Wanking is a sin because they told you not to do it. Just like drinking coffee or tea.
The single stone tablet stored away in the mormon ark of the covenant in the President's vault has exactly one commandment chiseled on it (in reformed Egyption, of course): "Thou shalt OBEY".
While that is a popular triplet in the Exmo community, it's not official doctrine. ;-)
You have to pay and pray only because they TELL you to. So they are extensions of "obey". Tithing has been suspended temporarily in the past, for example.
The same question occasionally arose in discussions I recall from my years in the Reorganized LDS Church.
It was not a matter for a bishop's review (which is financial) but rather a concern some members shared with the pastor of their congregation.
I'm not sure if there was ever a general consensus formed on this issue, but some of the things I do recall hearing....
1. Masturbation can become a barrier between partners in a marriage -- the act itself can displace or distort normal intimate relations between the couple.
2. Taken to excess, it can become a preoccupation that overrides other, potentially more important parts of life -- maintaining mental and physical health, etc. Thus, as an element of sexual addiction it can be destructive.
All such talk pretty much pertained to the situation of married adults, who sometimes brought their personal problems to the pastor for discussion/help. I do not recall any such talk applied to young unmarried members, or even to older unmarried RLDS.
One tangential doctrine I did encounter, from time to time, is that ANY excess or addiction which turns us away from God is wrong -- and that guilt or indifference is the usual consequence. Some folks called this "sin."
I think it's probably only a barrier if one is brought up to believe so. A lot of men and women who are married or are sex partners encourage it and help each other out. It is unnatural only if we teach ourselves that it is.
BUT, did you know that that was not translated correctly. In the JST, Joseph corrected it to:
" 9 And Onan knew that the seed should not be his; and it came to pass, when he married his brother's wife, that he would not lie with her, lest he should raise up seed unto his brother."
So Onan's sin was not spilling seed, or coitus interruptus, it was not bonking a woman he was religiously obligated to bonk.
Would you expect anything else from Joseph?
I don't think he was defending masturbation though, i suspect he was approving coitus interruptus as a potential method of birth control if needed (say, when bonking maid after being commanded by God)
As I understood it, Onan was obligated to raise up seed to his brother because he none. Therefore, he was obligated to do so. Onan wanted to retain all property for his own offspring and spilled his seed on the ground to make sure there was not a pregnancy. Onan's sin then would be greed in addition to violating the inheritance laws.
"Masturbation is the introduction of the more serious sin of exhibitionism and the gross sin of homosexuality."
"It [masturbation] 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."
This is why I think SWK was gay. I only think of women when I masturbate. If he comes to the conclusion that masturbation leads to homosexuality, then he had to have had some kind of same sex attraction.
I don't think he was gay, I think he was incredibly naive, very gullible, not especially smart and was probably the 5% of men who actually never did masturbate.
Someone confesses they're gay and says they masturbated (why not?) and SWK turns the correlation into causation.
There's also major confirmation bias going on. His typical ward member doesn't show up in his office and announce that he masturbated as a teen and occasionally when his wife is on her period. ALL he hears confessions from are people guilty of greater sins (or even crimes.)
(General Authorities fall for this crap all the time. Anyone remember the GA who talked about his friend, the grandchild pedophile, who blamed Playboy? And the GA not only bought it, he also believed that the guy had stopped!)
I've heard it mentioned in a couple of my religion classes that "procreative powers" are only to be used between husband and wife with in the bonds of matrimony. So, masturbation before marriage, after marriage because it's not between both partners... that "the powers of procreation are only to be employed with in the bonds of matrimony" idea (where does that quote come from? I can't remember) also is why single women can not have IVF or artificial semination, because they're not married and they're messing around with their powers of procreation outside of marriage. Seriously, that was a key point taught earlier this year in BYUI's Family Foundations class.
Whenever I read LBJ I remember the Saturday Night Live special episode based on the Lewinski scandal. They had little "historical facts" that showed between sketches.
One read: "LBJ's mexican whores called him 'El BJ'"
SWK....I feel sorry for his wife...no french kissing...no decent foreplay...no oral sex....no positions other than missionary. No wonder God blessed him with boils and but problems!!!
I had to be a little creative to think of reasons why it was harming anybody. Eventually I decided that it must be that if I kept doing it I would not be able to control myself when presented with the real thing, which made me terrified of attractive girls and women.