- This topic is empty.
-
Posts
-
Apologies if this has been discussed before. Searching ‘polygamy’ on this forum brings up over 1,700 results. I guess a lot of us have strong feelings on the subject. 😆 We’re often told that one of the reasons for polygamy (actually polyandry) in the Mormon church was to take care of widows. (I’ve heard and even parrotted the statement ‘there were a lot more women than men’ – actual demographic analysis doesn’t seem to bear that out, but let’s assume for the sake of argument that that statement is true.) This would seem to mirror the Levirate marriage laws that pop up in the Old Testament, where a man is expected to marry his brother’s widow, and (it’s assumed) the woman is expected to accept.
On the surface, taking care of widows is reasonable and even admirable. But… are there any ways of taking care of widows WITHOUT marrying them? Because offering marital protection is a lot less generous and noble when you consider that the man is
getting sex in return. Or at least, the expectation of sex. Or, in cases where the marriage isn’t likely to be consummated, the man is getting sexual accessat a minimum – the woman is NOT free to marry anyone else, she can’t marry someone of her OWN choosing and have sex with him. Also, depending on the laws of the time and place, the ‘generous’ widow-saving husband may also be getting access to the woman’s property, whether she brought it into the marriage or inherited it from her dead first husband. It really makes the whole exchange a lot less charitable and more of a transaction where the woman has little or no say. I guess for me, the problem with polyandry is that it implies that God sees women as objects – not as full agents of our own, but asa tool to be used for the benefit of men. Like we are just a little higher than animals. And saying ‘well it was for the protection of widows’ or ‘don’t worry, the church doesn’t practice it anymore’ or even ‘God commanded it and He will sort it all out in the next life’ doesn’t really help.
Thoughts?
I have seen some MINOR issues where marriage does give some “protections”, but don’t take this as me trying to support polygamy. Far from it. I think it was a terrible experiment that I have never felt it was from God. I don’t say that God could not have commanded it, but I have not felt God telling me it was God’d idea. And it breaks my heart how most of the hardship rested on the women. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
I first caveat everything I am about to say with two statements: 1 – I am an atheist. Ergo, I do not believe God has anything to do with polygamy.
2 – I think polygamy was (and remains in a different form) a terrible injustice and the very worst aspect of the Church ever.
OK, having gotten that out of the way I want to address the concept of polygamy as a means to take care of widows.
It is true that polygamy was often used in that way, and this goes back to JS himself. It was not the primary reason, not by a mile, but it was employed that way. Polygamy was, in part, a way to seal families for an expected afterlife of exaltation. A woman without a righteous man, in 1800’s thought, wasn’t destined for glory. So, polygamous relationships were often created to ensure that the woman had the blessings of the fullness of the priesthood. If you are getting uncomfortable with any of my explanation so far, please refer to #2 above.
So, for example, Rhoda Richards Damon had been a widow for 20 years before she joined the Church. She was the older sister of Willard Richards, who was 20 years her junior.
In 1843, she was sealed to JS. He as 38, she was 58. She later wrote:
Quote:In my young days I buried my first and only love, and true to that affiance [pledge], I have passed companionless through life; but am sure of having my proper place and standing in the resurrection, having been sealed to the prophet Joseph, according to the celestial law, by his own request, under the inspiration of divine revelation.
After JS was killed, she married BY for time. He was 44, she was 61.
One very interesting note about BY. His first wife Miriam Works Young died just after they both joined the Church. Many years later, as the Church was about to head west out of Nauvoo, 44-year-old BY married Miriam’s 69 year old mother, Abigail Marks Works. At the same time, she was sealed to her late husband, Angel.
While it is a gross exaggeration to say that caring for widows was a mainline reason for polygamy, it was used for that reason sometimes. Would there have been better ways, by today’s standards? Yes, absolutely. But it did also occasionally work back then.
