Learning About Polygamy: "it's Like Learning You Have Cancer."

[Avatar4321]

It can be a very traumatic experience to find out information that threatens to change your belief system. That somebody would laugh at an analogy that attempts to quantify the pain is unacceptable and insensitive.

it would hardly be traumatic if you read the scriptures of your belief system.

[ERayR]

It can be a very traumatic experience to find out information that threatens to change your belief system. That somebody would laugh at an analogy that attempts to quantify the pain is unacceptable and insensitive.

 

Choices can be tough but not as tough as something over which you have no control.

[Stargazer]

It can be a very traumatic experience to find out information that threatens to change your belief system. That somebody would laugh at an analogy that attempts to quantify the pain is unacceptable and insensitive.

Well, perhaps, Thinking, you should think a little more before pontificating about insenstivity. Since he hasn't responded to the point (yet), I shall enlighten you. The poster you're complaining about, with all those HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA's, lost his wife to cancer just a couple of years ago, after a good deal of pain and suffering. You really think that learning that Joseph Smith was a polygamist equates to that?

And I, almost lost my wife to cancer last year, too. Thus I find the comparison as presented to be INSENSITIVE to the extreme, and I second USU78's laughter.

Or didn't you know about USU78's personal history with the matter?

Edited January 28, 2015 by Stargazer

[Tacenda]

Well, perhaps, Thinking, you should think a little more before pontificating about insenstivity. Since he hasn't responded to the point (yet), I shall enlighten you. The poster you're complaining about, with all those HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA's, lost his wife to cancer just a couple of years ago, after a good deal of pain and suffering. You really think that learning that Joseph Smith was a polygamist equates to that?

And I, almost lost my wife to cancer last year, too. Thus I find the comparison as presented to be INSENSITIVE to the extreme, and I second USU78's laughter.

Or didn't you know about USU78's personal history with the matter?

I understand where USU78's comment of hahaha's was coming from. But have to say that even though it doesn't even come close to your and USU78's situations, my husband lost the wife he thought he knew and if he's still believing, the highest level of the CK with her. Edited January 28, 2015 by Tacenda

[Nevo]

Well, perhaps, Thinking, you should think a little more before pontificating about insenstivity. Since he hasn't responded to the point (yet), I shall enlighten you. The poster you're complaining about, with all those HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA's, lost his wife to cancer just a couple of years ago, after a good deal of pain and suffering. You really think that learning that Joseph Smith was a polygamist equates to that?

And I, almost lost my wife to cancer last year, too. Thus I find the comparison as presented to be INSENSITIVE to the extreme, and I second USU78's laughter.

 

Bushman didn't compare finding out that Joseph Smith was a polygamist to losing one's wife to cancer. Get a grip! 

[juliann]

But that's not what he said. He didn't say "learning about polygamy is like being diagnosed with terminal cancer and dying from it." He said that some people have a similar reaction:

It doesn't seem unreasonable to me to say that people who are told they have cancer find it to be a shocking and terrifying experience, and that they feel "frozen" and "hardly know what to do." It's not a statement that is meant to belittle the experience of dying from cancer. It is meant to convey how some people react to learning about the disturbing aspects of LDS polygamy.

 

This really isn't worth debating. No one is belittling the horror of finding out the church wasn't what you thought. Just don't try to compare it to something like cancer. It is no different than walking up to someone and saying "I understand how you feel." No, you don't. So don't use someone else's pain that you haven't experienced. We have this same thing going on when people think it is cute to say "I feel like I was raped" when something disagreeable happens. Or people make jokes about drinking the kool-aid or compare something to the Holocaust.

 

Let me tell you what a diagnosis of cancer is like. First, it follows a lot of mystifying sickness and pain. Lots of pain. Lots of doctor visits. And lots of agonizing waiting, waiting, waiting.Then you get that diagnosis and get told you have maybe a year, tops. Your body will be reduced to skeletal proportions and you will die horribly, wretching your guts out. Well, that comes a day after the diagnosis when you start frantically reading about your future. Maybe he was just talking about the very day of the diagnosis? You will never see your children grow up. You will never know if they are all right or have what they need.

 

I don't know what it feels like to experience what Bushman talks about. But I sure wouldn't use someone else's misery to make a point.

[rodheadlee]

No, it isn't, It's disgusting to say so.

[Nevo]

"Unacceptable," "disgusting," "insulting," "INSENSITIVE to the extreme," "[using] someone else's misery to make a point."

