Morality

I hear that elaborate introduction of all those accomplishments and have to remind myself that you don't have to be good, just have to be old.

Looking out at all of you and seeing how wonderfully young you are is an exciting experience for me. And I've felt a strong sense of responsibility about coming here today, with the numbers of you who are there. I've tried not to let that intimidate me. I'm a little bit like Bill Clinton. I never met a microphone I didn't like. And I especially appreciate the fact that it enables me to communicate today from here on the stand to one of you in the top balcony.

The spirit of any one occasion is the composite of all the spirit personalities who are present on that occasion. And so what happens today as I talk with you will not depend nearly so much on me as it does on each of you.

We are inseparably connected because we are our Heavenly Father's children. Though I may be a few years older than you are, I'm not so old that I don't remember some of the challenges that you experienced and how wonderful it is to be able to keep in touch in the ways that we are inseparably connected. And I plan to talk today about male-female relationships and I don't know, I've been thinking about why I'm an authority on that. One is that I'm female. The other is that I sound like a male. People call me in the morning and I make all these arrangements to get something done and they say, I'll be glad to do that for you, sir. I used to always be proud of my low voice. But life is a long lesson in humility. And invariably when I get that kind of response I wish that I had been born delicate and tiny like Dora. And I used to dream of what it would be like to stand. I'd stand in front of the mirror, and I'd half shut my eyes and say no, Dodo, it is better as it is. You never could have loved your child wife more than you do now. Dora's dying, in case you hadn't noticed. And, uh, as the years grew on you should have grown tired of her childish ways all to be lovely and delicate like Dora instead of vital and substantial like Vertimais.

My greatest worry as a young person was not whether or not anybody would seduce me, but whether or not anybody would ever want to. And I was what is classified as a wallflower. We decorated the walls of the dance hall while the popular girls danced in the middle. And I was known in our town in Canada as Lady Icicle. And I thought that was peculiar because I didn't think anybody had ever tried to thaw me out. There was a possibility, but I'd made up my mind that I wasn't going to let anybody kiss me until I got engaged. And that's okay if you get engaged soon enough, but if you wait as long as I did it's a long, hard famine. But I think I was about 14 years old and when some fellow who thought it would be a good idea to kiss me chased me all around the prairie and pushed me down on the ground and kissed me. And I said, “You're the first person that's ever kissed me.” And he said, “Well, that's a star on my chest.” And I said, “No, it's not.” And proceeded to beat the star off of his chest. I don't know whether he's the one who spread the word that I was lady icicle, but anyway.

After a very unstellar career as a high school most unwanted girl on a campus of 40 young people, I went to get my patriarchal blessing. I was surprised at one of the words in it, one of the sentences in it. My mother told me if you keep your problems in mind they'll be answered in your patriarchal blessing. I was surprised that it said, “Although there are great things in store for you, guard your virtue with your life. Although there are great things in store for you, there's nothing that will drag you down or destroy your chances in the celestial kingdom more quickly or more surely than immorality.” I thought it was peculiar that someone as unpopular as I was should be given such a strong warning. And I'd thought maybe that I'd die young and everybody who'd been mean to me would be sorry. And my patriarchal blessings said that if I didn't shirk the responsibilities of motherhood that the children that would be born of me, like Mary Beth, would be among the choice ones reserved to come forth in the last days. It also said, “In the selection of a partner in life be careful in your choice and don't throw yourself away on someone who isn't worthy of you.”

The time came when those sentences from my patriarchal blessing were very important guides to me. And when someone explained to me that all lovemaking has the potential of preparing your body for sexual intercourse when the hormones take their effect on you, these things are happening. After that, I would hold hands with someone and feel those sex electrical charges go through me and think, “Uh oh, there go the hormones.” Now, in case any of you are so wonderfully innocent as to not know what those feelings are, they're the squiggly, wiggly ones that you get when someone you've got the hots on comes into class. And, anyway, I call them sex electrical charges because they are very important.

You feel sometimes betrayed that they are so strong, but your Heavenly Father structured them into you for a very important reason. In men, they are very immediate. And I think the Lord did this on purpose. He knew that if they weren't, men would never want to take the responsibilities of a family, they'd just all go play golf or the stock market or basketball, and they might not want to turn their paychecks over to us. They say payday is like the Academy Award; it's, “May I have the envelope, please?” Now, in women, the sex electrical charges take a different form. They bring over a woman a sweet forgetfulness that makes her forget all about diapers and dishes and the way baby cereal cements itself to the side of the high chair and how much month there is left over at the end of the money. And all he and she think about is how wonderful it is to be together in this beautiful moment of mating.

