Polygamy And Dishonesty-

[Arbiter]

And what one would that be?

His overwhelming feeling that it was wrong.

I would agree and therefore by the evidence of multiple spiritual witnesses, plural marriage isn't something wrong.

That's an argumentum ad populum. The bandwagon fallacy. "Since other people believe it, it must be true." People who use it always fail to notice all the people who don't believe it. In your case, you've chosen to believe only the people who have borne witness that they felt polygamy was a correct principle, while you ignore the ones, equally qualified, probably more numerous as well, who have borne witness that it wasn't.

[Calm]

His overwhelming feeling that it was wrong.

So a feeling that it was wrong trumps a spiritual visitation....got it.

[Calm]

That's an argumentum ad populum. The bandwagon fallacy. "Since other people believe it, it must be true." People who use it always fail to notice all the people who don't believe it. In your case, you've chosen to believe only the people who have borne witness that they felt polygamy was a correct principle, while you ignore the ones, equally qualified, probably more numerous as well, who have borne witness that it wasn't.

You've misunderstood my point. I am not arguing for the validity of plural marriage, only for the validity of the experience of those who claimed a spiritual witness and then followed through and lived their life in a way that supported their described experience. You are apparently totally discounting all cases of plural marriage if I am reading you rightly as immoral or wrong, if I have misunderstood and you are open to the idea that God might direct some to engage in plural marriages then there is nothing I feel the need to discuss with you.

However if you think that God would never command plural marriage, then you need to come up with a rationale of why these people were so convinced that they had spiritual manifestations witnessing that the Lord wanted to undertake them, including some that would indicate little to no pressure having occurred on them before receiving a witness as in the case of Vilate Kimball IIRC.

Since you are willing to discount spiritual witness of those who experience them in favour of gut reactions, I really don't see any reason to continue this conversation though.

Edited October 3, 2012 by calmoriah

[KevinG]

Polygamy was soooo popular in the 19th century. It must have been a bandwagon thing.

[KevinG]

Brigham Young wrote, in his Journal of Discourses, that the only men who become Gods are those who enter into polygamy.

Pull up that quote in context and you will find Cal has it correct. Only those who obey the commandments of God will receive exaltation. That includes those who were commanded to live or accept in principle the laws of plural marriage.

http://en.fairmormon.org/Polygamy/The_only_men_who_become_gods_are_those_that_practice_polygamy

[Arbiter]

name='calmoriah' timestamp='1349287788' post='1209182553']CFR (call for reference meaning you need to provide the exact quote)

"The only men who become Gods, even the Sons of God, are those who enter into polygamy." Journal of Discourses, vol. 11, p. 269

also:

CFR (call for reference meaning you need to provide the exact quote)

Only the quote? Not the source? That doesn't make much sense.

It's hard for me to believe you doubt that women especially would find this a very hard thing to participate in. But here you go.

All of the following are from just one (well-reviewed) book: "Mormon Polygamy: A History, by LDS Author Richard S. Van Wagoner

• "... faithful LDS women reluctantly embraced the doctrine as a commandment of God"
  
• Phebe Woodruff, Wilford Woodruff's first wife, on polygamy: "I loathe the unclean thing with all the strength of my nature"
  
• Emmeline Free Young experienced "the torments of the damned" when Brigham married Amelia Folsom.
  
• Zina D. Jacobs Smith Young said, when a woman whose husband had taken a second wife asked her, "Does the fault lie in myself that I am so miserable; or is the system to blame for it?" Zina replied, "Sister, you are not to blame, neither are you the only woman who is suffering torments on account of polygamy."
  
• Sarah Pratt, Orson Pratt's first wife, said polygamy was "the direst curse with which a people or a nation could be afflicted. It completely demoralizes good men, and makes bad men correspondingly worse. As for the women—well, God help them."
  
• Martha Hughes Cannon, young third plural wife of fifty-year-old Angus Cannon, described her polygamous marriage as "a few stolen interviews thoroughly tinctured with dread." Called herself a "storm-tossed exile" from a happy, which to her meant a monogamous, marriage.
  
• Daughter of Jedediah M. Grant: "Polygamy is alright when properly carried out—on a shovel."
  

