THE LAW OF CHASTITY AND THE SIN OF SODOM

I wanted to delve into this a little more when I had a little more time on my hands.  In trying to flesh out the root cause and relationship of sexual sin and the shunning of the stranger.

Sexual sin is selfish:

• Rape or Incest/Pedophilia;  destroys any form of trust between humans.  Especially when it comes to children who are naturally trusting and cannot reason that their innocence is being compromised (necessarily at the time).  This is the greatest form of betrayal as it is NEARLY impossible to restore or engender true trust in a person ever again.  It is a life sentence for the victim and for those who attempt to love them.  I am living it, to a degree, right now.  In the end, I have seen multi-generational abuse come out of it, self-flaggelation of the victim both emotionally and spiritually, mental health issues and sometimes suicide.  In the end, the Atonement will cover it and completely heal it, but I find that it appears to be impossible or difficult to resolve in a normal human lifetime and with the limited amount of love at our disposal in this fallen sphere.

This is why Jesus was stark in His assessment when it comes to the judgment in that it would better had the person never gotten a body (picture the torturous state of satan and his minions), than to ever go there.  It does not get more stark than those words, that bluntly stated, by the God of Love....

• Adultery; destroys families (partners and children) in that trust is destroyed for a few minutes of pleasure.  It can be regained possibly over an immense amount of time, but the one act brutalizes any relationship.  Divorce is devastating outcome of it.  Recoverable - but so little so, that it ranks right next to murder in seriousness.
• Fornication; destroys trust in that two people who have engaged in it, even if consensual.  I just casually observe the number of people who "did it" before they got married and then feigned to love each other (yes, I know it is still possible to do so) during the duration of that relationship.  It seems (at least anecdotally), that the relationship ends in failure.  Often (not always), the sex which propelled them into a relationship (often peters out - pun intended) and the pair are left unfulfilled and the usual pornography, adultery takes over that relationship.  It comes down to delayed gratification - do you suffer a little more up front to have a multiplicative effect a little later on?  Or do you cave to your desires only to have it lean in the later years.  I am yet to see a way for those who have gone that route, to reverse the effects of it within their relationship.  It is kind of like the alcoholic who roasts his liver on the hooch, then quits, and then endures the ravages of liver disease until death.  Once the damage is done, it is hard to back it out - yet many still heroically attempt to do so.
• Pornography/Prostitution;  it is not a victimless crime.  If there were no demand for it, there would be no money in it and it would cease to exist as a thing.  The victims are those who are trafficked and often drugged in order to perform for the camera.  Often desensitized to the point they do not care.  Often just working for the next fix or enough money to feed (often) illegitimate kids.  These are those operating in the margins of society.  I have related the story of my younger sister's friend who was deceived into the trade as a 15 year old and then spit out of it at 17 (likely after she had contracted some dread STD).  Like so much trash, she was thrown out as an addict and used up.  She is now right around 50 years old.  Never married.  Who would want to deal with that background?  I think she may not be active LDS either.  None of that stuff is victimless crimes against humanity.  There is a cost to everything.  It is driven by selfishness.
• Homosexuality; it is simply selfish by definition in that it (often) deprives life by its very definition (no conception has ever occurred in the anus or without a penis in a vagina; basic biology...).  Simply. Not. Done.  Depriving life to another when we have it (this includes abortion), is the ultimate selfish act.  It is kind of like watching another starve while you are feasting at a table.  I think Jesus referenced this as the selfish act of the century (other than child molestation) and that the person who deprives others of the basics will look up from hell while the former sufferer enjoys an eternity of the abundant life and the former is satisfied just to eat the crumbs from the table as a wretch.

So, what does this have to do with Sodom?  All of that sin is selfish in nature (Ezekiel 16):  

49 Behold, this was the iniquity of thy sister ^aSodom, ^bpride, fulness of bread, and abundance of ^cidleness was in her and in her daughters, neither did she strengthen the hand of the poor and needy.

50 And they were haughty, and committed ^aabomination before me: therefore I took them ^baway ^cas I saw good.

No one, not a single person who is truly selfless and Zion-hearted would want to deprive another of their virtue, let alone deprive them of hospitality (warm place to sleep and food to eat) while they themselves are enjoying it.  It simply would not cross their mind.  If a mistake were made on the sexual sin side of the equation, repentance would be on the highest order of business.  True repentance and forsaking of it.

Two things remain seared in my mind from high school was being in the same locker room with the "jocks" and them literally plotting to take the virtue of their cheerleader girl friends who had "not put out" up to that point.  And then the sad news as they were bragging about finally making the score some time later.  They were derogatorily bragging about them like so many cheap, tawdry pieces of meat.  Just sick.  I wanted to go up and deck them, even though I had not dated those particular girls.  In today's world with technology, I would have recorded the audio and air dropped it in a different class so the girls could be clued in to the behavior of the assholes that they thought loved them.

I just have to wonder how many of these guys are in broken relationships.  I have spent time on fakelook and note that many of them are in broken relationships.  Many of the women and men with mental health issues or alcoholism and most with at least one divorce.  The pattern of broken living perpetuating through their lives and often band-aided with substance abuse to cover the pain of failure, etc.  Humans are meant to have joy in their relationships - not the trail of wreckage that Western society parades as normal.  Divorce should be the rare exception; not the rule as we find harmony in our lives through gospel living.

So, the greatest manifestation of sin in Sodom was allowing the engrained sexual nature of us as humans (yes, sex is healthy and normal and wholesome in a loving committed relationship, sealed by the bonds of marriage) to get to a point that it has become selfish and then possibly beyond a human need that needs to be contained within the bounds the Lord has set, to one where a basic human need is also deprived.  This selfishness appears to organically spill over into other basic human needs of food and warmth.  It is the lack of charity that appears to be the problem here.  The Golden Rule is at play.

