ONAN ESCHEWED - Rick Grunder

Masturbation.—The habit of masturbation is degrading and is likely to
interfere with the normal development of the sexual organs. It may also be
responsible for early loss of sexual power (impotence). [p. 38]
—That's all you get on this subject for your service to the Country. I have no
doubt that our WWI soldiers followed this latter advice as assiduously as they
followed the former.
62 KIMBALL, Spencer W[oolley] (1895-1985). THE MIRACLE OF FORGIVENESS.
Salt Lake City: Bookcraft, [c.1969; 32nd Printing, 1981].
21½ cm. xii, 376 pp. including frontispiece portrait of the author. Orig. red
cloth-backed white boards; gilt-lettered spine. Nearly fine (in tattered dust
jacket). $20
By Mormon Church apostle (from 1943) and finally President, 1973-85. As such,
this book reached more readers - at least with more influence and presumed
authority - than most reactionary works of so late a period. Scintillating chapter
titles include, among others, "No Unclean Thing Can Enter," "Repent or Perish,"
and "A Time of Reckoning." Kimball discusses MASTURBATION as his sole
introduction to the main topic of his sixth chapter, "Crime Against Nature"
(i.e., homosexuality). While not required reading, this book is by no means
discounted among most Latter-day Saints - but is rather admired and propounded
by some local Mormon leaders to the present day . . .
Most youth come into contact early with masturbation. Many would-be
authorities declare that it is natural and acceptable, and frequently young men I
interview cite these advocates to justify their practice of it. To this we must
respond that the world's norms in many areas — drinking, smoking, and sex
experience generally, to mention only a few — depart increasingly from God's
law. The Church has a different, higher norm.
Thus prophets anciently and today condemn masturbation. It induces
feelings of guilt and shame. It is detrimental to spirituality. It indicates slavery
to the flesh, not that mastery of it and the growth toward godhood which is the
object of our mortal life. Our modern prophet [David O. McKay, born 1873] has
indicated that no young man should be called on a mission who is not free from
this practice.
While we should not regard this weakness as the heinous sin which some
other sexual practices are, it is of itself bad [p. 77 ends] enough to require sincere
repentance. What is more, it too often leads to grievous sin, even to that sin
against nature, homosexuality. For, done in private, it evolves often into mutual
masturbation — practiced with another person of the same sex — and thence
into total homosexuality. [pp. 77-78]
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