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Shawn wrote:
… why can’t it be possible that there is a middle-ground?
Who is this? What have you done with Shawn?
🙂 I suppose I’m not winning any friends here. Please know that I am not trying to win an argument. I have come to peace regarding this issue, and I hope for others to do the same, but I understand not everyone (or not anyone) will see it how I do. If not, may you come to peace somehow. With genuine peace and love… cwald wrote:Shawn wrote:… why can’t it be possible that there is a middle-ground?
Who is this? What have you done with Shawn?
🙂
Dude, good one:clap: Everyone, marriage is a MUCH more complicated issue than most on either side of any argument about it tend to admit. Personally, I have read hyperbolic statements for and against polygamy, and, while I don’t like it in the slightest as lived by most people we think of when we talk shallowly about it, I can’t call it “evil” in the broadest sense – since I know of more than one scenarioch I would not condemn it (and at least two where I actually would accept it without problem).
Please, everyone, be very careful about sweeping generalities concerning very complex issues. It’s what we decry here all the time when levied against us.
Thanks Ray. Good to keep us from getting out of control. I don’t think the principal of polygamy can be considered evil between consenting adults. I believe it can be thought of as “probably not the best choice and not likely to work in most cases” but if consenting adults want to make the choice they should probably be allowed.
I believe anyone who thinks church assigning mates isn’t evil is deluding themselves. It is manipulation especially considering the “follow the priesthood” culture and the “God sent an angel” and “you have a choice…this or hell”. Yes the women had a choice…but the negative repercussions were huge if they refused…potentially losing family, community, or their very soul. That is worse than the old boss pressuring a secretary to provide favors out she will loss her job…and is sick and evil….and if the Nancy Rigdon story is true, she got labeled as a whore for refusing Joseph…
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I do not believe polygamy is evil. I think using religion to manipulate women to agree to it could be evil. Did JS and BY do that?
That is for each of us to decide with help from the gods.
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Now, to address the actual question and issue: 1) Joseph instituted and practiced “plural marriage”. The Church doesn’t deny that, and the evidence is over-whelming.
2) Joseph didn’t institute or practice polygamy as it was lived under Brigham Young and as it is understood by almost everyone when that word is used, and that also is indisputable. He didn’t live with multiple women, splitting his time with them. He didn’t have traditional marriages with them, in which children were born and supported. There are allegations that he might have fathered as many as three children with women other than Emma, but there is no proof of that – and some of the previous allegations have been dismissed. It’s an open question still, but so is just about any other unprovable allegation, so I don’t see it as a productive discussion, personally. He was sealed to already married women. He allowed women to be sealed to multiple men. At the last stages of his life, he seemed to be focused exclusively on dynastic and communal sealings, rather than the earliest moves into polygamy.
3) Joseph experimented with multiple forms of marriage / sealing arrangements. That also is indisputable. Emma denied everything until the day she died, but Joseph absolutely wasn’t constrained by the social morals of his time with regard to marriage arrangements. Personally, I believe he saw the next life very differently than his followers and others and was trying to approximate his view in this life – and I also believe he was a highly physical, charismatic man who liked and was attracted to women.
4) Joseph was sealed to a very few young teenagers, and they receive the focus of most discussions, but he also was sealed to far more older women who were not “temptations” in a physical way. His “marriages” defy typical patterns, and I believe they reflect his evolving view of marriage and, even more importantly, sealing much more than anything else.
5) There is no evidence that there was a sexual component with any particular type of woman to whom he was sealed – but there is evidence, imo, that such a component was more prevalent in the earlier sealings than in the later ones. I also see that as a manifestation of his evolving views.
6) I believe Brigham Young didn’t share Joseph’s personality or “vision” of the next life in ways that are specific to plural marriage and community sealing, so he instituted the model he understood – the traditional structure of classic polygamy.
7) I loathe coercion of just about any variety, and that feeling is most intense when sex is part of it. I don’t like the angel-with-a-sword accounts, whether Joseph believed them or not (and I’m not convinced he made them up, since I can believe he believed them without believing they came from God). I don’t believe all “visions” are good or of God, and I believe the issues surrounding all of this might be one major reason he was told that his name would be had for good and evil.
I love Joseph and admire him greatly, but I don’t believe he was infallible – and I believe when he made mistakes, they tended to mirror his great achievements. 9) I believe people can love multiple spouses deeply and equally, and that simple fact alone keeps me from dismissing or rejecting the concept of some kind of plural marriage arrangements in this life and the next. I also know enough of history to know of situations where catastrophe decimated male populations and gave rise to polygamy – and, while that is NOT the case in our modern Mormon history, those situations also keep me from condemning plural marriage arrangements in totality.
10) As I’ve said in other threads, I don’t believe sexual intercourse as we know it in this life continues in the next life, so much of the “ickiness” factor of plural marriage arrangements disappears for me when dealing with our eternal future.
That’s my short version.
I think Ray and Shawn have made some excellent points regarding polygamy (and Shawn–thanks for the Bushman quotes–those are great.) For the record, I’m against polygamy, but let me clarify some misconceptions. The FLDS Church gets the lions’ share of publicity, but there are other polygamist groups. The Apostolic United Brethren is a group (also known as the Allred group) that practices a much different form of polygamy, and this is the group Kody Brown (of the show “Sister Wives”) is from. They don’t marry teenage brides. I believe they limit wives to 4 (I think there is an ancient Midrashic tradition that says no more than 4 wives.)
I know there is a stereotype of patriarchy, but in many cases, the early polygamists were quite feminist. Mormons were the first to allow women to vote (which Congress later took away.) Brigham Young encouraged women to attend medical school. Some were quite professional. There can be a lot of feminist leanings in polygynous societies, and some of that is evident in the AUB. In Kody Brown’s case, wives #1 and #2 are primarily breadwinners (along with Kody.) Wife #3 is the stay at home mom. Wife #1 picked wife #4 for Kody (which is shown clearly in season 1.)
