Giving a presentation on polygamy…help?

[Anonymous]

QuestionAbound wrote:

And then…the bishop got up and did his part and told the youth and parents that this was a commandment once.

For some reason, that comment from him made something break inside of me. Like, I literally felt something snap in my heart. I don’t know why or what, but it happened and it was a bit paralyzing for me.

I’m still stinging a bit from it and so I just haven’t wanted to post here as a follow-up until I could do so calmly.

I thought I had found a “happy” place with the church organization until this assignment.

Not only has it put me in a place of loss with the organization, but it has even created a huge wedge between me and my husband and that, I feel, is the greater loss.

QA – I know that feeling. I also can’t press the point with my husband, because to hear the man I love and respect defend and deflect re. polygamy makes me despair. I can’t go there. And that’s my suggestion to you: don’t go there. Come here. And other places like this. Speak your mind to others; it does help. I may someday write or do something regarding Section 132 that would get me disciplined. Now I know that wouldn’t be the end of me, and because I’m not fighting this fight in my own home, it wouldn’t be the end of my marriage. He and I will both know that whatever happens will not justify hurting our relationship.

When I tapped into the experience of other women in patriarchal societies/religions, there was some comfort in realizing that the feelings I was having are as old as the hills. But I love the women who love their “tribe” and their families, but starting thinking, writing, talking and standing up for themselves.

This all just my opinion and experience. I don’t know that it will help you, but sometimes just discarding advice gets you off square one.

[Anonymous]

I’m sorry this has surfaced those things for you. It is sad. I don’t know what the solution would be. The Lord doesn’t seem to provide clear answers on this, but lets us flounder around the issue trying to do our best.

These things are hard.

Good for you for completing a tough assignment.

I am reminded of one of my oldest favorite quotes…way back in my journey…which made me think that if the Lord removed all problematic teachings or doctrines, we would probably grow less.

The saying goes:

CS Lewis wrote:

If our religion is something objective, then we must never avert our eyes from those elements in it which seem puzzling or repellant; for it will be precisely the puzzling or the repellant which conceals what we do not yet know and need to know….the truth we need most is hidden precisely in the doctrines you least like and least understand. Scientists make progress because scientists instead of running away from such troublesome phenomena or hushing them up, are constantly seeking them out. In the same way, there will be progress in Christian knowledge only as long as we accept the challenge of the difficult or repellant doctrines. A ‘liberal’ Christianity which considers itself free to alter the Faith whenever the Faith looks perplexing or repellent MUST be completely stagnant. Progress is made only into a resisting material.

To me, polygamy is repellent. We can’t ignore it or try to pretend it is not something to be dealt with in mormonism, or pretend it doesn’t bother us when it does. All I can do is seek understanding and work through it.

How will I conduct myself despite disagreeing with others? It seems to be what it comes down to.

I hope it is something you and your DH come to terms together about and not let it wedge your relationship apart. {hugs}

[Anonymous]

Wow QuestionAbound,

Reading through this thread just broke my heart! I had such optimism for a positive outcome on the first couple of pages only to be shattered by what your experience evolved into when your presentation was given. I TOTALLY admire your willingness to jump into the furnace on this, especially when difficult topics in meetings like this are always going to be spun somehow. The best I can hope for is that you and your husband can reach some kind of understanding on this and that it does not cause issues for the two of you.

I personally have no clue how one can study polygamy in the church without coming away disgusted with what it was all about. I’ll admit to having some very strong feelings on it due to personal experiences that make me see just how wrong it is.

Like a good returned missionary, I came home and married at a fairly young age. Just a few short years later, I lost my wife when she was only 23 to a terminal disease. We knew she would not survive and discussed what I would do after her passing – there were some tough conversations! For a long time, she did not want me to get married in the temple after she died, but within the last few weeks of her life, she gave her blessing. She knew that in our LDS lifestyle, any “good Mormon girl” that could be a future wife to me would require a temple marriage AND she wished I would have a happy life.

It was odd being a young widower in a single adult ward after she passed knowing that a) everybody knows how I came about to attend, and b) any girl I would date would know that according to church teachings, if she married me, she was entering into eternal polygamy, assuming, of course, that I was a faithful priesthood holder. I did find a wonderful woman who I took to the temple, but I know she had her own struggles with polygamy and the situation she was entering into.

