The March Continues: Up Next- Plural Marriage

[Bernard Gui]

10 hours ago, Calm said:

Children learn a great deal by watching others, especially parents, but grandparents and other immediate family as well.****  Church leaders who dedicated so much of their lives to God's work (those were lifelong callings in ways we probably couldn't stomach...years gone as missionaries, for example) probably had many children who seeing their parents and their 'coworkers' placing great value in their active faith believed that dedicating their own lives in the same way was a noble choice and when called themselves as adults had the desire to fulfill those callings to the best of their ability (the parents probably also had children who rejected that choice because they did not see the value in it that their siblings did, there are things I have rejected that I felt cost myself and my siblings too much...I chose a husband who could teach my kids how to play instead of work as my parents taught us...the kids are good at working at what they love, things like clean houses not so much, my parents would probably have had a fit if they caught us on a typical day these days).  

The adult children would also probably be more aware of the costs and perhaps even highly motivated to figure out how to minimize them for their own children, thus developing a core group of descendants who valued sacrifice, but were more capable of doing it wisely.

So it is not just about numbers of children or even righteous children, but perhaps in order for the Church to develop strong enough God needed a core of leaders knowledgeable in the demands of the committed leader's life because they saw examples in their own families...and then became examples for their children.  Passing on a family skill that grew in knowledge and refinement through the generations.  Beyond just desiring to serve, the children also likely learned leadership and counseling skills by watching their parents, their successes and failures; perhaps they even got to participate and work along side the adults as they grew up.

 In essence, their family life was an apprenticeship in Church leadership started in the crib.  Wouldn't have worked out that way for all of them perhaps, but more likely than in a nonleadership family.  Such a training process would have saved a lot of trial and error in a time when the Church needed a strong inner stability because of the turmoil going on outside of it.  Plural marriage, in many ways, could be seen as a foundation of a leadership guild.

Add the instant extremely supportive network of extended family plural marriage would have created where at least amount leadership, everyone quickly became related by blood or marriage to everyone else (you have a few men with five wives as leaders and a number more with two wives in a town...when the second generation marries, instant patriarchal tribe more or less I bet).

----

****In my family out of five kids, three of us went into engineering...I know I chose engineering because of the example of my father, the engineer (and son of a self taught engineer and brother of another engineer), and his counsel...I should have chosen physics (my true passion), ended up in psychology, guess I am more cerebral than my brothers.  My mother love the Word, language (not the Bible, though she loved that to)...her mom had been an English teacher. Mom was an artist, but fascinated with language,  My other sister is also an English teacher.  My mom sparked my interest in psychology and religion by seeing her study all the time and talking to her about it.

In my husband's family, dad was a professor/psychologist.  Eldest son became medical doctor, other three sons became psychologists or therapists.  Mom had nursing training (can't remember just what).  One daughter became a nurse, another daughter physical therapy, two sons married nurses, one a psychologist (me).  Other two daughters, I don't know what they did before marriage...but just like their mom, all the daughters have been RS Pres. And Stake Leaders.  Like their dad, all the men have been Bishops or HCs.  

Kids become who their parents are to a great extent, though hopefully we take what we are given and draw satisfaction by putting our own personal mark on it. 

Thank you so much for this thoughtful substantive reply. I am in complete agreement.You have expressed these thoughts so well, but you always do! Far better than I seem to be able to do. What you have described is what I believe Jacob had in mind when he said “raise seed unto the Lord.” I believe these Saints (men and women) did precisely that. Through extensive missionary efforts abroad and the creation of large families at home, the Church was able to quickly establish a core of faithful leadership (men and women) and membership whose influence persists today. It was never easy and many times it was unpleasant, but I am grateful to them for their faithful sacrifices.

This will be my final comment on Mormon polygamy in this thread.

 

 

 

Edited May 28, 2018 by Bernard Gui

[Bernard Gui]

16 minutes ago, Jeanne said:

Well.I hope so. 

I firmly believe it.

[2BizE]

On 5/25/2018 at 9:22 AM, ALarson said:

I've never objected to consenting adults deciding to live polygamy.  It's the marrying of 14 year old girls and other teens plus the lies told to hide this type of behavior (keeping the truth from their wife/wives) that is wrong to do, IMO.

