Random Polygamy Question

[pogi]

1 hour ago, katherine the great said:

I don’t discount the idea that he did marry the daughter. But I don’t think he had an actual marriage with the mother.  I think it was a sealing for eternity not for time. I’m not saying I approve or even understand these things. It’s very weird and seems strange and unnecessary to me. But I don’t see Joseph Smith having a full, consummated marriage with a mother and her daughter. I’d need a lot more evidence than I see to believe that.  Orson Pratt on the other hand, didn’t seem to have very many boundaries. It’s a fact he married a woman and her niece and fathered  children by both of them.

It wasn't a terribly uncommon practice in the early church to marry a mother and daughter - sometimes 2 daughters.  It certainly wasn't looked down upon or questioned by any in leadership. As I stated previously, I am a product of such a polygamous marriage.  They were married by George Q Cannon.  Their journals speak of receiving their second anointing in Aug of 1892 in the Salt Lake Temple - so despite the Leviticus passage, there was no burning.  Quite the opposite.   I agree that it is strange and hard to wrap my head around, but it was indeed an accepted practice in the early church.

[katherine the great]

30 minutes ago, Robert F. Smith said:

I cannot now recall the point made by Pratt, but the entire debate is here,  https://www.gutenberg.org/files/51140/51140-h/51140-h.htm  .  And discussion here  https://scholarsarchive.byu.edu/etd/4776/ .

Just skimming through it. He was very wordy-perhaps deliberately designed to confuse the listener. It sounds like he’s basically saying that Mormons (his terminology) reject the law of Moses therefore the prohibition has no bearing on them. 😳

[Olmec Donald]

54 minutes ago, Robert F. Smith said:

Moreover, despite professional efforts, no biological descendant of Joseph has been found -- apart from those he fathered by Emma, his first wife during that entire period.

Thank you for the update, I knew that was the case as of many years ago, but didn't know the current status.  Very interesting, especially if one of the justifications was to "raise up righteous seed" or something like that.  Is it possible that that particular justification did not originate with Joseph, but with Brigham?

It has been ballpark two decades since I did my very amateur research of this topic.  I drew out a timeline on butcher paper showing when Joseph's (weakly alleged in some cases) plural marriages occurred, along with other events, and my recollection is that the number of plural marriages started out slow and then accelerated, and then virtually stopped, with one very late-in-the-game sealing to an elderly woman.  The virtual stoppage approximately coincided with the formation of the Quorum of the Anointed, to which his attention seemed to shift.  I came away with the hypothesis that Joseph's concept of what our associations would be like in the Celestial Kingdom had evolved, and that the version which became Utah Valley Era polygamy was not the apex of that evolution.

And chances are I'm wrong.

Edited October 26, 2021 by Olmec Donald

[katherine the great]

27 minutes ago, pogi said:

It wasn't a terribly uncommon practice in the early church to marry a mother and daughter - sometimes 2 daughters.  It certainly wasn't looked down upon or questioned by any in leadership.

I’m an anthropologist and I understand that there are many forms of valid marriage in human societies. But this really makes my skin crawl (my apologies to your ancestors. There was an uncle-niece marriage in my family tree as well that kind of creeps me out). A man marrying a mother and daughter simultaneously would be a very, very unusual arrangement in any society. The only time I’ve even heard of it being accepted is in a particular Asian culture where a widowed woman must marry within her own clan and if the only available prospective husbands are much younger than her, she could use her young daughter to “sweeten the deal” if you will. In those cases though, the older woman does not engage in sexual relations with the young husband. That is left to her daughter to fulfill that part of the marriage contract. 
I wonder if such church members had any idea how completely outside the norms they were with the mother/daughter thing. I read of one such case when the daughter was seven or eight when her mother married this man and then he married her when she came of age. That is crossing boundaries that are clearly abnormal. He had been a father figure to her for years and IMO it’s borderline incest.

[mrmarklin]

Again, conflating sealing with marriage. 🥱

[Calm]

18 minutes ago, mrmarklin said:

Again, conflating sealing with marriage. 🥱

If a man and woman are sealed and they have children together, is it safe to assume they are also married by the law of the Church?

