A dangerous new trend is sweeping the nation, invading your home, and destroying your children. Or is it?
What is Mormon Soaking?
The fuss lately has been over soaking, a reported sexual activity that’s all the rage at BYU. Owned by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints—better known as Mormons—the college has made a name for itself with its infamous Honor Code, which is essentially a rigid list of don’ts: beards, sex outside marriage, and more are all strictly forbidden. That rigidity in the Honor Code is what’s supposed to force students to get creative about their sexual urges.
Not Unique to Mormons
This sort of restriction is not unique to Mormons; very conservative forms of Christianity generally have similar restrictions in place. The rumors about how people get around these restrictions abound. There’s the “poophole loophole” – anal sex – and “durfing” – dry humping. Oral sex is another popular workaround.
Soaking and Its Critics
Say the rumor mill’s right, and the Mormons have a few special ways around the rules. There’s stories galore about weekends in Vegas where students get married so they can have sex, only to annul the marriage on the way out of town. And then there’s soaking.
The fact that soaking is associated with Mormons gives critics—many of whom are former members—plenty of ammunition. To those who are not especially invested, it is merely one more oddity among the many strange rumors about the religion. Having been an ex-Mormon myself, now I find that people who never previously asked about it are curious and wonder, “Is soaking a real thing?”
Fact or Fiction?
So the question is, is soaking real? The answer isn’t black and white, as some people would seem to think. I called some old contacts, delved deep into archives of the internet, and braved the depths of Reddit in an attempt to sort fact from fiction within this age-old question: soaking—fact or fiction?
My Introduction to Soaking
As I’ve said, I’m an ex-Mormon, but I only learned about soaking a few months ago. A slightly jaded friend from BYU shared stories about the wild times happening at the school, and sooner or later, soaking came up. Later, I asked my sister about it, and she mentioned hearing friends make jokes about it in high school. At first, I thought it was just some weird but harmless curiosity. Having grown up with Mormons, I knew that every group has its oddities. But the more people kept talking about soaking, the more skeptical I became. After all, how could anyone in their right mind actually believe that something like soaking is permissible in Mormonism? The LDS Church is pretty straight-laced when it comes to sex outside marriage—masturbation is banned outright. This position supports their stance against gay marriage, which is defined as being “between a man and a woman.” Shame regarding sexuality is very deep within the church, and I guessed that if a Mormon couple were to succumb to their sexual urges, they would go all the way.
Historical Context of Alternative Sexual Practices
There is, however, some historical precedent for unconventional sexual practices within Mormonism. Take the case of Albert Carrington, the first Mormon Apostle–one of 12 men on a council that leads the church–to be excommunicated for adultery, in 1877. Carrington, who oversaw the church’s outreach mission in Europe, regularly cheated on his wife, though he claimed his actions were only “a little folly in Israel” because he never ejaculated during these encounters.
This is in some ways reminiscent of practices in the Oneida Community—a contemporary Christian commune that also practiced non-monogamy. In the Oneida Community, every person was considered “married” to each other, and men practiced male continence—basically, sex without ejaculation. Thus, while Mormons didn’t invent experimental means of handling sexual norms, these practices of Carrington and Oneida Community don’t directly equate to soaking.
The Rise of Online Soaking
The earliest mention of “soaking” on the internet seems to be mid-to-late 2000s, though the practice likely has roots much older. The oldest reference I could find was a 2011 Reddit thread in which the OP asked if anyone knew about soaking. A few people there commented that they had heard of it—sometimes under other names, like the “BYU Float” or Docking—but for the most part, they dismissed it as an urban legend.
The Dating is Weird Blog Post
In this 2010 blog post from Dating is Weird — content warning: uses mental health slur — the author states that soaking is a real thing and that she knows people who have “done it”. This raises the problem of whether internet sources are viable for accurate information, but we will get into that a bit later.
The T-Rex Comic and Its Origins:
You may remember this T-Rex comic from earlier. It did its rounds on Twitter recently, but it actually turned up in 2014. Mark Salcedo published it on his website bigfootjustice.com at around the time he was just getting started on work for the show Cyanide and Happiness. From what I could gather, Salcedo isn’t a Mormon, and the original responses to his post were more about the comic’s humor rather than any religious interpretation. That may be why soaking didn’t garner further attention until now.
The Fading Interest
Meanwhile, interest in soaking appeared to wane. In 2017, another Reddit thread about the topic got an especially bent but optimistic response—about the only personal story I heard during my reporting. In 2017, C. Brian Smith wrote about the couple’s soaking experiment in an article for Mel Magazine, which was related to him by the Redditor r/TheFilthiestCorndog. Aside from some other posts, the discussion regarding soaking simmered until the recent explosion of the @funeralpotatoslut TikTok.
