Reconciling the Lucy Walker story

[JLHPROF]

4 minutes ago, ttribe said:

This reaffirms a statement I made in the past - If this principle is from God, it can't be properly lived in this life.

I don't see that at all.
That is the same argument made against living consecration (and many other gospel principles).

Our mortal weakness doesn't absolve us of obedience to whatever command God chooses to give.

Edited January 3, 2018 by JLHPROF

[Calm]

Just now, ttribe said:

This reaffirms a statement I made in the past - If this principle is from God, it can't be properly lived in this life.

My great great grandmother said living in plural marriage gave her and others the opportunity to experience in mortality the closest thing to the love we would know in the Celestial Kingdom.  She was well known for her loving care of her sister wife.

[JLHPROF]

Just now, Calm said:

My great great grandmother said living in plural marriage gave her and others the opportunity to experience in mortality the closest thing to the love we would know in the Celestial Kingdom.  She was well known for her loving care of her sister wife.

Exactly what I'm saying.  Just because something is painful to walk through doesn't make the resulting fruit rotten.
That is the disconnect I see in every polygamy conversation.

[Gray]

17 minutes ago, JLHPROF said:

Because the very definition of good is whatever God says it is.  As long as you can be certain it is God's will.  And that of course is where the disagreement comes from.

That's an assumption, but if you're unable to discern good from evil on your own you're also unable to discern whether or not Eloheim is actually good. We wouldn't be able to reliably differentiate God from Satan.

Edited January 3, 2018 by Gray

[Thinking]

My younger sister had a child out of wedlock. He recently graduated from Law School at Cal Berkley. Does this good fruit make the tree (illegitimate birth) that created it also good?

[bluebell]

1 hour ago, Gray said:

Then how would you ever be able to judge whether or not God is good?

The spirit and faith.  

I know that I can't use myself as a standard to judge whether or not the god of the universe is good.  I don't have the knowledge or ability to do so.  He is the source of everything that I know about Him.  So faith has to play a part.

[bluebell]

56 minutes ago, Thinking said:

My younger sister had a child out of wedlock. He recently graduated from Law School at Cal Berkley. Does this good fruit make the tree (illegitimate birth) that created it also good?

I am also a child that was born out of wedlock, and I like to think I turned out pretty good.    

If God said somewhere in the scriptures "I sometimes use illegitimate births to create seed unto me" then I think we'd have to use the children born out of wedlock as part of how we judged that fruit because God has legitimized the illegitimate child with such a declaration.  

But since God has not said that, I don't think we would judge the fruit of fornication the same way.

Edited January 3, 2018 by bluebell

[ttribe]

1 hour ago, JLHPROF said:

I don't see that at all.
That is the same argument made against living consecration (and many other gospel principles).

Our mortal weakness doesn't absolve us of obedience to whatever command God chooses to give.

Yes.  This is what is commonly referred to as a "Difference of Opinion."

[Gray]

54 minutes ago, bluebell said:

The spirit and faith.  

I know that I can't use myself as a standard to judge whether or not the god of the universe is good.  I don't have the knowledge or ability to do so.  He is the source of everything that I know about Him.  So faith has to play a part.

If you can't judge  good from evil, how can you tell a good spiritual impulse from a bad one?

[stemelbow]

3 hours ago, bluebell said:

I was just looking for clarification on what exactly you were asking.  God says that the specific reason He commands polygamy is because of the seed it produces.  I just wanted to know if you were ignoring that specific scriptural 'good fruit' in your request. 

And yes, children come in all sorts of ways but when we are talking about polygamy, those specific children come through specific lineages that would not exist without plural marriage.

For example, Heber G. Grant was a product of polygamy and a prophet and president of the LDS church.  His spirit would still have come to earth without polygamy but Jedediah Grant would not have been his father.  His lineage would have been different.

If you read the journals of polygamist women though, it becomes clear that many believed it brought forth much good fruit.  That's why it's interesting to hear people (with no personal experience with polygamy) say that it produced only rotten fruit.  

