NOM

The Book of Mormon famously tells us that sex outside of marriage is the third worst sin one can commit. I think it is unfortunate that the reference in the Book of Mormon [Alma 39] is unfortunately vague: "These things are an abomination..."
"These things" lumps into one category anything from passionate kissing to rape, which is a significant shortcoming of "the most correct book" in my opinion.

5 Know ye not, my son, that these things are an abomination in the sight of the Lord; yea, most abominable above all sins save it be the shedding of innocent blood or denying the Holy Ghost?

I hope it's OK to perhaps name a few sins that would be worse than "these things." For example: Armed robbery.

Anything else strike you as worse than "these things?"

If we think in terms of how the Savior treated the woman caught in adultery as opposed to the way he lambasted the Pharisees who neglected and abused the poor, putting themselves forward as righteous.....

I'm not in a position to say which sin is greater.

Or if it really matters in this particular sense:
As the scripture says, (paraphrasing) If you have offended in one, you have offended in all.

Whether great sins or small sins we have all transgressed the Law. Thus, we are all guilty and fall short. We all need the redemptive power of God through the Atonement.

A truer measure might be the content of our hearts.

Did the adulterous woman know she was wrong but felt guilty and remorseful even before she was taken before the Savior? Did the Pharisees know they were wrong but were more than happy to exploit the poor for whatever they could gain?

Well, one infamous survey taken at BYU back in the day my age group was there, said that breaking the WoW was worse then anything but murder. You have to understand the timing of this, hippies and drugs, the war on drugs, and Mormonism being unique because of WoW, so it was really emphasized, and Donny and Marie were famous not because they could sing, but because they were clean cut teenagers in an age where adults were terrified their kids would become drug abusing hippies. I had units of drug abuse 12 times in high school, because every class crammed one in from health to history, because that was the fear of the day.

And as a side note, it was supposed to be destroying people’s faith in God that was the sin next to murder, but Mormons are now way over focused on sex, so they interpret the scripture the way they like instead of how it actually reads.

alas beat me to it. You need a few more verses of context to see it. You might even notice that Alma suggests that he has firsthand knowledge of how hard it is to repent of Corianton's sins. But people will proof-text, because people do people things.

To answer the original question, where should torture fit? Or rape? Or lying when you know it will get someone killed?

IMO it's not just proof-texting that's the problem, here. It's a shocking failure of imagination.

Secularism has put the philosophies and sciences of Men to work on this question, and they've come up with a codified system of laws and penalties for every country. No truly civilized country even addresses extra-marital sex as a sin, although it stands grounds for divorce.

Let us resolve to follow secular law rather than Sharia or Mormia law.

Thanks for the great posts Pale Rider, Alas, Reuben, and Moksha. This thread has been more enlightening than any Sunday School lesson I can recall on the subject. I don't remember exactly where I first heard the "sex outside marriage is the third worst sin"-meme, but I'm almost certain in was in a Seminary or Sunday School class when I was in my early teens. I think Church teachers often used these verses (Alma 39:4-5) to beat teenagers over the head with. I remember how uninformed and vulnerable I was as a teen. When I had my first orgasm/wet dream, I was half awake and didn't know what was going on. It was kind of scary. Then the Church made me feel guilty as well. This was before Boyd Packer's little factory talk, which at least explained wet dreams, although his explanation was so vague I'll bet a lot of young people didn't know what he was talking about. Overall, I am convinced Church teachings have done more harm than good regarding young people and sex.

What sins are worse than extra-marital sex? The sin of telling an entire segment of the population that they must be alone and never experience a sexual relationship.

What sins are worse than premarital sex? The sin of telling poor people to give money to a wealthy corporation before feeding their children. It would be better that a mill stone be tied around their neck and them tossed into the deepest sea than to fail to feed one of these little ones. The Bible clearly says that the church is supposed to use tithing money to feed the poor. Then again they even changed the definition of tithing to get more filthy lucre. It was supposed to be 10% of your increase, money you have this year more than you had last. The poor who can barely feed their children have no increase, so the church should be helping them feed their children, not stealing food out of the children’s mouth. Well, they think that the poor are giving the money to God, but no god I could ever worship would put paying the church before feeding children.

I was taught that murder and abortion were close, but not on the same level. Adultery is worse than fornication. The next biggie would be the WofW. Sex crimes or any crime against children were not spoken of. I did not even know that was a thing until I was in high school.

Rape of a child vs cheating on an adult spouse. Both are heinous, but can anyone put extra marital sex as worse than crimes against children? How about setting someone up to take the blame for a crime he/she didn't commit? There are innocent people in jail. Isn't the wrongful loss of freedom worse than extra marital sex?

Humans can be pretty icky. Worse than that, so much of that ickiness has become more and more acceptable.

Of course, NOTHING is as bad as denying the HG, even though he's a big boy and won't take it personally.

J. Golden Kimball was once being chastised by a member for drinking coffee saying: "I would sooner commit adultery than drink coffee", to which Kimball replied, "hell, who wouldn't?"

The bishop's handbook does not have any special instructions in case someone is convicted of murder, for example. But I suspect that this is not out of any neglect. Felony convictions are already known to condemn a person. I do not know if someone sent to prison for a murder gets an automatic excommunication. But this feels like a situation where the person at fault is already being removed from the company of believers so removing their blessings might not necessarily be a fait accompli.

“Corsair” wrote:I do not know if someone sent to prison for a murder gets an automatic excommunication.

See handbook 1 Chapter 37:1-9 crazy Mormons named Chad Daybell, Lori Vallow, and Jodi Arias.