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Awkward Sex Talk with Grandpa Packer

 Tyler Perry

I want to preface this essay by saying that the Church has removed this talk from its website, as of August 2019, and the associated pamphlet was discontinued in 2016 [1].  The intent of this essay is not to air the dirty laundry, but to give insight into the influences of how many church members view sex, sexuality, and LGBTQ issues.  The pamphlet was distributed for almost forty years, and it has undoubtedly had an impact on the language, beliefs, and culture of many church members.

It was shown to me almost as a joke.  I had never seen the pamphlet before, and when another Elder showed it to me, it seemed silly that this was spoken over the pulpit at General Conference.  The opening of the talk was deliberate and unequivocating, while the body of the speech was filled with corny metaphors and unhelpful, though familiar, advice.

“To Young Men Only” was the transcript of a talk by Boyd Packer in the Priesthood Session of the October 1976 General Conference.  Assured that his words would be safely kept among the boys, Packer spoke about sex, sexuality, puberty, adolescence, and homophobia in the most 1970’s grandpa way that he could manage.  It is awkward.  It is not good advice.  And it advocates for violence against homosexuals.  Pretty standard fare for 1970’s Mormonism.

The talk begins with Packer asserting that fathers should be talking to their sons about these things, which is true, but that some fathers may not be up to the task.  So, he is going to go ahead and do it for them.  He then gives some body-positive messaging, as well as good advice on avoiding tobacco, eating healthy, and getting good exercise.  So far, so good.  Then he suggests that young men will want to one day find a woman to marry and have sex with.

In this case, boy, was he wrong!

He then proceeds to the usual awkward sex ed video stuff about voice drops and hair in strange in wonderful places.  “You become very interested in young women – this is as it should be,” he says.  I mean, I am completely straight, and I have never been interested in women.  I have no idea what this guy is talking about.  It just seems like he has gone off the rails already.  Clearly, he is into some unnatural stuff.

You know that point in the sex ed videos when they actually talk about attraction to the opposite sex and they say things like, “This is totally normal, Timmy.  Now go play football!”  Yeah, Boyd is going to go one step further and prescribe this condition as an “ought-to” state.

I have not gotten to the homophobic part yet, by the way.

Anyway, most of that section is the usual “don’t do co-ed wrestling until you’re married” stuff that the Church usually espouses.  “We only want boys wrestling boys at our house,” Boyd indirectly tells us.  I understand Boyd.  As a totally straight guy, I know how much fun it can be to get down and dirty with the other boys, just showing off your masculine strength and rippling, sweaty muscles…

Sorry, um, where was I?

Right, no sex before marriage, kids!  You might catch a pregnant!

From here, we proceed on to my favorite part of this talk.  I like to refer to this as the “Don’t Touch Your Little Factory” section.  Packer compares the production of sperm to a “little factory”.  I mean, who said anything about it being little?  Speak for yourself, Boyd.

Anyway, the analogy goes that sperm production ramps up like a factory coming online and the production goes through a learning curve, process improvement, optimization, unionization, OSHA regulations, and eventual closure as the company moves operations offshore.  Sometimes, because the quality management team sucks at their job, the factory produces too much, and the only option is to just spew out the excess all over the bedsheets.

This is the weirdest metaphor for a nocturnal emission.  And it may seem like I am making this up, but I am only making up the part about OSHA regulations.

The factory really did shut down after Denise left for that Italian plumber.

Things have just never been the same since.

Nocturnal emissions are a completely normal part of adolescent development.  The exact mechanisms leading up to a nocturnal emission are not well understood, since human sexuality is a notoriously difficult field to study.  However, there was a study contemporary to this talk that suggested that nocturnal emissions serve to promote concentrations of healthy sperm during intercoital (between sex) periods [2].

But Boyd wants you to know that the one thing you should not do is open the release valve yourself.  Whatever you do, do not send orders down the pipe for the foreman to release the production for the customers to enjoy before the customer is your wife.  This is a serious transgression because it… um… well… God just doesn’t like it when you do that, okay?  Jesus cries because you touch yourself at night!  “It is not pleasing to the Lord, and it is not pleasing to you,” says the man who has never tried it.

And now for the part of this talk that was super damaging on my shame cycles!

