Okay I’ll say it, Polygamy

[Anonymous]

Quote:

I wish also that we could just lay it all out there and talk about it. Hiding it, as usual, seems to cause a lot of trouble.

I somewhat agree, but then I think “What can we really say about it?” From a correlation committee standpoint, the party line is impossible to draft, which is probably why this topic is the unmentioned elephant in the room so often. Open dialogue, asking open-ended questions seems reasonable, but you know that there will be weird weird speculative things said by well-intentioned members and that it could be worse than if the topic is skirted. Like with most things, I’m all for open debate and questions so long as stupid people are not allowed to speak.

[Anonymous]

Quote:

I’m all for open debate and questions so long as stupid people are not allowed to speak.

That is awesome wrapped in beast surrounded by sheer joy and sunlight. (That came from my teenage daughter when I read it to my kids.)

[Anonymous]

Short answer: No. No, não, non, nyet. What Sally said.

I was raised a good plyg kid LDS. My mother told me I had plyg ancestors probably before I was 12. I have always been able to name most of them and the number of their wives. I could always say “polygamy” with an assertive smile on my face.

Wrong, wrong, wrong. Polygamy is mathematically, spiritually, and morally wrong. For whatever reasons it was, has been, and is practiced in the D&C 132 fashion, it is wrong.

On the other hand, some limited free-choice , life-long polygamy doesn’t bother me at all. It’s just that the D&C 132 model isn’t shown to be workable, moral, or sustainable.

[Anonymous]

Well, I admit polygamy is not one of my biggest issues. I kind of just ignore it I guess, except for one thing. I am the decendent of a second wife. Without polygamy, who knows where/what I would be. Kind of eerie to think about. But I figure I am worth while, and that is how I came to be, so what right do I have to really question it? I know I would not like to live it, and I do not understand it, but I am here because of it. Does that make any sense?

Now, if you got me talking about prop 8, racism in the church, etc, well, then you would discover my problems.

[Anonymous]

Yesterday, there was an episode on TV titled: “Secrets of Polygamy”. This is one episode in a series. This episode talked mainly about the

FLDS church & their practice of polygamy. I’m sure it won’t be long before they talk about its history within the LDS church. They interviewed

people who left the FLDS church & they talked about the impact the practice had in their lives. None of it was good. Every time I watched

a program like this, I get into a very bad mood.

I have tried to understand why it started & practiced in the LDS church. I have read a number of history books including: Rough Stone Rolling by:

Richard Bushman. None of them really answered my questions.

I keep asking myself if this was such an important principle to understand & practice, why didn’t Jesus Christ ever talk about it?

And why doesn’t the church talk about it today?

The only thing(s) I can come up with is:

– The principle was a mistake.

– It was indefensible then & it’s indefensible today.

– We (as a church) do NOT admit mistakes.

– We do expect our membership to repent & admit mistakes.

– We will not speak of it again.

I better stop here. I’m getting in a bad mood again.

[Anonymous]

I have thought a lot about polygamy.

Problems Polygamy solved (1830’s – 1890’s primarily Nauvoo and Utah):

– Organizational Hierarchy Establishment – A man with many wives was more powerful then a man with fewer wives in the OT and in the restoration that Joseph Smith brought about.

– Organizational Control – Check. I don’t know the number of times that marriages were broken up so that the wife could be sealed to Joseph Smith or Brigham Young exactly, but I know that it happened. I think that this organizational control was an unexpected consequence if not the desired outcome in some instances.

NOTE: The church and it’s colonies were on the brink of breakup multiple times throughout that time period. The number of offshoots is underestimated and matters.

– Creating Alliances Through Marriage and Bloodlines – Check

NOTE: It went both ways. Joseph Smith and Brigham Young created alliances through family ties. A lot of “sealings only” marriages were to tie specific females to powerful males in preparation for the next life – Joseph Smith and Brigham Young became “tickets to a better next life”.

NOTE: Sealings and Marriage legitimized a man having multiple options to produce children. This concentrated the genetics of the population to a degree and disempowered men who were competing for/courting some of those wives.

– Creating Emotional Alliances Through Marriage – Check

NOTE: We know about “emotional adultery” and related concerns in this day and age. I suspect that for some people, sealings were the equivalent.

– Channeling Sexual Drive Legitimately – Check (In the case of Brigham Young for sure. For Joseph Smith, it’s not as clear cut).

NOTE: Women had ways outside of polygamy to solve this problem (which may not have been as much a concern for women who were running families as pioneers).

These are very patriarchal concerns for a patriarchal society. Even with the formation of the Relief Society (to handle some of the concerns of the women and organize a support workforce), educating women, and being progressive (at times) in encouraging women to have the right to vote – Joseph Smith set up a top-down organization (he believed it was revealed by God) and Brigham Young forged a mini Mormon empire in the desert (diminished by the U.S. government and it’s anti-polygamy laws).

