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Alex wrote:
I understand the idea that prophets are fallible. But we aren’t talking about a few mistakes or missteps….it’s a matter of claiming revelations from God with very clear language written down and published; 30+ wives, some at the age of fourteen and telling them they were damned if they didn’t agree; and from a man that saw God–or had a vision of some kind. Not just a man in line of succession to carry a mantle, but the man that restored the gospel to earth. I don’t see it as a mistake of one indiscretion or error, but either a clear direction from God or not.
This is something I see clearly, and it is disturbing. Why God would command someone to do something that involved relationships they found detestable, and if they didn’t do it, they would be damned? Plural marriage and how it unrolled contradicts my understanding of God at a fundamental level: He becomes demanding, calloused, and anything other than kind and tender.
My heart goes out to Emma in great measure. I feel anger toward JS and how this happened. And, I directly wonder if JS was a prophet or if the whole thing is a big giant lie. And, what is even more frightening to me is if it really is true! Is it true that God would tell a woman: “Marry him and share him with other women, who he can court any time he wants, or you will be destroyed.” This seems out of character with God…and if it is in character with God, that is even more frightening.
Just being honest here.
Old-Timer wrote:2) As I have said previously, I have to grant people who have been married to and loved deeply more than one spouse the right to believe in marriage beyond the grave and have a personal faith that they won’t have to choose between people they love deeply and passionately and equally.
Ray, I believe I know you well enough to assume that you intend for that to go both ways – as in a woman that has been married to two men in this life should have the right to believe in marriage beyond the grave and have a personal faith that she will not have to choose between husbands. It just sucks that her personal faith in this case would be completely contradicted by church teaching.
DevilsAdvocate wrote:Even if they don’t really like the idea of it I think many of them basically view it as already in the past and no longer anything to worry too much about nowadays similar to the racial priesthood ban simply by virtue of the fact that the Church has already abandoned the practice (in this life) and many of them have never read the essays or paid that much attention to D&C 132 and the history of it to begin with.
I agree that many members do not give the priesthood ban much thought. I believe this not to be the case, however, if we are talking about African American members. I believe that many black “investigators” have decided not to join because of this. I believe that many black members have lost faith over this issue and ultimately left the church. I believe that those black members that remain have each confronted this issue and personally found a way to stay in spite of it. Their efforts to stay were hindered by some of the terrible justifications that were given by some church leaders in times past. Ultimately, the pain of these members won out, the justifications were repudiated (years ago), and more recently the priesthood ban itself has been recognized as not from God.
I do recognize that polygamy is a different animal. However there are some similarities. And the sense of pain and marginalization is just as real for those affected.
While polygamy may be in the past, thank goodness, the problem it still poses is that our earliest leaders were polygamists and their views were canonized. D&C 132 still exists in the LDS faith (not in CoC). And our temple ceremonies reflect that unequal view of marriage. I’d love for it to be completely in the past, but the present is built on the foundations of the past, not in a vacuum. That is correct, Roy. hawkgrrrl wrote:While polygamy may be in the past, thank goodness, the problem it still poses is that our earliest leaders were polygamists and their views were canonized. D&C 132 still exists in the LDS faith (not in CoC). And our temple ceremonies reflect that unequal view of marriage. I’d love for it to be completely in the past, but the present is built on the foundations of the past, not in a vacuum.
You know my situation…been temple sealed and civilly divorced, and remarried outside the temple.My new wife is temple sealed and civilly divorced before married to me.
We asked about the procedure to get sealed together in the temple…and it is different for her than it is her prior husband she is still sealed to. It is different for me than it is for my ex wife who I am still sealed to.
Polygamy is in the past, until you have to deal with personal circumstances happening right now…and their procedures from the CHI reveal something is not equal for men and women for sealings, and it feels like it is related to the same ideas that were in play when they did practice polygamy.
And those underlying things that have not gone away are things that remind us today (my wife especially), that the church treats men and women differently.
DevilsAdvocate wrote:I’m not sure polygamy really has that many practical implications for many LDS women in real life especially compared to other traditional LDS teachings and expectations such as the 1950s style gender roles where many LDS women basically feel like they are supposed to be stay-at-home moms with as many children as possible rather than pursue education and career goals. In fact, it looks to me like many Church members whether male or female simply do not think about or worry about polygamy all that much. Even if they don’t really like the idea of it I think many of them basically view it as already in the past and no longer anything to worry too much about nowadays similar to the racial priesthood ban simply by virtue of the fact that the Church has already abandoned the practice (in this life) and many of them have never read the essays or paid that much attention to D&C 132 and the history of it to begin with.