 

— Internet's reaction to a good man's attempt to elicit empathy for others' suffering.

[sdc999]

Political correctness runs amok.  Cancer, unfortunately has gone the way of xerox and coke.    

Would you like a coke?    Yes.  Great what kind can I get you.

Would you Xerox this paper for me?

 

That man is a cancer on society.  

 

What?  is that man really killing society.  He made an analogy.  Not a great one but everyone is debating the analogy and not the meat of the meaning.  

 

It's extremely painful for some who bought in - hook, line and sinker to the folklore explanations for past history.  Is it killing somebody literally? No. but it is killing some testimonies.  Some may be paralyzed by the new information.   (Okay, all paralyzed individuals  pile on now.)   We're all going to get up tomorrow and go through the day.   Some will say, "I told you so"; some may say, "I knew that all along" and some will say, "that's not how I was taught."    ALL three are valid phrases depending on the person's point of view.  But all three, as an individual,  will be bashed by the other two.     

[Stargazer]

Bushman didn't compare finding out that Joseph Smith was a polygamist to losing one's wife to cancer. Get a grip!

I have a grip. His comparison sucks. If you think otherwise, you're entitled to your opinion, just as much as I am entitled to mine.

That being said, I can appreciate (sort of) how finding something out like that can have an effect.

On the other hand, in my time in Church I have seen people fall away for some of the most ridiculous causes. This is just another one which will contribute towards the winnowing that is bound to come. It's sad, but it's inevitable.

Edited January 28, 2015 by Stargazer

[Nofear]

Ok, some don't like the cancer analogy. I don't mind it but I've neither had cancer in close relations or was I horribly bothered by polygamy. Being a generally unempathetic person I can only posit that the point is that some people might react with a similar emotion as a diagnosis of cancer. And not all cancers are the same. Prostrate cancer, for example, has a very high survival rate and pretty much expected if you live long enough. Childhood leukemia, totally different category.

 

Point is there is a spectrum of reactions possible (to cancer or dealing with a difficult practice/doctrine). Some people can react well or poorly to either and you personal emotional response to either scenario is irrelevant. What is relevant is how you react to the individual who struggles. So, whatever you think of the analogy, remember that. Let's not strain at a gnat and swallow a camel.

 

Just as I would shouldn't say to somebody, "Oh you got cancer. Well, we all die anyway. Sucks that you have to go this really painful way, but you knew what you were getting into when you chose mortality." Neither should I say, "Sucks that you are having a hard time with polygamy. I don't, I don't know what your problem is. It isn't hidden and you could have known about the practice at anytime."

[Tacenda]

Ok, some don't like the cancer analogy. I don't mind it but I've neither had cancer in close relations or was I horribly bothered by polygamy. Being a generally unempathetic person I can only posit that the point is that some people might react with a similar emotion as a diagnosis of cancer. And not all cancers are the same. Prostrate cancer, for example, has a very high survival rate and pretty much expected if you live long enough. Childhood leukemia, totally different category.

Point is there is a spectrum of reactions possible (to cancer or dealing with a difficult practice/doctrine). Some people can react well or poorly to either and you personal emotional response to either scenario is irrelevant. What is relevant is how you react to the individual who struggles. So, whatever you think of the analogy, remember that. Let's not strain at a gnat and swallow a camel.

Just as I would shouldn't say to somebody, "Oh you got cancer. Well, we all die anyway. Sucks that you have to go this really painful way, but you knew what you were getting into when you chose mortality." Neither should I say, "Sucks that you are having a hard time with polygamy. I don't, I don't know what your problem is. It isn't hidden and you could have known about the practice at anytime."

I just got done cheering for Buckeye on another thread, bravo to you too! I nominate both your posts as posts of the day!! You cleared up so much!!

[HappyJackWagon]

 

no one is mocking the person going through the faith crisis

 

we are mocking the comparison to discovering you have inoperable cancer,

To many a faith crisis would be considered to be the equivalent of a cancer that will impact eternal salvation.

[Mars]

To many a faith crisis would be considered to be the equivalent of a cancer that will impact eternal salvation.

 

I already acknowledged that.  Post #28.

 

I said:

 

 

 

Confronting the very serious predicament of crisis of faith, especially from the believing perspective that both USU78 and I share, is

indeed a serious thing.  And it does merit sensitivity and sympathy on the part of the observer.

