I was a recently baptized teenage convert, unfamiliar with the ways of the church. Invited to a Thursday youth activity night at my ward building, I was asked to meet with a man in the building I didn’t know.
I would find out the man I was meeting with served on my stake’s high council. He also was a member of my ward. At the time I really didn’t even know what his church position meant. I was also puzzled why he wanted to meet alone with me.
When we met he said since I was a new young convert, the only one in my family to join, he wanted to review with me what my spiritual expectations were to live so I could remain clean after my baptism.
The stake leader briefly went over things like the Word of Wisdom and paying tithing. It seemed to me his tone was one of distrust I would obey anything. It just felt creepy.
We got to talking about chastity. That was the last thing I wanted to talk about with an old odd stranger I didn’t know.
He asked me how old I was when I started masturbating, and how often.
My head started wondering. What kind of church question is that?
I felt really pressured. I had started masturbating daily when I was four years old. I didn’t want to sound too perverted, so I lied.
I said twelve years old. Maybe once a month.
He started to ask all kinds of other strange questions. How did I learn to masturbate? Did I ever see porn? How long each time did I masturbate? What did I think about? Where did I do it? How many orgasms and other strange questions.
I felt bad. I lied on everything I told him. I made it up. I just didn’t want him to know me. I just played stupid.
He asked me if I was ever tempted or engaged in actual sex.
Again, I lied. I didn’t want to admit I had sex before with both boys and girls.
I just played stupid and said I was a virgin.
It just went on like that in the interview forever, especially all kinds of talk on oral sex. The man was an oral sex hound. He said he wanted to explain the Lord’s hatred of oral sex. He went on and on telling me stories of people who did oral sex and then problems it caused.
Even though I had done and experienced oral sex with boys and girls before, there was no way I was going to let the stake councilman know that. I just acted innocent like I was a virgin. After a very long interview he had me go back to the youth group. Besides a few boys playing basketball in the gym, everyone had already left
Not only had I missed my Thursday activity, all that was accomplished was not really anything at all.
I think the experience started me on the path to realizing sometimes it really is appropriate to lie to church leaders.
I think if you took all that time spent in inappropriate and useless youth sex interrogations multiplied by all the many tens of thousands of church leaders and millions of youth, perhaps something positive could get done by church members for this world.
Finally, i really think the man was a pervert. If I ever saw him today I would call him that to his face.