Throughout my study of the last 90 years of General Conference, it has shocked me how many talks are just as applicable today as when they were given, if not even more so! One perfect example of this is Elder Mark E. Petersen’s Apr. 1969 sermon on what was labeled the “sex revolution” at the time. I can’t help but read this talk and think, “If this was needed in 1969, how much more do we need this counsel with the whole LGBTQ+ movement today?!” So, realizing the timelessness of this message, I wanted to share it with you from the archives today!
The Dangers of the So-called Sex Revolution by Mark E. Petersen
We Latter-day Saints believe in the Lord Jesus Christ, who died for us all and was raised the third day afterward, in a physical, bodily resurrection. We believe that he has given us a way of life that will bring joy and happiness to all who truly follow him.
But without obedience to his laws, we cannot hope to receive his blessings.
The law of chastity
I wish at this time to refer to one of his divine statutes, which is binding upon all mankind, but which is widely disregarded. It is that pertaining to our moral conduct.
Humanity will rise or fall through its attitude toward the law of chastity. If the world will honor virtue, it can expect to receive God’s blessings; but if it persists in the practice of sodomy, adultery, and other perversions, it can expect only destruction, for the wage of sin is death (Rom. 6:23)
It is this awesome fact that should frighten at least the Christian world into a realization that we are being hurled into an abyss of moral degradation. The so-called sex revolution is destroying us.
In a recent edition of the Sacramento Union, an editorial warned that the stench of moral decay has become intolerable. It called for a reestablishment of the divine code of chastity before everything is lost.
The Chicago Tribune recently reported that venereal infection is now the nation’s leading communicable disease, which is another index to the extent of our moral breakdown. Three thousand new cases of this dreadful plague are contracted in America every day, more than half of them among teenagers.
Standards of right and wrong
As people change their standards of right and wrong, they begin to suppose that what was sin a generation ago is no longer so, that standards are relative things that may be altered at will through usage and desire, and that old-fashioned goodness now has turned into priggishness.
Many actually seem to think that the popular trend is what determines right or wrong, and that moral values change with public sentiment.
A mother recently wrote to a medical doctor who conducts a newspaper column and asked whether she should provide her daughter with a supply of “the pill” as she left to attend a boarding school. In writing to the doctor, the mother said: “Personally I don’t approve of sexual relations outside of marriage, but I wonder if I should be realistic and supply my daughter with birth control pills, just in case.”
Can any mother in her right mind take such a position? Has the writer of this letter never taught her daughter the Lord’s law of chastity? Why does she dread pregnancy but apparently have no great aversion to her daughter’s loss of virtue? Was this girl never taught about her bodily functions in the sanctity of a good home?
Teaching the facts of life
All children need to be taught the facts of life, but where that teaching is to be given has become a source of great controversy. Should it be provided publicly or in the privacy of the home? Is it wise to give it openly in such a way as to create a desire for corruption?
Is it to be merged with the so-called sex revolution that already has brought about the greatest moral decline in our age, with a plague of social disease in its wake? Or can it more properly be used to teach a nation chastity and sobriety?
Have you ever asked yourselves why this sudden urge to teach sex in a public way? Is someone afraid that the rising generation will not know how to reproduce itself, and that the race thereby may die out?
How is it that we ourselves were brought into existence? Our parents received none of this kind of teaching when they went to school. Think of the hundreds of generations that have preceded us on the earth. Is it by some great miracle that they ever saw the light of day, since many of their parents never went to any kind of school, public or otherwise, and certainly had none of the instruction now being proposed?
And what of those people who are concerned about overpopulation? They think we will run out of food if we do not control the birth rate. We may yet need a top-level conference of the advocates of sex education and the proponents of birth control to see whether we shall become extinct because they think too few people know how to reproduce themselves, or whether we shall starve to death because too many people know how to reproduce themselves.
Safeguards in sex instruction
Who is competent to give wholesome sex instruction to our children without creating lust in their minds? I would like to say, with all the emphasis at my command, that the proper teaching of sex requires also the teaching of complete chastity, whether that instruction is given in the home, the school, or the church. To do otherwise is nothing less than suicidal. To ignore chastity in such instruction can transform it into a course in youthful sex experimentation.
The experience of some European countries clearly confirms the fact that public sex education increases promiscuity, and as promiscuity is multiplied, venereal disease spreads like wildfire.
In all fairness to the children, we must not teach them the mechanics of reproduction without also emphasizing to them the safeguard that the Almighty has placed about it, that is, that the use of sex is to be confined completely and exclusively within the bonds of sacred marriage. No free sex is permitted by him. In his law, promiscuity is adulterous. The whole point of sex education will be missed unless we teach chastity as a major part of it.
Co-creators with God
God made sex, but not for entertainment. It was provided for a divinely appointed act of creation in which we, to this extent, become co-creators with him. If we fail to teach this, we defeat the whole purpose of sex education.
When schools are prevented from teaching anything of a spiritual nature, they are thereby disqualified from teaching sex at all, for in its very nature, sex is spiritual and inseparably connected with the creative work of God.
We are not animals, to dwell only in a physical world. We are the offspring of God, learning in this life to become like him. He decreed that human beings never shall indulge in sex outside of holy matrimony, which he himself instituted. This is his definition of chastity. This is what he requires of every man and every woman.
That is why, on the fiery slopes of Mt. Sinai, he declared: “Thou shalt not commit adultery” (Ex. 20:14). That is why, in his Sermon on the Mount, the Savior taught that anyone who even looks upon another with lust has committed adultery in his heart (Matt. 5:28).