 

What I meant was the eternal implications - if USU78, myself, and others are correct in our belief - carry some sort of metaphorical echo of dying from cancer.  In that, I understood the point of the comparison and what it conjures up in my mind.  Like Juliann mentioned, I don't think it's a good idea to use other people's suffering to stir up my empathies.  I'm not a cold hearted piece of work - you can tell me "This sucks, I am hurting."  And I will respond with kindness.  If I know you really well, I may go the tough love option and tell you to buck up.  But even that would be a kindness insofar as I judge it to be.

 

Do you think that because I oppose the comparison, that it means that I lack empathy or sympathy for your situation?

Edited January 28, 2015 by Mars

[juliann]

 

 

Column upon printed column heralded the supposed progress of

polygamy throughout the world -- forecasting how it would one day

become the standard family relationship of all righteous people.

The wives of Utah polygamists sent letters and petitions to the

leaders in Congress and to individual representative, pleading

that they be saved from the "persecution" of those who could not

comprehend the sanctity and immutability of Divine Revelation.

They LOVED being plural wives -- They wanted NOTHING else...

 

The columns of the LDS newspaper hinted at the fact "the sisters"

required worthy, priesthood-holding husbands, in order to escape

banishment to the lower kingdom in the afterlife -- and that those

husbands simply MUST BE polygamists, in order to progress up to

the destined honor and task of forming worlds and populating them

with elect offspring -- to rise to the lofty heights where Joseph Smith

himself "mingled with gods."

 

And each of these celestial realms-destined ladies, felt honored and

joyful, at being yet another jewel in their shared husband's radiant

crown of glory.

 

Then.... I went down to Salt Lake City and started reading the back

files of the "Tribune" and the other gentile papers from ages gone by.

And there, I found the stories of many of those same plural wives told

in less cheerful and saintly language -- of how many, many of them

lived in shame and woe, wishing they had never entered polygamy.

 

The same stories were related in the Josephite papers, but I did not have

access to them until Bro. Jim Kimball kindly issued me a researcher's pass

to the Mormon Church's microfilms. There the accounts given were even

more disheartening than those in the "Valley Tan" and the "Union Vedette."

For these faded flowers of Deseret had not forfeited their Book of Mormon

testimonies, nor their undying love for the Head of the Seventh Dispensation.

In all ways, (but that of professing, supporting and broadcasting polygamy)

they remained faithful saints -- practically indistinguishable from their

husband-sharing sisters, left back in "The Valley."

 

 

 

UD, did you find anything that referred to "the curse of Eve?"  As in, since the curse was that women's desires (affection) would be toward their husbands that polygamy made that impossible if you wanted to survive emotionally...thus elevating them from the curse? I'd be interested in any and all allusions towards that (talking about "affection" I think is just code for the curse.)

 

Which was worse? Seeing those black, positive biopsies -- or discovering

the lies told (in both of the latter-day churches) -- regarding 1840s and

early 1850s plural marriage?

 

I think, probably, the latter.

 

But the point is you are alive to be able to make that judgment.

[Uncle Dale]

UD, did you find anything that referred to "the curse of Eve?"  As in, since the curse was that women's desires (affection) would be toward their husbands that polygamy made that impossible if you wanted to survive emotionally...thus elevating them from the curse? I'd be interested in any and all allusions towards that (talking about "affection" I think is just code for the curse.)

 

But the point is you are alive to be able to make that judgment.

 

I never came across anything in the Restoration Churches' newspapers

along those lines -- though I may well have missed something important.

 

I recall seeing a piece or two on the "Law of Sarah" -- I'll have to look

through my notes, and see if I can't locate and post that 1870s stuff.

 

There is no doubt that many of the LDS ladies of that period were fully

content with their lives -- but our concentrating upon those particular,

more vocal advocates, can serve to obscure a larger picture.

 

Anna Dikinson (a noted lecturer in her day) passed through Salt Lake

City shortly after the railroad was completed, and, at first, was kindly

welcomed by the Saints, and spoken of nicely in the Deseret News and

Stenhouse's paper. A few weeks later she spoke out (in San Francisco)

on what she viewed to be the inherent inequalities of latter day polygamy,

and the Salt Lake editors predictably rescinded their prior laudations.

 

Anna was not in The Valley long enough to actually interview very many

of the Mormon ladies there, and her stereotyping of them was more along

the lines of what Sarah Pratt might have to say, than what Eliza Snow-Smith

would have told her. Still, Anna's lectures were repeated nation-wide, and

probably had some residual effect upon the events of 1890.

