Editor:

I am writing in response to one of Gordon Swift’s letters to the editor (“LDS Church bans oral sex,” Sept. 29).

Although the original subject matter has changed from what is appropriate for campus viewing to what is appropriate in the bedroom for LDS married couples, I’ve been doing my research on Swift’s claims.

I have found a member of the church who remembers reading that letter to his local ward in 1982, and although he doesn’t remember it word for word, he claims that “It said that the bedroom was sacred, that bodies were sacred, that a woman had the right to control her body and that a husband had no right to force a woman to do something that she thought was repulsive.” I have found no letters, orders, or whatnot to support Swift’s claims. In support of extinguishing Swift’s rumors, married couples are never asked to reveal any details about their sexual relations to anyone (except, and understandably, in the case of adultery).

Unfortunately, it is easy to believe Swift’s claims because the more ridiculous a claim is, the more people who don’t know the truth will believe it.

I know a woman who grew up in East Germany under communist rule-she remembers how everyone believed their communist rulers when they said “capitalism will crumble any day now,” and they believed it right up until the very end of communism in their country. And remember the recent lie in our own country, that “there are weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.”

If Swift is against what was proclaimed in the letter from the first presidency, then he is certainly a male chauvinist and I can understand why he isn’t married anymore, nor an active member of the LDS Church.

C. Jane Marlo

Alumna