For example, Laurel Ulrich wrote a well received book (here is a write up about it in the New York Times) that showed that some women sought out polygamy-

“A House Full of Females” is sensitive to the difficulty and confusion that accompanied early plural marriage, with its implied loss of status for women. But the book also tells a more complicated tale about women’s on-the-ground experiences. While some women objected to plural marriage, Ulrich notes, others sought it out as a means of securing economic stability or of escaping from abusive marriages. Still others came to embrace plural marriage as a form of communitarianism, in which women shared domestic burdens and labor. Ulrich describes friendships and rivalries between wives. She even makes a case for plural marriage as a vehicle for a form of feminist consciousness-raising. Although outsiders referred to Brigham Young’s home as his “harem,” Ulrich writes, “it could also have been described as an experiment in cooperative housekeeping and an incubator of female activism.”

I'll ignore the thing about I'm ignoring the scriptural good fruit stuff.  

 

So we have:

1.  Women had a place to seek our economic stability

    I suppose then the claim is women in 19century Utah who lived in polygamy were better off economically.  How do we know this?

2.  Women could escape abusive marriages

   What about women in plural marriages who were abused?  Do they not count?  is there any reason to think women in monogamous marriages were abused more than women in plural marriages?  What if a woman escaped an abusive monogamous marriage but was abused in a plural marriage?  This fruit sounds incredible guess.  They could have sought it out but I suppose they might not have had it better in a plural marriage.  So, doesn't quite sound like a fruit to me.

3.  Women didn't have to do as much around the house because they could share responsibility with other women.

    The issue here is can we show in some way that women in 19c Utah plural marriages were less busy around the house then 19c century women in the rest of the US?  With more women, more mess to clean up.  I'm not sure this can clearly be seen as a fruit at all.

4.  Women in plural marriage were possibly more likely to be in a feminist conscious-raising environment. 

  Again...I think something would have to be shown to prove this.  I'm all ears though.  

[Eek!]

On ‎12‎/‎28‎/‎2017 at 10:36 AM, DBMormon said:

Do you take the position that Joseph deceived Lucy Walker about God commanding him to take her as a plural wife, or do you subscribe to a God whose morality has him commanding a man in a father/daughter dynamic to change his relationship with this 16 year old girl living in his home effectively as his foster daughter into a husband/wife dynamic? 

At this time my answer would be "neither", but my perception of Joseph Smith's polygamy has changed significantly several times, and I doubt that it is through changing.  Briefly, my current thinking is that the timeline seems to show his "plural marriage phase" being replaced by his "Quorum of the Anointed" phase, and I believe that was a course-correction on his part.

DBMormon, it sounds to me like you are implying that Joseph Smith was guilty of virtual incest; if so, then I would disagree with that characterization.  I don't think you can reliably say they had a father/daughter relationship any more than you could say I had a brother/sister relationship with a girl whose family we lived with for a while when I was in my teens. 

 

 

 

[bluebell]

36 minutes ago, Gray said:

If you can't judge  good from evil, how can you tell a good spiritual impulse from a bad one?

I didn't say ever that I am incapable of judging good from evil, only that I am incapable of perfectly judging good from evil.  I'm fallible.  Neither can I rely on myself to be the standard for what is good and what is evil because, again, i'm fallible.  I'm also too ignorant; I'm not even able to comprehend everything that I don't know I don't know, let alone accurately interpret everything that I do know, all which negatively impacts my ability use myself as a standard with much success.

To answer your question though, I believe that good spiritual impulses are those which generally bring love, joy, peace, longsuffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness,  and temperance with them.  

[bluebell]

3 minutes ago, stemelbow said:

I'll ignore the thing about I'm ignoring the scriptural good fruit stuff.  

 

So we have:

1.  Women had a place to seek our economic stability

    I suppose then the claim is women in 19century Utah who lived in polygamy were better off economically.  How do we know this?

2.  Women could escape abusive marriages

   What about women in plural marriages who were abused?  Do they not count?  is there any reason to think women in monogamous marriages were abused more than women in plural marriages?  What if a woman escaped an abusive monogamous marriage but was abused in a plural marriage?  This fruit sounds incredible guess.  They could have sought it out but I suppose they might not have had it better in a plural marriage.  So, doesn't quite sound like a fruit to me.