All of this played out in St George.  I am quite sure that the officers would have been horrified at the thought of their own daughter being treated like that.  If not, then they are no better than a dog.  Dogs actually have far more dignity than that....

A few more thoughts.  I am always struck by the quickness and harshness of how an officer will respond to the report of a bank being "robbed".  If I were to call in any other crime (an actual crime against a person like assault or rape), good luck getting an officer there in record time, let alone a backup officer let alone a call for a possible SWAT team response to subdue the rapist or assaulter.  In the case of the bank and my daughter, it was amazing the rapidness and level of response to her supposed "felony bank robbery".  How police repond to crimes (especially things like human trafficking and prostitution) tells you largely who is in control and what their priorities are.  Banks and drug lords and big business are in control of the situation.  The police do not work for you; they work for them....  Them being the Gadiantons.

And thus likely why I will help her pursue charges against the police dept at a bare minimum to cause them to more properly assess their responses to an alleged crime.  I think the thing that pisses me off the most is that they brutalized her (quite likely could have ended up killing her - they should have kept her under observation for a minimum of 72 hours with periodic checkups thereafter until they were sure the danger of a brain bleed was well past), and then they tried to cover it up.  The audio tapes from the call that went out was for a burglary in progress.  This is so far from the truth it is laughable.  The dashcam and body cam footage from both cruisers and the two responding officers will further define this fact.  They were presumptive in their actions, did not read the situation right (her hands were empty, no backpack, and only a wallet on her person) and did not ask questions before deciding they needed to use excessive force to "subdue" their "suspect" who was just walking away from an ATM.

I can only hope that the bank employee or whomever called it in gets to enjoy a similar situation with themselves or a close family member so they can "enjoy" the experience for themselves.  The Law of the Harvest is a bitch...

She has filed a formal complaint with the PD and the question was asked, "What do you want to do with this?".  How about you issue a formal apology and admit there was a false arrest and that it was not handled properly?!?  Then IMMEDIATELY run everything past a Judge and get it all expunged?  No DUH!  That is what happens when you majorly screw up....  Persisting in a court date and not just reducing the charges is insulting!  Not offering to pay the hospital bills and make it like it never happened?  Insulting!

This is the sin of Sodom.  If I were the Police Chief, I would seriously rake the department over the coals.  Because, had she died from this?  I would be raising more than my share of hell for them down there.  Far more importantly than that, I would question whether my town warrants divine protection from what is coming.  I have waffled on how I feel about St George.  Obviously it will fare much better than say Las Vegas.  Talk about the sins of Sodom....  Filthy is a euphomism when describing that place.  Why anyone would want to raise a family there is absolutely beyond me....  I have seen some indications that SG will be a place of refuge and not refuse.  BUT - I have seen many things that concern me including a leaning towards the rainbow agenda by several in positions of power down there.  I often marvel at the landscapes and feel that they are a result of massive destructions of the former inhabitants in those areas, just as with the SL valley when it was covered with water (see statements by BY on the matter).

I get concerned about Cardston and our black body bag future (including two out in front of my house..).  We had a homeless lady show up on doorstep one night late and a few years ago.  The first thing that went through my mind as we were "interviewing" her to see if there was a threat to our abode, was the Sodom factor at play in my life.  I don't care about my safety so much, but we did have two teen girls in our home at the time.  We decided to take her in until she could get on her feet.  Our neighbors, who happen to be very high up in the Temple hierarchy outed us to their son, whom we are currently renting from, and we were swatted down for having given her a spare bedroom and food for a few weeks.  Our sin was not appreciated and Cardston clicked down one notch on the Sodom meter....

I see the Sodom effect as I will call it, manifest itself among the youth.  If a kid is not within the cool crowd or the right family group, they are often shunned.  Oddly enough, it is the shunning by the youth within the Church more than it is by those outside the fold.  This creates a vacuum that is exploited by those to fill the kids' heads with anti-Mormon propaganda.  This particular thing worked on my oldest daughter when we moved to Montana in the middle of her high school career.  All of the girls basically shunned her including the Bishop's daughter.  She is a little reserved, but not too socially awkward.  She always ate lunch alone those last two years of school.  While the Bishop's daughter was out fornicating, she was home studying and scratching her head and wondering what made her so off-putting that she had no friends (among the LDS crowd).  The hypocrisy and mistreatment by that posse really rubbed my girl wrong and she dropped out of Seminary after a year of that action and a snafu with the Seminary teacher who basically told all of the kids that the girls were to forget higher education, stay home and be barefoot and pregnant for the next thirty years of their existence....  The Bishop's daughter ended up going on to a temple marriage (I have always wondered if her new husband was even aware of the Chery Cherry robbing incidents previously in her life), while my daughter left the Church completely.  I am not blaming the kids of that posse - but I am 100% positive that it would have been a different outcome with my daughter if she had been welcomed into that group on Sundays as well as in the school cafeteria (at a minimum).  Instead the Protestant kids who had been taught in Bible camp that Mormons are cultists, were more than happy to whisk her into their posse and finish off her trust in the Restored Gospel....  They were just doing what they thought was prudent, based on what their Pastors had taught them...  Thanks, folks!  It has been superb!

And so it goes.  In Zion, we simply will dwell in love and this kind of thing will not exist.  The love that has waxed cold in many will burn brightly once again and the sins of Sodom will be a distant memory.  We will value love and relationships over money and avarice.  Those who merit it, will have been drowned in the depths of the sea, sunk in the depths of the earth like many places around St George were in previous days, etc and we will experience a new earth and a new mindset.  It will only come after the purge.