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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