Vort

Good points to remember. Thank you, @Vort and good on you for your success as well.

I've been trying to lose weight and exercise this year, with some success. My observation is as follows:
If you want to get stronger, then exercise. If you want to lose weight, then eat less. Seems obvious, but so many people think that by walking an extra half hour or doing some pushups, they can go ahead and have that hamburger and milkshake. That is generally not how it works, though. You actually have to do a lot of work to "burn off" calories. A couple of extra miles walked or a half hour workout just won't do much for the weight concerns.

I don't think there is anything inherently immoral about vegetarianism. If that's a route you want to go, I don't see a problem.
For myself, if I were to decide to go to a vegetarian diet, I would make sure to eat meat every few months, just so I could honestly say I was not 100% vegetarian. In the words of Doctrine and Covenants 49:18-19,
I have no problem with vegetarianism, only with someone teaching that it's a "higher" or "more holy" way.

I don't think there is anything inherently immoral about vegetarianism. If that's a route you want to go, I don't see a problem.
For myself, if I were to decide to go to a vegetarian diet, I would make sure to eat meat every few months, just so I could honestly say I was not 100% vegetarian. In the words of Doctrine and Covenants 49:18-19,
I have no problem with vegetarianism, only with someone teaching that it's a "higher" or "more holy" way.

If you and I say we disbelieve this no doubt there will be some even on this forum who will counter that we disbelieve the scriptures and even our own faith's presentation. My point is that the rib account is the only one I'm aware of, and so I use it to illustrate the difficulty of suggesting that the bodies of all humanity were created utilizing the same methods as were the bodies of Adam and Eve. You and I are free to speculate about the methods, of course, pending acquaintance with revealed doctrine on the subject. And we are all free to disagree and to  present alternate speculations. Am I incorrect?

Oracle, if I may say so:
Either your parents and your sisters are remarkably heartless, vindictive individuals; or your sense of perspective has been remarkably skewed by what you have experienced.  
If the former--that's a tough situation to be in, and I feel for you, and I don't know how to advise you except to say that theologically, at some point confession to priesthood authority is a requisite component of true repentance and you aren't doing yourself any favors by officiating in priesthood ordinances unworthily.  It may be that you need to start repeatedly saying "that's really not something I choose to share at this time" and sticking to your guns when people get nosy.
If you are in the latter scenario, though--well, that's a big part of why a bishop is needed; because Satan plays all kinds of mind games with you as long as you're living in darkness.  It may well be that your fear and shame are unnecessarily isolating you, not only from the Spirit, but from your family and from the community of believers that needs your support.  You have some legitimate concerns; but a lot of what you express here looks like "catastrophizing" which is frequent when one is dealing with compulsive or addictive-type behavior (I am *not* saying you are addicted; but I find that treating it as an addiction is often a useful paradigm for stopping problematic behaviors).
If you think you need to wait until college before dealing with a bishop, just bear in mind that at some point you are going to have to deal with this--whether in the run-up to a mission, or serious dating, or a temple wedding.  Repeated masturbation--especially if it is in conjunction with a porn problem--will *not* just go away if you suppress the behavior and keep it undercover long enough (in the addiction recovery program, we call that "white knuckling it").  Deep down, I think you already know that.
If you're into podcasts, check out the July 9 episode of "Leading LDS" podcast.  Then, subscribe to "The Next Step-12 Steps to Change" podcast.  (If your parents ask why you're listening to stuff about addiction, tell 'me it's because a guy you met online (me) is an addict.  )