3.  Women didn't have to do as much around the house because they could share responsibility with other women.

    The issue here is can we show in some way that women in 19c Utah plural marriages were less busy around the house then 19c century women in the rest of the US?  With more women, more mess to clean up.  I'm not sure this can clearly be seen as a fruit at all.

4.  Women in plural marriage were possibly more likely to be in a feminist conscious-raising environment. 

  Again...I think something would have to be shown to prove this.  I'm all ears though.  

I have no desire to prove anything to you.  What you believe about polygamy is inconsequential to me.  I'm just sharing with you what I believe, because you specifically asked me.  If you want to know whether or not polygamy had any good fruit for yourself, then you'll have to actually read the words of those who lived it to see what they said.

  

[stemelbow]

5 minutes ago, bluebell said:

I have no desire to prove anything to you.  What you believe about polygamy is inconsequential to me.  I'm just sharing with you what I believe, because you specifically asked me.  If you want to know whether or not polygamy had any good fruit for yourself, then you'll have to actually read the words of those who lived it to see what they said.

  

I stated my reasons for discounting the fruit you mention.  If you dont' want to support your position, I'm fine with that.  I'm not concerned.  We can disagree and be fine.  I'm not sure why this got all snippy.  And I"ve read tons of words from many of those who practiced polygamy and while many seemed to be very good people, I don't see them identifying anything that can be considered a unique benefit of polygamy (other than claiming to be living a godly law and obeying).  And as I already said, the reasons you have stated or quoted from Sister Ulrich are an abysmal attempt to show good fruit.  And I mean no offense.  It just so happens I disagree.  

[bluebell]

4 minutes ago, stemelbow said:

I stated my reasons for discounting the fruit you mention.  If you dont' want to support your position, I'm fine with that.  I'm not concerned.  We can disagree and be fine.  I'm not sure why this got all snippy.  And I"ve read tons of words from many of those who practiced polygamy and while many seemed to be very good people, I don't see them identifying anything that can be considered a unique benefit of polygamy (other than claiming to be living a godly law and obeying).  And as I already said, the reasons you have stated or quoted from Sister Ulrich are an abysmal attempt to show good fruit.  And I mean no offense.  It just so happens I disagree.  

I'm not being snippy, I just don't want to engage with you on this topic.  The fact that you called Sister Ulrich's work in her book an "abysmal attempt to show good fruit" without even reading it is an example of why I don't believe any good will come from having this conversation with you.

I offered some evidence of the good fruit that those who lived it have spoken of in support of my position.  What I don't want to do is argue with you back and forth about why your understanding of the fruits of polygamy are more accurate than theirs.  It will be a waste of time.

[Calm]

 

Quote

 I suppose then the claim is women in 19century Utah who lived in polygamy were better off economically.  How do we know this?

 

Kathyrn Daynes' study showed this.  Immigrant women (who tended to be from lower socioeconomic classes) who married into plural marriages married quicker and into higher income families.  Her conclusion was that plural marriage helped redistribute the wealth.

https://books.google.com/books?id=8RuWiM2-YYAC&pg=PA98&lpg=PA98&dq=kathryn+daynes+immigrant+women+plural+monogamy&source=bl&ots=7OD6Q2qtC7&sig=Ge-Ct61DKdphl1e2KoPORdLeiuQ&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiwsqXA5rzYAhUI7GMKHTl9Cb0Q6AEIJzAB#v=onepage&q=kathryn daynes immigrant women plural monogamy&f=false

Quote

Women could escape abusive marriages

While not specific to abusive marriages, divorce for women was relatively easy during the years of plural marriage, enough so that Utah became the divorce capital of the US.  Daynes states the easiness of divorce encouraged people to risk marriage, including plural marriage.  Many who left a plural marriage later remarried plurally.

"Lenient divorce laws fostered members' marriages to Saints by permitting them to 
easily dissolve their marriages with nonbelievers or apostates. Leniency in 
granting divorces also allowed those unhappy in plural marriages to escape from 
them. Plural marriage made it possible for women to find other mates easily..."