For people who have certain circumstances, it directly has practical implications today. Just as the racial ban has impact to some people today. There is just a large group of people in the church naive to these things.
Quote:And those underlying things that have not gone away are things that remind us today (my wife especially), that the church treats men and women differently.
Yep.
DevilsAdvocate wrote:In fact, it looks to me like many Church members whether male or female simply do not think about or worry about polygamy all that much.
DA, what I hope people get out of this thread is that looks can be deceiving. And it’s never going to be all/none. We’re talking about many/some/most. We can only speak for ourselves and the people close to us who share their innermost thoughts. My husband didn’t know any of mine on polygamy until about two years ago, and we’re close.My mother expected unequal treatment and I accepted it. What my daughters will do remains to be seen.
I actually think a whole lot of couples, men and women, would die if polygamy were reinstated. We kind of like to pretend it is a fundamentalist thing, even our lesson manuals skip the D&C 132 polygamy references. What makes polygamy pricklier than race is 132. The race issue never had a canon version. Sure it was in talks and so on, but not in the bound book of scriptures. I personally think it is the de-canonizing that is causing the thorn to remain. You can disavow uncanonized anything. Green jello, Pioneer Day, even Relief Society – but not WoW or Polygamy.
mom3 wrote:What makes polygamy pricklier than race is 132. The race issue never had a canon version. Sure it was in talks and so on, but not in the bound book of scriptures. I personally think it is the de-canonizing that is causing the thorn to remain. You can disavow uncanonized anything. Green jello, Pioneer Day, even Relief Society – but not WoW or Polygamy.
This is true. I also think you’d have a fair number of people who’ve been sealed to more than one spouse questioning the change and if their sealings are still valid. If you de-canonized you’d have to set an deadline by when multiple sealings would have to end. So if I was a widower marrying a second time I might have to hurry and get sealed to my 2nd wife before the deadline otherwise I’d have to choose which wife I love more and want to spend eternity with.
Roadrunner wrote:I also think you’d have a fair number of people who’ve been sealed to more than one spouse questioning the change and if their sealings are still valid. If you de-canonized you’d have to set an deadline by when multiple sealings would have to end. So if I was a widower marrying a second time I might have to hurry and get sealed to my 2nd wife before the deadline otherwise I’d have to choose which wife I love more and want to spend eternity with.
Once you start getting into these administrative challenges…it seems at some point the answer to how to make it all work is simply…”We just don’t know for sure. God will make it right.”So…if we just don’t know…then just make the change to make it more sense. Why women have to go through different hoops then men doesn’t feel right. So since we don’t know…and God will make it right…then just make it right so that men and women are treated equally, both men and woman should only be sealed to one living person and cancel the sealings when divorce happens, men and women can be sealed to more than one spouse in case of death of one…with no difference what that is one woman sealed to more than one man, or one man sealed to more than one woman…and let God figure it out.
And change D&C 132.
Heber13 wrote:Once you start getting into these administrative challenges…it seems at some point the answer to how to make it all work is simply…”We just don’t know for sure. God will make it right.”So…if we just don’t know…then just make the change to make it more sense. Why women have to go through different hoops then men doesn’t feel right. So since we don’t know…and God will make it right…then just make it right so that men and women are treated equally, both men and woman should only be sealed to one living person and cancel the sealings when divorce happens, men and women can be sealed to more than one spouse in case of death of one…with no difference what that is one woman sealed to more than one man, or one man sealed to more than one woman…and let God figure it out.And change D&C 132.
Yes!
I’ve linked to this in the past, but in case anyone is interested, here again is the By Common Consent series on Section 132: Quote:Sunday Evenings with the Doctrine and Covenants. Section 132.Part 14. Polygamy: Epilogue–Polygamy Today November 24, 2013 by WVS
This is the final post in the series on Doctrine and Covenants section 132. NB. Robert J. Woodford’s 1974 Ph.D. dissertation, “The Historical Development of the Doctrine and Covenants” has been very helpful in several aspects of this series, especially in confirming my readings of earlier editions. For earlier installments in this series, see Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, Part 6, Part 7, Part 8, Part 9, Part 10, Part 11, Part 12,, and Part 13.
(I believe it’s Part 13 where they suggest changes for Section 132, red verses to be omitted, blue verses to be added.)
If 132 were to be changed, the cries of white-washing would reach ear-splitting levels. Leave it alone or take it out is my view.
