The Washington-based Heritage Foundation recently published a study that shows, with glaring clarity, how destructive immoral behavior is to teenagers.

The lessons it teaches should hardly be news to members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, but they illustrate the very real perils of life in a world that is becoming increasingly deaf to the strains of virtue and self control.

The study shows that teenage girls involved in premarital sex are far more prone to depression than are their peers who remain virtuous. Among young men, those who have broken the law of chastity have a much greater propensity to contemplate suicide.

Perhaps the most telling statistic gathered by the research is that nearly two-thirds of the young women who had experienced intercourse outside marriage felt deep regret and wished they could undo what they had done.

Contrast this with the nearly constant message from popular television shows and movies these days, which is that chastity brings no prize and that immoral behavior is normal, desirable and harmless.

This big lie, perpetrated daily on the youth of the world, ends virtually always with the sad realization that, as the prophet Alma taught to his disobedient son, Corianton, "Behold, I say unto you, wickedness never was happiness" (Alma 41:10). It does little good to seek for joy and fulfillment among acts that corrupt, degrade and sap the human spirit of its ability to communicate with God.

Just as important, widespread immorality contributes to the decline of communities and nations, a fact that seems little understood these days. Faith, virtue and freedom are inseparably linked.

In a speech he gave a few years ago, Pennsylvania congressman Rick Santorum asked, "How is it possible to maintain liberty while banishing from the public square any reference to a transcendent moral code? My answer . . . is that it simply is not possible. In the view of our country's founding fathers and our greatest moral teachers, religion — and the truths to which religion points us — is essential to the success of the American experiment." (Speech to the Heritage Foundation's Conference on Religion and Political Leadership, Aug. 6, 1999.)

The same could be said of liberty in all nations. It relies to a great extent on the collective morality of the people.

Many years ago, President Gordon B. Hinckley had an encounter with a young man who tried to argue that peace and freedom, the young man's two greatest goals in life, could be obtained only if he was free from all moral constraints. Remembering this discussion, President Hinckley asks, "Can there be peace in the heart of any person, can there be freedom in the life of one who has been left only misery as the bitter fruit of indulgence?

"Can anything be more false or dishonest than gratification of passion without acceptance of responsibility? . . . Certain kinds of men are prone to gloat over their immoral conquests. What a cheap and sullied victory. There is no conquest in gloating, only self-deception and a miserable fraud. The only conquest that brings satisfaction is the conquest of self. It was said of old that he who governs himself is greater than he who takes a city." (Ensign, "In Search of Peace and Freedom," August 1989.)

Virtue, President Hinckley said, "is the only way to freedom from regret."

And yet, so-called modern experts, such as a child psychiatrist in San Francisco, say, "Normal sexual experimentation is different from dangerous risk-taking, and the fact that an adolescent is engaging in sex is not necessarily a dangerous risk." (As quoted in The Washington Times, June 4, 2003.)

Not a risk? How grateful we should be for a modern prophet who speaks the will of the Lord to counter the confusing and often destructive "wisdom" of the world. Faithful Latter-day Saints are not surprised to hear that immorality leads to depression and feelings of worthlessness. They don't need to relearn these lessons through personal experience. Instead, they need to help others understand why this is so.