My beloved young people. This is a grave responsibility, not an easy one. And I am eager to discuss with you some matters, which I consider very important. I love youth. I rejoice when they grow up clean and stalwart and tall. I sorrow with them when there are misfortunes and remorse and troubles.

Numerous disasters have occurred in mid-ocean by collisions of ships, and sometimes with icebergs, and numerous people have gone to watery graves. Soon, a thing of this kind will be of the past, for the ships will be equipped with radar equipment, which will alert officers should a collision be imminent. A tape will be played him automatically, be blooming from the darkened bridge.

“This is an alert. This ship is approaching an object. This is an alert.” And the voice will not be stilled until a mate comes to the radar scope and turns the recorder off. This will enable ships to alter their courses and save many lives. I believe our young people are wholesome and basically good and sound, but they too are traveling oceans, which to them are only partially chartered, where there are shoals and rocks and icebergs and other vessels and where great disasters can come, unless warnings are heeded.

Perhaps one of the most important functions of the general of the authorities of the church on all levels is to issue a warning so that no one will come to trouble. In the numerous interviews which I have among missionaries and others, I find that many give excuses for their errors on the grounds that they did not know the church's stand or did not know just exactly what was wrong or how wrong it was. Many times they indulge in rationalizations, unwarranted ones.

Now, I'd like to speak today about words. First, as they relate to the theme that I have chosen. There's magic in words, properly used. While some people would use them accurately and others, sloppily, words are means of communication and faulty signals give wrong impressions. Disorder and misunderstandings are the results. Words underlie our whole life and are the tools of our business, the expressions of our affections, and the records of our progress.

Words cause hearts to throb and tears to flow. Words can be sincere or hypocritical. Many of us are destitute of words and consequently clumsy with our speech, which becomes sometimes mere babble. Paul said, "Except ye utter by the tongue words easy to be understood, how shall it be known what is spoken? Ye shall speak into the air."

Touring foreign lands, one comes to realize his utter helplessness without words and symbols. The workmen engaged in building the tower of Babel were craftsmen skilled in their trades. Take away their tools, they will replace them. Take away their skills, they will learn anew. But take away their means of communication with one another, and the building of the tower must be abandoned.

Words which confuse the hearer or the reader are worse than valueless. A reasonable vocabulary of well-chosen words provides us with the shadings of meanings and enables us to speak finely when we might otherwise speak coarsely. The words which seem to be synonyms still have differences of shaded meanings, such as “child” and “urchin,” “hand” and “fist” “misstatement,” and “lie.”

Now note the difference in these words: John looked at Mary, John glanced at Mary, John gazed at Mary, John glared at Mary. Every person should speak in social and business and political life—and especially in moral situations—as he does in the Kodak store, when he says, I wish Kodak Ektachrome-X, color film, daylight EX 1-2-7, and the clerk knows exactly what he wants.

Even examinations now, in many cases, do not require expressions from students. They may place a cross and the appropriate square and avoid intellectual effort in marshal in marshaling thoughts, expressing them coherently, and have about a 50% chance of getting it right, even on a guess. Now, you'll wonder why I've introduced my talk with the subject of words.

May we mention some four letter words. Puny and weak and good and fine and tide and tire. Wait and grow and weep and limp and life and live and lurk. And love and lust—ah, there are the words I want, I’ve found them.

Let me begin with a story. Across the desk sat a handsome, young 19-year-old and a beautiful, shy, but charming 18-year-old and they appeared embarrassed, apprehensive, and near-terrified. He was defensive, boarding on to belligerency. There had been a sexual violations throughout the summer and intermittently since school started, and as late as last week. I was not much surprised—I’ve had these kind of visits many times—but what did disturb me was that they seemed little if any remorseful. They admitted admitted that they'd gone contrary to social standards, but quoted magazines and papers and speakers approving premarital sex and emphasizing that sex was the fulfillment of existence. Finally, the boy said, “Yes, we yield to each other, but we did not think that it is wrong because we love each other.”

I thought I'd misunderstood him. Since the world began, there have been countless immoralities, but to hear them justified by Latter-day Saint youth shocked me.