But until you are married, my young and my old brothers and sisters. I say old because you're as old as your spirit is. The spirit is old, but the physical mind is new, and it needs to be taught what the spirit already knows. And when I talk about that they are inseparably connected, that we are inseparably connected, as the 121st section of the Doctrine and Covenants says about the rights and the powers of the priesthood, that we are inseparably connected with the powers of heaven, I hope today to help a little bit in scrubbing up some of the electrical nodes that may have been corroded a little on your spiritual antennas.

Your knowledge as a spirit person is tremendous. The veil of your forgetting is reasonably complete. And the voices that prompt you to do some of the right things and accept some of the good things are very important voices. And when you hear them through the power of the Holy Ghost, pay some attention to the warnings they're giving you. I hope also that you can remember that if you're going to be in charge in the male-female relationship situation, you need to learn how to ground the sex electrical charges. And so I want to give you what I facetiously call the “ground rules.” I didn't ever ground any of my children for misbehavior. I didn't want them to be home that long. But I loved them, just wanted them to be out having good experiences, and I loved solitude and quiet. And when I talk about ground rules, they're basic and they're important if we're going to control the points of physical contact and keep it associated with the points of spiritual contact.

Rule number one is dress modestly. If you don't want somebody to steal your car out here in the parking lot, you don't leave the keys in the ignition and the door unlocked, do you? And anything too short, too tight, too bare, and too immodest can be a problem. Gives people ideas they otherwise wouldn't have.

Rule number two is kiss sparingly. Now a dictionary definition of a kiss is an anatomical juxtaposition of two orbicular muscles in a state of contraction. And if you kiss each other once, will you kiss each other again? The likelihood is that you will. And you won't be satisfied with simply holding hands. But you can't unkiss a kiss. I told a fellow that once, and he said, “Who would want to?” But prolonged kissing, and deep kissing, and continuous kissing can be very dangerous. It's important as much as possible to limit your kisses to good night kisses, and then you go in the house. And if you're a girl, he goes on his way, and the sex electrical charges just sort of fritter out and just have nice memories. Now if the time comes when you're too much in love to say goodnight after you've kissed goodnight, a generally good policy is to space your kisses. Don't overload the sex electrical circuit with prolonged kissing and deep kissing and continuous kissing or you'll blow your mind when you need it most. Okay? Dress modestly, kiss sparingly.

Rule number three is touch carefully. Now, the sense of touch is a very important means of communicating affection. They say one of the things hard about living alone is that you don't have a hug handy. And there are babies who die because they weren't loved and touched. In experiments, they found how very important it is to hold someone physically. Because you're dating, not mating, it will be your responsibility to take the sex electrical charges and ground them until you're married. When you're on a date, a very good rule, young women, is do not allow a young man to touch you on the skin of any portion of your body that would ordinarily be covered by clothing. Now, the way some girls dress, that's still a risk. But if you dress modestly, it's a good rule. When I was a young girl, we used to say, “Don't go with so-and-so because he has WH.” And WH stood for wandering hands. Someone called them Russian hands with Roman fingers. If he put his arm around your waist and his fingers began creeping up a little bit or down a little bit you'd think, does he know where he has his hands? And let me clue you. Isn't it true, fellows? He knows where he has his hands. He's feeling a natural desire on the part of a man to explore the contours of the female body. And you don't want to say, “Oh, how dare you do that to me?” But you could say, “That's a no-no. Rule number three.” And this could get you into a discussion on the ground rules.

Now, rule number four. You've been a little bit embarrassed by how graphic I've been and how plain my talk is. Someone said, “Let's have a frank and earnest discussion. You'll be Frank and I'll be Ernest.” I want you to know that any feelings of discomfort that you experience as I'm talking about these things are there to protect it. This wonderful creative source of life that enables you to father and mother children is so much in need of protection, and so instinctively do we feel the need to protect it. We keep looking for polite words to talk about it. One that bothers me is “have sex.” Well, I had sex for years before I had sexual intercourse. I was a woman, I had sex. And then we took one of the nice words I wanted to use when I said “male-female relationships.” We took the word “relationship,” which meant at one time that the two of us just got along wonderfully well. Or that I don't have a very good relationship with my son. Or that my daughter doesn't think I'm much of a mother.