There is more diversity among polygamists, and the FLDS are really a small subset of the groups. (They are the largest, but are dwarfed by other groups and rivaled in size by the AUB. The largest group is “unaffiliated” with 40% of all mormon polygamists.) The “Sister Wives” show is really interesting. If you want to know more about non-FLDS polygamist groups, I did a post. See
http://www.mormonheretic.org/2010/10/10/fundamentalist-mormonism-more-diverse-than-you-thought/ I apologize for my sweeping statements regarding polygamy. I should have specified that my exaggerated over generalizations were in regard to RELIGIOUS polygamy as a institutional commandment for any group of people. It is not an exaggeration to say that most women in a religion that practice polygamy comply due to the threat of losing their and their children’s eternal salvation. It is not complicated it is a fact.
To be clear, I do not have a problem with consenting adults that choose any combination of partners. I do not care if people choose to be sealed to multiple people in the next life.
The evil, and yes that is a strong word and I am using it purposely, is when any religion blackmails its women with threats of eternal damnation for themselves and their children if they do not follow the religious commandment to practice polygamy.
That is why any religious based polygamy is such a dark thing in most circumstances.
Dax wrote:Sambee……I’m sorry but you and most men miss the point as to why polygamy is so EVIL!!!
When a “religious prophet” commands that polygamy be instituted and than ties it to a woman’s salvation we are talking about a whole another level of evil and control. It is the THREAT of being dammed and not getting into heaven that is so evil! It takes away a woman’s choice because the church or her spiritual leaders are saying that she will not be able to go to heaven if she does not follow the church’s rules. Throw in the additional threat of not being with her children in heaven or the children’s eternal salvation in danger, and you have a type of evil that is sickening!!
If movie stars or consenting adults want to try out a thousand different combinations in the secular world that is different than
RELIGIOUSpolygamy! The consenting adults are not being threatened with the loss of their soul! That is why any argument about polygamy is different if we are talking about it being a RELIGIOUScommandment!! Polygamy is an institution that “spiritual” men use in order to have sex with other women, most of the time YOUNG girls/women.
None of what you are talking about is about polygamy in general. It’s a group of rules, threats etc, which have become
attachedto polygamy. A lot of our hatred of polygamy, comes from the fact that many people in the mainstream LDS are still bound to mainstream 19th century sexual mores. The irony is that the 19th century church wasn’t, and most of the modern world isn’t.
Quote:If movie stars or consenting adults want to try out a thousand different combinations in the secular world that is different than RELIGIOUS polygamy!
Yes, and that’s another thing I keep on saying. I’ve no problem with polygamy as long as it’s between
consenting adults. I’ve said that throughout. You’re talking about compunction. I’m not. I don’t agree with children getting married either. And as I keep on repeating, polygamy does not have to mean “one man, many women”. And all of its faults can usually be found in monogamy. Are the mass weddings of the Moonies (all monogamous, AFAIK) of strangers to strangers by a religious prophet less odious because they only occur between two people?
Dax, the AUB do consider polygamy essential to their salvation. Your comments above may apply quite well to the FLDS, but they do not apply at all to the AUB. According to Anne Wilde, many of the “unaffiliated” polygamists are actually active, temple-going LDS members who keep their polygamy a secret. Anne herself let everyone think she was simply divorced with a couple of kids, attended the temple regularly. When people asked why she wouldn’t remarry (when she was already secretly married to polygamist Ogden Kraut), she simply replied that she liked things the way they were. With the secret polygamy, she was very independent, ran her own house, had her own job (as a “single” mother), etc. It was nothing like the FLDS, and she was really quite a feminist who ran her household quite independent of a man. So the stereotypes you use really don’t apply to either the AUB or the unaffiliated polygamists who don’t practice the extreme patriarchy of the FLDS. The AUB are VERY religous, and consider polygamy essential, but women are not forced into it in any way. In fact, several of Kody Brown’s children say that they will not be polygamists, and it was even promoted on the show. (see http://hollywoodlife.com/2012/06/25/sisterwives-children-polygamy-scandal-new-interview/ Mormonheritic….if any religion requires polygamy to be “essential to the participants salvation” than I’m sorry but I do believe my previous statements apply. If you link a womans’s or mans salvation with practicing polygamy then by default there will be the implied threat, however nicely wrapped and taught, that if one does practice polygamy you will be in danger in the next life. It is this implied threat that is taught to the next generation of women and the cycle of religious polygamy continues.
When polygamy is connected to ones salvation, however sweetly presented, than that is when it becomes dangerous!
Dax, sincere question: Do you feel the same way about all forms of marriage – or just polygamous ones?
Mormonheretic, I appreciate the alternate point of view I do agree with Dax about I don’t think it should be required for salvation and it has a high potential to become a manipulative system when required for salvation….and doesn’t make sense to me personally as you figure there’s basically a ratio of 50/50 of men and women that means that some people are going to not make it because they weren’t able to be polygamous…
I have no issue though with a religion that says it is okay to be in a polygamist relationship. In fact I actually think that they would be a very interesting group of people to know…..my guess is they would have a lot fewer hangups
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Let me ask a question. If the prophet came out and told us that polygamy was now in affect and women can take as many men for husbands as they wish…but men can only be married to one woman…
You okay with that?
And then the prophet comes out and tells you that you need to marry a women who is 30 years your senior who already has 7 husbands in order to be obedient and ensure your place within the community, and ensure your salvation…
Still feel okay with all that?
Sometimes you need to wear the shoe and see how it fits.
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