Age of Consent

[Gray]

13 hours ago, pogi said:

Abusers don't typically go first to the mother and father asking for consent to abuse their child.  In abusive cases, the father is not typically eager to turn his daughter over to be abused.  Abuse is no different today than it was back then, it is hidden from the parents.

But it can work like that in situations where the behavior is not understood to be abusive. 

[JulieM]

9 hours ago, Calm said:

Skipping Alger which occured at least 5 years before one iffy polyandrous sealing I believe (Harris)and 8 years before the first solid case, Louisa Beaman, so I see Alger as an anomaly and therefore best to leave out in terms of establishing patterns.  All the following marriages occurred in a 2 1/2 year period, iirc.  Beaman was single, but after her there were 8 sealings to married women and two to widows over the next year and a half.  Beaman' brother was officiator at the sealing and iirc approached Louisa first about the possibility, but I may be mixing her up.

Only after mid 42 is he sealed to mostly single women over the next year or so (skimming wiki for dates) most of them iirc sisters or daughters of men close to him (which makes sense even if one ignores the possible family bonding as these would be women he would encounter socially and would know of their background and if they would be trustworthy not to spread rumors, but also makes sense in terms of creating one giant celestial family here on earth).

There was a blog I read recently that was quite articulate about this (the shift from being sealed to his friends' wives to being sealed to daughters) with good documentation.  I will see if I can find it.

Thanks, Calm. I'd love to read that if you can find it. This is a new concept for me and I'm interested in knowing more.

So, do you believe Joseph was sealing the entire family to him rather that just the woman as his wife?  (Just trying to understand).

If so, do we have statements from Joseph regarding that (other than the promise of eternal salvation and exaltation for Helen's family)?  But even with that promise for Helen, did that mean the entire family was being sealed to him?

Edited April 19, 2017 by JulieM

[Gray]

15 hours ago, Glenn101 said:

Does mental development equal social/moral maturity??? I think not. I have nothing right now to back me up or refute me, but I do not believe that age itself, or rather mental development alone is an indicator of maturity. Maturity comes with experiences, but not all mature at the same rate. There are some at fourteen that are more mature than some in their thirty-something years.

It is difficult, if not impossible to compare general maturity levels between current generations and those of one hundred and fifty plus years ago. It is still presentism to try to judge the cultural mores, etc. of those generations by the things we believe today. You are not going to change any of it.

 

Cultures change pretty quickly, but human biology does not change so quickly. We understand it better than our ancestors. 

A similar issue is child labor. We understand now that it's harmful to children to put them to work all day long in factories. Moral development is a continuous process. 

Edited April 19, 2017 by Gray

[Gray]

15 hours ago, Darren10 said:

Marriage is slavery? Good grief, join the relevant morality of today's society and leave traditionsl marriage alone.

Ha!

[Gray]

16 hours ago, MormonVideoGame said:

I know an 18 year old girl that married a lucky 30 year old dude in the Temple. Is that abusive? 

Abusive? Maybe not. Could be a bit sketchy. We operate under the assumption that 18 year olds are truly adults, but that may not be true. 

 

16 hours ago, MormonVideoGame said:

 So why do LDS men go to a mission at age 18? Some go to very dangerous places, you against that? Why do some men join the military (risk their life) at 18? In the military 18 year olds get serious injuries and trauma, especially during war. 

Social convention.

 

16 hours ago, MormonVideoGame said:

Please give me biological, medical, or psychological evidence that it is harmful, but evidence that doesn't apply to an 18 year old. 

It's all opinion. 

No, but Germany, Austria, Italy, Portugal are still happy countries. 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ages_of_consent_in_Europe

Because the brain is continuously developing from adolescence to about the age 25, the younger the person, the less able they are to give meaningful consent. That's clear, yes? A 14 year old less mentally developed than an 18 year old. 

 

[Gray]

16 hours ago, Ahab said:

What part of that marriage do you think necessarily is or would be pernicious and/or abusive?

The part about them wanting to be and stay together, or the part about them having sexual relations together?

Nobody has to grow up on their own, all by themselves, single, with no marriage partner or partners.  Growing up, growing wiser and more mature, to perfection, is something marriage partners can do together.

All of it would be permissive and abusive. Even if there is never any sex, a 14 year old isn't ready to make a lifelong commitment, much less an eternal one. 

[clarkgoble]

7 hours ago, Meadowchik said:

Salvation is primarily between the individual and the Savior. Does God give people special deals for salvation if they marry their daughters off to the prophet or not?