Seeking Answers in the People
Having exhausted the easily available sources, I turned to the public. Still hiding behind a burner account, I made a thread on r/Mormon. For the remainder of the day, I refreshed my phone as responses came in within hours. Some proved especially useful, leading me to new research avenues. These leads also led me to contact the Utah Folklore Society, whom I have not yet heard back from.
The Global Mormon Perspective
The responses kept coming, with a surprising amount of finger-pointing. Some said soaking was a “Utah thing,” while others specified it was known at BYU or BYU Idaho, a branch of the college said to be even stricter than the Provo campus. Given the dominance of Mormonism in Utah, it makes sense that the culture might develop uniquely from the rest of the world. Its influence is huge, with about 60% of the population being Mormons. Yet, at the same time, some standards are more relaxed to the extent that one can witness a mix of lapsed and practicing Mormons. According to Lisa Barlow from The Real Housewives of Salt Lake City, they are “Mormon 2.0.”
The Confusion Continues
So, could soaking be slightly accepted with Utah’s Mormons at least? Well, hunting for the Utah/BYUI leads simply led to more confusion. Some Utah Mormons in the thread admitted that they hadn’t heard of soaking until it went viral on TikTok. Questions posted on a BYU Idaho subreddit were met with bewilderment and flat denial. As of writing, no single respondent claimed to know any person that performed soaking. Yet, the students from BYUI agreed on the observation from other threads: that BYU students were dry humping left and right as if there’s no tomorrow.
The Limits of Non-Penetrative Sexual Activities
Realistically, if Mormons are not engaging in penetrative vaginal sex, that may be as far as it goes. Although some have recommended that anal and oral sex could be get-around practices to avoid chastity, it is not known whether Mormons actually engage in these practices. However, as was said earlier, if a couple of Mormons really wants to have sex, they will most likely find a way. But even married Mormon couples aren’t allowed to do everything. In 1982, Church Leadership issued a letter explicitly forbidding oral sex. At the time, Church president Spencer W. Kimball also warned against other bedroom acts he vaguely described as “unnatural,” which seemed to amount to a blanket condemnation of kink.
Note: An earlier version of this post cited this as part of a 2003 speech by Kimball. As one commenter noted, that would be quite a trick since Kimball died in 1985.
The current policy of the LDS Church is never to ask questions about the sexual intimacy between husband and wife, a policy formulated after allegations of sexual harassment against local church leaders. This policy would suggest that members may still attach stigma to non-penile-vaginal sexual activities. Even if an unmarried Mormon couple felt bold enough to experiment, they would likely stick to more conventional practices.
The Historical Context of Mormonism
Mormonism is a relatively young religion, having been founded in the mid-1800s. In contrast, extremist Christian groups have been around for hundreds of years and continue to thrive. It seems unlikely that a church in its formative years would be responsible for creating something as specific as soaking. Some Reddit commenters suggested they learned about the term from Christian Evangelicals or thought it was an Amish practice. It’s even possible that some teenagers, lacking proper sex education, might have engaged in something similar by accident. However, this doesn’t imply that the majority of couples in strict religious communities are practicing it.
Old Internet Threads and Their Reliability
What about the old internet threads that confidently claimed soaking was a real practice? These threads often served to perpetuate myths rather than provide solid evidence. In ex-Mormon circles, soaking is sometimes used as further proof of the church’s alleged eccentricity. While understandable given the potential triggers within Mormonism, this often results in a dehumanizing approach that ridicules those still within the faith.
For instance, a 2015 thread on r/exmormon features ex-Mormons asserting that soaking is real or at least plausible given BYU’s culture. Many responses lack substantial evidence, offering only claims like “my friend did this” or “my ex did that.” This thread often ridicules Mormon practitioners without presenting solid proof. Although a few responses hinted at or admitted to soaking, these were overshadowed by a wave of belittling comments. The focus seemed to be more on condemnation than on providing educational insights.
Conclusion and Future Research
At the end of the day, I must acknowledge that I’m not Mormon and have no personal stake in this matter. As Murphy’s Law (or Rule 34 of the internet) states, if something can happen, it will. There may be some Mormon couples who engage in soaking, but there’s no strong evidence to suggest it’s widespread within the culture. At most, it seems to be a glib joke. The discussion around soaking often shifts toward sex negativity. Ultimately, if something is legal and consensual, the specifics of how people have sex shouldn’t matter. Using myths like soaking to criticize Mormons only serves to deepen their sexual alienation.
The crux of the issue is that most evidence is anecdotal, with little widespread research available. Sexual shame often prevents many Mormons from sharing their sexual experiences openly. However, this may change in the future. Recently, SWELL, an organization based at the University of British Columbia, called for BYU participants for a study on sexual activity. Ironically, the study is named SOAK—short for Sexual Opinions, Attitudes, and Knowledge.
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