- “President Joseph F. Smith, who declared the three great dangers that “threaten the Church within” are false edcucational ideas, sexual impurity, and the flattery of prominent men in the world (Gospel Doctrine, 313)” (Men of Influence, 34)
- Of Souls, Symbols, and Sacraments (Jeffrey R. Holland) “Setting aside sins against the Holy Ghost as a special category unto themselves, it is LDS doctrine that sexual transgression is second only to murder in the Lord’s list of life’s most serious sins. By assigning such rank to a physical appetite so conspicuously evident in all of us, what is God trying to tell us about its place in His plan for all men and women in mortality? I submit to you He is doing precisely that–commenting about the very plan of life itself. Clearly God’s greatest concerns regarding mortality are how one gets into this world and how one gets out of it. These two most important issues in our very personal and carefully supervised progress are the two issues that He as our Creator, Father, and Guide wishes most to reserve to Himself. These are the two matters that He has repeatedly told us He wants us never to take illegally, illicitly, unfaithfully, without sanction.”
- Of Souls, Symbols, and Sacraments (Jeffrey R. Holland) “What would in the case of taking life bring absolute horror and demand grim justice, in the case of giving life brings dirty jokes, four-letter language, and wholesale voyeurism in movies, on television, over the internet, and almost everywhere else we turn.”
- Of Souls, Symbols, and Sacraments (Jeffrey R. Holland) “When one toys with the God-given . . . body of another, he or she toys with the very soul of that individual, toys with the central purpose and product of life.”
- Of Souls, Symbols, and Sacraments (Jeffrey R. Holland) “So partly in answer to why such seriousness, we answer that when one toys with the God-given–and satanically coveted–body of another, he or she toys with the very soul of that individual, toys with the central purpose and product of life, “the very key” to life, as Elder Boyd K. Packer once called it. In trivializing the soul of another (please include the word body there) we trivialize the atonement, which saved that soul and guaranteed its continued existence. And when one toys with the Son of Righteousness, the Day Star Himself, one toys with white heat and a flame hotter and holier than the noonday sun. You cannot do so and not be burned. You cannot with impunity “crucify . . . the Son of God afresh.” The exploitation of the body (please include the word soul there) is, in the last analysis, an exploitation of Him who is the Light and the Life of the world.”
- Of Souls, Symbols, and Sacraments (Jeffrey R. Holland) “Perhaps here Paul’s warning to the Corinthians takes on newer, higher meaning: “Now the body is not for fornication, but for the Lord; and the Lord for the body. . . . Know ye not that your bodies are the members of Christ? shall I then take the members of Christ, and make them the members of a harlot? God forbid. . . . Flee fornication. . . . He that committeth fornication sinneth against his own body. What? know ye not that your body is the temple of the Holy Ghost which is in you, which ye have of God, and ye are not your own? For ye are bought with a price: therefore glorify God in your body, and in your spirit, which is God’s.”
- Of Souls, Symbols, and Sacraments (Jeffrey R. Holland) “The purchase price for our fullness of joy-body and spirit eternally united-is the pure and innocent blood of the Savior of the world. We cannot then say in ignorance or defiance, “Well, it’s my life’ or worse yet, “it’s my body.” It is not your life or your body. “Ye are not your own,” Paul said. “Ye are bought with a price.” As a result of the excruciating suffering endured by Him in the atonement-the payment, He made for our sins-we are eternally indebted to Jesus. That is the one reason we call Him “Master,” in the holiest sense of the word. So in answer to the question, “Why does God care so much about sexual transgression?” It is partly because of the precious gift offered by and through His Only Begotten Son to redeem the souls-bodies and spirits- we too often share and abuse in such cheap and tawdry ways. Christ restored the very seeds of eternal lives, and we desecrate them at our peril. The first key reason for personal purity? Our very souls are involved and at stake.”