Men -- a lot harder to get quickly. But here you go, again:

• "...Brigham Young and Heber C. Kimball were challenged by this command [to practice plural marriage] http://mormon.org/faq/plural-marriage
  
• "When Joseph Smith first explained the doctrine of plural marriage to Brigham Young in the early 1840s, Brigham felt repulsed by it.
  
• Like Brigham, most of the early Latter-day Saints didn't instantly warm to the idea either"
  

Both of the above are from "Mormonism for Dummies" at http://www.dummies.com/how-to/content/understanding-polygamy-in-mormon-history.html

Next two from the book “The Nauvoo City and High Council Minutes” by Signature Books. No author, but edited by John S. Dinger. Costs fifty bucks -- something tells me it's well worth it. I ordered a copy

• Leonard Soby, an intimate of both Joseph & Brigham and a member of Nauvoo High Council, was very publicly opposed to polygamy.
  
• Nauvoo Stake President William Marks, also wanted no part of it, and also publicly opposed it. http://signaturebooks.com/2010/04/the-nauvoo-city-and-high-council-minutes/
  

When I began to try to find out how polygamy really looked, I fully expected I'd find that the many of the women involved hated it. The number of men who also participated against their better judgement was a big surprise. Providing you quickly with those quotes, the ones from men who reluctantly went along with it, isn't possible. Print books don't as yet have a search function. Takes time to get them in other words. If you'd still like to have them though, I'll be happy to provide. It just won't be today.

[Arbiter]

So a feeling that it was wrong trumps a spiritual visitation....got it.

If it doesn't trump someone else's angelic vision we're in more trouble than I thought.

You are really hanging your hat on believing something because someone else does, aren't you?

[juliann]

When I began to try to find out how polygamy really looked, I fully expected I'd find that the many of the women involved hated it. The number of men who also participated against their better judgement was a big surprise. Providing you quickly with those quotes, the ones from men who reluctantly went along with it, isn't possible. Print books don't as yet have a search function. Takes time to get them in other words. If you'd still like to have them though, I'll be happy to provide. It just won't be today.

You need to get current books. Second, you need to read books about the women, including their diaries, if you really care about what they think. You choose the negative soundbites and omit their life long defense of polygamy. Of course they didn't like it. But that is something quite different from the spiritual witnesses so many of these women claimed. Any discussion of polygamy that talks about women as if they didn't exist beyond a name assigned to some man should be condemned. First, it is sexist. Second, it is intellectually dishonest.

Edited October 3, 2012 by juliann

[Arbiter]

Arbiter:

So now you've become a mind reader of someone long dead. I'm a pretty good Social Worker. Even I don't claim that ability.

You're going to have to be more specific. As in telling me whose mind you think I think I'm reading, as well as why anything I've said qualifies as mind-reading.

[juliann]

If it doesn't trump someone else's angelic vision we're in more trouble than I thought.

You are really hanging your hat on believing something because someone else does, aren't you?

It is notable how easily you toss these women who lived it and their well documented views in a nameless "someone" trash bin. It doesn't show a high regard for women.

[thesometimesaint]

Arbiter:

You are claiming to be able to read Joseph Smith's mind.

[Arbiter]

You've misunderstood my point. I am not arguing for the validity of plural marriage, only for the validity of the experience of those who claimed a spiritual witness and then followed through and lived their life in a way that supported their described experience.

It sounds like I have at least partially misunderstood your point. There's a lot of overlap in the vociferous objections to polygamy from women in a polygamous marriage, and women contemplating one however.

The trouble with your insistence on believing said spiritual witnesses is that it's entirely possible that what you're calling a spiritual witness might be something else, but since the accounts you're depending so heavily on are very old, and the accounts that they even occured are very old, and are not just second hand, they're so far removed from the person who supposedly had them that they aren't just second hand accounts, they are hundredth hand accounts. It's a weak enough reason to take someone else's word that polygamy is an inspired doctrine if they tell you they've had a spiritual witness of it in person. Basically the accounts of spiritual witness you're relying on to show that polygamy was an inspired thing are all very weak reasons to believe polygamy actually was inspired of God. Another problem is that all these people are dead, so unless you've got a solid primary source, like a journal, personal correspondence, or as in the case of the church leadership, a mother lode of published writings, there is simply no way to evaluate any of them. Why don't you depend on your own ability to receive a spiritual witness instead? Nobody can take that away from you. You just shouldn't expect it to be good enough for someone else when they have a decision to make.