 

As for the malignancies, we all have to go sometime. I'd not wish the unhappy

medical reports upon anyone under 80 -- but when we outlive our alloted

"three-score and ten," such developments come as a matter of course.

 

I wish you well -- and a smiling 100th year birthday cake, if one day possible.

I'm not always a very compliant participant here; but I mean well, and hope

that sentiment shows through, now and then.

 

Uncle Dale

Edited January 28, 2015 by Uncle Dale

[SeekingUnderstanding]

del 

Edited January 28, 2015 by SeekingUnderstanding

[juliann]

UD, it is no secret the women lauded polygamy in public and shared their miseries in private. I can't defend it I can only try to explain it. Our problem is that almost everything has been done by men for men when it comes to polygamy. The wives are thrown under the bus if their experience threatens the reputation of a male leader. We are just now having women enter in and try to look at it through the woman's perspective. So our conclusions, sources, everything privilege male accounts, even to the point that a leading scholar declares there will be more women in the CK. So whatever you can find coming from women in your off the beaten tracks would be very helpful.

[Uncle Dale]

...

So whatever you can find coming from women in your off the beaten tracks would be very helpful.

 

Unfortunately the digging up and reading of these old letters and diary

entries will not be enjoyable research for anybody today. I pretty much

understand why they have been largely relegated to the footnotes of

three-generation Books of Remembrance, etc.

 

If anybody has the stomach for it, a perusal of the Salt Lake City

Anti-Polygamy Standard will be required reading. Here's a sample:

 

http://www.sidneyrigdon.com/dbroadhu/UT/utahmisc.htm#060182

 

Any modern reader delving into such sources ought to remind herself

to first of all excuse the blatant rhetoric, dismiss the political motives,

and try to sift out the true feelings and true happenings thus reported.

 

I know -- the task can be as discouraging as trying to read the Tanners,

and rescue bits and pieces of reliable history from their hostile stuff.

 

Getting a little away from Deseret -- readers may be surprised to see

an occasional quote from the pre-excommunication Stenhouse couple

in the pages of Elizabeth Cady Stanton's The Revolution -- a source

I highly recommend from that period.

 

For the more adverturesome, there's Anne N. Royall's The Huntress.

Only the last couple of years of her Washington, D.C. newspaper

reported on polygamy -- but there's interesting reading to be found.

 

Many of the eastern editors simply refused to believe that anything

like plural marriage existed in Utah Territory, c. 1849-50. The delegates

sent from Salt Lake, to promote the would-be new state, were not very

candid about the phenomenon -- and so the Washington, New York

and Philadelphia journalists can be forgiven for doubting that polygamy

ever existed in the first place. Still, their articles are worth reading.

 

It's time for some energetic young grad student to spend a year or

two, reading musty journals at the Huntington, Bancroft, Lee and

Church History libraries. There's an untold story waiting to be published.

Don't worry about lacking the faith-promotion aspect. That can shine

through the eventual thesis or dissertation in ways other than what

we might expect to read in Meridian Magazine, etc.

 

UD

[juliann]

I don't find the Woodruff comments surprising at all...although I seriously doubt there were women being thrown out of their homes given the many accounts of misery, she certainly wouldn't have been honest at any time if that was a serious threat since her negative comments were also published.  (I bought a letter by a woman who wrote something like "if there is a woman happy in polygamy I have never met her.") I am looking for more than that, however...what their religious motivation was on a day to day basis, for instance. We say it was religiously motivated but we use the motivation for the men.

 

Also, back to the arguing of who is the most traumatized. Although this has a narrower focus on LGBT and politics,  I think it lays out the appropriated culture that many marginalized Mormons are adopting, but which doesn't meld into group and cooperative Mormon culture   https://bullybloggers.wordpress.com/2014/07/05/you-are-triggering-me-the-neo-liberal-rhetoric-of-harm-danger-and-trauma/

 

And, as LGBT communities make “safety” into a top priority (and that during an era of militaristic investment in security regimes) and ground their quest for safety in competitive narratives about trauma, the fight against aggressive new forms of exploitation, global capitalism and corrupt political systems falls by the way side.

 

Is this the way the world ends? When groups that share common cause, utopian dreams and a joined mission find fault with each other instead of tearing down the banks and the bankers, the politicians and the parliaments, the university presidents and the CEOs? Instead of realizing, as Moten and Hearny put it in The Undercommons, that “we owe each other everything,” we enact punishments on one another and stalk away from projects that should unite us, and huddle in small groups feeling erotically bonded through our self-righteousness.