He repeated, “We love each other. They had repeated this abominable heresy so often that they'd convinced themselves and a wall of resistance had been built. And behind this wall, they stubbornly stood almost defiantly. If there had been blushes of shame at first, they had neutralized all this with their logic. Deeply entrenched were they in their rationalizations, but they had not read—pardon me—had they not read in some university papers of the new freedom where premarital sex was sanc sanctioned, at least not forbidden. Did they not see the looseness in every show on every stage, TV screens, magazines? Had they not discussed this in the locker room and in private conversations? Had it not been fairly well established then, in their world, that sex before marriage was not so wrong? Did there they not need to be a trial period? How else could they know if they would be sexually compatible in marriage? Had they not liked numerous others come to regard sex as the basis of living?

And a proverb came to my mind, “Such is the way of the adulterous woman. She eateth, and wipeth her mouth, and sayeth I have done no wickedness.”

In their rationalization they have had much cooperation for, as Peter said, “There shall be false teachers among you who privately shall bring in damnable heresies and bring upon themselves swift destruction and many shall follow their pernicious ways.” And here they are: false teachers everywhere are using speech, pornographic literature, magazines, radio, TV, street talk, everyplace spreading damnable heresies, that it is not wrong to do wrong. Lucifer and his diabolical scheming deceives the unwary and uses every tool and opportunity. Seldom does one go to a convention, a club meeting, parties, social gatherings—without hearing vulgarity, obscenity, and suggestive stories. Peter said again, “Be sober, be vigilant, because your adversary, the devil, as a roaring lion, walketh about seeking whomever he can destroy devour.

And the Savior said the very elect would be deceived, if it were possible. Satan will use his logic he to confuse, rationalization to destroy. He'll make shadings. He will open doors an inch at a time. He will lead from the purest white, through all the shades of gray, into the darkest black.

Young people are sometimes confused by the arch-deceiver. Now this young people looked up rather startled, when I postulated, “No, my beloved young folks, you did not love each other. Rather you lusted for each other.” Paul told Titus “Unto the pure, all things are pure, but under them that are dis defiled and unbelieving is nothing pure, but even their mind and conscience is defiled. They profess that they know God, but in their works, they deny him, being abominable and disobedient and unto every good work reprobate.”

Now I’m sure that Peter and James and Paul must have disliked this unpleasant business of talking about these unmentionable things, but they continued on and their epistles are full of warnings. And so we moderns must do the same, even though it is unpleasant to do so.

The boy and the girl sat still, reflectively. I was not sure if they were comprehending. Apparently their wrong concepts had been so bolstered, it was hard for them to change. Now we talked again about short words, like lift and lean and hide and lurk and flea and stay, and lose and gain and fall and rise, and open and shut and lure and save and loss and gain and fail and rise fall and rise and live and dead. And again, love and lust. The beautiful, holy word of love they have defiled until it is degenerated in and has become a bedfellow with lust, its antithesis. As far back as Isaiah, the deceivers and rationalizations were condemned. “Woe unto them that call evil good, and good evil that put darkness for light and light for darkness, that put bitter for sweet and sweet for bitter. Woe unto them that are wise in their own eyes and prudent in their own sight.” And Peter said, “Dearly beloved, abstain from fleshly lusts, which war against the soul.” There's a definite war declared when these things are per perpetrated. And I challenge any normal youth or adult who says he did not know he was doing wrong.

There is no compatibility between sin and righteousness, between guilt and peace. Paul charged the Corinthians, “Flee from fornication. He that commits fornicath fornication sinneth against his own body.” In order to avoid these disasters, Paul urged, “Do not accom do not company with fornicators and to keep in keep good company and to eat not with the evil and not be tempted by them. Therefore put away from yourselves, that wicked person,” he says.

Fornication with all its big and little brothers and sisters were evil and wholly condemned by the Lord in the beginning and until this day, and all between. The church has no toleration for perversions. The Lord is indicated his feeling, “I, the Lord cannot look upon sin with the least degree of allowance.”

Paul exhorted the Galatians, lashing out against the works of the flesh, adultery, fornication, uncleanness, lasciviousness, and then he added that, wha "they which do these things shall not inherit the kingdom of God.” For this is the will of God, and that statement should put at rest all question in the minds of all Latter-day Saints, this is the will of God. All these things are abominations and no amount of rationalization can minimize them or correct them.