This isn’t the end of my seeing what a mess polygamy is firsthand. As my first wife was in and out of the hospital over the course of several years, she had a very kind nurse that we got close to. The nurse was not much older than us and LDS. She had lost her husband who she married in the temple. In the LDS church, we all know that temple ceremonies only allow men to marry multiple times and not women. She was remarried to another LDS man outside the temple of course and I know it was difficult for her to think about it. Would the kids she planned to have be hers in the eternities?? What a hard thing to ponder!

My hope is that the church will reach a point some day when it totally disavows it!

[Anonymous]

Wonderful comment, NewLight.

Just to point this out, the teaching of eternal marriage and families means that any additional marriages after the first one, especially those with children, are going to face that same conceptual dilemma, regardless of what the Church does about its stance on polygamy. If we throw out the possibility of eternal polygamy for SOME people, we might have to throw out the idea of eternal monogamy, as well – and I’m not ready to insist we do that.

That is the primary, if not exclusive, reason I can’t reject the concept of polygamy in the next life **ONLY for those people who want it (both the men and the women)**, with the default for the vast majority of people being monogamy.

[Anonymous]

[Admin Note]: Given the history of discussions about this topic, and the fact that the event it discusses is over, I originally closed this thread. After discussion with a few people, it is being re-opened.

If it can continue to focus on ways to deal with the topic that can help people move forward and be as productive as it has been thus far, it will remain open.

[Anonymous]

Quote:

while some girls shake it off (like teenaged Hawkgrrrl) and some girls mentally submit (like my mother), I think most LDS girls upon learning about this go into a long, deep, private reflection about their very identity and worth and come out injured, whether they realize it or not.

Sorry to reopen this but I felt it necessary to clarify. I didn’t shake it off at all. When my seminary teacher told me I had to accept polygamy or I couldn’t be a Mormon, I said “Then I can’t be a Mormon.” I quit seminary and didn’t attend church for roughly 2 years as a result, even though I then attended BYU. I considered myself an atheist for most of my freshman year at BYU. Only when I had a conversion experience at age 19 did I return to church, and even then I did not and do not accept polygamy.

The only nice things I have to say about it are 1) sexism was so awful then that it some ways it was freeing to some women, giving them an opportunity to leave childcare to sister wives and pursue education and career, and 2) I would hate to overlook the sacrifices women made in these horrible circumstances. I have nothing nice to say about the men who benefited from it. To me, it’s gross and disturbing.

I’m flummoxed that your husband doesn’t believe that JS practiced it. I am partly with Oliver Cowdery in questioning the Fanny Alger “affair” as an affair rather than a plural marriage. His practice didn’t involve cohabitation, and there was a lot of deception of Emma. If you think Mormon Enigma is not something he would read, perhaps he would listen to a Maxwell Institute podcast on the First 50 Years of Relief Society. It discusses quite clearly that the first RS was disbanded because some of the sisters were privy to JS’s plural marriage offers and others (often including Emma) were not. It tore them apart. Maxwell Institute is run by BYU. Here’s a link: http://mi.byu.edu/mip-41-relief/

[Anonymous]

Sorry, that was too simple a way of saying what I admired about your teenage reaction. There are so many girls who immediately tamp down their response and start wondering what’s wrong with them. But you also paid a high cost.

What I could listen to of the podcast was interesting. I’d love to see one of those “indignation meetings.” One panelist points out that polygamy couldn’t be separated in the minds of early saints from the rest of their lives, so women staunchly defended it with mama bear energy.

I haven’t listened yet to the part about the original disbanding.

Edit to add: Part 1 of the interview covers Nauvoo polygamy. I think that for QA’s husband or any one else who disbelieves Joseph Smith practiced it, the panel says he did. But they said nothing critical of polygamy itself, or how it was implemented. In a weird exchange, Joseph Smith comes across as a hero of sorts, or peacemaker among the women, encouraging them to all have charity for each other … even though it’s his doings that are causing the strife. At least that’s how it strikes me.

[Author]

Posts