I do want to address your statement that:
Joni wrote:offering marital protection is a lot less generous and noble when you consider that the man is
getting sex in return. Or at least, the expectation of sex. Or, in cases where the marriage isn’t likely to be consummated, the man is getting sexual accessat a minimum
I agree that this was an issue and one of the things I most hate about polygamy. But it wasn’t universal. I honestly believe, for example, that sex was much less a part of Nauvoo-era polygamy than most imagine.Lastly, let me add as I often do, that there were plenty of men who in a way were also victims of polygamy. If we take the view that all men are lechers who prefer sex over every other form of happiness and who only marry for sex, then sure, they got great benefit out of having multiple wives. But I think that is an unfair generalization. Many middle-tier Mormon men who were polygamists lived lonely lives where their sole purpose was to provide for multiple families, but who had no real relationships either with the women or the children. I can’t imagine not being in the completely committed monogamous relationship that my wife and I have. In the free times in which we live, I have access to all the extra-marital sex I want, but I choose to be with my wife only, and it would be disastrous to my own happiness if I decided to have it any other way. Polygamy was bad for women, it was bad for children and it was bad for a lot of men involved in it.
My disclaimer is that I don’t believe God commanded polygamy. The sooner the church stops saying He did, the better. I understand that many considered it a test of faith. I also don’t believe anymore that an unmarried person’s reward for a life well-lived is any different than a married person’s. Another way to say it, I don’t believe that the pinnacle – the entire purpose – of our eternal lives is to procreateon earth or in heaven. Especially when prioritizing that above all else leads us to demean and dominate each other. I think the church is mostly grasping at straws with all the explanations, hoping that the collective weight of them will get us to look away…nothing to see here…nothing wrong with Section 132.
In addition to the promise of exaltation that OON talks about, Todd Compton in “In Sacred Loneliness writes about JS’s older wives:
Quote:One may ask why the Mormon leader married any older women at all. Two reasons can be offered. First, two of these women, Fanny Young Murray and Rhoda Richards, were sisters of favored apostles, so the marriages were dynastic. Interestingly, Joseph’s youngest wife, Helen Mar Kimball, was the daughter of another loyal apostle, Heber C. Kimball, so that marriage may also be considered dynastic, not motivated solely by sexual interest.
Second, older women served as teachers and messengers to introduce and convert younger women to the practice in Nauvoo. Elizabeth Durfee and Patty Sessions belong in this category. Eliza R. Snow acted in this capacity in Utah. For Mormon feminists unsympathetic to patriarchal polygamy, this will be one of the most troubling aspects of Mormon polygamy: women co-opting other, younger females into the order.Ann wrote:I think the church is mostly grasping at straws with all the explanations, hoping that the collective weight of them will get us to look away…nothing to see here…
I agree. And I am coming to see just how much they don’t want to say any “revelations” of past prophets as having been mistakes in any way. Now they did kind of throw Brigham Young under the bus a bit on the temple and priesthood ban essay, but with that one BY’s corpse had the bus tire markings all over it. But most all of the other essays are saying everything they can without coming close to saying JS ever messed up.I admire their loyalty to each other and the past presidents, but the world (and especially millennial’s) are not going to look on this ongoing with any amount of admiration. I worry this is going to become more and more strained.
On Own Now wrote:
I agree that this was an issue and one of the things I most hate about polygamy. But it wasn’t universal. I honestly believe, for example, that sex was much less a part of Nauvoo-era polygamy than most imagine.I agree that a lot of these marriages were not about sex – a 38-year-old apostle taking a 60-year-old widow as his 22nd wife was probably not having sex with her (although who knows?) That’s why I add the qualifier that the man at least gains sexual
accessin a way that disfavors the woman. Because when the 38-year-old apostle marries the 60-year-old widow, a miminumof two things is happening: 1) he is
legally entitledto have sex with her (and remember, marital rape laws didn’t exist then) 2) she can’t marry/have sex with anyone
else– even if someone comes along who is more to her liking (like a 60-year-old widower) So the woman trades away a lot of freedom in return for some form of “protection” – protection that wouldn’t even be necessary in a less patriarchal society.