Let it be known positively that the church is not softening on its attitude toward any of these sins. A young couple who had been so seriously in trouble, I reminded them now of the statement of Mormon, where the Nephites guilty of fiendish, abominable acts, had taken prisoners, the doc daughters of the Lamanites. And quote, “after depriving them of that, which is most dear and prat precious of all things, which is chastity and virtue, they tortured and murdered them.”

When the scriptures are so plain, how can anyone justify immoralities or blame them to love? As I looked the boy in the eye, I said, “You were not expressing love when you took her virtue” and to her, “There was no real love in your heart, when you robbed him of his chastity. It was lust, pure and simple, that brought you together in this most serious of all practices this side of murder.

Paul said, “Love worketh no ill to his neighbor,” and I continued, “If you really loved anoth one another, you would rather die than to injure one another. At the hour of indulgence, pure love is pushed out the one door and lust sneaks in the other. Your affection has been replaced with biological materialism and uncontrolled passion. When the unmarried yield to the lust, which induces intimacies and indulgence, they have permitted the body to dominate and have placed the spirit in fetters. In order to live with themselves, people who transgressed must follow one path of two alternatives.

The one is to sear the conscience and dull the sensitivity with mental tranquilizers so that the transgression may be continued. The other is to permit remorse to lead to total conviction, repentance, and eventual forgiveness. This conviction is the element of which this young couple was devoid.

One is not ready repentance until he has bared all his intentions and weaknesses and without excuses or rationalizations or explanations admits to himself that he has grievously sinned when he's confessed to himself, without the slightest minimizing of the offens the offense or rationalizing its seriousness, or soft-pedaling its gravity, and admits it is as big as it is. Then he is ready to begin his repentance. And any other elements of repentance are of reduced value until the conviction is established, totally. And then repentance may mature.

When evil is decried and forbidden and punished, the world still has a chance, but when toleration increases, the outlook is bleak as the Sodom and Gomorrah days.

We were in Los Angeles one year, long ago, when the news broke out of the pregnancy of a certain actress. It was big news and heavy headlines in every paper in the land. We were not surprised, knowing the standards in Hollywood. But that's But that such dissoluteness should be approved and accepted shocked me. The papers took a poll of the people. Club women and ministers, employers and employees, stenographers and teachers and housewives—and almost without exception, as though it were a child’s indiscretion, these community leaders found little fault and they criticized as puritanical and uh Victorian those who disapproved. Let her live her own life, they said. And why should we interfere with people's personal liberties?

In the state and the nation and across the seas, toleration for sin is terrifying. That the Church’s stand on morality may be understood, we desire we declare firmly, it is not an outworn garment, faded, old fashioned, and threadbare. God is the same yesterday, today and forever, and his covenants and doctrines are immutable. And when the sun grows cold and the stars no longer shine, the law of chastity will still be basic in God's world and in the Lord's church.

I continued to the young people, “the youth of today are seeing too many ‘adults-only’ shows which exploit sex, too many open dormitories on campuses, too many mattress parties for adolescents, too many girls with extreme dresses, tight sweaters, calling attention to sex, too many young men with tight suggestive attire. They too many novels where sex is the central dominant theme. What kind of a world would we have?” I asked these young people, “if this heresy, which you have espoused of premarital sex looseness, and, uh, ‘free love,’ alleged, were in order?” We are not speaking of a sex-free world any more than we are speaking of a sexy world. For sexless civil civilization would die in one generation, if indeed it were ever born. A sexy civilization will die of its own rottenness, when it is ripe in iniquity. There's a time and an appropriateness for all things which have values.

And when we come before the great judge, the bar of justice, shall we come before him as a thing or as a person? As a depraved body of flesh and carnal acts or as a son of God, standing straight and tall and worthy? And as we answer the vital questions we'll be be able to say I built, I did not tear it down. I lifted, I did not push down. I grew, I did not shrivel. I helped others grow, I did not dwarf them. I loved, intensely and blessed—I did not lust toward exploitation to injure.