[mrmarklin]

17 minutes ago, Calm said:

If a man and woman are sealed and they have children together, is it safe to assume they are also married by the law of the Church?

Marriages as we know them are ratified by civil authorities.  AFAIK, the temple sealers are also acting on behalf of civil authorities when they sign the marriage certificate. You all realize, of course, that prior to 1894, it was fairly common the have sealings to people of the same sex in the Church?  This was not considered marriage.

I am not such a theologian as to totally understand this, but it’s part of all of us belonging to the greater human family of God. 

Edited October 26, 2021 by mrmarklin

[Calm]

1 minute ago, mrmarklin said:

Marriages as we know them are ratified by civil authorities.  

So do you believe no one was breaking the Law of Moses when both a mother and a daughter had children by the same man both were sealed to because only one of them might have been married to the man? (Or perhaps neither were married to him, but only sealed?)

[mrmarklin]

8 minutes ago, Calm said:

So do you believe no one was breaking the Law of Moses when both a mother and a daughter had children by the same man both were sealed to because only one of them might have been married to the man? (Or perhaps neither were married to him, but only sealed?)

I modified my previous post. Please read it. I have no opinion on your assertion that the Law of Moses was broken, because I don’t have all the facts. 

[Calm]

So the only point you are making is that people confuse the two terms…but this point then has no relevance to the discussion of the several reports of a man being sealed to both mother and daughter and both of them having his children?  Nor anything to do with any sort of sealing where a man is sealed to both mother and daughter where at least one of them has no children?

If you have no opinion on the Law of Moses issue, could you please quote what you were responding to when you posted

Quote

Again, conflating sealing with marriage. 🥱

Also curious if you believe the Second Anointing can take place between a man and a woman who are sealed together, but not sealed in a marriage relationship?  (I am assuming you are referring to Law of Adoption sealings).

Edited October 26, 2021 by Calm

[Calm]

40 minutes ago, mrmarklin said:

it was fairly common the have sealings to people of the same sex in the Church?  This was not considered marriage.

It was considered a family sealing, yes?  These weren’t simply sealings of men to men and women to women, it was a father and mother being sealed to a child…three people involved in a sealing, not two.

Added:  trying to understand what point you were making, why the conflation argument was relevant to the discussion of marriage and/or sealing of a man to multiple women.  Are you suggesting in mother daughter cases, the man was sealed to one of them as a husband and the other as a father or a son?

Or are you suggesting using the term “polygamy” or “ plural marriage” is inappropriate in the case of sealing only relationships?

Edited October 26, 2021 by Calm

[Mike Drop]

10 hours ago, Robert F. Smith said:

Moreover, despite professional efforts, no biological descendant of Joseph has been found -- apart from those he fathered by Emma, his first wife during that entire period.

Legally, Emma was his only wife. Spiritually/eternally, if I remember correctly Joseph was actually sealed to 10/12 women before he was sealed to Emma. I think Louisa Beaman was Joseph’s actual first “spiritual” wife.

[rchorse]

While I agree that a man marrying both a mother and a daughter is strange, I'm confused by the concern that it violates the Law of Moses. Is anyone concerned that I eat bacon, ribs and other forms of pork regularly? That would also be a violation of the Law of Moses. Am I wrong in understanding that the Law of Moses was fulfilled in Christ?

I personally find a mother/daughter marriage distasteful, but the fact that it violates Mosaic law is not one of my concerns.

[SeekingUnderstanding]

4 hours ago, mrmarklin said:

it was fairly common the have sealings to people of the same sex in the Church?

This is just not true. J Stapley  has a couple of great papers on the topic. Every single sealing you are referring to was of a man sealed to parents (a man and a woman). It was an adoption and the equivalent of parent child sealings now. 
 

https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1885588

Edited October 26, 2021 by SeekingUnderstanding

[LoudmouthMormon]

Quote

Ding ding ding ding ding, we have a winner! Do you even realize what you just admitted? Yes, the gospel of Jesus Christ is first and foremost about eternal polygamist relationships.  Heavenly Father has made it possible for us to partake in his eternal plan while living here on earth. If I’m correct, and I am correct about a man who is sealed to two wives is a polygamist, that means of the 17 Mormon prophets, 9 have been polygamist. Am I wrong? 