Quote:Lastly, let me add as I often do, that there were plenty of men who in a way were also victims of polygamy. If we take the view that all men are lechers who prefer sex over every other form of happiness and who only marry for sex, then sure, they got great benefit out of having multiple wives. But I think that is an unfair generalization. Many middle-tier Mormon men who were polygamists lived lonely lives where their sole purpose was to provide for multiple families, but who had no real relationships either with the women or the children. I can’t imagine not being in the completely committed monogamous relationship that my wife and I have. In the free times in which we live, I have access to all the extra-marital sex I want, but I choose to be with my wife only, and it would be disastrous to my own happiness if I decided to have it any other way. Polygamy was bad for women, it was bad for children and it was bad for a lot of men involved in it.
The men not involved in polygamy must have suffered too, because who on earth were they supposed to marry? There’s a reason so much of the pulp fiction contemporary to the time deals with the fear of bands of Mormons stealing young women under cover of darkness to become polygamous wives. The numerical discrepancy was immediately obvious to people outside of the church – you wonder why it wasn’t more immediately obvious to, you know, God.
It was a justification, good or bad. P.S. I’m sure people outside of polygamist communities in those days found some way to take care of their widows that didn’t involve marrying them to already married people. It does seem like a logical fit for polygamist communities though.
First, I also dislike polygamy intensely. Full stop. The only part about it I can accept without intense dislike is the widow aspect, even though I am not a fan. They were much more dynastic in nature, and even that was sexist by our modern standards. It was sincere, however, and not about sex at all.
Also, the pulp fiction of the time had nothing to do with statistics. Seriously, stats had nothing to do with it. It was sensantionalist, ignorant fear-mongering. I know; I read some of it as part of my college thesis prep. My favorite was the story of a woman who was kept locked in the temple as a sex slave but who escaped by jumping out the window into the Great Salt Lake and swimming to her freedom.
Finally, what OON said – with one additional caveat:
I have to remember that Joseph seemed to view the general topic of sexual relationships very differently near the end of his life than he had earlier – and differently than Brigham did. Joseph was much more experimental and symbolically visionary than Brigham’s pragmatic literalism. I see polygamy as something away from which Joseph was moving (and never really did practice fully and openly) toward a universal, heavenly sealing, while Brigham used it much more as something to build a new, distinct House of Israel – almost a new ethnicity (which it did, in a real way).
Again, even though it had its issues in that regard, the way it was used to care for widows might have been its only semi-redeeming quality.
For all the reasons you brought up, Joni, I don’t understand why anyone would agree to it. The whole thing is weird. I will never understand it. Glad I don’t have to accept it…I reject it completely in this life or the next.
I don’t agree that one of the purposes of Polygamy was to take care of widows. If the man dies, he leaves multiple widows in a polygamous family.
I’m sure that the older sons & daughters took care of the widows when the husband / father died.
I believe that polygamy was meant to:
– increase the LDS population in a short period of time.
– and seal families together through the temple ordinances.
The understanding of this early policy would be so much easier if:
– the church would teach the membership today about the revelation received by JS.
– why was it necessary?
– why was it necessary to lie about it?
– why did it end? (beyond “God gave WW a revelation to stop it.”)
I don’t believe they (the church/GA’s) know.
Plus, I don’t have a lot of curiosity about this topic.
If the church is perfect, they should be able to issue a reasonable explanation that is understood by the general membership.
I do wonder what happened to all the surplus males during the LDS polygamy era. Modern polygamy groups just push them out, which seems like an unsustainable business model long term. And somehow TSM managed to take care of dozens and dozens of widows when he was a young bishop… without marrying any of them.
Wonder how he did that!