Thanks again @Vort.  Someday we should get together for dinner and have a long discussion.  BTW, In August I will be in the Seattle area – unfortunatly I will be with a small gang but if there is some down time perhaps we could have dinner or something and just chat.
It is interesting to me that Isaiah describes an apostasy as a rebelling against G-d (turning from G-d) with three interesting ideas.  #1.  Is a Transgression of the Law.  #2 Changing the ordinances and #3 breaking the everlasting covenant.  Most people think of apostasy or heresy as a corruption of doctrine.  I find it interesting that “doctrine” did not even make Isaiah’s “A” list of what constitutes apostasy and heresy.   I am not going to teach it as gospel doctrine but I personally believe that it is possible to fall into apostasy without turning to false doctrine.  Rather, I believe false doctrine is created by apostasy or heresy as a means of justification for the real or defining problem that involves much more than the elements of false doctrine. 
I think it is also interesting that when Jesus spoke of identifying his disciples he did not recommend a critical look at their doctrine but rather if they “love” one another – behavior centered rather than theologically based in ideas.  We can further discover this is not love according to modern definitions but more in accordance with the ancient use of the term “Charity” or the divine love G-d has for mankind.  In other words, that they take upon themselves the most noble characteristic of G-d.
 
The Traveler

and you're such a cowie

It is truly wonderful that this is not your decision, and in fact has nothing whatsoever to do with you. Thus, you are free to let it go, seeing as how it's none of your business anyway, and go on merrily with your life, worrying about things that actually pertain to you.

"Gnostic" has long become a shorthand way of saying "something I think is heretical". There are many early Christian heresies that were not gnostic, simple misunderstandings or falsehoods. Sadly, some true principles were classified early on as gnostic; thus, the restored gospel sounds to some people like a resurgence of Gnosticism. The Gnostics themselves were hardly a uniform group with well-defined beliefs and clear-cut doctrine. So, for example, while Gnosticism generally rejected a literal resurrection*, in some cases Gnostics allowed for it when trying to prove another point, e.g. that the post-mortal Christ delivered important truths to Peter.
*The primitive Church fought this particular heresy from the beginning, certainly relatively early in Paul's career, as in 1 Corinthians 15.
Most Latter-day Saints don't really understand the difference between apostasy and heresy, since we generally only use the first term to cover both concepts. Apostasy means when you depart from gospel truths and leave it and the Church behind you, while heresy means believing and teaching as gospel things that are untrue and not part of the gospel. The apostate will generally admit himself/herself as being apostate (though they'll say they are "apostate" from a false tradition), while a heretic will not recognize his heresy (because he thinks that his beliefs are right and everyone else is mistaken about the gospel). Thus, the person who abandons the Church in disbelief, asking that his name be removed, is well and truly an apostate, while the person who considers himself a good Latter-day Saint but thinks the First Presidency and Quorum of Twelve don't hold the keys of the kingdom is, properly speaking, a heretic.

But he's coming back...

Sure. And both of these are covered under the initial baptismal covenant.
I see the sequence of covenants we make as being additive, revealing to us the deeper, more important aspects of covenants that we have already made by having us make them more specifically.

It is truly wonderful that this is not your decision, and in fact has nothing whatsoever to do with you. Thus, you are free to let it go, seeing as how it's none of your business anyway, and go on merrily with your life, worrying about things that actually pertain to you.

"Gnostic" has long become a shorthand way of saying "something I think is heretical". There are many early Christian heresies that were not gnostic, simple misunderstandings or falsehoods. Sadly, some true principles were classified early on as gnostic; thus, the restored gospel sounds to some people like a resurgence of Gnosticism. The Gnostics themselves were hardly a uniform group with well-defined beliefs and clear-cut doctrine. So, for example, while Gnosticism generally rejected a literal resurrection*, in some cases Gnostics allowed for it when trying to prove another point, e.g. that the post-mortal Christ delivered important truths to Peter.
*The primitive Church fought this particular heresy from the beginning, certainly relatively early in Paul's career, as in 1 Corinthians 15.
Most Latter-day Saints don't really understand the difference between apostasy and heresy, since we generally only use the first term to cover both concepts. Apostasy means when you depart from gospel truths and leave it and the Church behind you, while heresy means believing and teaching as gospel things that are untrue and not part of the gospel. The apostate will generally admit himself/herself as being apostate (though they'll say they are "apostate" from a false tradition), while a heretic will not recognize his heresy (because he thinks that his beliefs are right and everyone else is mistaken about the gospel). Thus, the person who abandons the Church in disbelief, asking that his name be removed, is well and truly an apostate, while the person who considers himself a good Latter-day Saint but thinks the First Presidency and Quorum of Twelve don't hold the keys of the kingdom is, properly speaking, a heretic.