Place for sex education
Sex education belongs in the home, where parents can teach chastity in a spiritual environment as they reveal the facts of life to their children. There, in all plainness, the youngsters can be taught that procreation is part of the creative work of God and that, therefore, the act of replenishing the earth must be kept on the high plane of personal purity that God provides, free from all forms of perversion.
Unskilled parents can learn to teach their children properly. In fact, God commands it, and who are we to disobey? Why do some attempt to supersede the parents instead of teaching them how to fulfill their responsibility?
Casualties from immorality
Another evidence of the effect of our declining morals comes from Vietnam. Each week we count our war casualties. They are listed as killed, wounded, and missing. These reports are most sobering, and wring the hearts of loved ones who had hoped so fervently that such a loss would never come to them,
But there are other casualties that are seldom mentioned, casualties which should stagger this nation and compel every man who enters the service to pause and consider their causes and consequences. These casualties are not the flower of America, shot down in defense of our flag. They are innocent babies born as the offspring of adulterous relationships between some of our soldiers and the women of the Orient.
Medical men warn of the skyrocketing rise of venereal disease in our armed forces, and it is certainly something to fear. But what of the innocent children born from illicit relationships? No one knows exactly how many of these children are now living in Vietnam. The figure may run well beyond the 50,000 mark. In Japan there are more than 20,000 mixed-bloods fathered by U.S. servicemen. Other thousands of such illegitimates are in Thailand, Korea, and Taiwan.
Nearly all have been abandoned by their fathers, who sought momentary thrills, as they supposed, by cohabiting with Oriental women, not thinking that their own flesh and blood—born of these illicit unions—would become abandoned orphans, shunned by nearly all who see them. In Vietnam these unfortunates roam the streets, unwanted, uncared for, begging for a living.
It is said that one in every ten American soldiers fathers a child by an Asian woman. Who has the right to beget illegitimate children? Who has the right to take the virtue of an Asian or any other girl, or to lose his own? Which American—at home or abroad—has the right to abandon his own flesh and blood and forget that his illegitimate child ever existed?
Can God bless America?
Can the God of heaven, who holds us all accountable for our sins, overlook this wickedness? Of what good are national days of prayer if we do not support our prayers by our good works? Will God strengthen the arms of fighting men who desecrate his most holy laws? Will he prosper a nation that apparently condones these illicit practices and does little more than provide prophylactics to men who indulge?
Are these fathers so lacking in natural affection that they are willing to completely forget and ignore their own offspring in a foreign land? We sing, almost tearfully at times, “God Bless America.” But we are almost constrained to ask: How can he?
The venereal disease rate in our war areas is frightening in the extreme. We welcome our boys home as conquering heroes, but some of them bring back a plague of venereal disease, which can destroy them. Venereal disease is a killer. It also maims, causes heart trouble, insanity, and blindness. It destroys homes, spreads corruption to innocent wives, and blights the lives of helpless children.
God a significant presence
Some people justify their immorality by saying that restrictions against it are merely religious rules that have no meaning any longer because there really isn’t any God. Thoughtful people now recognize the existence of Deity more than ever before. Persons of genuine intellect, the true researchers, the great philosophers, and the outstanding educators not only acknowledge him, but they also worship him.
It is the selfish element in the world that no longer accepts Deity. And why? Because they do not want to be interrupted in their ingrown pursuits and are so involved in their personal desires, passions, appetites, and lusts that they have no room left for sacred things. Therefore, in their selfishness they reject or ignore God.
To the true realist, God is a significant presence who guides the ultimate destiny of the world. But let us never forget that one of his most basic laws concerns morality.
Moral law irrevocable
That law is irrevocable and inescapable and applies to all, whether we believe in God or not. Everyone is subject to its penalties, no matter how they may try to ignore them, The wage of sin is death Rom. 6:23even to the unbeliever!
Immorality is next to murder in God’s category of crime, and always brings in its wake both destruction and remorse, even to college students who carry the pill with a mother’s consent.
This nation was built upon a foundation of morality and spirituality. It is just possible that a rejection of these basic factors may bring about its fall. It was so with Greece and Rome. It can happen to us unless we repent.
Every one of us would do well to remember that the “mills of the Gods grind slowly, but they grind exceeding small.” No one can flout the divine law with impunity. Every right-thinking person should be willing even to die if necessary in defense of virtue, whether that death be physical or social.
“Thou shalt not commit adultery” Ex. 20:14 will forever stand as an immutable law to all human beings. This generation may rationalize itself into complete intoxication with sin and proclaim to high heaven that it is old-fashioned to be clean, but it will yet wake up to the stem reality that God does not change and that the moral laws are his and not man’s to shift with every whim.
Adultery next to murder
Adultery is still next to murder in the Lord’s category of crime (Alma 39:5). Homosexuality was made a capital crime in the Bible (Lev. 20:13). It was the Almighty who decreed that men and women must cover their nakedness by wearing proper and modest clothing (Gen. 3:21) No amount of rationalizing can change God’s laws. No amount of fashion designing can turn immodesty into virtue, and no amount of popularity can change sin into righteousness.
Once again we Latter-day Saints affirm the reality of the existence of Jesus Christ. Once again, as his humble servants, we define his law of personal purity, and solemnly declare that sex sin is an abomination in the sight of God (Jacob 2:28) No one on earth can ever cancel the divine command that says, “Thou shalt not commit adultery” (Ex. 20:14).
To this I humbly testify in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ. Amen.
Mark E. Petersen, Conference Report, April 1969, pp. 62-66
If you liked this conference talk on “The Dangers of the So-called Sex Revolution” from the archives, you might enjoy these other articles from the archives too!