My young people were still rationalizing and excusing themselves every kind of sex encounter for the unmarried. From the first lustful stirrings of passions, relating to self or to others is a sin. And thought habits are perverted and lives are blemished and God's laws are broken and penalties will be paid. And let us emphasize again—thoughts that are vile are sin, they need not be reflected in actions. Illicit sex is a selfish act, a betrayal. It's damnably dishonest. To be unwilling to accept responsibility is cowardly and disloyal. Marriage is for time and eternity. Fornication and all other deviations are for today, for the hour, for the now. Marriage gives life. Deviations bring death.

Premarital sex promises what it cannot possibly produce or deliver. Rejection is often the fruit, as it moves and its participants down the long corridor of repeated encounters. I know this by long and wide experience. Often the two people involved who've crossed these lines become disgusted with each other and discontinue their associations altogether. And where did their love go? The eighth of the ten commandments says, “Thou shall not steal.” Yet, the immoral act is robbery in its worst expressions. It's taking with or without permission, the most priceless, the most unrecoverable, the most unreturnable possession of an individual—chastity and virtue.

In one dark, inglorious hour, lives can be taken or shattered, that in a long lifetime, total restoration is impossible. Health lost may possibly be regained. Wealth lost may be accumulated again. Freedom lost might be fought for and regained. But virtue stolen? It is gone. Is not this one of the prime reasons why this forbidden thing is so heinous, like murder? For neither For neither can ever be wholly compensated nor wholly returned or undone.

“Thou shalt not kill,” came from Mount Sinai, and in the same breath, “Thou shalt not commit adultery” or fornication, we could add, for they are the same, same act. One can take a life easily, but return it never. So it is that when the pangs of futility and the remorse impress the uselessness of the act, there must come the time when the fornicator or adulteror, like the murderer, will wish he could hide, hide from all the world, from all the ghosts and especially from his own. And there’s no place to hide. There are dark corners and hidden spots and closed cars and locked rooms in which the transgression can be committed. But to conceal is different. Even in remote parts of the world in the darkest night, eventually one must face himself and God.

Cain had difficulty hiding. The Lord did ask, “Where is Abel, thy brother?” and Cain had boldly replied, “I know not, am I my brother's keeper?” Did he think he was deceiving the Lord or himself? The Lord said, “What has thou done? The voice of thy brother's blood crieth unto me from the ground, which hath opened her mouth to receive thy brother's blood from thy hand. A fugitive and a vagabond shalt thou be in the earth.” And Cain said, “My punishment is greater than I can bear. Behold, thou hast driven me out this day from the face of the earth.” That was true of murder. In the lesser degree, it is true of illicit sex.

The Lord said, “Thou shall cleave unto thy wife and they thy and you two shall be one flesh. To cleave is to adhere closely, to cling. And the Lord gave us the purpose for this cleaving—the peopling of the earth, the replenishing of the earth, the subduing of the earth, the dominion over the earth. The There was high purpose in the creation and in the proper intimacies of husband and wife, but these can never be defended outside of marriage.

And if a The premarital sex act is a deceptive lie, too. The Lord asked, “If a son shall ask bread of any of you, that is a father, will he give him a stone? Or if he ask fish, will he give him a serpent? Or if he asked for figs, will he give him thorns? Or for grapes, a bramble bush? Or for an egg, will he offer him a scorpion? Bread is the staff of life, the stone is lifeless. The fish builds and sustains the body as do the egg, the figs, and the grapes, but the serpent destroys. Proper sex functions bring posterity. Elicit relations are always intended to avoid posterity. Every tree that bringeth forth good fruit shall be saved and every tree that brings forth evil fruit shall be hewn down and put into the fire.

When we talk of sex, first thought comes of fornication or adultery, but our second comes to petting. We talked about petting many times, but we do not seem to get it over. Still young people do this abominable practice. Still young people are justifying themselves and turning themselves loose to their carnal appetites.

And the world will still go on a-dying, destroying itself, until people begin to use the words in their proper perspective, calling a spade a spade and not a spoon, a deeps a deep sin and not a harmless diversion. Until we rip the disguising mask from its ugly face and strip from its lustful body the sheep's clothing with which the victim or the vicious wolf has concealed his mean self.