 

Where this is the most visible, IMO, is the Mormon feminist communities where I have seen a startling increase in "crying."  It is rare to go more than a few posts without someone expressing they are "in tears" or "heartbroken." It reminds me of the article Armand Mauss wrote about Bibles on the podium being replaced with kleenex boxes.  I'm guessing, but it seems to have emerged as trendy social media terms are imported.

 

Of course, I am flattening out all kinds of historical and cultural variations within multiple histories of feminism, queerness and social movements. But I am willing to do so in order to make a point here about the re-emergence of a rhetoric of harm and trauma that casts all social difference in terms of hurt feelings and that divides up politically allied subjects into hierarchies of woundedness.

 

 

(BTW, I think this male author is much too flippant with the "no sense of humor" thing which was used with great success against second wave feminism.)

 

At any rate, to object to Bushman's use of cancer is playing into this same drama.

[Uncle Dale]

I don't find the Woodruff comments surprising at all...

...

 

 

As I recall, with a little careful searching, we might turn up a

subsequent denial from Sister Woodruff -- or, at least a partial

rebuttal that calls into question the entirety of the APS gossip.

 

And, although Brigham Young once gave a discourse, allowing

all those unsupportive of polygamy to quit and leave the Territory,

I doubt that many apostles would have thrown uncooperative

wives out into the cold.

 

Perhaps such a fellow as John D. Lee might have -- though he

never rose higher in society than being a local leader and rep

in the territorial legislature. From reading in his private papers

how he sometimes treated his wives (not suitable for quotation)

we might well imagine a marginal Saint of his predispositions

treating the ladies very badly.

 

There was some general rejoicing when women were given the

vote by the legislature (and approved by the gentile Governor);

but their names were recorded each time they voted, and their

ballots perserved, along with those identifications. The supervisors

of elections were males and the investigators of alleged voting

irregularies were the same high-ranking males. A brute like Lee

might easily have kept track of how each of his wives voted on

any particular issue, and remembered those whose votes differed

from any husbandly counsel given prior to casting the ballots.

 

Things eventually got better -- and Utah and Wyoming could boast,

with some deserved pride, as to their pioneering spirit in women's

rights in the voting booth.

 

But, this was one of the problems Anna mentioned -- and one which

was not rectified for quite a while thereafter.

 

UD

Edited January 29, 2015 by Uncle Dale

[carbon dioxide]

I learned about polygamy 30 years ago when I was a teen.  So I guess I had my cancer as a teenager and grew out of it. 

[Buzzard]

I'm late to the party, most of this kind of statement was made up on page one, but I have cancer.  I understand that the author was grasping for a parallel, but there is no comparison at all.  Maybe having had some of these polygamist wives for ancestors softened the blow.

[Tacenda]

Unfortunately the digging up and reading of these old letters and diary

entries will not be enjoyable research for anybody today. I pretty much

understand why they have been largely relegated to the footnotes of

three-generation Books of Remembrance, etc.

If anybody has the stomach for it, a perusal of the Salt Lake City

Anti-Polygamy Standard will be required reading. Here's a sample:

http://www.sidneyrigdon.com/dbroadhu/UT/utahmisc.htm#060182

Any modern reader delving into such sources ought to remind herself

to first of all excuse the blatant rhetoric, dismiss the political motives,

and try to sift out the true feelings and true happenings thus reported.

I know -- the task can be as discouraging as trying to read the Tanners,

and rescue bits and pieces of reliable history from their hostile stuff.

Getting a little away from Deseret -- readers may be surprised to see

an occasional quote from the pre-excommunication Stenhouse couple

in the pages of Elizabeth Cady Stanton's The Revolution -- a source

I highly recommend from that period.

For the more adverturesome, there's Anne N. Royall's The Huntress.

Only the last couple of years of her Washington, D.C. newspaper

reported on polygamy -- but there's interesting reading to be found.

Many of the eastern editors simply refused to believe that anything

like plural marriage existed in Utah Territory, c. 1849-50. The delegates

sent from Salt Lake, to promote the would-be new state, were not very

candid about the phenomenon -- and so the Washington, New York

and Philadelphia journalists can be forgiven for doubting that polygamy

ever existed in the first place. Still, their articles are worth reading.

It's time for some energetic young grad student to spend a year or

two, reading musty journals at the Huntington, Bancroft, Lee and

Church History libraries. There's an untold story waiting to be published.