I don’t know if I’m going to come back to this site. I’m taking a break. However, I’ve come back to peak around. This thread was very interesting to me. I’ve read through all of it. I thought maybe, as a millennial LDS girl, I could add a new perspective into the mix. I recognize that I can’t speak for all LDS women, I can’t even speak for millennial LDS women. I can only speak for myself. But in my experience, the girls I know, the women I have interacted with my whole life, all have an issue with polygamy. I’ve never spoken to a girl that is fine with it—except for me. In my conversations, I was the only person that was like, “I’d be fine with it.” But I’ll get to that later. Polygamy is not something that we can just ignore and it will go away. Because it hasn’t been disavowed, and is a part of our Church legacy, and is still implemented in temple practices, it will continue to be in our psyche, especially the LDS woman’s psyche. It’s like this silent cross the women in my life are afraid to talk about—and I’m not just talking about family. When I’ve “come out” to LDS women about my “doubts” of the Church, the first response I typically get is, “Is it polygamy?” Yep, the women I talk to think polygamy is the reason I have doubts—because polygamy is something they can see as causing a good LDS girl so much anguish that she’d want to leave the Church. I’ve had conversations about polygamy in Relief Society, Sunday School, Seminary, and personal conversations outside of Church with girls all throughout my life. It’s not something that’s dying out. This will continue to be an issue for women.
That being sad, I don’t think polygamy is on the minds of a lot of LDS women a lot. It becomes something they have to put on the shelf. Most of them reason out that God would never ask them to do something that would make them miserable and they don’t study further than that. That becomes their reconciling moment—they choose to have faith that it won’t be forced into it. Since they’re not reading D&C 132 deeply and they’re not looking into church history which deviates from the standard narratives so they don’t have reason to believe they would be forced into it. They don’t know that Joseph’s supposed revelation threatened Emma with destruction, or that he didn’t get permission from her in many cases. They don’t know about the Law of Sarah. I’ve also had a friend tell me she thinks it was the Lord testing his people and it won’t happen again. However, with that said, it’s still the inevitable “polygamy” topic which tests and tries us women to exercise excruciating faith (again, speaking from my experience) will come up again and again in our minds and hearts.
The way the church teaches this doctrine perpetuates the pain for women. The entire doctrine, even as it is still taught today, is a sexist abomination in my opinion, and I use those words purposely. The fact that the Church teaches they “just don’t know” what will happen in the next life is beyond awful. I understand that it’s better than teaching that polygamy’s required, but I feel like I’m grasping at straws to find that positive point. I’ve witnessed what happens when a woman asks sincere questions about polygamy in the next life. At one point, this was me. The standard response is, “It was practiced in the past, we don’t know what will happen in the afterlife.” A follow up question, “So will it be required in the Celestial Kingdom?” Answer: “Some people think so, some people don’t. We just don’t know.” It’s outright horrific. The Church, which claims to have all essential truth, to have the answers to life’s biggest questions, that gets on its high horse about gay marriage, can’t even answer women whether or not they’ll be forced to share their husband with other women for eternity? It’s tragic. It’s wrong.
I also think some of the Church’s issues with gender inequality beckon back to our polygamous history, but that’s a conversation for another day. I do think one of the reasons we don’t talk about Heavenly Mother is because so many people in our church think God has plural wives…but again, conversation for a different day.
Just for clarification, I am not against polygamy as a consensual practice, but our church’s polygamous systemic practice is one that perpetuates gender power imbalances, and historically, reduced women to objects—rewards to be taken by powerful, rich men. It’s awful stuff. And the fact that our LDS women have to live in fear of what will happen in their afterlife, and in some cases, what their husband might choose, is awful.
For the record, I also used to be one of those girls who said I would be fine with polygamy in the afterlife. I sincerely meant it. I came to a place where I thought to myself, “We’re all going to be perfect, eventually. I don’t care if I have to share my husband as long as I’m loved—not just by my husband, if I have people in my life that truly love me. Then it’s okay. There’s probably going to be more women than men in the Celestial Kingdom, anyway. Maybe I’ll even want to have my husband take other wives because we’ll all be so righteous and so good that jealousy won’t be a problem.” Funny fact: when I first started finding out information about Joseph Smith’s marriages to women that were already married, I even considered the notion that *gasp* we’re going to have lots of polyamorous relations, male/female, female/female, male/male and that there might not even be sexual relations. After all, I was taught in Seminary that in the next life we will have bodies of flesh and bone, not flesh and blood, so how are women going to get pregnant the way they do in earth if this is true? Ha ha.