Salvation also hinges upon turning oneself to Christ. Thus if one rejects what Christ asks, we're rejecting being one with him. It's fair to ask whether what the prophet said is correct of course. So I'd have hoped that all the Kimballs prayed mightily over this. But if they feel God really wanted it, isn't that between them and the Savior?

[clarkgoble]

16 hours ago, JLHPROF said:

• Well, that's got me convinced.
  Raise the minimum marriage age in the United States to 25.
  And the voting age, and the driving age, etc.

I think this is creating a false dichotomy. After all not everyone matures at the same rate. I know some people who were definitely mature enough at 18 or 19. I certainly wasn't and am very glad I married later despite feeling hard done by at the time. Yet for laws we have to pick a general case. People might be too immature to do something but that seems different from arguing if it should be legal.

[clarkgoble]

9 hours ago, Calm said:

Cant find the blog I am thinking of, but think it was on BCC because the format feels right.  Found something that referenced the idea for a bit that I will post for now:

https://bycommonconsent.com/2008/12/25/follow-up-thoughts-on-nauvoo-polygamy/

 

I suspect you're thinking of some of Jonathan Stapley's papers on the theology of adoption. He's touched on it several times at BCC and it's been discussed at the Juvenile Instructor at times as well. His main paper is "Adoptive Sealing Ritual in Mormonism." Sam Brown also has written on it like his paper "Early Mormon Adoption Theology and the Mechanics of Salvation." I think it's clear that these issues and polygamy were connected in Joseph's mind. But he didn't really given any clear teaching on the subject in any extant records IMO. The theology continues to develop well into the 20th century. Part of that is of course a reaction to the cessation of polygamy.

Fundamentally though Jospeh taught that the sealing of families has to be done so that everyone is sealed to someone. If their parents reject the gospel then they need to be sealed to someone else. That appears to be where there were what Compton calls dynastic polygamous marriages. It was a way of doing that. I suspect that from a contemporary Mormon perspective though that most of these things will have to be done in the Millennium after most of the work for the dead is done and people have had sufficient opportunity to accept or reject the fulness of Christ's teachings. As Sam Brown notes, a lot of this is a kind of mirror of the view we are adopted as Christ's children in the atonement. (See Mosiah 15 for this notion of seed -- although more immediate context for most people were various Pauline texts on adoption)

The reasonable criticism of Joseph in all this is that if adoptive sealings could be done eventually why the rush to have families sealed to Joseph by marriage rather than as his children? That isn't something I think historians have a good grasp on yet. The other obvious question is why people thought these sealings would guarantee anything, given that there already was a theology that the were valid only if sealed by the Holy Spirit of Promise. So the sealing alone guaranteed nothing. While again a lot of that theology developed later, there are some oddities here. There's just a lot of vagueness in the topic.

My guess is that the underlying theological drive is the idea that salvation simply isn't an individual thing, such as Protestantism emphasizes so strongly. While there are some individual aspects to salvation, ultimately we are saved as a group and a community. (This notion of group was of course quite common in ancient Israel but far more alien to Greek and Roman culture)

Edited April 19, 2017 by clarkgoble

[pogi]

10 minutes ago, Gray said:

But it can work like that in situations where the behavior is not understood to be abusive. 

Which is precisely why no one should judge Joseph or Helen's parents for being ignorant of future understanding.  It smells of presentism, no?

[Meadowchik]

46 minutes ago, clarkgoble said:

Salvation also hinges upon turning oneself to Christ. Thus if one rejects what Christ asks, we're rejecting being one with him. It's fair to ask whether what the prophet said is correct of course. So I'd have hoped that all the Kimballs prayed mightily over this. But if they feel God really wanted it, isn't that between them and the Savior?

An alternative to your interpretation is that they were simply off the mark. It wouldn't be the first time for humans to be so and is certainly not the last.

The only sense to be made of the transaction was that Helen's father and Joseph both wanted a bemefit from the other. Anything else beyond a circular argument is nonsensical. (Even Abraham was told to stop when his faith was tested.)

 

Edited April 19, 2017 by Meadowchik

[HappyJackWagon]

18 minutes ago, pogi said:

Which is precisely why no one should judge Joseph or Helen's parents for being ignorant of future understanding.  It smells of presentism, no?

You seem to be making the point that nothing was inappropriate since Helen's parents were involved and that a loving father wouldn't "typically" consent to the abuse of his child. But of course there are examples where this happens, even within the practice of modern-day polygamy. When Warren Jeffs married a 13-14 year old girl, it was with consent of the parents. According to you this wouldn't happen. Yet it did. Why? I suspect it is because they didn't view it as abusive.

