- This topic is empty.
-
Posts
-
Quote:
SD wrote:
Funny, my TBM wife said she’d be fine with plural marriage because she doesn’t like cleaning. She’d love to have another helping hand around the house! The thought of my daughter in a plural marrige makes me cringe.
How come LDS culture is okay with polygamy doctrine but frowns upon hiring out household chores? Full disclosure: I have a housekeeper. (Every house with two working adults deserves one.)
Your argument about wives who are not interested in sex is something I have heard frequently as a reason for polygamy. You might just end up with multiple wives who all don’t want to have sex with you.
I never hear that same argument used as a reason for a woman to have multiple husbands. How come the frisky women with an impotent husband is not given the same consideration? The wife who has a husband who hasn’t maintained himself well is supposed to be happy staying in that relationship.
Healthy women have needs. The church culture continues to ignore that fact and to tell women that they are not supposed to own their sexuality.
In the healthiest relationships, spouses take care of each other completely and there isn’t room for a third spouse.
Quote:Healthy women have needs. The church culture continues to ignore that fact and to tell women that they are not supposed to own their sexuality.
Yep. That is one of the worst things, culturally, about how we tend to view sex.
amateurparent wrote:In the healthiest relationships, spouses take care of each other completely and there isn’t room for a third spouse.
Good quote API think I understand everyone’s issues, although I admittedly can never see things from a female perspective. That does not mean I don’t abhor polygamy – I do and I do not believe it was inspired of God, I don’t believe the angel and the flaming sword story, and I would not participate in polygamy. That said, I deal with the issue the same way I deal with all the other issues I have – I focus on what I do believe. I believe in a loving and merciful God and in a Savior who somehow provided an infinite atonement. I can focus on that alone. I can also remind myself of the temple recommend questions and the Articles of Faith. I have never been asked if I believe in or support polygamy, if I believe the Book of Mormon or the Book of Abraham to be the word of God, if I believe prayers are answered or even if I pray at all. There are lots of other things I have never been asked. I can focus on what I am asked and I can choose not to believe that which I am not asked and it doesn’t appear to make one lick of difference.
DarkJedi, It’s great that you can choose to not to have to believe in polygamy or that you choose not to let it bother you because you haven’t been asked. You are coming from that view point from an absolute place of privilge and power as you are a man in the lds church. Women have zero power in anything the church does officially. Even polygamy was introduced via a threat to Emma’s utter destruction. There was nothing she and the other women could if they wished to remain Lds. So yes many women choose the minimization route when it comes to polygamy in order to continue in the church. It doesn’t change the fact that the threat of polygamy is still sitting in their subconscious ticking away until ” the day the Lord will increase my understanding so I can be humble enough to accept Gods will of polygamy for his daughters,” via my sweet TBM visiting teacher. Really? So sad that to this day we still teach our daughters to accept polygamy in order to be lds.
DarkJedi wrote:I believe in a loving and merciful God and in a Savior who somehow provided an infinite atonement. I can focus on that alone.
I truly appreciate the friendship, the commaraderie, patience, etc., that a forum like this gives me. Need to say that!
“I can focus on that alone.” I
canfocus on that alone, by myself, away from the church’s static and apparent paralysis. I can be like all the other women on my block who would sooner fly to the moon than wonder about polygamy. Just like no one scratches their head at the lack of black men in the church back in the day, I hope no one will be mystified by women and girls looking elsewhere. And it was so unnecessary. The essays could have started the big ship’s course correction. Instead they threw a wrench into the engine.
But still, it’s Sunday. Good Sabbath to us all.
DarkJedi: The problem is as an LDS woman, I am asked to agree with polygamy. I am asked to agree that it was “of God” in the past and I am asked to agree with it “in principle” for the future.
I have a profession. Financially, I make more than all 4 of my siblings combined. (That includes two nuclear engineers). I don’t have to work 40 hours a week on order to do that. Yet, I am constantly told at church that my life choices to work are wrong .. Because I don’t “have” to work. I choose to work.
When you go to church, how often have you been berated or dissed or preached at that your profession is unacceptable? How often have you been told that it is inappropriate to make too much money. How often have you been told that you should only take employment that you can do part-time from home? How often do you find yourself playing down your profession so that you appear less professionally successful that what you are?
I am supposed to look attractive, but MODEST. I am supposed to hide any sign of sexuality.
The life of an LDS man isn’t easy, but as you work and fulfill a calling, the expectation is that your wife will pick up all the things that you don’t have time to do. She will handle home repairs, car repairs, yard maintenance, cooking, cleaning, laundry, investments, bills, renovations, children. She will do it all while fulfilling callings of her own and possibly also working.
I love my life. I love my profession and my marriage and the life balance that we have created. I would like it more without the constant quotes from The Proclamation and the huge serving of guilt.
Part of me is saying, Hang on a minute. How did the conversation get here? But part of me understands how it “gets here” real quick. When an underlying doctrine of the church, recently reaffirmed in the essays and according to my reading, is that women are less than men, it is unfortunately very easy to wonder how
otherdoctrines, policies and practices have been influenced by it. That said, I don’t see online DJ or, I assume, real-life DJ undervaluing women and their accomplishments and aspirations.
AP, I think men and women both are the offenders here. I have done a heap of repenting in my heart for all the know-it-all, judgmental SAHM stuff I’ve said in the past. My bad.
Dax wrote:So sad that to this day we still teach our daughters to accept polygamy in order to be lds.