Not sure what your point is.  Yes, the system currently in place allows a guy to be sealed to multiple women, if one of them isn't in the marriage picture.   No, I don't believe you could call that a "polygamist" situation, because polygamy has to do with folks all alive and together here on earth.

Honestly, if one is going to have some system where earthly covenantal relationships are binding after death, reality forces one to have some system in place to handle this stuff.  The alternative is that marriage relationships are dissolved after death.  The notion that we become sexless angels, happy to spend an eternity in worship of God with our harps and halos is pleasant enough theology, but it's not mine.

I dunno, whenever I see some critic jumping up and down gleefully and clapping their hands in some "gotcha" moment over LDS sealings, I just get the mental image of middle schoolers writing dirty things in each other's yearbooks about who slept with who, and who is the hottest girl and whatnot.  It's like there's a hidden assumption, where sealings are just unthinkingly assumed to be about nasty church leaders getting some young sweet action in bed.

Such notions might speak to the individual critic's maturity levels or value system, but it's a problematic criticism for several reasons.  Fertile, virile Joseph's lack of children with anyone but Emma being a biggie. 

 

Edited October 26, 2021 by LoudmouthMormon

[pogi]

5 hours ago, mrmarklin said:

Again, conflating sealing with marriage. 🥱

 No, these mother-daughter marriages/sealings were consummated marriages and approved by the top leadership. 

Quote

They were married the following February 18, 1864, in Salt Lake City, Utah. The marriage was verified by the Crescent Ward Records, Film 2, pg-05-869 in Salt Lake City, Utah. Their home was a log house with dirt floor and roof.

A year later, because she was past the child-bearing age, she gave consent for Thomas to marry her daughter, Louisa Harriett Mills. They were married in February 9, 1865, and they all lived together until Francis’ death in 1888.

The marriage of my GGG grandfather to his daughter-in-law (yes, that is weird to say) in 1865 was presided by George Q Cannon, with Brigham Young and Heber C Kimball acting as the witnesses.  They had 14 (not 12 as I previously recollected) children together. 

[katherine the great]

1 hour ago, rchorse said:

While I agree that a man marrying both a mother and a daughter is strange, I'm confused by the concern that it violates the Law of Moses. Is anyone concerned that I eat bacon, ribs and other forms of pork regularly? That would also be a violation of the Law of Moses. Am I wrong in understanding that the Law of Moses was fulfilled in Christ?

I personally find a mother/daughter marriage distasteful, but the fact that it violates Mosaic law is not one of my concerns.

Are we free to discard the 10 Commandments too? Maybe some parts of the Mosaic law are worth preserving. Especially one like this that seems to defy the laws of nature. 

Edited October 26, 2021 by katherine the great

[rchorse]

12 minutes ago, katherine the great said:

Are we free to discard the 10 Commandments too? Maybe some parts of the Mosaic law are worth preserving. Especially one like this that seems to defy the laws of nature. 

Given that all of the Ten Commandments are affirmed in scripture after the ministry of Christ, I don't think they're unique to Mosaic Law.

I'm not in favor of a man marrying a mother and her daughter(s). I just find the appeal to the Law of Moses strange and not particularly compelling.

[pogi]

1 hour ago, rchorse said:

While I agree that a man marrying both a mother and a daughter is strange, I'm confused by the concern that it violates the Law of Moses. Is anyone concerned that I eat bacon, ribs and other forms of pork regularly? That would also be a violation of the Law of Moses. Am I wrong in understanding that the Law of Moses was fulfilled in Christ?

I personally find a mother/daughter marriage distasteful, but the fact that it violates Mosaic law is not one of my concerns.

56 minutes ago, katherine the great said:

Are we free to discard the 10 Commandments too? Maybe some parts of the Mosaic law are worth preserving. Especially one like this that seems to defy the laws of nature. 

