The LDS church does not have a monopoly on guilt-tripping to the big M.

As a Lutheran growing up and a Roman Catholic later on in life, neither church held a monopoly on how sinful the Big M was. It just was but I never could figure out why.

However, I have never heard by either Lutherans or Catholics that the Big M would lead to homosexuality which was alluded to by the "Miracle of Faith" (is that the name of the book?) That's just silly.

If that were so, we'd be a world full off homosexuals. Last I heard was that homosexuals are anywhere from 5 to 10 percent of the population and since 99% of boys and girls like to play with their pleasure points, the math is really off the charts.

We had different experiences then. I never heard the word once as a born-and-raised Catholic. Never heard it mentioned in any Protestant church, either.

But so what? We're here to recover from mormonism.

Cheryl, don't misunderstand me. It's just that maybe the guilt trip might be a little weightier for Mormons because of the implications that masturbation would lead to homosexuality. That's a heavy trip to put on young minds. I may not have made that clear in the original post.

I think the biggest difference is that in other denominations children are not pulled into an office alone with a freaky effer that will question them about it and then want to hear every detail.

That seems light years beyond just telling someone it is bad.

Just what I was thinking. And also try to shame them or tell them that they aren't worthy.

SO much this. I had a conversation with one of my Catholic friends about this. (After I had left the church) I told him, that as a youth it was not at all uncommon to be alone with a middle-aged Bishop discussing Masturbation in detail. My friend was quite appalled and explained that, yes there is plenty of guilt-tripping and such in the Catholic church on the subject, but they don't drag kids into it like the Mormon Church does.

He then relayed a story of when he was at a Catholic youth camp or something of the sort, and one of the guest clergyman from a different region was popping that question to the kids as they came in to do confession with him. The local clergy took him aside, sent him home and told him he was not welcome back to the camp in the future. (Which is the APPROPRIATE response to such an occurence.)

In my teacher training about 30+ years ago, in a class on Adolescent Health and Sexuality, the teacher was an Israeli grad student. He explained the religious roots of masturbation being forbidden. He said it had to do with the admonition to populate the earth (and strengthen the tribe). Masturbation was regarded as "spilling the seed" or wasting it, and was therefore forbidden.

This was similar to dietary laws coming from historical situations where, at the time, it was prudent to follow the dietary restrictions.

He stressed that masturbation was absolutely normal and nearly universal.