I’d like to be able to tell myself that polygamy is not of God, but from where I’m sitting, it’s exactly the sort of thing He’d do. This is the same guy who tells me to veil my face during the prayer circle and won’t let me talk to my Mother, after all…
Back in the early days of the church, friends would be sealed to one another. One as the son and the other as the father. (Sometimes there were arguments over who would have which role.) People approached sealings almost like their own personal team building exercise. Empire Building in some ways. They had friends, family and extra women sealed to them, and tossed in a few widows to improve the numbers. In some situations, pretty young women were almost treated like trading cards in some ways.
Think Fantasy Football combined with Sex and Genealogy.
Joni wrote:I’d like to be able to tell myself that polygamy is not of God, but from where I’m sitting, it’s exactly the sort of thing He’d do. This is the same guy who tells me to veil my face during the prayer circle and won’t let me talk to my Mother, after all…
Polygamy, veiled faces, and not talking to mother… it strikes me that these are all men’s interpretations of god. Men who were very much products of their time just as we are products of ours. All the heavy lifting of the restoration occurred in the 1830s and 1840s. Some of their ideals and biases have survived into our day out of reverence, tradition, and assumption.
If god has made us in his image, we have returned him the favor. -Voltaire
It would be difficult for the patriarchal men in positions of authority living in patriarchal societies to define god in any other way. Societies and ideals change but traditions linger. Women are still going to veil their faces because people have faith that Joseph Smith restored the practice. I think current prophets have more confidence in Joseph Smith’s ability to receive revelation than they do their own, so the practice becomes almost untouchable despite an evolving understanding of god. Hey, it comes with the territory when we mythologize historical figures. We have lots of bronze age ideals that get carried forward to our day because we hold Abraham as an authoritative figure. How could Abraham be wrong about god? Boom, a bronze age bias is introduced into our contemporary concept of god.
Who defines god? Abraham, Moses, Isaiah, Jesus, Paul, JS, TSM, our friends, ourselves, some combination? That’s the challenge. Saying “I don’t believe god would do something like that” helps me create a better god and as Voltaire pointed out, it can be reciprocal. God creates a better me, I create a better god, we evolve together.
Sidetrack note:
I mentioned that leaders might have more confidence that JS revealed everything so there is pressure to not make changes, which potentially halts or pumps the breaks on the restoration. It makes me wonder, if a contemporary leader were to make a wide, sweeping change would the average member be able to place as much faith in the contemporary leader as they place in mythologized leaders? Do we need legends to facilitate accepting new revelations? Can new legends be born inside a sleeping religion or is it more like Hollywood, every once in a while a reboot (externally driven restoration) is necessary to revive a franchise.
nibbler wrote:Sidetrack note:
I mentioned that leaders might have more confidence that JS revealed everything so there is pressure to not make changes, which potentially halts or pumps the breaks on the restoration. It makes me wonder,
if a contemporary leader were to make a wide, sweeping change would the average member be able to place as much faith in the contemporary leader as they place in mythologized leaders?Do we need legends to facilitate accepting new revelations? Can new legends be born inside a sleeping religion or is it more like Hollywood, every once in a while a reboot (externally driven restoration) is necessary to revive a franchise.
We have such a case. Just look at the move away from Polygamy. It seems to me there were a LOT of members that didn’t really believe in the “current revelation” to stop practicing polygamy. They lost quite a bit of trust in their leaders.amateurparent wrote:Back in the early days of the church, friends would be sealed to one another. One as the son and the other as the father. (Sometimes there were arguments over who would have which role.) People approached sealings almost like their own personal team building exercise. Empire Building in some ways. They had friends, family and extra women sealed to them, and tossed in a few widows to improve the numbers.
In some situations, pretty young women were almost treated like trading cards in some ways.
Think Fantasy Football combined with Sex and Genealogy.