Jumping on a bit on Gator's turf--for better or for worse, Mormonism doesn't really have a formally commissioned institute of apologetics (or even theology).  Some BYU professors, and some independent LDS researchers, have done yeoman's work in these fields.  But if you approach the church itself with these kinds of concerns--whether the "mission home" (aka "mission presidency" or "mission office") that oversees the missionaries you are working with, or the presiding officers ("bishop") of your local Mormon congregation--the thrust of their ministry is opening people up to the possibility that a) a person can ask a question directly to God; and b) that, at least in generalities if not always in specifics, God will talk back.  Once that key relationship has been established, my experience is that much of the rest tends to fall into place.

You are right about this part. If you stop officiating or assisting in sacrament, it will be very visible.
Well, good for you. Doing what is right is always better than doing what is wrong, even (OR ESPECIALLY) when it's uncomfortable or embarrassing.
If people ask about it -- which they shouldn't -- you can simply tell them you're talking with the branch president about things. That's all. You never need to tell them any more. Probably no one will ask. (The exception here is your parents, who will -- and should -- ask, and to whom you might want to give a better explanation of what's going on. They love you more than anyone in the world, and they can help.)
Talk to your branch president and start on your path back to where you want to be, and those feelings will vanish. Really! But odds are they'll come back, weaker but still there, and you will need to be brave again to reconquer them. And they'll come back again, weaker but still real, and you'll do it again. This is how we grow and become stronger.
None of us knows this. You well may find heterosexual desires and impulses that bloom. But your important work is to get yourself right with your Father in heaven so that his Spirit can guide you to holiness. The rest will eventually take care of itself.

You are right about this part. If you stop officiating or assisting in sacrament, it will be very visible.
Well, good for you. Doing what is right is always better than doing what is wrong, even (OR ESPECIALLY) when it's uncomfortable or embarrassing.
If people ask about it -- which they shouldn't -- you can simply tell them you're talking with the branch president about things. That's all. You never need to tell them any more. Probably no one will ask. (The exception here is your parents, who will -- and should -- ask, and to whom you might want to give a better explanation of what's going on. They love you more than anyone in the world, and they can help.)
Talk to your branch president and start on your path back to where you want to be, and those feelings will vanish. Really! But odds are they'll come back, weaker but still there, and you will need to be brave again to reconquer them. And they'll come back again, weaker but still real, and you'll do it again. This is how we grow and become stronger.
None of us knows this. You well may find heterosexual desires and impulses that bloom. But your important work is to get yourself right with your Father in heaven so that his Spirit can guide you to holiness. The rest will eventually take care of itself.

This will end if you go see the branch president, Oracle - please trust us on that.  It may still be hard, but it'll be the good hard, the hard of work and progress, as opposed to the hard of despair.
Even if you aren't able to administer the sacrament, and even if people think you did something, they won't know what, and it won't matter.  What matters is you getting the help you need to get right with the Lord - that is worth any sacrifice.  Humbling yourself enough to get through that will make you so much stronger, and bring you so much closer to the Lord.
Instead of saying, "I can't...", start saying, "I will not let anything come between me and the Lord."  Keep repeating that until you have the strength - the longer you wait, the harder it will be, the sooner you act, the sooner bad feelings will be replaced with good.
You still have my prayers.  And lots of e-hugs.

I was terrified to go sit in the bishop's hot seat.  It could have meant the end of my marriage, my job, my life.  
It was the most freeing, most soul-cleansing thing I've ever done.  
If you're going to bother being Mormon, you might as well be Mormon all the way.  Either the church is true or it isn't.   Put your faith and trust in God, and go confess to your Branch President.  

Headshots baby, headshots.

But he's coming back...