They say the devil isn't who he is because his mother didn't understand him. The probability is that she understood him very well, that she knew how much he wanted the honor and the glory. Now, Satan doesn't have a body, and he's very jealous of yours. His whole efforts are exerted in the direction of seeing that you misuse yours. With all the powers he has, and he has great power, enough to make you ill, and enough to almost kill you, enough to persuade you that life isn't worth living and you could go kill yourself. That you own this body, that you don't really own everything that started it out, that made you grow, came from two other people.

Okay? I've given you all these warnings that you're not going to be as comfortable with rule number four to talk about together. It's avoid contact horizontally. Elder Boyd K. Packer, in conference talk, discussed this subject. He said, “Don't go into a house alone together. Don't go into a bedroom alone together. Don't go into a house alone together.” And when they published his talk, they eliminated that. And I understand why, but I also understand why Brother Packer said it initially.

Had an interesting experience with a young man in junior high school. This is a boy, 15 years old, and he's not going to date till he's 16. And he likes this girl. And her parents have gone to California on a vacation, and they've decided it's okay to leave their 14-year-old daughter home alone. She can pour her own wheaties, and she can open her own can of soup, so it's okay to leave her alone. These kids aren't going to date till they're 16. But there isn't anything wrong with walking home from school together, is there? And so they walk home from school together, and they go into the house alone together. And it's not very long after that until they are in the bedroom alone together. Not very long after that until they have broken one of the Ten Commandments. The law of chastity is that you should not have sexual intercourse with any person to whom you are not legally married.

Now, no matter how many people in the world— President Benyon, would you come here? please? I'd appreciate if you'd help me. This is the neatest man, isn't he? Love him. Take your coat off. Okay. Now, we want you oh, no, not over there. Bring it back over here. I want you to put it on again. But we'll have you wear it wrong side out this time. Now the world today would have you wear your morals wrong side out and show the seeming side of everything. Now, if you'll turn around again, President Benyon. They've carefully disguised these seams so you don't see the rough edges. And the world would have you look as though it's okay to go this way. Somebody's looking for something different to do. Thank you, you may return to normalcy.

Almost every talk show, someone standing there wearing their morals wrong side out and talking bravely, right in your living rooms, about their various sexual exploits to a point where you're so saturated with temptation. I came home from my first year at BYU and a very dear friend of mine had had a forced marriage. And she said, “I guess you've been hearing things about me, haven't you?” And I said, “Yes.” And she said, “Well, they're true. Just take my advice and never lie on beds with boys.” I thought at the time, “It's ironic that she should say never lie on beds with boys when she and her husband, who were the parents of this newborn child, should be a man and a woman.”

And so you won't say, “Sister Christensen said never lay on beds together. But she didn't say never lie down on couches together.” I want you to warn you not to lie down on couches together. And that if you're hiking and you're tired, or you're swimming and you need to stretch out, it's always a little safer to lie in your tummy.

Now, no one of those things by themselves is immoral. But just keep firmly in mind that there is a hazard in the horizontal. And if ever there is any question in your mind as whether or not you're still in charge of the sex electrical charges, stand up. I was telling these rules to a youth conference once down in Eden, Nevada, and we had a testimony meeting afterward, and one cute little cowboy-type boy got up to bear his testimony and he said, “My hormones must have really gotten their signal switched because I feel an impelling desire to stand up.” I hoped if the time ever came that, if this crisis existed for him, he'd remember the reason for the rule.

Rule number five really ought to be rule number one. The rule of thumb. Dress modestly, kiss sparingly, touch carefully, avoid contact horizontally. It's decide previously that you don't wait for the emotion of the moment, that you decide ahead of time that your answer to all questions of whether or not you will have a premarital sex experience is a firm and a decisive no. You won't think of all the reasons you shouldn't do it, just remember there's one thing that's that you're not going to do it.

Well, now suppose you already have. What happens? I had an interesting experience in the days when I was at university ward in Salt Lake, and we had firesides every Sunday night. We had milk, nickels, and popsicles, and we turned in our nickels back when you could get milk, nickels, and popsicles for nickels and then they'd buy more for the next week. And I thought it'd be kind of nice to give them a change. So I made some Jell-O and put fruit in it and everybody raved about how good it tasted and what a nice change it was. And I was glad to do the dishes and I thought maybe some of the fellows there could think I could do something besides talk. And next week I thought I was really going to do something exciting. It was a cold November night, so I decided to make chili.

