- Jonathan Green on How Many Latter-day Saints View Pornography?: “Here’s a basic teaching: “Whosoever looketh on a woman to lust after her hath committed adultery with her already in his heart.” If you think I’m judgy, wait till you get to explain the time you tried to persuade people that using pornography was good and healthy. Assuming you’re real, I think there’s a good chance you’re setting yourself up for some massive problems down the road. You’ve persuaded your wife to ignore your porn habit and maybe indulge in her own. What happens when she starts feeling guilty after a talk at church or General Conference or a temple recommend interview? Libido is not the only thing that can be imbalanced in marriage; so can a sense of guilt. Are you going to prevent her from seeking guidance from the bishop? How does this play out when the bishop asks for your side of the story? If your marriage crumbles, for this or any other reason, how does your sophisticated take on pornography sound at a custody hearing? Lusting after other women is not something that should be normalized as part of a healthy marriage. Husbands, love your wives. Your real wife, not some airbrushed fake or AI hallucination.” Apr 6, 05:22
- on How Many Latter-day Saints View Pornography?: ““The Church condemns pornography in any form. Pornography use of any kind damages individual lives, families, and society. It also drives away the Spirit of the Lord. Church members should avoid all forms of pornographic material and oppose its production, dissemination, and use.” -General Handbook: Serving in The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints 38.6.13 You can disagree with the church on the matter if that’s how you feel. But that’s literally the official position of the church. And I don’t think the church is going to take your pornography usage lightly, even if you and your spouse genuinely don’t think it’s harming either of you personally.” Apr 5, 22:12
- on How Many Latter-day Saints View Pornography?: “Jonathan Green, So you gouge your own eyes out and self-castrate and have sold all you have and given to the poor? Of course you haven’t. And those are basic teachings of Jesus. You have compromises that don’t just work, but make your life better and sweeter than being completely indigent and at least partially without sight. Your extremism about pornography usage between two loving and committed MARRIED adults says more about your own issues than it does your religious convictions. People with your particular malady of compulsive self- and other-shaming make me sad. We’re over here living our best LDS lives, temple recommend holding, tithe paying, enjoying how all our kids have opted to embrace their faith and religious commitments, and not feeling the slightest bit evil about how pornography is part of our marriage. Seriously, I am flummoxed by the tone of scrupulosity in your response. Oh well, live and let live!” Apr 5, 21:38
- on How Many Latter-day Saints View Pornography?: “Using pornography is sinful and immoral, also evil and a moral failure. If one spouse feels more libidinous, using pornography to raise sexual arousal even more does not make any sense whatsoever. People can quibble about lots of things, but not this. The Church’s hard stance against pornography is correct.” Apr 5, 20:35
- on How Many Latter-day Saints View Pornography?: “More valuable would be a measurement of how many marriages are healthy, loving, and lifelong when pornography use of the spouses is not vilified and mutually understood to be an important tool in the individual and shared sex lives of the married couple. As a middle aged person in a very happy and healthy LDS marriage that has persisted for decades and grows stronger by the year, I can report that pornography has been a crucial component to our relationship for all the obvious reasons (differing libidos, stressful seasons, pregnancy/parturition/child-rearing, health issues, perimenopause/menopause, etc.). Many years ago we had some honest conversations with each other and decided to let go of accumulated religious shame and expectations…and presto! Seriously one of the best things we have ever done as a couple. Is this sinful or immoral? We absolutely can say it is not. We have a lovely and mutually respectful relationship, healthy and thriving kids all interested and active in the church, and an exciting sex life together that is fully ours and better now than in our 20s. We are your most basic looking church members in the pews, and nothing about us says anything but normal, boring, happy 40-50 somethings, because we are normal, boring, and happy. I don’t know because I respect boundaries and I love for others to have their privacy and choices remain fully theirs, but I am guessing that many, many healthy and happy marriages are pretty much like ours, all across Utah and beyond. The broad brushstrokes of pornography use=evil/moral failure is too broad and unproductive. Unhappy marriages undermined by guilt, suspicion, and unaddressed biological realities are a far worse problem in my life experience.” Apr 5, 13:54
- on A Review: Changemakers: Women Who Boldly Built Zion: “Emma Bidamon is in there but Chieko Okazaki isn’t?” Apr 5, 12:34
- on How Many Latter-day Saints View Pornography?: ““The only actual data I’ve seen just suggests that levels of *distress* about pornography are much higher among conservative religious groups, which makes more sense.” That’s true. “On that note, I have wondered in this and the other surveys how useful the LDS v. non-LDS distinction is, given how diverse the second group is.” That’s also true to an extent. If I were doing a full-fledged article I’d also look at religiosity to see how much of the LDS effect is really just a proxy for that (controlling for religiosity we might be more likely to look at porn for all I know), then throw in the standard controls, etc., but for stuff like this the top level, zero order “Do LDS look at porn a lot relative to others” is interesting in its own right. “The general culture of sex-negativity (token paeans to the goodness of marriage notwithstanding) can also backfire badly when people actually marry.” I have no doubt this happens, I’m not doubting your valuable personal experience, and organized religion isn’t perfect in how they handle the erotic (it could be less guilt-based, especially back in my and probably your day), but nowadays I think that in the aggregate people tend to overplay the “religious people are debbie downers about sex and it messes them up” line. Having religious parameters can have its sexual benefits. Of course some people’s wedding nights weren’t great, but on the whole it probably works out better as a first time than the backseat of a car after being pressured by a JV high school football player. I suspect that the 90s were peak libertinism-is-the-road-to-sexual-flourishing, but now even secularists are backing off from that. More quantitatively, me and others have found that religious tend to be more sexually satisfied than the non-religious (https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1007/s13644-019-00395-w). Also as an aside, using the same dataset as above I actually looked at whether members have more marital sex and they aren’t (hence no blogpost on that), but they’re not having less either.” Apr 5, 12:06
- on How Many Latter-day Saints View Pornography?: “(First off—heads up that I no longer attend an LDS church, and haven’t for nearly three years. I just pop by now and then out of curiosity.) Honestly, this isn’t particularly surprising to me. I don’t think I’ve seen any actual evidence beyond the paid subscriptions that the numbers are higher. The only actual data I’ve seen just suggests that levels of *distress* about pornography are much higher among conservative religious groups, which makes more sense. On that note, I have wondered in this and the other surveys how useful the LDS v. non-LDS distinction is, given how diverse the second group is. There are definitely enough members of other very conservative religious groups (or just with very conservative upbringings within broadly more liberal denominations) to contribute disproportionately to the 30% of men who haven’t masturbated in the last month, for instance—I suspect it would be higher if you excluded all the other groups who are actively trying not to. I also just tend to doubt whether, even if you think these are practices worth discouraging*, the cost is actually worth it. Having adult men question children (often alone in a room together) about whether they masturbate or watch pornography is crazy, and would be viewed as creepy and abusive in any other context. The general culture of sex-negativity (token paeans to the goodness of marriage notwithstanding) can also backfire badly when people actually marry. My own partner and I both grew up LDS, and it seriously messed up our ability to have a healthy sexual relationship or even talk about it openly for years. I often think about how much easier it would have been if one of us (especially her) hadn’t been raised with that messaging. I normally have pretty warm feelings towards my upbringing—this is the one thing I feel really, deeply bitter towards the church about. Obviously it doesn’t hit everybody the same (I knew plenty of male missionaries who were bull-headed enough to basically just ignore the messaging) but it can be pretty bad. I don’t know if messing up children’s self-perception and view of sex for decades is worth it so that you can feel proud about your kids not masturbating or watching porn or whatever. *I don’t see any problem with masturbation, and honestly found the stat about more than half of all LDS women never having even tried it more than a little sad, but I’m also generally not a fan of pornography—it tends to really lean into and promote a lot of quite bad sexist and patriarchal stereotypes.” Apr 5, 08:21
- on Cutting Edge Latter-day Saint Research, March 2026: “I love that there’s finally an article in the language/rhetoric space — and on a subject similar to what I will be presenting on at Mormon Scholars in the Humanities in late May. Going to be very interesting to read that article.” Apr 4, 20:27
