Sexual Sins
We verily, have forbidden you lechery.
- Bahá’u’lláh, Epistle to the Son of the Wolf, p. 49.
It condemns infidelity in marital relationships, and all manner of promiscuity, of easy familiarity, and of sexual vices.
- Shoghi Effendi, The Advent of Divine Justice, p. 30.
Considering that the perpetration of an immoral sexual act by one adult against another is punishable by law, the perpetration of such an act against a helpless child seems indeed heinous.
- Universal House of Justice to an individual believer, 16 August, 1993.
Masturbation is clearly not a proper use of the sex instinct, as this is understood in the Faith. Moreover it involves . . . mental fantasies, while Bahá’u’lláh, in the Kitáb-i-Aqdas, has exhorted us not to indulge our passions and in one of His well-known Tablets ‘Abdu’l-Bahá encourages us to keep our “secret thoughts pure”.
- Universal House of Justice, 1981, Lights of Guidance, p. 364
They that follow their lusts and corrupt inclinations, have erred and dissipated their efforts. They, indeed, are of the lost.
- Universal House of Justice to an individual believer, 24 January, 1993.
We shrink, for very shame, from treating of the subject of boys. Fear ye the Merciful, O peoples of the world! Commit not that which is forbidden you in Our Holy Tablet, and be not of those who rove distractedly in the wilderness of their desires. (Aqdas, paragraph 107)The word translated here as "boys" has, in this context, in the Arabic original, the implication of paederasty [anal intercourse between a man and a boy]. Shoghi Effendi has interpreted this reference as a prohibition on all homosexual relations.
- Universal House of Justice, NSA USA - The Bahá’í Faith and Homosexuality
If a Bahá’í woman suffers abuse or is subjected to rape by her husband, she has the right to turn to the assembly for assistance and counsel, or to seek legal protection.
- Universal House of Justice to an individual believer, 24 January, 1993.
It is difficult to imagine a more reprehensible perversion of human conduct than the sexual abuse of children, which finds its most debased form in incest.
- Universal House of Justice to an individual believer, 24 January, 1993.
One of the most heinous of sexual offenses is the crime of rape.
- Universal House of Justice to an individual believer, 24 January, 1993.
Quote of the Day
Kamal 18 Mashiyyat 182 B.E.
Be sensitive for the possibility of prior exposure to severe violence, such as a personal or family history of trauma from torture, mutilation, war atrocities, gang rape, arson, bombings, lynchings, or other extreme forms of violence. Prior exposure to other forms of violence may exacerbate the effects of domestic violence.
National Spiritual Assembly of the Bahá’ís of the United States – Guidelines for Spiritual Assemblies on Domestic Violence, p. 94