Edited January 3, 2018 by Calm

[Eek!]

3 hours ago, Calm said:

My great great grandmother said living in plural marriage gave her and others the opportunity to experience in mortality the closest thing to the love we would know in the Celestial Kingdom.  She was well known for her loving care of her sister wife.

Very interesting.

I am under the impression that plural marriage could work well when it was what everyone in the relationship wanted, and specifically when the women all loved one another and wanted to be sister-wives to each another.  And conversely I am under the impression that when the husband took additional wives against the will of the first one(s), it didn't work out so well (surprise, surprise).  Do you know any of relevant specifics from your great-grandmother's marriage?

This in particular stands out to me:  "... the closest thing to the love we would know in the Celestial Kingdom."  It seems to me that in order for plural marriage to be the higher law given by a God who is good and fair and no respecter of persons, it would have to be a "better deal" for EVERYONE involved.   Do you think that (or something like it) was your great-grandmother's perception? 

[stemelbow]

9 minutes ago, bluebell said:

I'm not being snippy, I just don't want to engage with you on this topic.  The fact that you called Sister Ulrich's work in her book an "abysmal attempt to show good fruit" without even reading it is an example of why I don't believe any good will come from having this conversation with you.

Actually I called your attempt to show good fruit of plural marriage abysmal.  I don't know that the summary you quoted from the Times accurately represents Sister Ulrich, nor do I know that she thought the things said at you quoted it were an attempt to describe the good fruit of polygamy.  All we had to discuss was a snippet from an article mentioning the book and offering a bit of a summary.  I asked you what you thought and you offered me the quotation. I responded and asked some questions and asked for support, which on both counts you refused.      

9 minutes ago, bluebell said:

I offered some evidence of the good fruit that those who lived it have spoken of in support of my position.  

 

I don't think so and I said why.  But we can certainly disagree on that point.  What you offered were comments, it seems, that seemed to show that polygamy was not as bad as it seemed in some cases and in some ways.  I don't think that those comments showed any particular fruits of polygamy.  

9 minutes ago, bluebell said:

What I don't want to do is argue with you back and forth about why your understanding of the fruits of polygamy are more accurate than theirs.  It will be a waste of time.

No need.  I already said I'm happy to think you have no support for a claim of good fruits from polygamy even if you feel you have offered support.  It seems we simply disagree that the quote you offered actually described good fruits of polygamy.  

[Calm]

https://www.npr.org/2017/01/17/510246850/how-mormon-polygamy-in-the-19th-century-fueled-womens-activism

"ULRICH: Mormons supported suffrage for women, I think, as a way of calling the bluff of 19th-century antagonists, who claimed that women were subordinated in Mormonism. And that - in a kind of joking way, a writer in The New York Times said, well, let's give them the vote, and then they can, you know, eliminate polygamy. Well, Mormons thought that was a rather bright idea. Some people have assumed, well, the men just came up with this idea as a kind of political move. But what we know now, through very careful research in the minutes of women's meetings, is that they asked for it.

GROSS: The women asked for it?

ULRICH: The women asked for it. For many of us, we think that the women's rights movement is about seizing power over men who appear to be controlling our lives, right to wages, right to divorce, right to enter any profession we would like. In truth, many Mormon women already had those rights. And when they acted publicly in 1870, when this discussion was going on, they astonished the world by creating a very large meeting to defend polygamy, which one woman expressed as the right to choose my own husband.

Now, I think we have to look at that public demonstration in behalf of polygamy in more than one way. These were women who had suffered the loss of homes, had suffered incredible hardships - through the persecution..."

"

GROSS: So something I found very interesting, you quote a reporter from New Jersey who wrote, what is the use of women's suffrage if it is to be used to bolster up an institution so degrading to the sex and demoralizing to society? And he's referring, there, to plural marriage. But then, two famous suffragists, Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony, support suffrage in Utah and say, you know, polygamy and monogamy, they're both oppressive systems for women.

And Stanton says, the condition of women is slavery today and must be so, so long as they are shut out of the world of work, helpless dependents on man for bread. So I think it's really interesting to see these two suffragists basically say, oh, you think plural marriage is oppressive? Well, look at your own marriage. Your own monogamous marriage is oppressive to women, too.