The idea of flesh being an evil clothing for the divine spirit is an old gnostic heresy, taken directly from Greek philosophy (e.g. Plato) and adopted wholesale into Christianity after about the first century AD. My guess is that the pseudepigraphal book you mention is gnostic in origin. ("Pseudepigraphal" means "falsely attributed", so by definition a pseudepigraph is a work believed not to have been composed by the purported author. So the "Testament of Abraham" would be considered a pseudepigraph if it was thought not to actually have been written in the original instance by Abraham.)
So-called "gnosticism" was one of the first and most persistent heresies of early Christianity, one which led directly (and quickly) to what we Latter-day Saints call the Great Apostasy. The Greek γνῶσις "gnosis" means knowledge; both words share a common Indo-European linguistic origin, and the now-silent "k" in "knowledge" was originally the same sound represented by the "g" sound in "gnosis".
The gnostics made profit, both financially and socially, by claiming to have Christ's secret teachings to his apostles given during the "lost" 40 days following Jesus' resurrection. Lots of false stuff, some of it quite bizarre, arose at the end of the first century and throughout the second century AD, attributed to Christ as a secret teaching. The early Church tried so hard to keep these teachings from taking root, but after the apostles died, it was an impossible task. False prophets gladly taught their pet doctrines and gained followers, and the humble and sincere seekers were left to try to work out Christian doctrine through the lens of Greek philosophy. This is why so much Greek philosophy is baked into traditional Christianity, things such as the corrupt and evil nature of matter and the utter "otherness" of God. The very earliest Christians were mocked and excoriated for being so simple and gullible as to believe as literal truth stuff like the resurrection of the dead and the appearance of God to men. If not for the work of Augustine, Christianity might even now be marked by crudely literal belief in such ideas. Instead, it took a restoration through the likes of a Joseph Smith to get back to such breathtakingly naive, crudely literalistic ideas like, "If you want to know if an angel is from God, ask to shake his hand." The sophisticates can't help but roll on the floor in laughter at such things.

The idea of flesh being an evil clothing for the divine spirit is an old gnostic heresy, taken directly from Greek philosophy (e.g. Plato) and adopted wholesale into Christianity after about the first century AD. My guess is that the pseudepigraphal book you mention is gnostic in origin. ("Pseudepigraphal" means "falsely attributed", so by definition a pseudepigraph is a work believed not to have been composed by the purported author. So the "Testament of Abraham" would be considered a pseudepigraph if it was thought not to actually have been written in the original instance by Abraham.)
So-called "gnosticism" was one of the first and most persistent heresies of early Christianity, one which led directly (and quickly) to what we Latter-day Saints call the Great Apostasy. The Greek γνῶσις "gnosis" means knowledge; both words share a common Indo-European linguistic origin, and the now-silent "k" in "knowledge" was originally the same sound represented by the "g" sound in "gnosis".
The gnostics made profit, both financially and socially, by claiming to have Christ's secret teachings to his apostles given during the "lost" 40 days following Jesus' resurrection. Lots of false stuff, some of it quite bizarre, arose at the end of the first century and throughout the second century AD, attributed to Christ as a secret teaching. The early Church tried so hard to keep these teachings from taking root, but after the apostles died, it was an impossible task. False prophets gladly taught their pet doctrines and gained followers, and the humble and sincere seekers were left to try to work out Christian doctrine through the lens of Greek philosophy. This is why so much Greek philosophy is baked into traditional Christianity, things such as the corrupt and evil nature of matter and the utter "otherness" of God. The very earliest Christians were mocked and excoriated for being so simple and gullible as to believe as literal truth stuff like the resurrection of the dead and the appearance of God to men. If not for the work of Augustine, Christianity might even now be marked by crudely literal belief in such ideas. Instead, it took a restoration through the likes of a Joseph Smith to get back to such breathtakingly naive, crudely literalistic ideas like, "If you want to know if an angel is from God, ask to shake his hand." The sophisticates can't help but roll on the floor in laughter at such things.

