Distinct polygamy concerns

[carbon dioxide]

11 hours ago, webbles said:

I went a grabbed the 1880 10% IPUMS data set.  It has a variable for "Married within the past year".  I grabbed that plus the gender and then calculated the percentage for various age ranges.  I got average ages less than what that chart shows.

For men:

Ages 13-15: 0.05%
Ages 16-17: 0.36%
Ages 18-20: 8.83%
Ages 21-23: 28.82%
Ages 24-26: 25.31%
Ages 27-34: 25.02%
Ages 35-44: 7.42%
Ages 45-60: 4.18%

For women:

Ages 13-15: 2.00%
Ages 16-17: 9.96%
Ages 18-20: 34.90%
Ages 21-23: 24.99%
Ages 24-26: 12.57%
Ages 27-34: 8.88%
Ages 35-44: 3.88%
Ages 45-60: 2.82%

So, almost 12% of all the women married in that one year (1880) were under 18.  But for men, it was just 0.41%.  Over half the men were under 27 and over half the women were under 24.  ~45% of the women were <20.

 

If that is correct for 1880, I wonder what the 1830s and 1840s was like. 

[teddyaware]

13 minutes ago, The Nehor said:

While this may be true it is also the dogma of virtually every sex cult.

II don’t believe the kind of hedonistic, self-absorbed men who join sex cults do so in order to take on solemn covenantal responsibilities before God to support wives and sire and rear children for the rest of their lives.

[The Nehor]

15 minutes ago, Obehave said:

Sounds better when coming from a woman rather than a man, too.  And even better coming from a Relief Society sister.  I would that ALL women and men feel this way rather than only the men who many consider to be sexual predators and womanizers.

This is why sex cultist recruiters are usually a “wife” of the leader and not the leader himself when they are trying to convert a woman to join.

[Tacenda]

28 minutes ago, Buckeye said:

I’m not sure if this has been covered, but the impact of polygamy on men is horrible and often overlooked. I agree with all the concerns about the impact on women, but for me the impact on men is at least as bad and much less discussed.

Simply put, because roughly equal numbers of men and women exist, to accept polygamy as practiced by the church (ie, multiple wives per husband), one must either (i) believe that men are inherently less valiant than women or (ii) accept that huge numbers of men will be excluded from exaltation for no fault of their own.  Even if just a few men practice polygamy, that means some portion of men will be excluded from eternal marriage. And I don’t buy the argument that only a small potion of saints practiced it. That may have been factually true because we practiced it for only a few decades, but our teaching was that all should practice it. And why not? If something is good we desire all to receive it. 

Polygamy is simply evil. There’s no way to square it. The impact on women is harmful. And the impact on men is just as harmful. Just ask any of the mothers of FLDS “lost boys”

Agree, I believe it is the bad fruit from Joseph.

[bluebell]

14 hours ago, JLHPROF said:

Do you truly believe women suffered that much more in polygamy than men?  I've read a ton of history and journals and they show plenty of trials for husbands too.  Is it an assumption or incontrovertible historical fact that it sucked more for God's daughters than his sons?

I think it was a sacrifice for both, but if you go off of the number of women who are willing to leave the church or stay away from the temple over the idea of having to practice it or that God ever asked women to do so, and compare it to the number of men who are willing to do that for the same reasons, it seems to be a much (much) larger concern for women than for men in general.  

That coupled with the few journals I have read from women in the past who were committed to the practice but lived most of their lives alone with their children, plus what I've seen of it as it's been practiced by other offshoots in our day by those who practice it personally, do lead me to believe that the practice is usually harder on women than men.  (This was cemented to me when watching a polygamous relationship between a man and his four wives, where he was not at all getting along with one wife.  He had three other wives to meet his emotional, mental, and physical needs and she had no one.) 

In general, polygamy is a multiplication for men but a division for women.  Men get more of something and women get less.  For some women getting less of their husband to emotionally connect with, or replacing that spousal connection with a sister connection, might be right up their personal alley.  And for some men, getting more wives to emotionally connect with and more sexual partners and more sexual intimacy might be a huge trial. 

