Quick answer: is masturbation a sin for Latter-day Saints?
What current Church guidance says: The Church’s current youth guide, For the Strength of Youth: A Guide for Making Choices (2026 edition), does not mention masturbation by name. Its chapter “Your body is sacred” asks youth to “avoid anything that purposely arouses lustful emotions in others or yourself.” Some members and local leaders read that line as including masturbation; others do not. The 2011 edition’s more specific instruction, “Do not arouse those emotions in your own body,” was removed in the 2022 revision and does not appear in the 2026 edition.
What earlier leaders taught: Past Church leaders, including President Spencer W. Kimball, taught explicitly against masturbation. Those teachings are part of why many Latter-day Saints carry strong guilt about it today.
What clinical research shows: Masturbation is common. In Britain’s national sexual health surveys, 40% of women and 78% of men reported masturbating in the past month (Natsal, Journal of Sex Research, 2025), and pediatric researchers describe it as integral to normal sexual development (Robbins et al., Archives of Pediatrics & Adolescent Medicine, 2011).
In practice: How this fits your faith is yours to work out with God and, if you choose, a trusted leader. In clinical work, the distress people bring is far more often driven by shame and fear than by the behavior itself. The history below shows how Church teaching on this has changed over the last century.
History of masturbation teaching in the LDS Church
- In-depth and detailed history of masturbation in the LDS Church: https://danielaburgess.com/blog/dont-touch-sexual-taboos-lds-faith-intro/
- Misinterpretation of Lust: https://www.jasonstaples.com/bible/most-misinterpreted-bible-passages-1-matthew-527-28/
- LDS Medical Historian Lester Bush observed that church in; “The late 1920s and most of the 1930s saw a more explicit “sex education” in church lessons, to a degree not matched before or since. As one invited speaker explained to a general conference of the Relief Society, adults needed to realize that “you and I have been brought up in a generation where we just could not talk about sex. Not so our youngsters. They are talking and thinking about sex as frankly as anything else, and so far as I can discover, as wholesomely. Official [church] manuals advised members to purchase secular works on the subject-specific titles were suggested–and that the expression of sexual interests ‘should be guided and directed, not inhibited.’ An apogee (in the Mormon context) was reached in lessons which warned against creating emotional problems in adolescent children by an ‘unintelligent’ over response to the discovery that they practiced masturbation.” Health and Medicine among the Latter-day Saints: Science, Sense, and Scripture by Lester E. Bush, Jr pg. 144
3The Lester Bush quote above comes from the Relief Society Mag 1932 pages 89-93, the who section is absolutely amazing https://archive.org/details/reliefsocietymag19reli/page/n101/mode/2up?q=sex
“Rhetoric from the pulpit at Church conferences has changed over time on the issue of sexual immorality. Very little was said about this topic in the Church’s first century . . . American society began its own transformation in sexual values . . . in the post-World War II baby boomers. The value of chastity was cast aside in favor of sexual liberation. LDS Church leaders reacted by emphasizing more often and more strongly from the pulpit the value of chastity.” —E. G. Swedin Swedin, E. G. (2003). Healing souls: Psychotherapy in the Latter-day Saint community. University of Illinois Press. pg 155-6
LDS Church Relief Society President Amy Lyman Brown Health article on not overreacting to masturbation which can be found at my site: https://danielaburgess.com/blog/the-unintelligent-parent/ or here: Relief Society Magazine: Guide Lessons For April 1927 Lesson IV Social Service (Fourth Week in April).
If this topic hits home, you don’t have to sort it out alone — read about how I help people build shame-free sexuality, or book a free 15-minute consult.
If shame about masturbation is weighing on you or showing up in your marriage, sexual health therapy or religious trauma therapy can help you sort out your own values from the fear you were taught.
Explore related teaching
Related educational topics include Module 3 (The Pull of the Familiar) & Module 8 (Connect Without Book Speak) in Improving Intimacy: The Course and our members-only Inner Circle essay “After the Disclosure: Why Policing & Confessional Loops Keep Both Spouses Stuck”.
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Working through this with someone? See how I approach sexual shame and worthiness anxiety.
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