ULRICH: Yes, absolutely. They're talking about laws. Specific laws, in the 19th century, was oppressive. Many states still followed the common law Doctrine of Coverture, which declared a woman civilly dead once she married. It's not just...

GROSS: So she had no legal rights over her money, her property. She had no ownership over them.

ULRICH: Her money, her - her money, her property - she couldn't sue or take a case to court except under a father or a husband - so dependency. The right to divorce - although divorce laws were greatly liberalized in the 19th century in most parts of the country, it was definitely - you had to prove either adultery - it took a while for physical abuse to be grounds for divorce.

Utah had no fault divorce from the beginning. It was very, very open and pretty common. And particularly, I think that made plural marriage workable. If you didn't like it, you could leave. And there was no real stigma, which is what's interesting. Well, I can't say that. Of course, there must have been. People may have looked down on other people. But people who were high authorities in the church had multiple divorces. Women who were divorced went on to marry somebody higher up in the hierarchy. It's a very different world than we imagine. And so instead of comparing plural marriage in the 19th century to our notions of women's rights today, we need to compare plural marriage, monogamy and then other institutions that really distressed people in the 19th century, like prostitution for example, different kinds of bigamous relationships.

So Mormons would argue, many American men have multiple sexual partners. They're just not responsible. They don't acknowledge them. They don't give them dignity. They don't legitimate their children. So polygamy is a solution to the horrendous licentiousness of other Americans. Seems like a strange argument to us today, but in this era, it made sense to some people.

GROSS: Well, another thing about the early divorce law in Utah - didn't that also make it easier for women in monogamous marriages - and maybe monogamous marriages outside of the Mormon faith - to divorce their husbands and enter into a plural marriage with a Mormon family?

ULRICH: Yes. We think of marriage in the 19th century as a very stable institution supported by laws - strict laws, hard to be divorced, et cetera, et cetera. But the major means of divorce in the 19th century was probably just leaving town...."

"ULRICH: And men did that more easily than women. But bigamy was pretty common in the 19th century. What's interesting about the Mormons is they sanctified new relationships for women who had fled abusive or alcoholic husbands. A number of these married both monogamously and polygamous among the Latter-day Saints. And they were welcomed into the community and not stigmatized.

One woman said that when Joseph Smith married her, even though she was legally married to somebody in South Carolina - you know, it was a long ways away - it was like receiving golden apples in baskets of silver. That is, she was not an outcast woman. She was a woman who had made her own choice and had left a bad situation, and now she was going to enter a relationship with a man she could admire."

[stemelbow]

15 minutes ago, Calm said:

" I suppose then the claim is women in 19century Utah who lived in polygamy were better off economically.  How do we know this?"

Kathyrn Daynes' study showed this.  Immigrant women (who tended to be from lower socioeconomic classes) who married into plural marriages married quicker and into higher income families.  Her conclusion was that plural marriage helped redistribute the wealth.

https://books.google.com/books?id=8RuWiM2-YYAC&pg=PA98&lpg=PA98&dq=kathryn+daynes+immigrant+women+plural+monogamy&source=bl&ots=7OD6Q2qtC7&sig=Ge-Ct61DKdphl1e2KoPORdLeiuQ&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiwsqXA5rzYAhUI7GMKHTl9Cb0Q6AEIJzAB#v=onepage&q=kathryn daynes immigrant women plural monogamy&f=false

It may be that women in Utah moved up socioeconomic classes when joining in with plural marriages, but that doesn't really show the fruit of plural marriage.  It may be that without plural marriage these women and men might have all been better of economically.    Let's compare women in Utah to women in other parts of the US for instance.  Were women in Utah who were in polygamous marriages better off economically than other women in the US?   

When I click your link it is discussing how many women or the rate of women are marrying plurally.  it is not discussing anything about women who marry other women's husbands become richer.  So I'm not sure where you want me to go in order to discuss it.

[Calm]

23 minutes ago, Eek! said:

Very interesting.