Petting. When we can terminate this terrible vicious habit of youth, we have the fornication and the adultery pretty well licked, for the one is the parent of the other. Undoubtedly Potiphar's wife flattered Joseph, and expressed her alleged love for him, at first. When this failed, she tried force and intrigue. And failing there, she tried to cover with blackmail. And with such a clear conscience, Joseph must have felt his dark dungeon a pleasant prison, for he was safe from the machinations of this vile woman.

What is love? Now, that's what we need to know. Love is good. It's wholesome. It's everything that's wonderful. It is not the wanting of bodies. Physical attraction is only one of the many elements of love. It's cleanliness and worthiness and progress and sacrifice and selflessness. This kind of love sees through poverty and sickness, accomplishment and disappointment, and time and eternity it lasts. For many years, I saw a good man carry his tiny, emaciated, arthritic wife to meetings. There could be no sexual intercourse. Here was love. I saw a kindly woman wait on her husband for many years, as he deteriorated with muscular dystrophy. She walked on hand and I mean, she waited on him hand and foot when all he could do was blink his thanks with his eyes. I think that was love. One woman I knew carried her little unfortunate child, all its life, till it was too heavy, and then in a wheelchair, and when it died, she was greatly grieved. I think that was love. One woman visited her son in the penitentiary. He could give her nothing. She went because she could give, not take. And so sex, unwarranted, is taking, stealing, robbing, with all the ugly things to follow. Proper sex life in proper marriage is wholesome, brings posterity, brings joy, and peace love and all the things that are good.

One more thought that the the young man brought up when he'd failed on the other. He said, “Well, but we were going to be married. Yes, we were going to be married.” And I guess he thought that that would excuse him and clarify. I said to him, “Yes, you were going to be married. Well, I think you should be married and immediately.” And uh, he said, “But we couldn't be married. My goodness. We are not ready for marriage.” Said, “We couldn't hire doctors. We couldn't pay hospital bills. We couldn't build a home. We couldn't furnish it. We couldn't uh, do all these things.” And then I said to him, “My dear boy,” as kindly as I could, “you have precipitated yourself into adulthood. By the act that you committed, you made yourselves adult. You brought these responsibilities on yourself. Now there's only one thing you can do and that's to be a man and stand up and take your medicine and go forward and do the things which you’ve brought yourself to. Now you're going to have a baby. You must give this girl marriage and this child a name and honor. And you must spend the balance of your life building, overcoming, and build such a glorious life for this family that they will forget, if they knew if the children knew.

I want to mention one other thing, which must be spoken here, and that is not only fornication and adultery. There are many other sins. And we know they’re sins. We don't have to be told. Whenever we have to hide and whenever we have to bend our heads, we know that they’re sins. And I want to speak of the perversions for a moment. For they’re growing. There are far more people that are known to be perverts these days, men and women, largely men.

This is an abominable sin and there is no scripture and there is nothing that can ever justify it. It is forgivable like adultery is forgivable. It is a sin of such gravity that excommunication is the penalty like it is for adultery. But there is this hope, repentance is always here and possible, and a great and total and continuing repentance can cleanse one's garments in the blood of the Lamb, when there is a total, sustained, and continuing repentance.

I cannot imagine that this university would ever enroll a pervert, knowingly, an unrepentant one. I cannot imagine this university ever tolerating on its campus one day or one week any adulterer or fornicator or pervert unrepentant. I am underscore, “unrepentant,” because all these sins can be wiped out pretty well, if there's repentance. But unid unrepentant sinners have no place on the campus of the Brigham Young University. If they’re repentant, there's great tolerance and understanding and the brethren always will err on the side of leniency, I know.

God bless you, young people. I've spoken frankly and boldly, not because I wanted to—I'd much rather speak of other things. As I said in the beginning, my numerous interviews makes me do this, because the responsibility that is on our shoulders. If you know the standards of the Lord and the Church, and then break them, that's totally your responsibility. If we haven't trained you, that's ours. And for that purpose, I speak so boldly this morning about these unmentionable, ugly subjects.

God bless you, that you will fortify yourselves and protect yourselves against these damning influences and associates and practices and powers. God bless you. We love you. We want you to all grow tall and straight and wonderful.

And I bear you my testimony, the divinity of the church and the gospel. And the rightness of the things which I have said. In the name of Jesus Christ, amen.