Don't worry about lacking the faith-promotion aspect. That can shine

through the eventual thesis or dissertation in ways other than what

we might expect to read in Meridian Magazine, etc.

UD

After stumbling onto the website of JS' s wives I was shocked to learn the truth and soon after that I was reading stories about the FLDS escapee's and it made me angry and that anger turned toward the root of it. And therefore added to the problem of seeing that it started with JS.

Before, I was under the impression polygamy was to take care of the widows and children after their ordeals in the east and travels to Utah and losing husbands along the way. Didn't know it was commanded to live it, for everyone at some points.

I remember going on a trip to Hawaii with my sister and brother in law for a real estate convention before I was married. The three of us would be out and about and someone asked where we were from and when we said Utah they thought we might be polygamists. We got a laugh out of it and it was when I didn't know the half of it.

The closest I've really ever gotten to reading about early polygamy is on anti sites and some of "In Sacred Loneliness". I don't know if I have the stomach for reading more or not, but believe there had to have been some good too.

Completely forgot, I did listen to every one of Lindsay's podcast on FMH's, called "A Year of Polygamy", she speaks of many early women's lives in polygamy, all the way through to her current podcast on the Kingston's, the first one started with Fanny Alger, I believe. So that's an option if Juliann would like to listen to those.

[Uncle Dale]

After stumbling onto the website of JS' s wives I was shocked to learn the truth and soon after that I was reading stories about the FLDS escapee's and it made me angry and that anger turned toward the root of it. And therefore added to the problem of seeing that it started with JS.

Before, I was under the impression polygamy was to take care of the widows and children after their ordeals in the east and travels to Utah and losing husbands along the way. Didn't know it was commanded to live it, for everyone at some points.

I remember going on a trip to Hawaii with my sister and brother in law for a real estate convention before I was married. The three of us would be out and about and someone asked where we were from and when we said Utah they thought we might be polygamists. We got a laugh out of it and it was when I didn't know the half of it.

The closest I've really ever gotten to reading about early polygamy is on anti sites and some of "In Sacred Loneliness". I don't know if I have the stomach for reading more or not, but believe there had to have been some good too.

Completely forgot, I did listen to every one of Lindsay's podcast on FMH's, called "A Year of Polygamy", she speaks of many early women's lives in polygamy, all the way through to her current podcast on the Kingston's, the first one started with Fanny Alger, I believe. So that's an option if Juliann would like to listen to those.

 

I can't say for certain that "it was commanded to live it, for everyone at some points,"

and that seems unlikely -- given the fact that there never were enough new female

converts "gathered" to supply even the male population of Utah with multiple wives

(let alone those "extra" male Welsh, Swede, and Danish guys coming over with the gals).

 

But, yes, it was held up as the ideal family organization -- and one designed to raise

up and sustain a righteous generation, suitable for welcoming Christ at the Second

Coming, and establishing the Kingdom of God on earth during the Millennium.

 

And all of that does not even begin to expound the preceived benefits in the hopeful

afterlife, of eternal progression, organization of worlds, celestial eternal families, etc.

 

So -- highly encouraged? Yes. But "commanded," perhaps only in certain instances,

for Seventies destined for advancement, or some such private counsel.

 

My wife and I lived among polygamists in South Asia. She was the room-mate of

a "third wife" of a relatively wealthy merchant, for over a year. What we both saw,

in our respective assigned villages, were the day-to-day squabbles of half-brothers

and half-sisters, competing for attention and rewards in very limiting circumstances.

Only the children of the first wife received a proper education. Only the beauty of

the third wife saved her from the vengeance of the second wife, etc.

 

The sad part of it all, was seeing young Hindu girls of ten and twelve being told

by the religious authorities, that the gods had ordained these practices, and that

in order to obey their commandments, those same girls MUST become the wives

of total strangers -- of polygamists twice and thrice their own ages. To disobey

was to lose all status in society, and become an outcaste.

 

Having said all of that, I did see some relatively happy plural wives -- women who

were the first wives (or the favorites) of compassionate husbands. It was a rarity,

but there were indeed instances in which "sister wives" lived productive and

decent lives within that "institution."

 

So -- I have mixed feelings. I'm not certain how it all began, or whether some of it did

not bring good results. It still exists in North America (though more or less hidden) --

and will continue to exist, no matter what laws are written, no matter what esteemed

religious authorities may say, pro or con.

 

It is a strange phenomenon, and it both boggles my mind and haunts my heritage.

 

UD

Edited January 29, 2015 by Uncle Dale