What kind of creep would marry a 14 year old?

[Bernard Gui]

12 minutes ago, 2BizE said:

What kind of creep would marry a 14 year old?

Move along, please. 

[california boy]

5 hours ago, 2BizE said:

What kind of creep would marry a 14 year old?

According to some, someone who just wants to raise up “righteous seed”.  Evidently, no grown women were available. Evidently, Lorenzo Snow was 60 something when he married his 14byear old bride. Yikes.

[Calm]

29 minutes ago, california boy said:

According to some, someone who just wants to raise up “righteous seed”.  Evidently, no grown women were available. Evidently, Lorenzo Snow was 60 something when he married his 14byear old bride. Yikes.

People can have misunderstandings about how best to achieve worthwhile goals.

From what Helen herself writes, it sounds in Joseph's case that the intent was to join two families who cared about each other deeply into one.  That this could be done by sealings of ancestors rather than direct, immediate sealings (as occurred through Law of Adoption) was not revealed for some reason until Wilford Woodruff's time.

 

[california boy]

58 minutes ago, Calm said:

People can have misunderstandings about how best to achieve worthwhile goals.

From what Helen herself writes, it sounds in Joseph's case that the intent was to join two families who cared about each other deeply into one.  That this could be done by sealings of ancestors rather than direct, immediate sealings (as occurred through Law of Adoption) was not revealed for some reason until Wilford Woodruff's time.

 

I should correct the ages. I decided I should look up the exact information.  Lorenzo Snow was 57 when he married 16 year old Sarah Jensen.  6 our of his 9 wives were teenagers when he married them.

[Calm]

58 minutes ago, california boy said:

I should correct the ages. I decided I should look up the exact information.  Lorenzo Snow was 57 when he married 16 year old Sarah Jensen.  6 our of his 9 wives were teenagers when he married them.

I am not familiar with the details of Snow's relationships, so have no clue what the motivation might be there.

It might have been the driving down of ages that occurred during the peak plural marriage activity.  This is imo a result of one likely misunderstanding, numbers were made too important of a sign of faithfulness.

----

I am not so sure Joseph saw the "righteous seed" as a big of a deal as "eternal families"  I don't have my Bushman RSR book anymore so years since I lent it out and it got lost, so my memory of what I read cannot be doubledchecked, but I have the impression that Bushman saw Joseph working to create an extended family among his friends in the here and now and was less concerned with doing much more than he was already doing towards raising up a righteous seed.  If his celestial kingdom here on earth vision was successful, righteous seed would inherently follow as day follows night.

Edited May 29, 2018 by Calm

[california boy]

1 hour ago, Calm said:

I am not familiar with the details of Snow's relationships, so have no clue what the motivation might be there.

It might have been the driving down of ages that occurred during the peak plural marriage activity.  This is imo a result of one likely misunderstanding, numbers were made too important of a sign of faithfulness.

----

I am not so sure Joseph saw the "righteous seed" as a big of a deal as "eternal families"  I don't have my Bushman RSR book anymore so years since I lent it out and it got lost, so my memory of what I read cannot be doubledchecked, but I have the impression that Bushman saw Joseph working to create an extended family among his friends in the here and now and was less concerned with doing much more than he was already doing towards raising up a righteous seed.  If his celestial kingdom here on earth vision was successful, righteous seed would inherently follow as day follows night.

I think it is more difficult to know or understand what the goals of Joseph Smith were in his marriages.  But it becomes much more clear how it was practiced when the saints were in Utah.  

[Gray]

Does anyone have a good legal theory for why the supreme court could potentially rule in favor of plural marriage rights in the future? I don't see a case for it myself, but I also don't see a particularly compelling reason for it to be something that is prosecuted, except in the case of coercion/underage marriages.

[HappyJackWagon]

It's really quite fascinating/entertaining to watch Mormons act offended by the prospect of consenting adults...gasp...practicing plural marriage. Poor Brigham must be turning in his grave.

Ronaldo may help polygamy become cooler but Mormons were the pioneers of the sxual polygamous revolution before it was cool. There must be some credit for that, right?

[ALarson]

1 hour ago, HappyJackWagon said:

It's really quite fascinating/entertaining to watch Mormons act offended by the prospect of consenting adults...gasp...practicing plural marriage. Poor Brigham must be turning in his grave.

