I hate this subject. I hate that is it necessary to discuss such indignities. There is so much that needs to be taught and learned. It perplexes me why it is necessary to address so basic and obvious an evil to people who say they want to follow God.
Among us are those whose aggressive preaching of evil sexual practices provokes the Lord to reiterate to us the words of Jeremiah:
My heart within me is broken because of the prophets, all my bones shake, I am like a drunk man and like a man whom wine has overcome, because of the Lord and because of the words of his holiness. For the land is full of adulterers, for because of swearing the land mourns, the pleasant places of the wilderness are dried up, and their course is evil and their force is not right. For both prophet and priest are corrupt, yea, in my house have I found their wickedness, says the Lord. Wherefore their way shall be unto them as slippery ways in the darkness, they shall be driven on and fall therein for I will bring evil upon them, even the year of their visitation, says the Lord. And I have seen folly in the prophets of Samaria: they prophesied in Baal and caused my people Israel to err. I have seen also in the prophets of Jerusalem a horrible thing: they commit adultery and walk in lies, they strengthen also the hands of evildoers that none does return from his wickedness. They are all of them unto me as Sodom and the inhabitants thereof as Gomorrah. (OC Jeremiah 8:18)
It does not matter if this sin is advocated under a new name. No change of vocabulary will justify this sin. Calling it celestial does not make it less hellish. Teaching it is no sin to engage in adultery because you and your victim were bonded to one another before the foundation of the world is a lie designed to seduce the foolish.
The restoration began with the Lord offering to extract us from this perversity. In the first message to Joseph Smith Christ quoted language from scripture to describe the world. The rest of Paul’s passage from which Christ’s words were taken declares that people are, “lovers of pleasures more than lovers of God, having a form of godliness, but denying the power thereof. From such turn away, for of this sort are they which creep into houses and lead captive silly women loaded with sins, led away with diverse lusts, ever learning and never able to come to the knowledge of the truth.” (NC 2 Tim. 1:8) Diverse lusts can be given any name a clever man or woman chooses, but it does not improve the sinful and destructive nature of the failure.
There are many ways to prevent Zion. One of the most successful tools to bar individuals from rising up to Zion is to have them defile the marriage relationship through sexual sin. Having sexual relations outside the marriage covenant is unholy, ungodly and designed to create so corrupt a people that they will be barred from God’s presence.
There is a great mountain to climb. A beast guards the passageway. That beast takes many forms. Sexual sin is one of its forms. Do not let it destroy you.