A More Effective Approach to Masturbation and Pornography Pt. 1 - Natasha Helfer Parker | Ep. 1144

The Shame Doctrine: Why the LDS Church's Sexual Ethics May Be Harming the People It Aims to Help

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints has long treated masturbation and pornography use as grave moral failures, positioning them alongside serious transgressions and requiring members to confess these acts to ecclesiastical leaders. Yet a growing body of evidence suggests this approach produces the opposite of its intended result. Rather than reducing sexual transgression, shame-based sexual ethics may be driving members toward the very behaviors the church seeks to prevent, while simultaneously creating measurable mental health harm.

This tension between institutional doctrine and lived outcome forms the core argument in a conversation between therapist Natasha Helfer Parker and John Dehlin on the Mormon Stories Podcast. The discussion raises uncomfortable questions: Is the church's approach to sexuality grounded in contemporary psychological science? Has the institution's framing of normal sexual behavior as sinful caused collateral damage to individual mental health and family relationships?

The Church's Historical Position on Sexuality

The LDS approach to masturbation and pornography did not emerge in a vacuum. For decades, church materials have presented these behaviors as serious spiritual problems requiring repentance, priesthood intervention, and sometimes professional treatment. General Authorities have compared pornography consumption to drug addiction, using neuroscience imagery to argue that sexual content activates reward centers in the brain much like cocaine or heroin.

The 1980s offer a particularly stark example of this interventionist posture. Church leaders distributed a memo to bishops instructing them to discourage married couples from engaging in oral sex, labeling it an "unholy practice." Tens of thousands of members reported receiving counsel that shaped their intimate relationships based on doctrinal positions that the church has since quietly abandoned.