Virtue #1 (as in feel free to skip this post unless you want to know how insightful I am on all things religious)

Here we go again: This requirement asks that I read a variety of scriptures and then write the promised blessing of being sexually clean and pure.

Scripture #1: Moroni 9:9 tells that chastity and virtue are the things most precious and dear.  I find Moroni's qualitification interesting here.  There are a lot of precious and dear things--families, children, integrity, faith, testimony, and, I don't know, salvation, just to name a few, but Moroni says that chastity is most precious and dear.  Meaning that is it more precious than a variety of other attributes.  Of course, he doesn't say THE most just most, so maybe he was just trying to make a point and emphasize one thing without de-emphasizing another.  Maybe I'm reading too much into it.

Scripture #2: Jacob 2:28: We learn that the Lord God delights in the chastity of women, which, in this particular scripture, is referring to the practice of plural marriage, but we won't get into that.  I have a lot of feminists thoughts that go along with this scripture, but I don't think they add much, if anything, to the discussion, so I'll keep them to myself.  I will note, however, that in the context of the chapter, the Lord is not rebuking women for being a little too free, but the men for forcing/coercing/allowing the women to be more free than they should--or in this case, engaging in plural marriage.

The Family Proclamation: First off, it's been a long time since I've read the whole thing, all the way though and I must admit that I was tempted to be lazy once again and only read the first column (because it's so long), and wow.  Those last two paragraphs.  Forceful.  In terms of the blessings of maintaining sexual purity, I think one of the biggest ones is not having to stand accountable (in a bad way) before God.  I don't even like to be accountable to Rex for forgetting to buy chocolate milk--Rex can be pretty...well he's three, we'll just put it that way.  Another thing I noticed this time reading the Proclamation is how global it is.  Often when we talk about chastity we talk in terms of the guilt or STDS or pregnancy the individual will (may) suffer, but the Proclamation moves beyond the individual to the family, country, world, and society at large.  Our individual chastity and the strong families that are formed, in part, from it, have a global effect.

Article of Faith #13: We like good things.  We look for and actively seek good, virtuous, chaste things--did I mention I haven't watched The Daily Show for at least a month now?  It's not the most virtuous or lovely show out there, even if it is hilarious and a fairly decent source of news.

For the Strength of Youth: I like it.  Not too harsh, not too soft.  Mostly just doctrine.  This is a bit of a side note but I've noticed lately that we are actually teaching youth doctrine and not just lists of things to do and not to do.  This section of the For the Strength of Youth explains why sexual sin is so serious rather than just saying that it is.  It took me years to understand why we are to be chaste.  I was because I was 'post to (as John Bytheway would say), but I didn't understand why.  I'm glad that the why is included--why are we chaste?  Because sexual intimacy creates children and that's what gods do they create.  So if you're going to be like a god, then you really need to be like a god, and do it in the proper order with the proper authority.

Proverbs 31: 10-31: Mentions virtue once and strength twice--a virtuous woman is clothed in strength and honor.  There's a link there--between honor and strength.  It takes great spiritual strength and strength of character to raise above and maintain virtue, so while virtue is a lovely word and idea, I think I favor strength, as least in my semi-feminists, 21century way I do.

So let's sum this all up and answer the question: What are the promised blessings of being sexually clean and pure?

First, to focus on the individual: those who are sexually pure don't have to stand before and explain their sins...That may be the biggest blessing, at least for me, as mentioned.  Second, and this is also important to me, is a strong family.  I am pretty sure that if I were to go back on my promise to Greg and Heavenly Father in this respect, I would loose my family, and they are pretty much the most important thing to me.  Or it.  The group of us.  The unit.  Or, as Rex puts it, "Our whole fambly."  But strong families in general are important--that's one thing I learned in my two-year-tenure as a teacher--families are so important.  Those students that came from the idea, nuclear family, did better than those who did not.  They got better grades, they coped with the stress of school better, they interacted with their peers in healthier ways.  Families are pretty important.  But when one or both people in a relationship fail to live up to that, as I understand it, the emotional pain is immense and the family usually falls apart and so do the lives of the children.  That's not to say that children are doomed to failure when their parents fail because they aren't--lots of successful people come from broken homes, it's just harder when the family is not intact and strong.  Other blessing include that list of, what I consider peripheral things, such as lack of STDS, lack of unwanted pregnancy, lack of nasty name calling and hard break ups.

Lastly, I am so commit to being chaste: done and done.