I absolutely respect peoples' right to conduct their personal lives as they see fit as long as they aren't hurting anyone in the process. That means what they do is none of my business. We're not talking about some individual people who made a decision, free of input from someone in their lives who had powerful influence over them, to have a polygamous marriage. We're talking about whether or not a practice that most people would shrink from as morally unacceptable, was actually something they were being commanded, by God, to do. It's a very different thing.

You are apparently totally discounting all cases of plural marriage if I am reading you rightly as immoral or wrong

I wouldn't do that. I've read many accounts of happy polygamous families that I have no problem whatsoever believing are authentic. What I'm doing is totally discounting the practice of polygamy as something that God told the saints, through Joseph Smith, to engage in.

if I have misunderstood and you are open to the idea that God might direct some to engage in plural marriages then there is nothing I feel the need to discuss with you.

I am not open to that idea. God, as I understand him, doesn't tell people to do immoral things. Things that hurt other people. Things they know are wrong. People do ugly immoral things. But not because God told them to. People may say God told them to do them. That doesn't make it so.

However if you think that God would never command plural marriage, then you need to come up with a rationale of why these people were so convinced that they had spiritual manifestations witnessing that the Lord wanted to undertake them

It wasn't the first time that a group of people, en masse, particularly a mass of religious people, did something odd, or socially unacceptable, or plain old wrong, because they thought the Lord told them to do it and it won't be the last. Don't you remember that group in California that thought they were scheduled to be picked up by an alien spaceship so they all killed themselves in a way they believed would facilitate that? Christian Scientists don't believe in going to doctors. Don't believe in disease. Jehovah's Witnesses don't believe in blood transfusions. Accounts of people dying like flies in both religions are legion. I honestly can't believe you even asked the question.

including some that would indicate little to no pressure having occurred on them before receiving a witness as in the case of Vilate Kimball IIRC.

You'll have to tell me about the Vilate Kimball story you're thinking of. The one I remember about her is the one where Joseph Smith ordered her husband to offer her up to him to be one of his wives. Which he did, after what he called three days of agony. Turns out it was just sort of a joke. A "test" I think Joseph told him, as he showed up with his wife to hand her over although it almost killed him. If you think that was the behavior of a righteous man, I'd love to hear your rationale for that.

Since you are willing to discount spiritual witness of those who experience them in favour of gut reactions, I really don't see any reason to continue this conversation though.

I think what you meant to say was since you can't browbeat me into agreeing with you that what looks to me like a powerful spiritual witness to Brigham Young was a mere "gut reaction," in favor of the second, third, fourth and fifth hand, hundred-fifty or so years old accounts of spiritual witnesses you offered as more dependable than that, you're going to concede you might need to look at this a little closer.

[Arbiter]

You need to get current books.

What made you think I don't have current books? Or that "current" automatically means "better?" It happens to be true about polygamy, since when I began to dig into it, maybe 7-8 years ago, I had a hard time finding books that weren't written either by the Church meaning sugar-coated and whitewashed, or by crazy people hell bent on destroying not just the lds church, but any church they decided fit their definition of bad, wrong, evil, etc. There were smart, objective books and papers that had been written, some of them written by professors at BYU. Just not as plentiful as they are now. But unless it's a current subject, which polygamy isn't, ordering somebody to get current books isn't necessarily good advice.

Second, you need to read books about the women, including their diaries, if you really care about what they think

I care very much about what they think. I wish more people in the Church cared about what they think. How wretched they were made by polygamy. You wouldn't defend it nearly so thoughtlessly if you did. I've read lots of books about women, and more of their journals than books. It was an obsession for a few years. I read fast. That adds up to a whole lot of reading about what they think, and how they felt, and how it really was. As opposed to how we get told it was. Really, you've drawn conclusions from facts not in evidence. And you're giving advice you obviously haven't taken. Since if you'd read any of the kind of books you're suggesting for me, your feelings about polygamy would be much closer to mine than they presently are.

You choose the negative soundbites and omit their life long defense of polygamy.