TODAY:

I don’t think the church CAN have honest conversations about polygamy, because of the decreasing relevance of some of these concerns, and the “loss of face” that the church would have, they don’t. Polygamy’s definition and objectives were moving targets as more “revelation” was identified and policies codified so that you can’t have an accurate conversation without a timeline and a cast of major characters.

– Having Multiple Wives in this day and age signals a) child care payments and alimony, b) the man didn’t get it right the first time (if divorced), and c) compassion (they found someone after they were widowed).

– Organizational Control & Alliances – The world has come a long way in some areas to compile research on organizational behavior, creating alliances and the like. In addition, marriage has moved into the realm of “love” and “access to divorce” which has become a game-changer in terms of legacy creation. It is more about “quality of marriage and child-rearing” rather then “quantity of marriages and children”.

– Emotional Alliances – The church was built on “revelation between man and God” as a foundation, with emotion being “proof of” the basis. If someone wants an emotional marital arrangement, they don’t need the church to supply it – they can divorce and find someone. If someone wants to practice loving others – they have their ministering families, etc. to sort it out with. Also, there is a lot of competition with other less costly organizations such as Toastmasters to create connections between humans at.

– Channeling Sexual Drive – The options available to do so are still available, and in a sense easier to access without the cost of another marriage. There are also conversations now about “no sex drive” and a “women’s sex drive” in a variety of circumstances – which makes managing men’s sex drives from an organizational perspective less of an issue. It may be a sign of progress that “sexual harassment” goes from a feature to a bug for an organization:)

I think the biggest challenge is that polygamy was an attempt to restore a “means to an end” that was advertised as “an end” to get buy-in of people. The “means to an end” (organization) is no longer as relevant and “the end” turns out to be more of a belief system that is more universal and less unique to the church (with loss of authority). Family structures have shifted to become more “partner” – so the colonization attempts are more clearly identified and condemned (in some trendy circles). In a sense, a lot of people (especially women) are quietly rebelling by walking away because they don’t want “taxation without representation” in very specific terms (that are the cultural terms of workplaces everywhere in America today at least).

[Anonymous]

To me, polygamy seemed to be a perceived legitimate, evolving take on a series of organizational and individual problems.

I think the number of problems it created or solved for you as a person depended a lot on where you were in the pecking order, your colony/location and who your connections were. Say what you will, the history of the Mid-West was defined by the impacts of polygamy for a very long time.

Growing up in the culture where a) women have greater autonomy in terms of voting and running for office, financial autonomy, have access to decision-making mechanisms regarding childbirth, childcare, and related fields – that matters. The world of machinery isn’t one that Joseph Smith could have foreseen all the implications about – including running water and public health, electricity and computers, and the mobility granted by trains and cars. We know now that population growth shouldn’t be concentrated into a few powerful people/families (history if nothing else teaches that) – and there is a lot about organizational dynamics and trauma that Joseph Smith couldn’t conceive of.

[Anonymous]

It’s a tough subject for me to detangle because there were so many overlapping factors and I wasn’t there.

I wanted to look at a two patterns of the restoration and then apply those patterns to polygamy.

Hindsight revisions

The Book of Mormon uses language that reflects a more trinitarian view of god? We better go back and do a liberal sprinkling of “Son of” any time god is mentioned in the text to reflect our updated understanding.

The Book of Commandments says what? Better change a word or two, remove a word or two, and add a word or two to get the revelation to say what we need it to say for the Doctrine and Covenants.

We need a Melchizedek priesthood. Better back date some revelations and weave it into the existing foundational narratives.

Restoration of all things

The church was big into restoration. Very big. I think many restoration movements in Joseph’s day were primarily focused on restoring a New Testament church but Joseph viewed the church as something a little different. Perhaps to him the church wasn’t something that started with Jesus, it was something that stretched back to Moses and even Adam. I don’t know whether this was unique but his restoration efforts included things from the Old Testament in addition to the New Testament.

To underscore the point here, there was discussion about how the practice of animal sacrifice from the Old Testament would be restored. They were in the mindset that everything had to be restored.

Section 13 of the D&C caused some to speculate that animal sacrifice would have to be restored, even if just in some some small limited capacity, in order to complete the restoration. That’s how seriously people took the concept of restoration and that’s how far back they delved to look for things to restore.

On the subject of polygamy…

Restoration of all things

They had an obsession with restoring things from the Bible. Polygamy is mentioned in the Old Testament. It was going to be on their radar.

Hindsight revisions

It’s my opinion that Joseph Smith committed adultery with Fanny Alger. Smith later “restored” the practice of polygamy and back dated revelations to cover his earlier indiscretions with Alger. I think he also used a restoration of polygamy to rationalize continued pursuit of his appetites.