I had my mother's 20-quart pressure cooker full of beans. And I'd flavored them wonderfully and they tasted so good. I kept sampling them and telling myself how everybody was going to rave on these wonderful beans. They say obesity is a state existing where the Lord does not help those who help themselves and help themselves and help themselves. And I kept helping myself to those beans and telling myself how everybody was going to rave about them. When it came time to serve them on Sunday night, I put them on the front burner and I turned the electrical—not a sex electrical current, but an ordinary electrical current—onto high. And it contacted the bottom of that pan. And it was not very long until those beans were burned. And every miserable cotton-picking bean in the whole 20-quart pressure cooker tasted of the scorch. And I was just devastated. I'd have cried, but there was enough water and salt in them already. I put tomato juice in it. I put ketchup in it. I put salt, vinegar, mustard, pepper, but nothing took away the taste of the scorch. And in our little kitchen with the blue linoleum, a voice said to my mind, “This is like moral sin. It taints everything you ever do. And while everything that you would give your public might be tasty and wonderful, because you get the heat too high there is the flavor of the scorch.” I couldn't buy anything on Sunday in those days as a replacement, even if I had been willing to go to the store. I took them and I served them and nobody raved. And some people didn't finish eating them.

You know, the only real solution in this situation is to cook a new pot of beans. And this is what happens when you repent of this transgression. Remember the account of the Savior when the woman was taken in adultery, even in the very act, and they were ready to stone her? The Savior came upon them and said, “He that is without sin, let him cast the first stone.” And one by one, they dropped their stones and walked away. And he turned to her, and he said, “Woman, where are thine accusers?” Her answer was, “None, my lord.” He said, “Neither do I condemn thee. Go thy way and sin no more.” He didn't say, “Because you started, you just well make a career out of this.” Did he? He said, “Go thy way and sin no more.”

Wonderful blessings can come to us. The powers of the priesthood that are inseparably connected with the powers of heaven. The warning regarding transgressions to the priesthood, Pat Holland reminds us, apply equally to women:

“Behold, there are many called but fewer chosen. And why are they not chosen? Because their hearts are set so much upon the things of this world and aspire to the honors of men that they do not learn this one lesson that the rights of the priesthood are inseparably connected with the powers of heaven and that the powers of heaven cannot be controlled nor handled only upon the principles of righteousness.”

I submit to you that one of the most significant of the powers of heaven that has been given to us is what Pat's husband, Jeff Holland, referred to in his talk to BYU students in his Fire and Ice wonderful sermon dissertation is that the most godlike thing that anyone experiences in this life is sexual intercourse. The coming of one man and one woman together to become one flesh is a sacred, wonderful, beautiful experience. But so much of it transcends the physical, the mental and the emotional and the sense of unity that goes with the commitment to whatever life can come. This process of creating life takes 32 hormones to nurse a baby. Suppose you had to remember to take a pill for the day the arms were to grow on your child.

I had a very sobering experience when our third son died of aplastic anemia and septicemia. I learned the great meaning of health in the navel and marrow in the bones. That marrow in the bones is literally your lifeblood. And the special connection of an umbilical cord. And this boy, his tongue was swollen until it filled his whole mouth, and he couldn't speak, but he wrote a note and said, “Is there someone else in this room?” And I said, “Do you see someone?” He nodded yes. And I said, “Sometimes when you're very sick Heavenly Father sends special messengers to comfort you, and this is probably who you see.” And he said, “Clayton's here, isn't he?” And I thought, “Well, he's not seeing anyone from the spirit world. He's just delirious.” Because Clayton was his next older brother who was very much mortal. Then his perception said, “You don't believe me?” He wrote that. I said, “Oh, yes, I do.” And it occurred to me the person who he was seeing was probably my father who died when I was six years old and looked a great deal like his brother Clayton. Then he wrote another note and it said, “Who is that in your lap?” I don't know what he saw, but I was three months pregnant with our youngest child. “Who is that in your lap?”

Where is the significance of this spirit personality, this personality that existed long before it ever came to you? What kind of protection are you going to give it in its mortal existence? What kind of responsibility? Sister Holland says as women, “If we take care of our responsibilities, our rights will take care of themselves.” Great lesson I'd learned from this boy's death is that no matter how many our Heavenly Father has, He always misses those He loses. And He would miss any one of you if He were to lose you. He'd always think of where you would have been if you'd stayed with him.

When my husband was critically ill, I stretched out my hands across his bed in the intensive care unit and said, “What did I ever do to deserve you?” And his answer was immediate. He said, “You kept yourself morally clean. And the Lord led me straight to you.” As a stake president, he heard story after story after story of, uh, people who hadn't paid enough attention to the ground rules.

May you, as wonderful Ricks College students, continue to be inseparably connected in your male-female relationships with the powers of heaven is my prayer. In the name of Jesus Christ. amen.