- “You may come to that moment of real love, of total union, only to discover to your horror that what you should have saved has been spent and that only God’s grace can recover that piecemeal dissipation of your virtue.” Of Souls, Symbols and Sacraments, Jeffrey R. Holland
- “As all couples come to that moment of bonding in mortality, it is to be just such a complete union. That commandment cannot be fulfilled, and that symbolism of “one flesh” cannot be preserved, if we hastily, guiltily, and surreptitiously share intimacy in a darkened corner of a darkened hour, then just as hastily, guiltily, and surreptitiously retreat to our separate worlds- not to eat or live or cry or laugh together, not to do the laundry and the dishes and the homework, not to manage a budget and pay the bills and tend the children and plan together for the future. No, we cannot do that until we are truly one- united, bound, linked, tied, welded, sealed, married.” Of Souls, Symbols and Sacraments, Jeffrey R. Holland
- “Can you see then the moral duplicity that comes from pretending that we are one, sharing the physical symbols and the physical intimacy of our union, but then fleeing, retreating, severing all such other aspects- and symbols- of what was meant to be a total obligation, only to unite again furtively some other night or, worse yet, furtively unite (and you can tell how cynically I use that word) with some other partner who is no more bound to us, no more one with us than the last was or than the one that will come next week or next month or next year or anytime before the binding commitments of marriage?” Of Souls, Symbols and Sacraments, Jeffrey R. Holland
- “Our sexuality has been animalized, stripped of the intricacy of feeling with which human beings have endowed it, leaving us to contemplate only the act and to fear our impotence in it. It is this animalization from which the sexual manuals cannot escape, even when they try to do so because they are reflections of it. They might as well be textbooks for the veterinarians.” Fairlie, The Seven Deadly Sins Today (Notre Dame, Ind.: University of Notre Dame Press, 1979)
- “I have heard all my life that it is the young woman who has to assume the responsibility for controlling the limits of intimacy in courtship because a young man cannot. Seldom have I heard any point made about this subject that makes me more disappointed than that. What kind of man is he, what priesthood or power or strength or self-control does this man have, that lets him develop in society, grow to the age of mature accountability, perhaps even pursue a university education and prepare to affect the future colleagues and kingdoms and the course of the world, yet he does not have the mental capacity or the moral will to say, “I will not do that thing”? No, this sorry drugstore psychology would have us say, “I just can’t help myself. My glands have complete control over my life- my mind, my will, my entire future.” To say that a young woman in such a relationship has to bear her responsibility and that of the young man too is one of the most inappropriate suggestions I can imagine. In most instances, if there is sexual transgression, I lay the burden squarely on the shoulders of the young man- for our purposes probably a priesthood bearer- and that’s where I believe God intended the responsibility to be.” Of Souls, Symbols and Sacraments, Jeffrey R. Holland
- “Indeed, most tragically, it is the young woman who is most often the victim; it is the young woman who most often suffers the greater pain; it is the young woman who most often feels used and abused and terribly unclean. And for that imposed uncleanliness the man, as well as the woman, will pay, as surely as the sun sets and rivers run to the sea…After a bold confrontation on the subject of sexual transgression among the Nephites, he quotes Jehova: “For behold, I, the Lord, have seen the sorrow, and heard the mourning of the daughters of my people in the land…And I will not suffer, saith the Lord of Hosts, that the cries of the fair daughters of this people…shall come up unto me against the men of my people, saith the Lord of Hosts. For they shall not lead away captive the daughters of my people because of their tenderness, save I shall visit them with a sore curse, even unto destruction.” Don’t be deceived and don’t be destroyed. Unless such fire is controlled, your clothes and your future will be burned, and your world, short of painful and perfect repentance, can go up in the flames. I give that to you on the good word: I give it to you on God’s word.” Of Souls, Symbols and Sacraments, Jeffrey R. Holland
- “Sexual union is…a sacrament of the highest order, a union not only of a man and a woman but very much the union of that man and that woman with God.” Of Souls, Symbols and Sacraments, Jeffrey R. Holland
- “Veritable teenagers- and all of us for many decades thereafter- carrying daily, hourly, minute-to-minute, virtually every waking and sleeping moment of our lives, the power and the chemistry and the eternally transmitted seeds of life to grant someone else her second estate, someone else his next level of development in the divine plan of salvation. I submit to you that no power, priesthood or otherwise, is given by God so universally to so many with virtually no control over its use except self-control. And I submit that we will never be more like God at any other time in this life than when we are expressing that particular power. Of all the titles He has chosen for Himself, Father is the one He declares, and creation is His watchword- especially human creation, creation in His image. His glory isn’t a mountain, as stunning as mountains are. It isn’t in sea or sky or snow or sunrise, as beautiful as they all are. It isn’t in art or technology, be that a concerto or computer. No, His glory- and His grief- is in His children. We- you and I- are His prized possessions, and we are the earthly evidence, however inadequate, of what He truly is. Human life is the greatest of God’s powers, the most mysterious and magnificent chemistry of it all, and you and I have been given it, but under the most serious and sacred of restrictions. You and I- who can make neither mountain nor moonlight, not one rain-drop or a single rose- have this greater gift in an absolutely unlimited way. And the only control placed on us is self-control- self-control born of respect for the divine sacramental power it is…We who may not be able to repair a bicycle or assemble an average jigsaw puzzle can yet, in all of our weaknesses and imperfections, carry this procreative power which makes us so very much like God in at least that one grand and majestic way.” Of Souls, Symbols and Sacraments, Jeffrey R. Holland
- 1 Corinthians 6:9-10…Unchaste won’t inherit the kingdom
- Alma 12:14…Our works will condemn us, wants rocks on us
- Moroni 9:9…The most expensive and precious of all things – virtue and chastity
- Jacob 2:28…God is pleased with women’s chastity
- Jacob 2:27 -28…27 Wherefore, my brethren, hear me and hearken to the word of the Lord: For there shall not any man among you have to save it be one wife, and concubines he shall have none; 28 For I, the Lord God, delight in the chastity of women. And whoredoms are an abomination before me; thus saith the Lord of Hosts.
- Jacob 2:31 -33…31 For behold, I, the Lord, have seen the sorrow, and heard the mourning of the daughters of my people in the land of Jerusalem, yea, and in all the lands of my people, because of the wickedness and abominations of their husbands. 32 And I will not suffer, saith the Lord of Hosts, that the cries of the fair daughters of this people, which I have led out of the land of Jerusalem, shall come up unto me against the men of my people, saith the Lord of Hosts. 33 For they shall not lead away captive the daughters of my people because of their tenderness, save I shall visit them with a sore curse, even unto destruction; for they shall not commit whoredoms, like unto them of old, saith the Lord of Hosts.