While it is true that the law of Moses has been fulfilled, much of the law still remains - albeit with modified consequences for violation of the law. 

If we examine the Leviticus passage on marriage to a woman and her daughter, it becomes more difficult to dismiss as being fulfilled and irrelevant when we view it in context of the verses it is sandwiched between.  

Quote

 

Leviticus

13) If a man lies with a man as with a woman, they have both committed an abomination. They must surely be put to death; their blood is upon them. 
14) If a man marries both a woman and her mother, it is depraved. Both he and they must be burned in the fire, so that there will be no depravity among you. 
15) If a man lies carnally with an animal, he must be put to death. And you are also to kill the animal.…

 

The following is a really grim description from the Ellicott's Bible commentary on the punishment of burning.  Holy crap! 

Quote

They shall be burnt with fire.--This, as we have seen, is the second of the four modes of capital punishment. (See Leviticus 20:2.) In the following ten cases those guilty of the sins specified suffered this punishment: (1) the unchaste high priest's daughter (Leviticus 21:9); (2) he who had commerce with his daughter; (3)or with his daughter's daughter; (4) or with his son's daughter; (5) or with his wife's daughter; (6) or with her daughter's daughter; (7) or with her son's daughter; (8) or with his mother-in-law; (9) or with the mother of his mother-in-law; and (10), or with the mother of his father-in-law. It will thus be seen that with the exception of the high priest's daughter this death was only inflicted for incest. As the Bible nowhere states the precise mode in which this kind of death is to be carried out, the authorities during the second Temple maintained that it must be executed in such a manner as to leave the body externally un changed by the flames, because, when God himself inflicted this punishment, the dead bodies of Nadab and Abihu were in a perfect state of preservation. (See Leviticus 10:2.) To effect this the criminal was put into dung up to his knees, a soft cloth containing a hard one was then tied around his throat, while the two witnesses who had secured his sentence drew tighter by the two cords till the criminal opened his mouth, when molten lead was poured down his throat, thus burning him to death. Hence the ancient Chaldee Version renders it here, "they shall be burnt with fire, with melted lead in their mouth."

https://biblehub.com/leviticus/20-14.htm

While punishment for the violation has clearly changed as the law of Moses was fulfilled - considering the preceding and following verses, many of the practices are still considered sinful and are used today to condemn homosexual marriage, for example. 

Edited October 26, 2021 by pogi

[Tacenda]

Not sure which one, but when one of his wives was a young girl Joseph told her he'd marry her one day, unless I'm getting the story wrong, my mind forgets, so hopefully someone will either correct or verify. To me that is sort of a grooming thing, which doesn't sit well. Here is an infographic of his wives but can't figure out which one it was. Didn't know of Joseph having other wives in my mid 40's and finding out started my faith crisis about 15 years ago, but still holding on to this faith for other reasons.  

http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-WjLtGm8cVMs/Uiik1dLcrTI/AAAAAAAAAio/-mllOQ4KoXE/s1600/The+Many+Wives+Of+Joseph+Smith+Chart+v2.0.png

Edited October 26, 2021 by Tacenda

[Tacenda]

1 hour ago, LoudmouthMormon said:

Not sure what your point is.  Yes, the system currently in place allows a guy to be sealed to multiple women, if one of them isn't in the marriage picture.   No, I don't believe you could call that a "polygamist" situation, because polygamy has to do with folks all alive and together here on earth.

Honestly, if one is going to have some system where earthly covenantal relationships are binding after death, reality forces one to have some system in place to handle this stuff.  The alternative is that marriage relationships are dissolved after death.  The notion that we become sexless angels, happy to spend an eternity in worship of God with our harps and halos is pleasant enough theology, but it's not mine.

I dunno, whenever I see some critic jumping up and down gleefully and clapping their hands in some "gotcha" moment over LDS sealings, I just get the mental image of middle schoolers writing dirty things in each other's yearbooks about who slept with who, and who is the hottest girl and whatnot.  It's like there's a hidden assumption, where sealings are just unthinkingly assumed to be about nasty church leaders getting some young sweet action in bed.