Ronaldo may help polygamy become cooler but Mormons were the pioneers of the sxual polygamous revolution before it was cool. There must be some credit for that, right?

It's also pretty funny to see someone start a thread regarding polygamy on a Mormon discussion board and then want to forbid the discussion of Mormon polygamy in the thread.  When things got to be difficult to discuss or defend (regarding Mormon polygamy), all of a sudden it was banned from the discussion.  Also, why is it potentially harmful to the institution of marriage to think of polygamy entering the picture now, but it wasn't harmful to marriages back in the early days of the church?  I wonder how good Lorenzo Snow's marriages were with all those teenage girls (and yes, he did consummate the ones with the 16 year old girls as they had children quite soon after marriage....and he was close to 60 years old at that time, iirc.)

But we're discussing some soccer player living with or marrying two women?

Edited May 29, 2018 by ALarson

[JLHPROF]

3 minutes ago, ALarson said:

Also, why is it harmful to the institution of marriage to think of polygamy entering the picture now, but it wasn't harmful to marriages back in the early days of the church? 

In the early days of the Church polygamy was spoken of as a higher law, a sacred practice.  Considering how unholy most matrimony seems to be today, I'm not sure it would be good for legal polygamy or polygamy being accepted culturally either.

I  don't worry about polygamy being harmful to marriage.  I worry about sacred things being degraded by public consumption.  Society has made a mess of marriage and degraded it by the removal of God.  Why would we want society going any further down that path?

[Stargazer]

On 5/27/2018 at 7:54 AM, california boy said:

Thanks. That is helpful. I don’t pot people on ignore because I like reading all sides of an issue. But I will take your advice on how to deal with someone who ignores what I am saying and takes what I have said out of context 

I have decided to deal with certain such individuals the same way myself. Not you, by the way.  The straw man builders, for instance.

Edited May 29, 2018 by Stargazer

[Stargazer]

On 5/28/2018 at 12:26 AM, JulieM said:

My thoughts exactly.  You have to be presumptuous enough to believe only those men named could raise righteous seed or that all these wives couldn’t raise righteous children unless they were married to these men.  These women could have had more children with other husbands and raised more children with a father who was more present in the home, imo, who were righteous seed.  There were many good men in addition to the ones named in that post.

The earlier post by california boy, which mentioned that BY had produced just around 2 children per wife gives me a thought.  A man with 27 wives is not going to be able to spend a lot of "quality time" with each one (about 2 weeks with each one during the year), and it might be expected that there will be a low birthrate per wife.  Sorry to get so numeric with this, but...

If a mother has only two or three children, and is being supported by her husband to the extent that she can devote herself to them more intently than if both parents were working, then it seems like there would be a greater likelihood that she would be able to raise them to be strong in the gospel.  The opposite case would be a monogamous couple with, say, ten children.  The mother would be stretched in her ability to pay equal attention to them all, and thus might have a more difficult time keeping them all strong in the gospel.  On top of that, if there were four other sister wives forming a support community, there would be plenty of mothering resources overall.  I don't know if sister wives were close enough to form such communities together, however.  I'm sure that at least some were.

In connection with this, one has to consider that a woman who is living in a plural marriage is probably likely to be a very strong believer, and thus might be better at inculcating that faith into her children than some other woman who might not be so believing.  Of course there would be exceptions on both sides.  There always are.

Don't know if this theory holds water, but it's something that occurred to me.

Edited May 29, 2018 by Stargazer

[Bernard Gui]

Deleted to end derailing

Edited May 29, 2018 by Bernard Gui

[california boy]

8 minutes ago, Bernard Gui said:

What do you think that says about President Snow? 

Evidently President Snow liked to marry teenage girls. 

[Stargazer]

On 5/28/2018 at 1:16 AM, JulieM said:

Why not ever name all the mothers it took to raise these 800 children?  I’d guess they had more to do with raising them than these 20 men spread thinly between 800 children.  

And, were there not many, many other good men who would have married these women monogamously and raised more children in the church?  They could have actually been in the home with their wife and all their children.  Also, men may have converted to the gospel and married these good women increasing the membership.  Your reasoning is faulty here, imo.

