching, pressure that becomes conspicuously absent when no one is watching.
Perhaps that’s why Harvard economics professor Benjamin Edelman’s research published in 2009 showed that Utah led the nation in per capita paid porn subscriptions and why in 2015 Utah ranked seventh in the nation for paid memberships on the extramarital dating site AshleyMadison.com. And perhaps that’s why in 2016, critical thinking–oriented website ProCon.org ranked Utah 28th in the nation for “unlawful promotion of or participation in sexual activities for profit.”
And perhaps that’s why more Mormons than you might think, including Mormons you’d least expect, pay for sex.
This essay is excerpted from Behind the Mormon Curtain: Selling Sex in America’s Holy City, which is available for purchase at these paid links: Amazon, Bookshop, and Pitchstone.
Steve Cuno is an award-winning advertising writer and the as-told-to author of Joanne Hanks’s popular memoir, It’s Not About the Sex My Ass: Confessions of an Ex-Mormon, Ex-Polygamist, Ex-Wife. In his spare time, Steve enjoys walking his dogs, playing his piano, and wondering what to write next. A former Salt Lake City resident, he now lives in Portland, Oregon. To learn more about or to contact Steve, visit www.stevecuno.com.