This is consistent with my understanding. I believe that the reason that understanding polygamy is so difficult is that the doctrines that give birth to polygamy are so foreign to the doctrines that underpin the church today. These doctrines evolved just like other doctrines. However, it is somewhat embarrassing to state the JS believed in some concepts that we have later grown up from and in some cases disavowed.
I listed several reasons given by JS as justifications for polygamy:
Quote:Polygyny Justifications of JS
1. God commands it: “God said thou shalt not kill, at another time he said thou shalt utterly destroy…that which is wrong under one circumstance, may be and often is, right under another…Whatever God requires is right, no matter what it is…although we may not see the reason thereof till long after the events transpire.” RSR p. 441 “I have constantly said no man shall have but one wife at a time, unless the Lord directs otherwise. “TPJS p. 256, 324
2. The ancient patriarchs practiced it (apparently without divine condemnation).
3. To fashion a righteous generation on the eve of the Second Coming: “The Lord has revealed to me that it is his will that righteous men shall take righteous women, even a plurality of wives, that a righteous race may be sent forth upon the earth preparatory to the ushering in of the millennial reign of our Redeemer.” RSR p. 326, Jacob 2:24-30
4. For “greater glory”: “The first commandment was to ‘Multiply’ and the Prophet taught us that Dominion & power in the great future would be commensurate with the number of ‘wives, children & friends’ that we inherit here and that our great mission to earth was to organize a nucleus of Heaven to take with us. To the increase of which there would be no end.”…”When the family organization was revealed from heaven- the patriarchal order of God, and Joseph began, on the right hand and the left, to add to his family, what a quaking there was in Israel.” In Sacred loneliness p. 10-11 “Joseph’s kingdom grew with the size of his family, and those bonded to that family would be exalted with him.” JS reportedly said “I know that I shall be saved in the Kingdom of God. I have the oath of God upon it and God cannot lie. All that he gives me I shall take with me for I have that authority and that power conferred upon me.” In Sacred Loneliness. The purpose was “to create a network of related wives, children, and kinsmen that would endure into the eternities…Like Abraham of old, Joseph yearned for familial plentitude.” RSR p 439-440, D & C 132:55
5. Pre-mortal commitments: “Joseph said I was his, before I came here. He said all the Devils in Hell should never get me from him.” JS had been told to marry Mary, “or suffer condemnation- for I (Mary) was created for him before the foundation of the Earth was laid.” In Sacred Loneliness, also “thou made a covenant with one of thy kindred spirits to be thy guardian angel while here in mortality, also with two others, male and female spirits, that thou wouldst come and take a tabernacle through their lineage, and become one of their offspring. You also choose a kindred spirit whom you loved in the spirit world … to be your be head, stay, husband, and protector on the earth, and to exalt you in the eternal worlds. All these were arranged.” The Origin and Destiny of Women, John Taylor. Said Asael Smith, Grandfather of the Prophet, “I believe God hath created the persons for each other, and that Nature will find its own.” The Family of Joseph Smith p 16
Of these reasons only #1 and #2 hold any real weight with our modern church. Reasons #3, #4, and #5 all seem rather weird today because they no longer line up with what we collectively teach and believe. Reasons #3 and #4 also underpinned our Mormon push for large families that is also largely in decline. How long has it been since you were told that it is our duty to bring spirit children into the world through a righteous lineage prior to the impending Millennium? How long has it been since you were told that the degree of glory that one inherits in the CK is correlated to the size of their righteous posterity? #5 has been almost specifically disavowed to counter young men receiving “revelations” about whom they should marry in the late 1900’s.
Somewhat similarly, It was a big surprise to me that the LDS concept of the Godhead evolved over many years of thought (a portion of that evolution occurred after the death of JS). We like to pretend that the concept of the Godhead stepped directly out of the first vision experience and that at that moment the 14 year old JS had a more clear understanding of God than all the learned professors and theologians then living. From my current understanding, the concept of the Godhead was much more fluid during and after the lifetime of JS.
- You must be logged in to reply to this topic.