[Anonymous]

I agree that polygamy is very complex and it’s more complicated because, as Nibbler points out, we weren’t there AND it’s hard to rely on what historians say because, as historians admit, what we see is filtered through them. In fairness, it’s impossible to do minute-by-minute histories so summaries are absolutely necessary – but summaries can’t help but be influenced by the writer’s point of view (this is also why it’s impossible to report totally unbiased news).

Nibbler makes some great points – revision has clearly happened, including dropping entire sections of the D&C because they didn’t fit (particularly regarding polygamy). And I agree with Nibbler (and Oliver Cowdery) that the Fanny Alger affair was exactly that – an affair. I also believe Joseph had second thoughts on polygamy, particularly after it was so roundly rejected by Emma and she wasn’t buying the usual “thus saith the Lord” line from Joseph. (In my view Joseph’s usual tact when someone didn’t agree with him was to come back with a “thus saith the Lord” commandment directed at that person – his revelations seemed very convenient in that sense.)

There is also the view that early polygamy was really more about joining people together as a larger family of God as opposed to the way we see sealings now (joined together as families which are linked). In earlier polygamy many people (including men) were sealed to prophets and apostles as a way of joining us all together. That form of sealing/polygamy was absolutely not about sex and it gets diluted into the modern view, hence the “no evidence” Joseph had sex with women he was sealed to. Some of this is clearly an intent to whitewash polygamy (or make it more “acceptable”) by sort of folding it into sealing – but of course sealing and polygamy are actually somewhat related.

In the end I believe polygamy was not in any way “of God” and and the church needs to find some way to come to terms with that itself. The problem is there is no way to save face in doing so, very similar to the other thing Brigham Young let get way out of hand – racism. Joseph was a very complex and flawed individual and I believe the church has made some strides in allowing that to be noted and known. Brigham was probably even more flawed and did so much damage to the church while saving it at the same time. He should be and has been recognized for his role in saving the church, but it’s also time he was moved off his pedestal as well.

[Anonymous]

I also agree that polygamy was & is a very complex and complicated issue but, so was the holocaust during WWII.

I know that the 2 issues are not the same. There are issues that need answers & when wrong, they need to be defended & addressed.

I am not trying to start an argument on this topic. I am really trying to understand:

– why was polygamy necessary?

– why did JS practice it & introduce it?

– why did it continue after his death?

– why didn’t the church abolish it earlier instead of having the principle & practice forced upon them as revelation?

– why wasn’t the practice dropped as quickly as the use of coffee & tea? (too much sarcasm?)

Most importantly:

– why doesn’t the church address this topic today?

– do they still consider it a valid revelation & practice?

My own opinion is: The doctrine of polygamy isn’t defensible. Polygamy causes more harm than good. Therefore, it didn’t originate with God.

While the church remains silent, they don’t want anyone to “look behind the curtain”.

[Anonymous]

– why was polygamy necessary?

I don’t believe it was necessary.

– why did JS practice it & introduce it?

It’s impossible for me to say definitively. In part to excuse/justify infidelities, in part to restore something he believed he needed to restore, and probably several other overlapping factors that don’t come to mind.

– why did it continue after his death?

This is another one of those overlapping things but I think a big factor was that members believed it was a necessary part of the restoration.

I think it follows the same logic as that testimony chain that people talk about at church. If the BoM is true, JS was a prophet; if JS was a prophet, the church is true. And to that tack on, if the church is true, the thing the prophet teaches is true. The prophet is teaching polygamy, so that must be true.

I think other people started practicing polygamy before JS died, so the practice continued as a supposed restored principle of the gospel.

– why didn’t the church abolish it earlier instead of having the principle & practice forced upon them as revelation?

– why wasn’t the practice dropped as quickly as the use of coffee & tea? (too much sarcasm?)

This is where it really starts to get problematic. It’s a very hard thing to abolish.

There were polygamous families to consider that would be torn apart by an outright ban.

There are going to be fundamentalist sects (purists to what JS revealed) that will see any departure from the practice as the church going apostate.

Interestingly enough, the WoW wasn’t enforced overnight. There was a period of several generations where members were eased into the WoW being enforced. Polygamy was similar, a practice that needed to end that people needed to be weaned off of.

Most importantly:

– why doesn’t the church address this topic today?

I’m guessing current leadership views it as a black eye. They’d probably rather everyone disassociate Mormonism with polygamy because they probably feel it hinders missionary efforts.

It’s also a sticky subject with descendants of polygamous families. When polygamy is denounced some feel like it is an attack on their ancestors/them.

– do they still consider it a valid revelation & practice?

