From on the pulpit that is wooden many Mormon congregations and seminars, church leaders have talked frequently about intercourse — and very nearly solely about chastity.

Making love before wedding, they warn, is “a severe sin.” Wearing clothing that is modest the “foundation stone” of abstinence. People should get a handle on their ideas and prevent pornography to keep their “moral cleanliness.” Those dating and single must not be involved in “passionate kissing” or lying in addition to another individual, with or without clothing.

“Please, never say: ‘Who does it harm? Have you thought to a freedom that is little? I could transgress now and repent later on.’ Please don’t be so silly and thus cruel,” apostle Jeffrey R. Holland said in a October 1998 talk on “personal purity.” “. You operate the terrible threat of such spiritual, psychic harm that you might undermine both your desiring real closeness along with your capacity to provide wholehearted devotion to a later on, truer love.”

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