Yup.
That’s why I posted. It’s my breaking point and I can’t sit by while it happens.
amateurparent wrote:DarkJedi:
The problem is as an LDS woman, I am asked to agree with polygamy. I am asked to agree that it was “of God” in the past and I am asked to agree with it “in principle” for the future.
I have a profession. Financially, I make more than all 4 of my siblings combined. (That includes two nuclear engineers). I don’t have to work 40 hours a week on order to do that. Yet, I am constantly told at church that my life choices to work are wrong .. Because I don’t “have” to work. I choose to work.
When you go to church, how often have you been berated or dissed or preached at that your profession is unacceptable? How often have you been told that it is inappropriate to make too much money. How often have you been told that you should only take employment that you can do part-time from home? How often do you find yourself playing down your profession so that you appear less professionally successful that what you are?
I am supposed to look attractive, but MODEST. I am supposed to hide any sign of sexuality.
The life of an LDS man isn’t easy, but as you work and fulfill a calling, the expectation is that your wife will pick up all the things that you don’t have time to do. She will handle home repairs, car repairs, yard maintenance, cooking, cleaning, laundry, investments, bills, renovations, children. She will do it all while fulfilling callings of her own and possibly also working.
I love my life. I love my profession and my marriage and the life balance that we have created. I would like it more without the constant quotes from The Proclamation and the huge serving of guilt.
Well, actually I am long term unemployed and under-employed and my wife is the breadwinner in the family. I might know a bit more about that of which you speak than you apparently think I do.
Ann: DJ is awesome. A really good guy. Tonight his comment about focusing on what he does believe just hit me wrong. Let’s blame it on my Jet Lag status.
Ann wrote:Dax wrote:So sad that to this day we still teach our daughters to accept polygamy in order to be lds.
Yup.
That’s why I posted. It’s my breaking point and I can’t sit by while it happens.
I’m sorry ladies, I have to disagree. I don’t think we (as in the top leadership of the church or as a local ward/stake in my case) teach women or anyone else that they have to accept polygamy. Fact is, we don’t. We are allowed our agency in the matter and opposing polygamy – as a male or a female – in most of the church will have no affect on one’s standing in the church. I’m not saying I stand at the pulpit and preach against polygamy, but I am saying my leaders know my stance and there is not an overwhelming disagreement about it. It is likewise on several other subjects (gay marriage being one of them).
And just because someone is standing at the pulpit or in front of the classroom doesn’t mean I have to listen to or agree with them. I understand not everyone is able to block stuff out, but it is something I have worked at and were I not able to do so I would not be a member now.
DarkJedi: They teach lessons that talk about families who were threatened with eternal damnation if they didn’t allow their daughters to be married into polygamy. Polygamy is taught as an eternal principle, and multiple women are sealed to one man in the temple. Then we are told that we can personally disagree with doctrine, but we are not allowed to publically attempt to convince anyone else to our viewpoint. But wait, as a woman, I am supposed to follow my priesthood leaders, and my husband is the final authority in our home. And before husband, it was our fathers. Righteous Dominion.
Women might not be asked pointblank about polygamy, but we are all groomed for it from a very young age.
DarkJedi wrote:Ann wrote:Dax wrote:So sad that to this day we still teach our daughters to accept polygamy in order to be lds.
Yup.
That’s why I posted. It’s my breaking point and I can’t sit by while it happens.
I’m sorry ladies, I have to disagree. I don’t think we (as in the top leadership of the church or as a local ward/stake in my case) teach women or anyone else that they have to accept polygamy. Fact is, we don’t. We are allowed our agency in the matter and opposing polygamy – as a male or a female – in most of the church will have no affect on one’s standing in the church. I’m not saying I stand at the pulpit and preach against polygamy, but I am saying my leaders know my stance and there is not an overwhelming disagreement about it. It is likewise on several other subjects (gay marriage being one of them).
And just because someone is standing at the pulpit or in front of the classroom doesn’t mean I have to listen to or agree with them. I understand not everyone is able to block stuff out, but it is something I have worked at and were I not able to do so I would not be a member now.
I might not have phrased it as “in order to stay LDS,” but I was in particular agreement about it being a sad state of affairs.
Of course, no one
hasto do anything. But we teach that God commanded it and we haven’t taken it off the table. It’s a wretched thing to do to our girls. Members who publicly call the divinity of Section 132 into question
aregiven “attention” from leaders. amateurparent wrote:DarkJedi:
They teach lessons that talk about families who were threatened with eternal damnation if they didn’t allow their daughters to be married into polygamy. Polygamy is taught as an eternal principle, and multiple women are sealed to one man in the temple. Then we are told that we can personally disagree with doctrine, but we are not allowed to publically attempt to convince anyone else to our viewpoint. But wait, as a woman, I am supposed to follow my priesthood leaders, and my husband is the final authority in our home. And before husband, it was our fathers. Righteous Dominion.
Women might not be asked pointblank about polygamy, but we are all groomed for it from a very young age.
I’m sorry that that is taught there. It is not taught in that way here. I’m sorry this offends you. I also think you you have a belief about the average male in the church that does not stand up – we have no more power than the average woman. While I could probably get away with saying I don’t agree with polygamy at the pulpit (and so could you here), I have could not get away with an Ordain Women type movement against polygamy nor could I get away with open repeated rebellion against the principle – but I see no need for me to do that anyway.
- You must be logged in to reply to this topic.