“There are ways to conquer such a habit.  First of all, you must leave that factory alone long enough for it to slow down.  Resisting is not easy.  It will take weeks, even months.  But you can get the little factory slowed back down to where it should be.”

So, that’s not really how it works.  Let me tell you how this does work (one man’s own experience being used to generalize for all men; there is absolutely no way that this could end badly).  Essentially, just like your body has an appetite for food, air, and a good cry after seeing that one dog movie, you know the one, your body has an appetite for sex.  This does not turn off.  With age, changing hormones, and other factors, it can slow down, but for most of the target audience of this talk, it is full steam ahead all the time every time.

What that means is that your body is constantly signaling you to deal with the fact that you’ve been walking funny all month, and then it gives up on waiting, wet dream, reset the cycle.  Cycle after cycle after cycle.  The whole time, your psyche is being assaulted by the dissonance between “what does Jesus want” and “you have a basic biological need, why aren’t you just dealing with that and getting on with your life”.

Some people can endure this cycle for years.  Most people will not even reach one loop on this cycle.

But you can overcome this challenge.  The only reason why you failed is because you are not doing the things that Packer suggested well enough.  It is your fault.  Oh, and everyone knows, by the way.  Everyone knows why you are not taking the sacrament.  You were doing so well too.  Just last week, you were up there blessing the sacrament, weren’t you?  And now, here you are, waving off the tray when your mom offers it to you.  Everybody knows what you did.

So, yeah, masturbation is like super normal, hurts nobody at all, and helps you to not be a little weirdo all the time.  Yet here we have Boyd telling us that it is super bad because of all those times in the Bible where God said to not masturbate.  You know, like that one time in that one book, oh which one is it?  You know.  You know the part I’m talking about, don’t you?

To put into perspective how freaking damaging this cycle is, I came to associate Alma the Younger’s sin with my “struggles with masturbation”.  Yeah, no joke.  I saw overcoming it like Packer says as this great redemption story.  Again, I equated my masturbating with Alma the Younger’s deliberate attempts to tear down the church of God.  Can you imagine the impact that that had on my 100% hetero heart and mind?  I could also share some journal entries that will give some fascinating insight into how much I just hated myself for this.  I think I was so busy hating myself for masturbating that I never got around to hating myself for being a total hetero dude bro.  That was the part of myself that had to go!

Boyd gives this useless analogy about this time that he forgot how fluid mechanics works.  So, that’s fun.

After that, we get another fantastic metaphor that forgets that Pavlov is a scientist who learned some things about behavioral programming.  Yup, this is not going to cause any problems at all.  I can’t wait to see what we find here.

If you have ever had the pleasure of hearing a Priesthood leader refer to your mind as a stage in which only one actor can occupy at any time, well, they probably got that from this pamphlet, even if they are a telling or two removed.  The purpose of the analogy is to say that if you are thinking about sexy, muscular dudes running around without their shirts on the beach as the sun beats down on their sweaty bodies, then you can’t be thinking about Jesus.  But, if you are thinking about Jesus, then you probably aren’t imagining him and the disciples running around shirtless on the beach, but now you are.

We then have this totally brilliant, will not backfire in any way, idea.  If you start imagining Jesus and the disciples shirtless on the beach… Whoops, I mean, if you have an immoral thought, then what you want to do is start singing a favorite hymn.  Boyd suggests “I Am a Child of God”.  Personally, I like “Come Ye Children of the Lord” or “How Firm a Foundation” or “The Iron Rod” or “Come, Come Ye Saints”.  Not sure why I like those so much…

So, anyway, I now get an erection whenever I hear “I Am a Child of God”.

“Now a warning!”  We know that Boyd means business now.  This warning is also a trigger warning for blatant and disgusting homophobia.  “There are some circumstances in which young men may be tempted to handle one another… Sometimes this begins in a moment of idle foolishness, when boys are just playing around.”  So, we all agree that Boyd Packer totally had a gay fling with one of the boys he grew up with, right?  Like, this is just a basic point of fact.  I mean, he grew up in an age when boys would play strip poker, have literal pissing contests, and otherwise goof around unsupervised in the woods together.  This whole part here is definitely described from experience.

He continues, “When a young man is finding his way into manhood, such experiences can misdirect his normal desires and pervert him not only physically but emotionally and spiritually as well.”  In other words, if you want your homie to catch the gay, then you just gotta help him play.

