Wendy L. Watson offered these warnings to the youth of the LDS Church…

Warning 1. To be stamped on the cover of his [Satan’s] magazines:

“Contents highly addictive. Extremely corrosive-to-the-soul materials enclosed. Be prepared to have your mind twisted, your views of love ravaged, your spirit shrunk. Be aware that the Spirit of the Lord will not be with you during or after viewing. Be prepared that after an initial rush, you will experience feelings of depression, loneliness, despair, and guilt. Nevertheless, with repeated exposures over time, you can numb those feelings and enter into an almost total amnesia about who you really are and about truth itself.”

Warning 2. For the beginning of Satan’s coproduced movies:

“The following scenes are brought to you in the hope that you will think of yourself as being an animal. Actually the dung from an animal is more pure and would harm you less when taken into your system. Extreme caution needed. This movie will make you believe that lust is really love and that all love really is—is lust. This movie will have its greatest effect if observed when you are feeling misunderstood, alone, blue, or just that you don’t fit in. If you are not in any of these moods, viewing the movie will actually assist in getting you there. If you are in one of these moods, your spirit will be more vulnerable, and thus your ability to distinguish good from evil will be even more quickly extinguished.”

Warning 3. For the devil’s Internet connections:

“Share the following with someone whose soul you would like to destroy. Complete success is ensured if you can offer it in the spirit of friendship and under the guise of love. By thinking and talking together about the content, all sweet pure feelings will be distorted into grand perversions. Pick a perversion, any perversion. That may be one of the very last choices you will get to make.”

 

[In fact, if you are tired of making choices just view the following several times—or keep immersing yourself in similar material—and your degree of freedom will be increasingly limited with each successive viewing. The irony is that you will be provided with a personalized illusion that your freedom is actually increasing. We’ve taken this way beyond the old smoke and mirrors tricks—and the illusions that will influence your heart and mind will be stunning. Virtual reality is here to replace virtuous living.]

Warning 4. To announce the adversary’s influence on prime-time viewing:

“How many lies can you find in the following sitcom? If you can’t find any . . . Gotcha! In the following, we are going to offer you ideas that you have never before entertained. But with repetition and humor we will slowly dilute the initial recoiling of your spirit, and you will begin to forget that there was ever a time when you didn’t believe these lies to be true.”

Warning 5. A lie-busting warning for rented videos:

“Fantasy only allowed here. Only erotic illusions contained. No empathic love depicted. No consequences noted. No impact on your body, spirit, relationships with God, family and friends addressed. Please note that interactions will appear much more splendid than they really are. This is not real life. But it is a really great lie. We have left out the gory details that would only ruin the subtle appeal this movie will have for you.”

Warning 6. For videos purchased:

“Congratulations! You bought the movie this time instead of just renting it. In fact, you are buying this whole scheme—hook, line, and sinker. Let’s just have this be our little secret. No one needs to know. No one will ever be able to tell. When people tell you that you are looking different, darker, or talking differently, or that you are more difficult to get along with, just get angry at them and go buy another movie or magazine with similar contents. Actually, you will soon be ready to advance to our total-destruction-of-the-senses line. You, too, will soon be past feeling.”

Wendy L. Watson, 1999 Women’s Conference, “Personal Purity and Intimacy” (Provo, UT: BYU, 1999).