I certainly didn't do that. Your defensiveness however, suggests you have a strong need to believe I did. Which I'm very, very familiar with.

Of course they didn't like it. But that is something quite different from the spiritual witnesses so many of these women claimed.

That's a valid point.

Any discussion of polygamy that talks about women as if they didn't exist beyond a name assigned to some man should be condemned. First, it is sexist. Second, it is intellectually dishonest.

Anyone who objects to sexism, who doesn't object to polygamy, is in real danger of some kind of philosophical whiplash or something. You can't hold those two things in the same brain, side by side, for long. Something has to give. And your intellectually dishonest charge doesn't make any sense. I hope you don't think you can make a case that I've been that. If you do, I'd love to hear it.

[USU78]

Oh brother.

Another defender of Dead Mormon Women . . . quite against their will . . . calling Julieann sexist for disagreeing that they either need defending or were incapable of speaking for themselves certainly as well as and surely no less well then their nonpolygynist sistern in the XIXth Century.

[Tacenda]

What made you think I don't have current books? Or that "current" automatically means "better?" It happens to be true about polygamy, since when I began to dig into it, maybe 7-8 years ago, I had a hard time finding books that weren't written either by the Church meaning sugar-coated and whitewashed, or by crazy people hell bent on destroying not just the lds church, but any church they decided fit their definition of bad, wrong, evil, etc. There were smart, objective books and papers that had been written, some of them written by professors at BYU. Just not as plentiful as they are now. But unless it's a current subject, which polygamy isn't, ordering somebody to get current books isn't necessarily good advice.

I care very much about what they think. I wish more people in the Church cared about what they think. How wretched they were made by polygamy. You wouldn't defend it nearly so thoughtlessly if you did. I've read lots of books about women, and more of their journals than books. It was an obsession for a few years. I read fast. That adds up to a whole lot of reading about what they think, and how they felt, and how it really was. As opposed to how we get told it was. Really, you've drawn conclusions from facts not in evidence. And you're giving advice you obviously haven't taken. Since if you'd read any of the kind of books you're suggesting for me, your feelings about polygamy would be much closer to mine than they presently are.

I certainly didn't do that. Your defensiveness however, suggests you have a strong need to believe I did. Which I'm very, very familiar with.

That's a valid point.

Anyone who objects to sexism, who doesn't object to polygamy, is in real danger of some kind of philosophical whiplash or something. You can't hold those two things in the same brain, side by side, for long. Something has to give. And your intellectually dishonest charge doesn't make any sense. I hope you don't think you can make a case that I've been that. If you do, I'd love to hear it.

The really sad thing about polygamy is that it rages on forth. There are some that can "do" polygamy, think "Sister Wive's" but they even have their issues. I think if LDS still lived polygamy I would hope they lived it the way the show portrays it. But someone like Warren Jeffs did a number on it. In Colorado City and the YFZ Ranch in Texas, it is a serious matter, and the world has yet to do much about it. Because the ones living it believe the outside world is evil. They are taught since birth, this sentiment. They don't learn correct history, or even have a library in their town (Colorado City) anymore, their books were burned. There is rampant incest going on in these communities. Their police force is no help because they are of the same faith. I've heard there are deaths that are never reported, nor births. They want to bleed the beast, or government. So the fruit of the tree of polygamy, is bad. Plus, I'm of the opinion that in the bible God didn't command polygamy. I think JS just needed to justify an affair at the beginning and then it got out of control. I don't have the reference but at the end, before his death, he said that it was wrong.

You are out of the thread for appealing to criminal activity as support.

[Arbiter]

Oh brother.

Another defender of Dead Mormon Women . . . quite against their will . . . calling Julieann sexist for disagreeing that they either need defending or were incapable of speaking for themselves certainly as well as and surely no less well then their nonpolygynist sistern in the XIXth Century.

You wouldn't be the one unhappy with me because he thought I was reading the mind of dead people are you? How did you come to know that Dead Mormon Women don't want to be defended?

I think (although I can't be sure) that you think that whatever a nonpolygynist sistern in the 19th century is, it defended them when they were alive, so nobody needs to bother thinking about whether polygamy was crap or not now. Am I close?

