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Originally Posted by LA Ute
And a lot is coming back to me after all these years.
First, I think the letter on LDS-Mormon.com may be doctored. I am pretty sure that the words "oral sex" did not appear in the letter that I heard read to my group back in 1982. I would have remembered that. Instead, the letter was quite oblique on the entire subject. It was nothing like an "Official Delaration," either, although someone above referred to it as such. LDS-Mormon.com is an anti-Mormon site. Skepticism is warranted.
Another thought: The reported reasons for the letter are important. It came at a time when the Church leadership was trying to get control of the temple recommend interview process. Back then every bishop and stake presidency member conducted a general worthiness interview that was very free-wheeling-- it could range from "Is there any reason I shouldn't sign this?" to "Well, I'm going to give you the Celestial Kingdom temple recommend interview, not just a run-of-the-mill chat." Lots of priesthood leaders were probing into matters that were not appropriate for such settings. For example, in my stake in L.A. the stake president had every bishop ask if the candidate ever watched R-rated movies. Doing so was grounds for denying a recommentd. On the question of whether the interviewee paid a full tithe, often the interview would delve into exactly what that meant-- did you pay on your gross or your net? In my Salt Lake stake the stake president wanted to know how often the candidate had been in the temple in the past year, and if atttendance wasn't high enough for him he'd give the person a recommend, but on condition that they went, say, 8 times in the next month.
Apparently, the 1982 letter was in response to the problem of bishops and stake presidents probing deeply into the personal sexual practices of members. There were (justified) complaints, and the First Presidency tried to get a better hold on the process.
All of this is the primary reason why the temple interview questions are written down now, and interviewers are strictly instructed to ask only those questions and no others.
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LA, I respect your views and your intellect, needless to say. There is much about which we see eye to eye. But I've got to say that I think your assertion (apparently based on a 23-year old recollection of something read over the pulpit one Sunday) isn't worth crediting. The weight of the evidence is that the letter is genuine. I don't know the folks behind the lds-mormon.com website, and have not extensively read the website, but they don't seem to be those kind of people. On the other hand, your "doctored" assertion (on such flimsy, self-serving evidence) seems to me potentially counterproductive if your desire is to reassure those who are disturbed by this hair-brained correspondence. A cover up tends to be worse than the original offense--something the LDS Church has sometimes appeared slow to learn--and your offhanded accusation that the letter was doctored is just that.
I say the letter is genuine until proven otherwise. This should be easy to do if in fact it was doctored.