Continuing with our series about sex and Latter-day Saints. To recap, I ran across a dataset  with a lot of sex questions and a large enough sample of Latter-day Saints (322) to be able to draw some conclusions with. I have already written about what that survey says about masturbation, pornography, and abortion among Latter-day Saints. Finding that Latter-day Saints masturbate less, watch pornography less, and are involved in abortions less. However, these numbers, while smaller, are not insignificant, and there are plenty of our fellow brothers and sisters in our congregations that have experience with these things.   

Similarly. when we look at affairs, total number of sexual partners across the lifecourse, and STD diagnoses, I don’t think anybody will be surprised that Latter-day Saints score lower. But how much lower?  Again, we don’t have any context for these numbers, and of these three variables: STD diagnosis, number of sexual partners, and affairs, only one of them is per se sinful by Latter-day Saint standards. For example, multiple sexual partners might be spouses or from a pre-Latter-day Saint life when they weren’t subject to the same law and expectations (D&C 88).  So in presenting these numbers I’m not tut tutting anybody, just pointing out how frequent these experiences are among our brothers and sisters in the pews. Here we’re going to be a little heteronormative and focus on opposite-sex sexual partners.

Number of Opposite-Sex Sexual Partners

“How many different women have you ever had a sexual relationship with?”

“How many different men have you ever had a sexual relationship with?”

About one out of ten LDS and non-LDS adults are “virgins” (I kind of don’t like that term because of the all the historical and social baggage, but oh well).  Six out of ten LDS men and LDS women have had one sexual partner-usually, I imagine, their spouse but not necessarily, and about one out of five LDS women and one out of five LDS men have had 3+ sexual partners.

Despite the fantasies many of us had about what the gentiles were doing when we were frustrated Utah teenagers, the gentiles aren’t actually partying too hard. Serial monogamy more than James Bond, with about one in ten who really get around. Perhaps the biggest difference is that for non-members the serial monogamy ranges (3-15) are the norm, whereas for Latter-day Saints the one sexual partner is the norm (kind of ironic, given how much grief this issue has given us historically).

And yes, two Latter-day Saint men claim to have had 100+ female sexual partners. Sexual partner counts are incredibly right-tailed, but at some point it’s questionable whether you’re dealing with an accurate reporting or what is termed the “jokester” effect. (“Yeah bro, I’ve had hundreds.”) In theory you can have hundreds of sexual partners, but in practice I imagine such numbers are typically limited to very high sociosexuality females, rockstar/athlete/celebrity males, or men who take a suspicious number of trips to Thailand by themselves.

Number of Who Have Had An Affair

“Have you ever had a sexual relationship with someone else while you were married?”

About 2% of LDS women and 6% of LDS men admit to having had an affair. So once again about one out of 20 men and one out of 50 women. So one per RS lesson and two per EQ lesson?

For non-members it’s quite a bit higher at 8% of women and 13% of men. (This survey was taken about ten years ago, and I heard somewhere that the gender gap in affairs has closed? Haven’t done a deep dive on this admittedly).

STD Diagnosis

“Have you ever been told that you had a sexually transmitted infection?”

(Again, not passing any kind of judgment)

9% of female Latter-day Saints and 19% of female non-Latter-day Saints.

Versus

4% of male Latter-day Saints versus 11% of male non-Latter-day Saints.

Code

#https://www.thearda.com/data-archive?fid=FS14&tab=2

library(haven)
df <- read_sav(“~/Desktop/Relationships in America Survey (2014).SAV”)

df <- df %>%
mutate(STD = case_when(
Q109 %in% c(-1, 3) ~ NA_real_,
Q109 %in% c(1, 2) ~ 1,
Q109 == 0 ~ 0,
TRUE ~ NA_real_
))

attributes(df$Q109)
table(df$STD, df$Q109)

#Q103 and #Q104
attributes(df$Q103)
df$womenhadsex<-ifelse(df$Q103==-1, NA, df$Q103)
table(df$womenhadsex, df$Q103)

attributes(df$Q104)
df$menhadsex<-ifelse(df$Q104==-1, NA, df$Q104)
table(df$menhadsex, df$Q104)

attributes(df$Q111)
df$Cheated <- ifelse(df$Q111 == -1, NA, df$Q111)
table(df$Cheated, df$Q111)

attributes(df$Q37)
df$Mo <- ifelse((df$Q37 == -1 | df$Q37==98), NA, ifelse(df$Q37 == 5, 1, 0))

table(df$Mo, df$Q37)
attributes(df$PPGENDER)

attributes(df$PPGENDER)
df$hadsex<-ifelse(df$PPGENDER==1, df$womenhadsex,
ifelse(df$PPGENDER==2, df$menhadsex, NA))

df_female<-subset(df, PPGENDER==2)
df_male<-subset(df, PPGENDER==1)

#Cheated while married
t.test(df_female$Cheated~df_female$Mo)
t.test(df_male$Cheated~df_male$Mo)

#STD
t.test(df_female$STD~df_female$Mo)
t.test(df_male$STD~df_male$Mo)

#Count
t.test(df_female$menhadsex~df_female$Mo)
t.test(df_female$hadsex~df_female$Mo)

t.test(df_male$womenhadsex~df_male$Mo)
t.test(df_male$hadsex~df_male$Mo)

Mo<-subset(df, Mo==1)
NoMo<-subset(df, Mo==0)

Mo_X<-as.data.frame(round(100(prop.table(table(Mo$hadsex, Mo$PPGENDER),2)),0)) #
NoMo_X<-as.data.frame(round(100(prop.table(table(NoMo$hadsex, NoMo$PPGENDER),2)),0)) #