I am under the impression that plural marriage could work well when it was what everyone in the relationship wanted, and specifically when the women all loved one another and wanted to be sister-wives to each another.  And conversely I am under the impression that when the husband took additional wives against the will of the first one(s), it didn't work out so well (surprise, surprise).  Do you know any of relevant specifics from your great-grandmother's marriage?

This in particular stands out to me:  "... the closest thing to the love we would know in the Celestial Kingdom."  It seems to me that in order for plural marriage to be the higher law given by a God who is good and fair and no respecter of persons, it would have to be a "better deal" for EVERYONE involved.   Do you think that (or something like it) was your great-grandmother's perception? 

My ggmother (may have been one more great, names were similar) told her husband it was time to get permission to enter into a second marriage and then told him who to marry.  Don't have any of his commentary on it, but he married three additional wives eventually.

I know she was rather a snob about plural marriage, but it might have been based on feeling defensive.  She didn't take kindly to being pitied by monogamous women (and she appeared to believe a lot of that went on, I don't know if this was true or if she was oversensitive) and made a cutting remark about how they may pity her, but she never saw a monogamous household that was as well cared for as a plural one (iirc, there were specifics about having the front step clean among other things, I got the impression she saw them as lazy or too arrogant/selfcentered to get their own hands dirty).

I don't think everyone has to be on the same page for some to feel like they are in a wonderful relationship.  I have a relative who thought he was up until the day his wife told him she had married him only for his future social standing and wealth and was leaving him.  

I agree eternally speaking, it has to be for the benefit of all involved.  Sacrifices where one ends up with less than another or even suffering aren't meant to be lived eternally.  They are done so that the future can be better.

[Calm]

14 minutes ago, stemelbow said:

It may be that women in Utah moved up socioeconomic classes when joining in with plural marriages, but that doesn't really show the fruit of plural marriage.  It may be that without plural marriage these women and men might have all been better of economically.    Let's compare women in Utah to women in other parts of the US for instance.  Were women in Utah who were in polygamous marriages better off economically than other women in the US?   

When I click your link it is discussing how many women or the rate of women are marrying plurally.  it is not discussing anything about women who marry other women's husbands become richer.  So I'm not sure where you want me to go in order to discuss it.

There is a chapter after that one on economics, unfortunately not all of the book is previewed.

Edited January 3, 2018 by Calm

[Analytics]

On ‎1‎/‎1‎/‎2018 at 5:35 AM, kiwi57 said:

That's false. Of course.

We are talking about Joseph inviting a young woman to become his plural wife.

Incidentally, it's kind of funny the way you trip over your own feet in your attempt to compete with the sanctimonious judgmentalism of your fellow anti-Mormons. A scandal isn't a scandal until it becomes public knowledge; if something is "scandalous" then it is, by definition, not "secret." Your zealous piling up of accusatory adjectives has led you to contradict yourself.

 

Definition 1 of scandalous is, "disgraceful; shameful or shocking; improper." That was the sense in which I was using the term.

Of course, you could frame Joseph's "invitation" as being pure as snow. But that doesn't change the fact that had Joseph's wife, Lucy Walker's father, or the Saints in general found out about such "invitations", it would have been superlatively scandalous in every sense of the word.

[ttribe]

4 minutes ago, Analytics said:

Definition 1 of scandalous is, "disgraceful; shameful or shocking; improper." That was the sense in which I was using the term.

Of course, you could frame Joseph's "invitation" as being pure as snow. But that doesn't change the fact that had Joseph's wife, Lucy Walker's father, or the Saints in general found out about such "invitations", it would have been superlatively scandalous in every sense of the word.

He can't respond.  He's been thrown out of the thread.

[JLHPROF]

22 minutes ago, Analytics said:

But that doesn't change the fact that had Joseph's wife, Lucy Walker's father, or the Saints in general found out about such "invitations", it would have been superlatively scandalous in every sense of the word.

Lucy Walker's father gave his approval.  Admittedly after the fact since he was on a mission, but when he returned he approved.

• When father returned from his mission, the matter being fully explained in connection with the doctrine, received his endorsement and all parties concerned received his approbation.
  William Holmes Walker, Reminiscence and Diary, 7–10