For married Mormons: Where does OK end and sin begin?

It’s pretty clear that reproductive style “tab A in slot B” sex with your spouse (while thinking loving thoughts of your spouse) is OK, and waiting until your spouse is asleep and then sneaking into the computer room to masturbate to naughty pictures is a sin. But in fact there’s a whole lot of gray area between these two, and nobody seems to know quite where to draw the line. Of the following scenarios, which are sins? (No cheating by looking at the CHI online! )

Also — whether or not you believe in sin — which of the following actions do you think are or are not conducive to a healthy marriage, and why?

1. Bringing yourself to climax manually while thinking of your spouse is OK:
   1. never
   2. if your spouse is there participating
   3. if you’re away from your spouse for an extended period of time
   4. if you’re on the phone with your spouse
   5. if your spouse is busy, indisposed, or not in the mood
   6. whenever you’re in private.
2. What is OK to think about while having sex with your spouse?

The Carnal Bite

how great that I’m not the only one in the world who is asked by little old ladies at church, “What’s a nice Mormon girl like you doing writing about vampires?” — says Jana Riess. So Stephenie Meyer isn’t the only one. Is the Mormon teen vampire romance now the new Jack Weyland?

I know this isn’t just a Mormon thing (it’s part of a larger trend: Buffy, Ann Rice, etc.), but I’m not surprised to see Mormons joining right in. The fit couldn’t be more perfect. Love and romance are at center stage, but all that scary sex is replaced with the family-friendly entertainment alternative: violence. As I discussed in my post Rated R “just for violence,” I don’t get why healthy depictions of sexuality are totally taboo for young people, but violence can be used as harmless fun for kids.

In the case of vampire romances, it looks like a situation where a teenage girl wants to imagine the male lead having an intense and passionate physical need for her. Yet, perversely, it’s safer to revel in this feeling of physical desire in the form of “blood-lust” — the desire for the death-bearing bite that consumes her — and avoid the (much scarier) real thing. In a nutshell, this whole thing reeks of a rather screwed-up fear of healthy sexuality. Of course I’m totally biased on the subject. Am I being unfair?

Unrealistic Expectations?

One of the primary feminist complaints about pornography is that is promotes unrealistic expectations. This point has already come up on The Visitors’ Center here. I’ve also heard people jokingly suggest that romance novels play a parallel role, encouraging women to have unrealistic expectations that ordinary men can’t live up to. I’d never heard this argued seriously, though, until I read this fascinating post about Stephenie Meyer’s Twilight.

The comments in particular blew me away: