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No. I have heard variations of it everywhere I have lived, from people in all religions and denominations – and even from an atheist or two. It is because men can be pompous, conceited asses – and so can women, since I have heard it from women, as well.
Thanks everyone for sharing ideas and feelings in a productive manner. I know that there are deep emotions on this subject and I appreciate the mutual respect that we try so hard to maintain.
Ann asked – Quote:
What’s your take on the girl in the class, meek and lowly, willing to submit to what she considers the inevitable? If that were my daughter, I’d be sad. I would see her as I see myself at that age – whittling away at my sense of self until I fit in the doctrinal box. It was just a couple of years ago that I sprang from it.And, by the way, I’m also sad for my daughter. As she sits there, her trust and respect for her leaders is being whittled down, too. The ties that bind her to this particular church (not to God) are weakening.
What I’m saying is that both girls are losing.
Here goes my crack at it.
As I read this conversation I sense that I have created a different heavenly realm in my head. I can’t even say when this happened, but somehow my Heavenly Mother is one rockin’ woman and so is Heavenly Father. People can site scripture for hours to point to the opposite. I live with a man who does it all the time. He see’s all the horrors on the earth and to him it testifies that either there is no God and we are on our own; or that God really doesn’t give a rip. Neither of us can change each other’s minds. Believe me we’ve tried. One of the things I have concluded is that maybe my heaven only exists in my head, for all I know I am going to be living in outer darkness, but in my head I am happy. I think the same happens in lots of area’s of life.
From one point of view the girl who chooses to prepare herself see’s herself as valiant and being good. Is she? I can’t say. She may end up living in outer darkness, too. On her own cloud trying to fulfill her own dream.
I understand your concern that your daughter is having to compromise who she is to fit a religion. Many people see Mormonism as cultish in ways other than polygamy because to belong you have to fit a mold. That mold maybe WoW, or weird temple ceremonies, or strange secret underwear, but it’s always there. For your daughter her trust in her leaders is being shaped by this, for another person their trust is shaped by inclusion of LGBT people, for another it is keeping a seer stone tucked away for nearly 200 years. Everyone of us is here because something aches and we are trying to address the ache, the disappointment, the anger, the fear.
I do believe the next generation of kids who stay will be less blindly obedient, the outside world has taught them to stand on their own, their most noble authority is themselves. It may be in that generation that polygamy finally hits the full time mat.
I don’t see both girls as losing. I see both girls choosing. Now if the church wishes to keep both girls and they may (and I hope they do) want to look hard at polygamy and the twisted reality it presents. But just like the things I listed above – there is a stinking host of issues that drill deep into devout members hearts that hurt as badly to them as polygamy does to someone else. Neither issue is dismissable, its valid, its human but I think it is going to be our generations test. We won’t pull handcarts, etc. We will wrestle.
Last of all, thanks to everyone who shared. I have a daughter studying anthropology and the processes of human life, conversations like this shed tremendous light on human nature. Thanks.
mom3 wrote:Everyone of us is here because something aches and we are trying to address the ache, the disappointment, the anger, the fear.
Thanks, mom3. It doesn’t seem to me that the church understands that at some point, addressing all these things takes too big a bite out of the StayLDS equation. There might be other places to be with less ache, disappointment, anger and fear to be addressed. I spent the afternoon outside and realized how absolutely foreign to me is the God of 132. He’s not real to me.
The thread will stay open so people can report…well, whatever they’d like to about polygamy-related conversations.
I just remembered another one. In my older daughter’s student ward last summer, they took a Sunday to talk about the polygamy essays. Bottom line: It looks strange to us now, but make no mistake, it was God’s will. This was from a member of the bishopric, a man who is a long-time family friend and great guy.
Thisis why I despair. There have been some serious miscommunications in this thread. I’m trying to think of a rule of thumb going forward. Let’s be especially careful anytime
youor youris in the sentence. “Do unto others….”
Ann wrote Quote:It doesn’t seem to me that the church understands that at some point, addressing all these things takes too big a bite out of the StayLDS equation
Agreed. Our issues may not be the same but eventually it doesn’t matter.
Ann wrote:I don’t care a wit about Abraham anymore, or Joseph Smith or Brigham Young…But I can’t stay in a church that is actively or passively teaching polygamy to my kids. I can’t…Am I an apostate if I decide to openly speak against this kind of teaching and conditioning? Personally I don’t think some of these Church leaders realize how many Church members are actually more concerned with the way the Church is now than what Joseph Smith and Brigham Young said or did over 100 years ago. One problem with expecting the Church to do more to officially leave polygamy behind such as removing or changing D&C 132 anytime soon is that it basically it looks like many of these Church leaders simply do not believe it’s their place to change things like this and they think that whatever God supposedly commanded is automatically right, even if remarkably unpopular and/or hard to believe for most people.