Clearly I’ve changed my views. Granted, I wasn’t always so accepting of polygamy. I remember reading a book about Church History (faith promoting) when I was a pre-teen and sobbing when I got to the passages about polygamy—it was awful. I went to bed crying myself to sleep. It’s a tragedy that a young girl with so much faith should be hurt that deeply by doctrine. As I got older I thought that maybe it was a divine practice that was implemented wrong because of human failings. Now I see the church’s implementation of polygamy as something deeply sexist and wrong.
I should also mention that I have a friend who is in an open marriage. She has a husband and a partner. She defies the stereotypes of that kind of person being someone who is selfish and doesn’t value her marriage—she truly loves her husband. She’s one of the kindest people I know. She’s constantly doing things for other people, whether it be her husband, in-laws, parents, family, partner, etc. I personally wouldn’t want that lifestyle for myself. I would be jealous, and I’m busy enough already, I can’t imagine juggling two relationships at once. But none-the-less, she’s happy. I’m not afraid of non-conventional marriage arrangements. I just think the way the church taught, and teaches polygamy, is wrong. And I don’t see it changing anytime soon. But from what I’ve experienced, girls in the Church aren’t forgetting about it. They’re just putting it on the shelf. But until the Church deals with this issue, we’re not going to resolve our gender-inequality issues. I feel like the two are strongly linked. Maybe working on one will help heal the other.
mom3 wrote:…even our lesson manuals skip the D&C 132 polygamy references…
What makes polygamy pricklier than race is 132. The race issue never had a canon version. Sure it was in talks and so on, but not in the bound book of scriptures. I personally think it is the de-canonizing that is causing the thorn to remain.You can disavow uncanonized anything. Green jello, Pioneer Day, even Relief Society – but not WoW or Polygamy.I don’t know about that; here is at least one canonized scripture that Church leaders used to justify the racial priesthood ban in the past:
Abraham 1:21-27 wrote:Now this king of Egypt was a descendant from the loins of Ham, and was a partaker of the blood of the Canaanites by birth…From this descent sprang all the Egyptians, and thus the blood of the Canaanites was preserved in the land…The land of Egypt being first discovered by a woman, who was the daughter of Ham…When this woman discovered the land it was under water, who afterward settled her sons in it;
and thus, from Ham, sprang that race which preserved the curse in the land…Pharaoh, being a righteous man, established his kingdom and judged his people wisely and justly all his days, seeking earnestly to imitate that order established by the fathers in the first generations, in the days of the first patriarchal reign, even in the reign of Adam, and also of Noah, his father, who blessed him with the blessings of the earth, and with the blessings of wisdom, but cursed him as pertaining to the Priesthood….Now, Pharaoh being of that lineage by which he could not have the right of Priesthood, notwithstanding the Pharaohs would fain claim it from Noah, through Ham, therefore my father was led away by their idolatry… Sure they didn’t change this and other racist sounding scriptures talking about God cursing people with a dark skin and/or based on who their ancestors were other than the one where they changed “white and delightsome” to “pure and delightsome” but the fact that they are still there didn’t stop them from completely reversing their position later anyway and mostly ignoring these scriptures. It looks to me like it’s mostly a matter of what they want to emphasize or not and there are already all kinds of canonized scriptures that almost no one pays any attention to anyway. So I still don’t see why they couldn’t disavow polygamy, the WoW, or whatever else more or less the same way they already did with the racial priesthood ban without it being nearly as big of a deal to most members as some people think it would be in theory. As far as I can tell the main thing preventing Church leaders from making changes like this is simply that they don’t feel like they are supposed to change these things (because they assume they came from God) or they don’t think there is enough of a problem to even consider changing. Some interesting points about D&C 132 that don’t seem like they are talked about in many polygamy discussions are that this section wasn’t added until 1876 and before that the original Section 101 in the 1835 D&C included the following verse.
Quote:Inasmuch as this Church of Christ has been reproached with the crime of fornication and polygamy, we declare that
we believe that one man should have one wife, and one woman but one husband, except in the case of death, when either is at liberty to marry again.This was later removed when D&C 132 was added. What’s worse is that the accounts of the way Joseph Smith actually practiced polygamy/polyandry don’t really resemble the description in D&C 132 anyway because it said the new wives should be virgins and married only with the consent of the first wife. So D&C 132 doesn’t really help Joseph Smith’s credibility much anyway once you start looking at all the details but I guess the Church is basically depending on most members not noticing or worrying too much about issues like this.
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