The idea of flesh being an evil clothing for the divine spirit is an old gnostic heresy, taken directly from Greek philosophy (e.g. Plato) and adopted wholesale into Christianity after about the first century AD. My guess is that the pseudepigraphal book you mention is gnostic in origin. ("Pseudepigraphal" means "falsely attributed", so by definition a pseudepigraph is a work believed not to have been composed by the purported author. So the "Testament of Abraham" would be considered a pseudepigraph if it was thought not to actually have been written in the original instance by Abraham.)
So-called "gnosticism" was one of the first and most persistent heresies of early Christianity, one which led directly (and quickly) to what we Latter-day Saints call the Great Apostasy. The Greek γνῶσις "gnosis" means knowledge; both words share a common Indo-European linguistic origin, and the now-silent "k" in "knowledge" was originally the same sound represented by the "g" sound in "gnosis".
The gnostics made profit, both financially and socially, by claiming to have Christ's secret teachings to his apostles given during the "lost" 40 days following Jesus' resurrection. Lots of false stuff, some of it quite bizarre, arose at the end of the first century and throughout the second century AD, attributed to Christ as a secret teaching. The early Church tried so hard to keep these teachings from taking root, but after the apostles died, it was an impossible task. False prophets gladly taught their pet doctrines and gained followers, and the humble and sincere seekers were left to try to work out Christian doctrine through the lens of Greek philosophy. This is why so much Greek philosophy is baked into traditional Christianity, things such as the corrupt and evil nature of matter and the utter "otherness" of God. The very earliest Christians were mocked and excoriated for being so simple and gullible as to believe as literal truth stuff like the resurrection of the dead and the appearance of God to men. If not for the work of Augustine, Christianity might even now be marked by crudely literal belief in such ideas. Instead, it took a restoration through the likes of a Joseph Smith to get back to such breathtakingly naive, crudely literalistic ideas like, "If you want to know if an angel is from God, ask to shake his hand." The sophisticates can't help but roll on the floor in laughter at such things.

The idea of flesh being an evil clothing for the divine spirit is an old gnostic heresy, taken directly from Greek philosophy (e.g. Plato) and adopted wholesale into Christianity after about the first century AD. My guess is that the pseudepigraphal book you mention is gnostic in origin. ("Pseudepigraphal" means "falsely attributed", so by definition a pseudepigraph is a work believed not to have been composed by the purported author. So the "Testament of Abraham" would be considered a pseudepigraph if it was thought not to actually have been written in the original instance by Abraham.)
So-called "gnosticism" was one of the first and most persistent heresies of early Christianity, one which led directly (and quickly) to what we Latter-day Saints call the Great Apostasy. The Greek γνῶσις "gnosis" means knowledge; both words share a common Indo-European linguistic origin, and the now-silent "k" in "knowledge" was originally the same sound represented by the "g" sound in "gnosis".
The gnostics made profit, both financially and socially, by claiming to have Christ's secret teachings to his apostles given during the "lost" 40 days following Jesus' resurrection. Lots of false stuff, some of it quite bizarre, arose at the end of the first century and throughout the second century AD, attributed to Christ as a secret teaching. The early Church tried so hard to keep these teachings from taking root, but after the apostles died, it was an impossible task. False prophets gladly taught their pet doctrines and gained followers, and the humble and sincere seekers were left to try to work out Christian doctrine through the lens of Greek philosophy. This is why so much Greek philosophy is baked into traditional Christianity, things such as the corrupt and evil nature of matter and the utter "otherness" of God. The very earliest Christians were mocked and excoriated for being so simple and gullible as to believe as literal truth stuff like the resurrection of the dead and the appearance of God to men. If not for the work of Augustine, Christianity might even now be marked by crudely literal belief in such ideas. Instead, it took a restoration through the likes of a Joseph Smith to get back to such breathtakingly naive, crudely literalistic ideas like, "If you want to know if an angel is from God, ask to shake his hand." The sophisticates can't help but roll on the floor in laughter at such things.