If you think that the homophobia is bad already, just you wait.  No 1970’s homophobia would be complete without the pedophilia analogy!  “There are some men who entice young men to join them in these immoral acts.  If you are ever approached to participate in anything like that, it is time to vigorously resist.”  Yeah, Boyd, if you are a minor and a creepy old dude with a 1970’s mustache approaches you for sex, that’s a creepy pedophile.  That’s a good situation to get out of.

What that is not is a situation in which two consenting adults are engaging in a loving, healthy relationship.  Not that I would know anything about that, seeing as to how I am as straight as a rainbow arrow.

You might be thinking that the homophobia has hit its peak and we can move on to the outro.  But we cannot.  Because the casual homophobia ventures into something much worse.  Again, the church has removed all traces of this talk and the associated pamphlet from its website.  This next section is likely the reason why.  Again, I need to emphasize that this can be triggering, especially considering the source that this is coming from.  I am not going to filter this, because I think it is best taken as Packer spoke it.  But I will mark the text in red so you can identify where to skip to if you do not want to read extremely hateful speech disguised as teachings from an Apostle.

“While I was in a mission on one occasion, a missionary said he had something to confess.  I was very worried because he just could not get himself to tell me what he had done.

“After patient encouragement, he finally blurted out, ‘I hit my companion.’

“‘Oh, is that all,’ I said in great relief.

“‘But I floored him,’ he said.

“After learning a little more, my response was ‘Well, thanks.  Somebody had to do it, and it wouldn’t be well for a General Authority to solve the problem that way.’

“I am not recommending that course to you, but I am not omitting it.  You must protect yourself.”

That, my dear reader, is a supposed Apostle of the Lord Jesus Christ, casually advocating for violence against homosexuals.  That is not a teaching of love.  That is not a teaching of understanding.  That is not a teaching of acceptance.  That is a teaching of hate.  For forty years this pamphlet went around the church.  How many queer kids were taught to hate themselves because of it?

Packer will continue the essay with some transphobia as well, saying that “There is no mismatching of bodies and spirits.  Boys are to become men – masculine, manly men” (the kind I like).  I have seen some pretty manly trans dudes too, Boyd.  It’s too bad that you were too closed off to ever get to know them.

The talk finishes out with a repeat of the same sorts of things as before.  “Don’t touch yourself.”  “Don’t touch your best friend while you lie next to each other under the stars as the frigid air chills you both to the bone and the only source of warmth is the embrace of each other.”  “Wait until you’re married to have sex with a woman” (On it, chief!).  “Eventually, you can become a father” (I sure hope so).

As I stated at the beginning, my purpose in writing this is not to air out the Church’s dirty laundry.  The point was to show some of the historical influences and teachings that impact the way members today view LGBTQ people.  For almost forty years, “To Young Men Only” was distributed by the church.  Some of its ideas are used by members to this day.  This has certainly left an impact on the church and its culture.

If we are going to be better, then we must learn from the past.  While I appreciate the Church’s removal of this hateful, damaging speech, this was done quietly, and without a denunciation of anything taught therein.  There is little more available than a statement that the “retirement” of these publications is normal [3].

There is a saying that those who do not learn history are doomed to repeat it.  The Church continues to hide these things away without showing that they have learned to be better.  What sort of history are we doomed to repeat?

“To Young Men Only” is the sort of awkward sex talk that your grandpa might have given you.  It is awkward, filled with bad metaphors, and served with a side helping of casual homophobia, with a smattering of transphobia to really spice it up a little.  Its retirement came 40 years too late, but the lack of denunciation of any of its teachings will be another stain on the Church’s record.

References

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/To_Young_Men_Only (retrieved 22 August 2020).

[2] https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/0306987775900535 (retrieved 22 August 2020).  The article refers to both nocturnal emission and masturbation as being useful for essentially replacing unhealthy sperm cells with new healthy ones.  There is some additional research that may suggest that masturbation is an evolutionary tool for promoting male fertility by this very mechanism.

[3] https://archive.sltrib.com/article.php?id=4584556&itype=CMSID (retrieved 22 August 2020).  I am not impressed with the reporting in this article.  It makes the entire talk seem funny and silly, which, part of it definitely is.  But it ignores the reasons why this talk needed to be retired, namely, the casual advocating for violence against homosexuals.

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