Faith Over Fear
For an upcoming ward youth summer activity, a permission and medical release form created by the church needed to be signed. This form, copyrighted by Intellectual Reserve, Inc., includes a second page regarding “conduct at church activities.” No pornography, no vaping, no shoplifting, no threats to harm self or others, etc. If a youth participate in any of the prohibited activities, “leaders at the event or activity will speak with you, your parents, and your bishop or stake president. These leaders may decide to send you home immediately.” Stuff that sometimes needs to be spelled out explicitly now and then.
But I found the form’s first admonition disheartening:
“Please note that Church activities are not the time or place for romantic behavior or for conversations and actions that distract from the purpose of the event or activity.”
President Oaks needs to have a conversation with some form writers and those who direct them if he is really concerned about young adults not marrying. Habits of mind leading to lots of unmarried 26-year-olds have taken hold. Learning to engage in initial stages of romantic behavior should be listed somewhere as one of the purposes of bringing youth together for activities. Chewing tobacco and carrying guns at a youth conference should be discouraged. Flirting should be encouraged. We who believe in chastity should be the ones teaching romance as something good and distinct from unchaste actions that we teach people not to mire themselves in. We should exercise faith that those we call young men and young women can learn to talk to one another and experience attraction in the Lord’s uplifting way instead of Satan’s degrading way. If we don’t believe we can teach that . . . prepare for tiny Primaries, consolidated wards, and fewer stakes of Zion.
For a more salutary take on youth activities, here are lines from a Church News profile on a new General Authority Seventy, Elder Karl Hirst:
“At age 14, Karl attended his first youth convention (youth conference) as the only active young man in his ward. [. . .] Over the weekend, the new friend introduced Karl to others, including one Claire Wright. ‘I have this vivid memory of him introducing me to Claire and her friend and others from his ward, and that is how I met Claire,’ said Elder Hirst, adding, ‘I was struck immediately.'”
[. . .]
“Her first recollection of meeting young Karl Hirst was not at age 14 but two years later, as they attended the same stake youth activities. They found themselves in the same groups, ‘and I was just drawn to him — he got my attention.’
“About five or six months later, again at a stake activity, Karl and Claire were chatting, and he asked her for a date.
“‘And that was it,’ said Sister Hirst of a relationship that rekindled prior to his departure to serve in the England London South Mission and maintained through correspondence and an agreement for her to wait for him to return from his mission. The two were engaged six days after his return.”
G.
June 4, 2024
That’s bad language and a great story
There could be a time and place where that would be good language and a good rule. It’s not that the idea is bad, is that it’s wildly ignorant of the problems of 2024
On the other hand, its possible that Zoomer counselors can be brought to enforce a rule against all romantic activity but not a rule against only lgbetc romantic activity
Zen
June 4, 2024
G – would you elaborate? I am in general agreement with J, but I want to understand what you are saying.
E.C.
June 5, 2024
Bad examples: the senior girl who, at a girl’s camp, led a conversation about how many boys she’d kissed, then went around the tent asking how many boys the rest of us had kissed, like the number of lips locked with was an achievement. Ick, and no, I did not participate.
Or that time when I was 15 and my parents were camp cooks and dragged me along as kitchen help for a young men’s mission prep camp, and the leaders kept asking me which boys I thought were cute and offering to set me up as soon as I turned 16 . . . with young men about to go on missions.
Also not appropriate: some of the behavior my parents have witnessed as camp hosts amongst the lgb-confused teens.
All I’m saying is that there are reasons that line in that form exists.
Zen
June 5, 2024
That makes sense.
I hate the feeling of ‘The Higher Law being withheld’, but I suppose that is always inevitable, to some degree.
G.
June 5, 2024
Zen, if you are a youngun in the 80s, say, there’s a whole lotta fornication going on and romantic attachment is pretty easy to do, then trying to suppress it at church youth events so the spirit can be noticed is a great idea.
John Mansfield
June 5, 2024
In matters of preparing to court and then marry, I have come to believe through those I’ve met that the motto of the SAS commandos has valence: Who Dares Wins.
For an individual that means actively pursuing what you want, figuring out what works, brushing off bruising setbacks, and caring more about the desired outcome than about not embarrassing yourself by being seen desiring it. As a church it means not being cowardly paralyzed by all the possible modes of failure into just doing nothing and slinking off with no more reward than a single buried talent.
A song I held to a few years ago when I wanted to marry again was Emmylou Hariis and Mark Knopfler’s Belle Star:
There’s lonely people everywhere
From Abilene to Arkansas
The way they run for cover
You’d think love was against the law
Well, I don’t need a pistol, baby
You won’t have to rob a train
You can be my Belle Starr
And I can be your Jesse James
It don’t take a genius, baby
There ain’t no big mystery
You can’t play it safe
And still go down in history
So saddle up the horses
‘Cause we’re headed for the hall of fame
I’ll be your Belle Starr
You can be Jesse James
(It’s a song, not a poem; look it up.)
John Mansfield
June 5, 2024
A young family moved into my ward many years ago. The couple had been married a little more than a decade. It turned out that they had married shortly after he returned from his mission. The bride still had a year of high school left which she completed as a married woman. That made sense to me: if a married student can continue college, she can certainly manage a senior year of high school. The thing I wondered and never asked was how their romance developed, since she would have been 15 when he left to be a missionary.
E.C., it’s too bad your 15-year-old self wasn’t able to receive the willingness of those adults in the kitchen to help you think about a future of dating. There are a lot of worse developments you could have experienced at 16 than going on a date with a 19-year-old with a mission call.
Seeking romance is a vulnerable, exposed thing. It makes some treat it with humor that leaves others feeling ridiculed. It causes many to treat their romantic ambitions as a private concern which no one around them should know anything about, which is pretty counter-productive. Connecting takes connection. In the case of my first, late wife, I met and talked with my future mother-in-law half a year before I met her daughter.
E.C.
June 5, 2024
@ John Mansfield,
I’m going to have to disagree here. I don’t have a problem with age gaps after both parties are 18, but someone who has just turned 15 dating a 19-year-old is sketchy for multiple reasons.
One of my aunts had a 15-year age gap with her husband, and they had a beautiful long life together, so I don’t doubt it works out sometimes, but she met him when she was 19.
I’ve never knowingly turned down a date from a young man who’s asked me – after I turned 16. I have turned down a date offered by one young man’s mother (aggressively offered), mostly because I could see that she was going to be very involved in any relationship I might have with her son.
John Mansfield
June 6, 2024
E.C., I am not sure how comfortable you are with me examining the personal example you provided. There are some differences in the narrative between your first comment and the second, but I fear personalizing this.
Stepping away from your particular tale, perhaps I can say that, yes, there are bounds that respect the need of youth to mature. “No dating before 16” is one such healthy rule. At the same time there are also forces at work keeping youth from maturing, and unhelpful forces that make those readying themselves for romantic interaction, and someday marriage, to feel ashamed for doing so. We are in battle against those forces so that a 14-year-old girl at a youth conference, like Claire Wright in 1986, can leave a memorable impression on a 14-year-old boy, like Karl Hirst, who two years later at other church activities will start to favorably draw her attention, leading to dating, and love, and marriage.