It seems like for them it is mostly about defending Joseph Smith as a trustworthy prophet in theory to the point that they apparently don’t even want to openly consider the possibility he could have simply been acting on his own without any direction from God in this case. To me it’s just one more reason to take what Church leaders and scriptures say with a grain of salt. Just because some men claiming to speak for God said it that doesn’t mean we need to believe it. They can insist it came from God all they want but I just don’t buy it and I don’t see how they can expect very many people to really believe this story once they actually pay attention to some of the most troubling details of this embarrassing doctrine.
There are women in the church who defend polygamy, and it seems to me that they fall into two camps: 1) those disappointed by their first husbands and hoping for an upgrade even as a multiple wife, and 2) those who feel secure in their placement as a first wife. These just seem like emotional reasons to support it, plus there is a strong expectation in Mormon culture to humbly accept whatever weird doctrines are thrown at you as a litmus test. tl;dr, If I hear one more person say “obedience” as if it is the I Ching of spirituality, I’m going to go on a three state killing spree. I think that polygamy is one of those doctrines that will be ignored to death. The essays will be the last official word, there won’t be any conference talks on the subject, seminary and institute teachers will finesse or just skip teaching about 132 and the history of the “principle” and the only people with anything to say will be history hobbyists, nutcase, zealots, and those who yearn for bearded prophets who come out with a revelation a week and the ability to see Christ on demand plus the occasional paper or book at the MHA. That’s what I think the GA’s hope and that we’ll consider that period from a different church in a different time and that has nothing to do with what is happening now. IMHO. I sure hope that the essays don’t sit unchanged. I understand that they were breaking some new ground and a step forward, but I was very disappointed. hawkgrrrl wrote:There are women in the church who
defendpolygamy, and it seems to me that they fall into two camps: 1) those disappointed by their first husbands and hoping for an upgrade even as a multiple wife, and 2) those who feel secure in their placement as a first wife. These just seem like emotional reasons to support it, plus there is a strong expectation in Mormon culture to humbly acceptwhatever weird doctrines are thrown at you as a litmus test. tl;dr, If I hear one more person say “obedience” as if it is the I Ching of spirituality, I’m going to go on a three state killing spree. There’s defending and there’s accepting. I think there’s more of the latter. Maybe that’s just because that was my category.
I have noticed that my friends who are jolly about polygamy do see themselves as the chooser, the crafter of the group, and they almost make it appealing. I have some cool friends. But I’m listening to a biography of BY right now and am brought swiftly back to the heartbreaking reality of most of Mormon polygamy.
Ann wrote:I sure hope that the essays don’t sit unchanged. I understand that they were breaking some new ground and a step forward, but I was very disappointed.
+1
DevilsAdvocate wrote:Personally I don’t think some of these Church leaders realize how many Church members are actually more concerned with the way the Church is now than what Joseph Smith and Brigham Young said or did over 100 years ago.
I wish we could beef up interest in history. It’s not really that I don’t care a wit about Abraham or BY, but I look at them now as men in context, not the setters of rigid templates for my life. There is much about Abraham, the friend of God, that is inspiring. But, as people here have helped me learn – boundaries, folks! My eighteen year-old should not be told that Abraham’s polygamy spells anything in her life. Anything.GBSmith wrote:I think that polygamy is one of those doctrines that will be ignored to death. The essays will be the last official word, there won’t be any conference talks on the subject, seminary and institute teachers will finesse or just skip teaching about 132 and the history of the “principle” and the only people with anything to say will be history hobbyists, nutcase, zealots, and those who yearn for bearded prophets who come out with a revelation a week and the ability to see Christ on demand plus the occasional paper or book at the MHA. That’s what I think the GA’s hope and that we’ll consider that period from a different church in a different time and that has nothing to do with what is happening now. IMHO.
I think you’re right about this being the hope.I just want to say that my comments earlier in the thread were likely reasons people adopted this terrible practice. They weren’t meant to be justification for the practice. If there is one thing I could erase from actual practice in the past it would be plural marriage (along with a lot of other things) Sent from my XT1080 using Tapatalk
SD – I didn’t take it that way. I’ve thought about your phrase, “committed genes.” I don’t have them, but I was raised up and nurtured in the church by people who do.
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