[Lamanite]

I abandoned this thread awhile ago, was it ever conceded that Joseph was dishonest with Emma about his marriage to Louisa Beamen? If so, does anyone else feel that in spite of that type of dishonesty we can still sustain Joseph as Prophet, Seer, and Revelator?

Big UP!

Lamanite

[Arbiter]

Polygamy was soooo popular in the 19th century. It must have been a bandwagon thing.

Within the church community, in the Salt Lake valley, isolated and safe from much outside influence, yes, it was soooo popular. The pressure to participate was peer pressure on steroids.

[Deborah]

I abandoned this thread awhile ago, was it ever conceded that Joseph was dishonest with Emma about his marriage to Louisa Beamen?

How can anyone say? There's a lot we don't know about that time as not everything was documented. I think speculation on this is useless and unfair to those who were there as we don't know what they were dealing with. We either accept Joseph as a prophet or we don't. I do not want to judge whether he "lied" about something. He is in the hands of God, not people who were never there and never had to deal with the situation.

[Calm]

If it doesn't trump someone else's angelic vision we're in more trouble than I thought.

The spiritual witness was BY's own...so his own gut reaction vs. his own spiritual witness...

Why do you keep misreading what I am posting?

[Calm]

The trouble with your insistence on believing said spiritual witnesses is that it's entirely possible that what you're calling a spiritual witness might be something else, but since the accounts you're depending so heavily on are very old, and the accounts that they even occured are very old, and are not just second hand, they're so far removed from the person who supposedly had them that they aren't just second hand accounts, they are hundredth hand accounts.

I don't think you understand how documentation of history works....

Another problem is that all these people are dead, so unless you've got a solid primary source, like a journal, personal correspondence, or as in the case of the church leadership, a mother lode of published writings, there is simply no way to evaluate any of them.

I take it you didn't bother to check out the links that I posted. Edited October 4, 2012 by calmoriah

[Lamanite]

How can anyone say? There's a lot we don't know about that time as not everything was documented. I think speculation on this is useless and unfair to those who were there as we don't know what they were dealing with. We either accept Joseph as a prophet or we don't. I do not want to judge whether he "lied" about something. He is in the hands of God, not people who were never there and never had to deal with the situation.

All right.... let me get together some references. I think if you're fair and objective in your assessment of the historical record you might need to make a paradigm shift.

You'll probably defend your position by using words or phrases like "withheld information" or "protected" or "justified" blah blah blah. So if that is going to be your defense just tell me so I don't need to dig up a bunch of source material.

Big UP!

Lamanite

[Deborah]

All right.... let me get together some references. I think if you're fair and objective in your assessment of the historical record you might need to make a paradigm shift.

It's not a matter of a paradigm shift or what references you have. The question always is how accurate or complete or corroborated are the references. Even then you are using sources that reflect one side.

[Lamanite]

It's not a matter of a paradigm shift or what references you have. The question always is how accurate or complete or corroborated are the references. Even then you are using sources that reflect one side.

When the source being considered is a "primary" source- the "one side" it usually reflects is REALITY. There are of course several factors to consider when evaluating source material, but when the historical records are considered in the aggregate, the circumstances and actions relating to Joseph's marriage to Louisa are pretty straight forward.

I'll refrain from gathering source material on Joseph's marriage to Louisa for now. Let me know if you ever become open and objective regarding the subject and I'll be happy to get together what's out there.

Big UP!

Lamanite

[Deborah]

Lamanite, why is it so important to you to show that Joseph lied? That's a more important question. what is the point? Do you want to disprove Joseph as a prophet? Do you want to show he was flawed? I think we already understand that. Besides which in calling someone a liar one has to look at it in context of the times in which the lived.

Do I believe Joseph might have told some white lies on the subject? Yes. Do I care? No. Because I don't know the kind of pressure he was under or what the exact circumstances were and whether I'd do the same under the same circumstances and it doesn't change the fact that I believe he was a prophet and it was the Lord who would chastise him if he was doing wrong. I am also aware of historical context in cases such as Germans lying about Jews hiding in their attics. Do I think that was wrong? No. I would have done the same. Have I lied to my kids? Yes, when I told them a different story about how their hamster died.

So again, why does it matter so much to you to show Joseph "lied."

Edited October 4, 2012 by Deborah