Such notions might speak to the individual critic's maturity levels or value system, but it's a problematic criticism for several reasons.  Fertile, virile Joseph's lack of children with anyone but Emma being a biggie. 

 

I won't even go where they are saying the women were getting abortions by Dr. Bennett, because that's not been proven I gather. But I will say that Joseph wasn't fully out as a polygamist and even denied it while living it and of course he'd not want offspring yet, and there is the natural method of the pull out method, sorry for the mention, didn't want to. But there's that and many miss it.

[Mike Drop]

1 hour ago, LoudmouthMormon said:

No, I don't believe you could call that a "polygamist" situation, because polygamy has to do with folks all alive and together here on earth.

What? We’re sealed for eternity. Once sealed, mortal death isn’t even a worry anymore because we believe we will be together forever. Remember this “ And verily, verily, I say onto you, that whatsoever you seal on earth shall be sealed in heaven, and whatsoever you bind on earth, in my name and by my word, saith the Lord, it shall be eternally bound in heaven.” As far as I understand, according to Mormon doctrine, A wife is a wife and a husband is a husband no matter here or in heaven. Correct? So if a man is sealed to multiple women, isn’t he practicing polygamy? Or are you saying the polygamist relationship only begins once all three or more spirits are together in the Celestial Kingdom? I’m confused.
 

 

[pogi]

24 minutes ago, Tacenda said:

I won't even go where they are saying the women were getting abortions by Dr. Bennett, because that's not been proven I gather. But I will say that Joseph wasn't fully out as a polygamist and even denied it while living it and of course he'd not want offspring yet, and there is the natural method of the pull out method, sorry for the mention, didn't want to. But there's that and many miss it.

Yes, when it comes to the pull out method, "many miss it"  Ha, ha! 

I know that is not what you meant, but it truly is not a terribly reliable method.  Statistically, 1 in 5 women who practice this method will end up pregnant in 1 year. 

Now, how many wives did Joseph have?  Let me do the math...ummm nope, not working out. 

There may have been other natural practices used back then that may have decreased chances of child birth, but birth control/family planning was not really smiled upon in the church (to put it lightly).  Indeed, multiplying and replenishing the earth was the primary justification for polygamy.

Brigham Young:

Quote

This is the reason why the doctrine of plurality of wives was revealed, that the noble spirits which are waiting for tabernacles might be brought forth

 

[Robert F. Smith]

13 hours ago, katherine the great said:

Just skimming through it. He was very wordy-perhaps deliberately designed to confuse the listener. It sounds like he’s basically saying that Mormons (his terminology) reject the law of Moses therefore the prohibition has no bearing on them. 😳

Yes.  The Rev J. P. Newman was particularly focused on the Mosaic prohibition, but I couldn't immediately ferret out Pratt's reply.  One thing which the late Prof Jacob Milgrom argued on some of the Mosaic provisions was that they only applied to Jews then and today, unless the non-Jew happens to live in the Land of Israel -- in which case the Mosaic Law must be followed.  Jacob Milgrom, “Does the Bible Prohibit Homosexuality,” Bible Review, 9/6 (Dec 1993):11ff., online at  http://members.bib-arch.org/publication.asp?PubID=BSBR&Volume=9&Issue=6&ArticleID=3 .

[Tacenda]

55 minutes ago, pogi said:

Yes, when it comes to the pull out method, "many miss it"  Ha, ha! 

I know that is not what you meant, but it truly is not a terribly reliable method.  Statistically, 1 in 5 women who practice this method will end up pregnant in 1 year. 

Now, how many wives did Joseph have?  Let me do the math...ummm nope, not working out. 

There may have been other natural practices used back then that may have decreased chances of child birth, but birth control/family planning was not really smiled upon in the church (to put it lightly).  Indeed, multiplying and replenishing the earth was the primary justification for polygamy.

Brigham Young:

 

Did you see my full post, I mentioned that it was hidden, Joseph's polygamy and therefore he didn't want any pregnancies at that time, I'm thinking. Until it was acceptable I'm also thinking.