When I was bishop I had a couple come to me distraught because their teenaged daughter ran away from home. After asking a couple of questions to understand the situation more fully I learned that in response to this daughter's disobedience her mother would holder on the ground and hit her in the face multiple times with the front and back of her hand. They didn't see anything wrong with this behavior. They viewed it as their role as parents to discipline their daughter, even if it meant physically, and no one had the right to tell them otherwise. I told them otherwise and they were ticked. They ended up leaving the ward until I was released and the father was called as the new bishop 4 years later.

The point is, just because they didn't see anything wrong with the behavior I felt was abusive, just as the parents of Jeff's young brides and Helen's parents didn't view giving their 14 year old daughter to a 35+ year old man in marriage, doesn't mean it isn't abusive. While there may be some elements of presentism it doesn't mean it's wrong. And just because our time is different doesn't mean the cultural sensibility is different. Lapse in time doesn't always create presentism when comparing them.

Edited April 19, 2017 by HappyJackWagon

[Gray]

22 minutes ago, pogi said:

Which is precisely why no one should judge Joseph or Helen's parents for being ignorant of future understanding.  It smells of presentism, no?

I don't think we should judge them as if they were 21st century people, no. But we can acknowledge that we now understand that such relationships are inappropriate, and our doctrine should reflect that. 

[JLHPROF]

2 hours ago, SeekingUnderstanding said:

Helen quotes Joseph as saying "If you will take this step, it will ensure your eternal salvation and exaltation & that of your father’s household & all of your kindred."

Salvation and exaltation.

 

Correct.  A specific type of salvation.
Salvation has multiple uses in Mormon theology.

[clarkgoble]

12 minutes ago, HappyJackWagon said:

The point is, just because they didn't see anything wrong with the behavior I felt was abusive, just as the parents of Jeff's young brides and Helen's parents didn't view giving their 14 year old daughter to a 35+ year old man in marriage, doesn't mean it isn't abusive. While there may be some elements of presentism it doesn't mean it's wrong. And just because our time is different doesn't mean the cultural sensibility is different. Lapse in time doesn't always create presentism when comparing them.

I think that's a fair point. However the charge of presentism means what matters when judging them is their understanding. That is we can simultaneously think a practice bad while cutting the people involved some slack. In this case since it's not at all clear the marriage was consummated (and reasons to think it wasn't) I think that's doubly true.

[JulieM]

6 minutes ago, JLHPROF said:

Correct.  A specific type of salvation.
Salvation has multiple uses in Mormon theology.

And did Joseph specify for them which salvation? Did Helen (or her parents) know there were multiple meanings?

What's also disturbing for me here is that Joseph originally asked for Vilate (later saying it was only a test) and then agreed to take Helen as a wife when she was offered.  All of that just seems so wrong when you analyze what took place there.

Would the same promise for eternal salvation have been given if it was Vilate that Joseph ended up marrying instead of Helen?  

Edited April 19, 2017 by JulieM

[clarkgoble]

7 minutes ago, Gray said:

I don't think we should judge them as if they were 21st century people, no. But we can acknowledge that we now understand that such relationships are inappropriate, and our doctrine should reflect that. 

Polygamy is an excommunicable offense - arguably seen among the worse - and young marriages are discouraged. So doesn't our theology now do that already?

[HappyJackWagon]

5 minutes ago, clarkgoble said:

I think that's a fair point. However the charge of presentism means what matters when judging them is their understanding. That is we can simultaneously think a practice bad while cutting the people involved some slack. In this case since it's not at all clear the marriage was consummated (and reasons to think it wasn't) I think that's doubly true.

I think more specifically presentism reflects judging them based on past cultural expectations and understanding. Otherwise, there would never be any judgment of anyone who didn't understand or agree with the cultural expectation.

Like Gray said, we may not judge them as 21st century people but that doesn't mean we don't judge the behavior, teaching, practice, doctrine according to our current understanding.

[HappyJackWagon]

6 minutes ago, clarkgoble said:

Polygamy is an excommunicable offense - arguably seen among the worse - and young marriages are discouraged. So doesn't our theology now do that already?

No. It's currently a policy but that doesn't do anything to disabuse the church of the doctrine.

IOW- policy has changed but doctrine hasn't, but it should.

[Gray]

10 minutes ago, clarkgoble said:

Polygamy is an excommunicable offense - arguably seen among the worse - and young marriages are discouraged. So doesn't our theology now do that already?