I don't think the reasoning is faulty.  If I recall correctly, it was the mothers in Israel (talking ancient Israel here) that were considered to be the most important parent in raising children, the one that would be with them, that would be doing the most to transmit the traditions.  To put a more modern twist on the issue, how many of today's feminists, such as the one who said this:

would be glad to agree that men can be helpful sometimes, but are only essential as sperm donors?  Female bears raise their cubs in complete isolation from male bears, and while it is clear that we are not bears, single women have been raising children without the children's fathers for thousands of years.  I like to say that it's best if both parents are present and active in childrearing, but flexibility is important.

[Stargazer]

On 5/28/2018 at 6:32 AM, jpv said:

Nobody is interested in answering your question it seems.

There is no answer to his question that doesn't hoist some on their own petards.  Many of those Congressmen who cried bloody murder about polygamy in Utah went home in the evening not to their wives, whom they left in their home districts (ostensibly due to the expense), but to the mistresses they could afford to entertain.  

[Bernard Gui]

2 hours ago, HappyJackWagon said:

It's really quite fascinating/entertaining to watch Mormons act offended by the prospect of consenting adults...gasp...practicing plural marriage. Poor Brigham must be turning in his grave.

Ronaldo may help polygamy become cooler but Mormons were the pioneers of the sxual polygamous revolution before it was cool. There must be some credit for that, right?

 Wrong. Neither making plural marriage cool nor taking offense that adults do what adults do are the reasons for bringing up the soccer player in Brazil. That has been the clear intent throughout the discussion. 

The question is what changed when he decided (according to news reports) to marry the two or three women with whom he is living? It was presented as a catalyst to examine a broad and persistent societal view that condemned the Mormon practice more than a century ago. Living with, having relationships with, and having children with multiple un-married partners is viewed as less egregious than marrying them. The former is acceptable, but the latter is prosecutable. He was not criticized until he revealed plans to marry the women with which he was living as if they were married. Before that he was an international hero.

Why is that?

[Bernard Gui]

Deleted to end derailing

Edited May 29, 2018 by Bernard Gui

[JulieM]

15 minutes ago, california boy said:

Evidently President Snow liked to marry teenage girls. 

And have sexual relations with them as well.  I’m not sure why some here are ok with that for then but would find it very distasteful to see today.

Also, I’ve read that Lorenzo Snow starting dating  or preparing young girls as young as 9 years old to become one of his future wives.  I’ll try too look up where I read that.

[Bernard Gui]

9 minutes ago, Stargazer said:

There is no answer to his question that doesn't hoist some on their own petards.  Many of those Congressmen who cried bloody murder about polygamy in Utah went home in the evening not to their wives, whom they left in their home districts (ostensibly due to the expense), but to the mistresses they could afford to entertain.  

Which fact was noted by many LDS men and women at the time. It’s interesting that the same hypocrisy persists today, which is what this thread is about.

Edited May 29, 2018 by Bernard Gui

[Bernard Gui]

4 minutes ago, JulieM said:

And have sexual relations with them as well.  I’m not sure why some here are ok with that for then but would find it very distasteful to see today.

Also, I’ve read that Lorenzo Snow starting dating  or preparing young girls as young as 9 years old to become one of his future wives.  I’ll try too look up where I read that.

Please start your own thread to do that.

[Stargazer]

23 hours ago, california boy said:

Wait.  You believe it inappropriate to talk about the wives of these polygamist marriages and their role in raising up righteous seed in a thread about the legitimacy of polygamy based on raising righteous seed?  Especially when you are the one that introduced the fathers of these marriages and how many children they fathered   Now it is inappropriate to talk about what role the wives played?   Do you even realize how this makes you sound?

That's what I meant when I talked about straw men.  Bernard didn't say it wasn't appropriate, per se, only that it was not the topic of the thread, and if someone wanted to address the question of the mothers, he seemed to think that was a great idea, and not inappropriate at all. 

If one is going to hold another responsible for his words, then one should at least have the courtesy of holding him responsible for the words he actually used, instead of others that might possibly give one a false advantage.  

If I understood correctly, the question he was asking had to do with the calumnity of someone marrying two or more women versus the "so what, who cares" matter of living with them without benefit of marriage.  

Edited May 29, 2018 by Stargazer