With all my heart I find echo in the testimonies which have been borne yesterday and today respecting the mission of Joseph Smith, the Prophet, and his relationship to the Son of God, even Jesus Christ. In the same breath I wish, also, to tell President McKay, so that he can hear me say it, that I uphold and sustain him as a successor of Joseph Smith and a prophet of the living God. And I pledge myself, as I have in the past, to support him, his counselors, and the Twelve in doing whatsoever I shall be assigned to do.

I say this now because I am going to do something which I dislike very much to do. For the few minutes that I have I want to change the tenor of this conference and talk of something else. Also, I should like to explain to you that I am going to reverse the process which I normally would use. I am going to make a conclusion, and then explain the reasons for it. Normally I would give the reasons, and then state the conclusion.

If I had a loaded gun in my closet, and ignored the possibility of my children using it, I would be a derelict parent. And if I said, in addition to that, "Why doesn't the Church do something about it?" I would be thought a fool, and justly, too. If I as a father knew of a condition which, though it might not be able to kill the body as a gun might, could slay my son's spirit eternally, and did nothing to change it, to the extent that I remained passive, the sin would be upon my head. Then if I should say, in addition to that, "I cannot understand why the Church doesn't do something about it," I would be vain, for so far as my family is concerned I am the Church. It is my responsibility to protect my family and not depend upon anyone else to do it. I may ask for help from Church members and others, but I am the primary protector.

In 1910 I stood next to the back fence of the Lowell School with several of my classmates. A seventeen-year-old boy was there—we were about eleven years of age—and he was exhibiting a picture and bragging to us small children his enjoyment of the situation depicted thereon. I need not tell you that the picture was pornographic in its nature, nor describe it further in detail. I saw it for not more than four seconds—just that long. It has been nearly fifty years, and I cannot, and have not been able to forget it. It has a way of boring itself into my mind, generally during the times I especially would not want it to.

The other day I was standing in a store near a magazine rack. In front of the rack were two young men, I should judge about sixteen years of age. They each had in their hands a copy of a magazine they had picked from that stand. I was not so far away but what I could see at what they were looking. One boy would turn a page, then snicker and nudge his companion who would look, and then he in his turn would guffaw and in a moment or two repeat the process.

They did not purchase these magazines. After they had satiated themselves with the material therein, they put them back on the rack and went out of the store. I followed them for a moment and watched them go up the street. When they got out into the open, where they were not inhibited, from the noises they made, from the laughter, and the joking and the kidding with each other, I would not need to have been a prophet to have been able to predict what they would do that night.

Those pictures in the magazines were not one whit less than what I saw fifty years ago. How widespread do you brethren think that practice is? How far does it extend? I would ask you. My father never knew what I saw. I never did tell him. Do you know what your sons are looking at when they stop in front of drugstore, department store, other store magazine racks?

May I take from the Doctrine and Covenants two verses of scripture which I am sure have not been applied to this particular thing, but which I should like to apply. One is a prophecy and a warning: ". . . In consequence of evils and designs which do and will exist in the hearts of conspiring men in the last days, I have warned you, and forewarn you"  D&C 89:4

And the other: ". . . inasmuch as parents have children in Zion, or in any of her stakes . . . that teach them not to understand . . . the sin be upon the heads of the parents . . . And they shall also teach their children to pray, and to walk uprightly before the Lord"  D&C 68:25,28

May God bless us to become alert to probably the most insidious danger that confronts our boys today, I humbly ask in the name of Jesus Christ. Amen.