I don't think we have any kind of official position on adults marrying underage persons. Correct me if I'm wrong.

Edited April 19, 2017 by Gray

[pogi]

21 minutes ago, HappyJackWagon said:

You seem to be making the point that nothing was inappropriate since Helen's parents were involved and that a loving father wouldn't "typically" consent to the abuse of his child. But of course there are examples where this happens, even within the practice of modern-day polygamy. When Warren Jeffs married a 13-14 year old girl, it was with consent of the parents. According to you this wouldn't happen. Yet it did. Why? I suspect it is because they didn't view it as abusive.

When I was bishop I had a couple come to me distraught because their teenaged daughter ran away from home. After asking a couple of questions to understand the situation more fully I learned that in response to this daughter's disobedience her mother would holder on the ground and hit her in the face multiple times with the front and back of her hand. They didn't see anything wrong with this behavior. They viewed it as their role as parents to discipline their daughter, even if it meant physically, and no one had the right to tell them otherwise. I told them otherwise and they were ticked. They ended up leaving the ward until I was released and the father was called as the new bishop 4 years later.

The point is, just because they didn't see anything wrong with the behavior I felt was abusive, just as the parents of Jeff's young brides and Helen's parents didn't view giving their 14 year old daughter to a 35+ year old man in marriage, doesn't mean it isn't abusive. While there may be some elements of presentism it doesn't mean it's wrong. And just because our time is different doesn't mean the cultural sensibility is different. Lapse in time doesn't always create presentism when comparing them.

All of these examples are based in present and modern understanding of abuse, of which warren Jeffs etc. are privy to.  To judge Warren Jeffs and the parents of his victims is something we can do without being guilty of presentism.  We cannot judge Joseph and Helen's parents without being guilty of presentism however. 

I do think that cultural sensibilities are different today.  What was once considered discipline just 50 years ago is considered abusive today. Culture and society was different back then.  Obviously from our modern perspective, such behaviors are abusive and wrong, but that is an example of presentism and is not a fair judgement. 

[SeekingUnderstanding]

2 minutes ago, pogi said:

All of these examples are based in present and modern understanding of abuse, of which warren Jeffs etc. are privy to.  To judge Warren Jeffs and the parents of his victims is something we can do without being guilty of presentism.  We cannot judge Joseph and Helen's parents without being guilty of presentism however. 

I do think that cultural sensibilities are different today.  What was once considered discipline just 50 years ago is considered abusive today. Culture and society was different back then.  Obviously from our modern perspective, such behaviors are abusive and wrong, but that is an example of presentism and is not a fair judgement. 

I'm pretty sure society at large back in the 1840's viewed Smith's and Kimball's marriage as wrong...

[omni]

18 hours ago, rongo said:

BYU's IT department and Family Search have a website where people can see how they are related to all sorts of people. Our stake has a page within that where stake members can see how they are related to other stake members as well. It's amazing (and fun) to see this, especially when people are totally unaware of the relation (which is sometimes surprisingly close). This is another legacy of polygamy. To this day, in 2017, despite the decades of first-generation Mormons, if you take a straw poll of people with ancestors from the polygamy period, it is still disproportionately high. Very, very high, and much higher than conventional wisdom would indicate. This is also true of converts with no apparent polygamous ancestry, who, come to find out, do have ancestors from the polygamy period. The positive effects of polygamy disproportionately continue to reverberate through generations, and continue to play a role in the gathering of Israel. 

I think this is more a result of normal growth patterns and population interactions rather than any inherent legacy of polygamy.  Given the number of generations that have passed since polygamy was instituted, I think it would be relatively rare to find a multi-generational LDS who only had polygamist ancestry.  I.e.  While the number of LDS who practiced polygamy may have been relatively low, their progeny experience exponential growth through generations of intermarriage with the ancestors of monogamous LDS.

Due to the intermarriage, one could conversely look at the number of strong LDS families / leaders today that come from monogamous LDS lines and tout the benefits of monogamy .

 

[pogi]

31 minutes ago, Gray said:

I don't think we should judge them as if they were 21st century people, no. But we can acknowledge that we now understand that such relationships are inappropriate, and our doctrine should reflect that. 

I agree with that, and I see our church doing that.  For example, we are taught to not even start dating until we are 16, and only then in group settings until we are old enough to seriously consider marriage.

[pogi]

6 minutes ago, SeekingUnderstanding said:

I'm pretty sure society at large back in the 1840's viewed Smith's and Kimball's marriage as wrong...

The polygamy part of it yes, the child abuse part of it...I am not as sure as you are.