Friday, March 28, 2008

Masturbation and Missionaries: Is it a Harmless Practice? The Poll



2 comments:

MormonZero said...

Harmless? Physically, No. Spiritually, debatable. Mentally and Emotionally, There are a number of factors that would take longer to discuss and explain than I would like.

What is sad, is to see young people who get involved in a physically harmless act that drives them to unbalanced shame and guilt, which only helps fuel a compulsion to act out something that they oftentimes discovered by accident and didn't really want to be doing in the first place.

Pablo said...

I think it is a good thing to discuss, because it usually winds up being taboo. If you buy into some of the studies that have been done like the Kinsey report, its findings suggest that upwards of 92% of men have masturbated at some point in their lives, and the other 8% are probably lying. The LDS church maintains that around 40% of their full time missionaries do it. The church will never change its view that masturbation is OK, but they should at least acknowledge it as a huge emotional issue that all of their young men go through and stop using scare tactics to try and stop them. If you want to see how masturbation is sometimes addressed in the mission field, then go here http://www.youtube.com/user/equilibrium83