I think they do. If a man’s wife passes away, that man can be sealed to another woman. There’s no requirement to cancel the first sealing, he can be sealed to his deceased wife and his living wife at the same time. This is one facet to “the ghost of eternal polygamy” that you’ll hear people talk about.

Minyan Man wrote:

My own opinion is: The doctrine of polygamy isn’t defensible. Polygamy causes more harm than good. Therefore, it didn’t originate with God.

I’ve reached a similar conclusion. Too many bad fruits.

I do want to point out that the actual people that are a product of polygamy (both the descendants and people that believed they were faithfully obeying a principle) are not the bad fruits to which I refer. People did the best they could with the beliefs and tools they had at their disposal. I just believe that in practice the bad outweighed any good. There’s a reason we don’t practice it today.

[Anonymous]

A) Why doesn’t the church address this topic today? I think that the main reason is that it is 1 topic that has roots in “tradition”, “population demographics”, and creates a “priesthood holder-centric” blind spot about what the sealing/un-sealing experience is like for women and children

I think that what accidently got restored as part of the restoration process was the arrogance/pride/power of linking families together (and being the sole power source for the process) and not dealing well with the fallout from maintaining family linkages (such as abuse and related trauma practices). I also think that the DNA family ancestry groups/organizations are able to link more people together in a more standardized, uniform, and scientific way that is accelerating asking the question, “what are the implications of being linked to this set of people?”.

“Do they still consider it a valid revelation and practice?

Define Valid?

[Anonymous]

I think that polygamy itself is a symptom of the stark power balance of a binary, gender-based performance/authority system of wielding power.

I don’t think it’s obsolete because it works as a system for wielding organizational power.

I don’t think it’s obsolete because men and priesthood-holding are so intertwined and the successful attempts to give women priesthood authority (such as to be baptismal witnesses) wind up giving tweens and teenagers priesthood authority at the same time (thus diluting the impact of that redistribution of power).

Deborah Tannen (a linguist scholar) postulated that “men tend to talk in hierarchy, and women tend to talk in networks” to the degree that she compared them to intercultural exchanges. I think that those “talking preferences/priorities” are an example of how power transfers in broad strokes (“presiding = hierarchy” and “partnering = social networking”) and that that matters. I think that those “who talk differently” get marginalized easier and that reformation would actually take adding authority/weight to those voices and actually paying attention to those voices – which doesn’t have the momentum to happen.

[Anonymous]

I’m partial to the explanations you’ll hear from those in the remnant movement. Their thoughts are generally…

Either Joseph didn’t practice polygamy, or if he did, it was a limited, sealing only practice.

Polygamy as it’s typically thought of was introduced by people like Brigham Young secretly at first, and then practiced more openly after Joseph was gone. The kind practiced by BY was openly condemned by JS.

A lot was falsely attributed to JS after he was gone, including D&C 132. Historians of the time recorded things to make polygamy look like it came from JS. Most of the wives that were supposedly married to JS only claimed to have been married to him after he was gone.

The saints were cursed for their practice of polygamy and it was the main reason why they were driven out of Nauvoo.

I haven’t dug too far into the weeds of historical records and journals to confidently say I believe that that’s how it really was, but from what I have seen, it is plausible at least. It makes a lot of things make sense as well.

One big thing it explains is why the Church can’t address it. Our legitimacy as the true branch of Mormonism hinges on Brigham and every president after him being who we say they are. If BY and the other polygamists did the things mentioned above, it blows a huge hole in our claim to be the “true church”.

[Anonymous]

Not disagreeing with anything that has been said, just offering my own thoughts:

Why was polygamy necessary? Why did JS practice it & introduce it?

It wasn’t necessary. I don’t think Joseph initially (immediately post First Vision) set out to restore the Biblical church, but evolved into that role. That was not an unusual thing at the time – others were also trying to do so under a belief what was good for them is good for us. I also think Joseph used it as an excuse to cover up the Fanny Alger affair (and possibly others).

Why did it continue after his death?

I think because he introduced it to others in the inner circle and they embraced it. His successors in leadership probably embraced it more than he did.

Why didn’t the church abolish it earlier instead of having the principle & practice forced upon them as revelation?

I think the closest we came was the Manifesto (which I also don’t believe was actual revelation) and that caused a schism in the church which we still have not recovered from. This is where the modern fundamentalist sects come from. As stated by Nibbler I think there is also some aspect of the domino effect of the prophet – it polygamy isn’t true then maybe Joseph wasn’t a prophet and the other dominoes fall. My personal point of view is that the dominoes don’t exist and it is a fallacious argument (in other words Joseph could have been a prophet but made up the BoM).

Why doesn’t the church address this topic today?

I don’t see a way for them to do so and save face. Especially with the current temple/covenant path rhetoric.

Do they still consider it a valid revelation & practice?

I believe so, again, especially in relation to the covenant path rhetoric.

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