But in general, I think that a life with more intimacy and emotional connection with a spouse is seen as better than a life with less intimacy and emotional connection with a spouse.

 

 

[carbon dioxide]

1 hour ago, Buckeye said:

Polygamy is simply evil. There’s no way to square it. The impact on women is harmful. And the impact on men is just as harmful. Just ask any of the mothers of FLDS “lost boys”

It is your opinion that it is evil.  A person can say that monogamy is evil and cite a billion examples of how monogamy has harmed men and women.  Think of all the divorce that occurs in monogamist marriages.   Clearly monogamy is a big problem in society today. 

[bluebell]

2 minutes ago, Obehave said:

Good luck, rongo.  I wish you nothing but success as you try to correctly explain to those Relief Society sisters how having sister wives can be a wonderful, holy, and righteous thing.

@rongo, please don't attempt to explain to a group of women how awesome having or being a sister wife is.  🤦‍♀️

[rpn]

People leave because

they don't like the prophet marrying 14 year olds (so discuss dynastic sealings and Wilford Woodruff's revelations about sealing only to actual ancestors in Teachings of Wilford Woodruff manual intro and lesson on temples)   And because for some it is also a moral issue, refer to Brian Hales research about polygamy and point out that we all know (because we've all so served) that the Lord only has flawed humans to do His work on earth.

 

People leave because THEY don't want to share their dh eternally.    The only teaching here is that becoming what we need to become to live in the Celestial kingdom DOESN"T require we all think alike, nor does it require we do anything we don't personally choose to do.

 

People leave because they see women being treated as less than in the rules that allow men to have multiple sealings, but not women (while they are alive --- after they are dead those ordiances ARE done for everyone who fits the category (wife, parent)

And there is no way you can discuss everything, so just take a list of resources for people who wish to understand more.

(And if the OP is a man and is NOT a polygamy scholar, the OP should tell the RSP that they aren't the right person to give that lesson, and unless they are going to advertise and live stream it, there is no point of teaching those who are IN THE PEWS, what the history and doctrine was or wasn't, means prospectively or not.)

[ksfisher]

4 hours ago, teddyaware said:

The main problem that prevents Church members from coming to understand that plural marriage can be practiced in holiness is due to the fact that they are only able to view it from the vantage point of their own unconverted, carnal natures. They are unable to grasp that plural marriage can indeed be practiced in righteousness because they are only able to see it through the lens of their own carnal lusts and jealousies that act as blinders preventing them from comprehending the workings of the Spirit.

Or maybe they just don't understand it.  It's ok to say that you don't understand one of God's commandments.

[Tacenda]

5 minutes ago, Obehave said:

That Relief Society President who asked rongo to speak on this issue wasn't doing rongo any favors, was she.  We need some woman or women to say these things!

Not too many members, at least the ones I know, know much about polygamy, haven't done the research, believe it was more a Brigham Young thing, speaking from experience, until maybe recently, if that. 

But yes, it'd be nice for a woman to do the teaching as well. But it'd be rare, IMO, for many members in the church to do it without bias toward a faithful approach and leave out the details. I believe Rongo has helped a good many members during their faith crises. 

He would know that those people have been googling things and wouldn't take listening to white washing.

Edited July 7, 2022 by Tacenda

[Fether]

53 minutes ago, The Nehor said:

True, of which I know virtually nothing.

Ya, I have no opinion whatsoever on that either.

[MustardSeed]

You were asked by someone who doesn't know you, to teach a class on polygamy to a group of women?

 

OK....  why?

[Buckeye]

48 minutes ago, carbon dioxide said:

It is your opinion that it is evil.  A person can say that monogamy is evil and cite a billion examples of how monogamy has harmed men and women.  Think of all the divorce that occurs in monogamist marriages.   Clearly monogamy is a big problem in society today. 

An individual couple’s failure does not make the institution of monogamous marriage a failure. The institution’s benefits have been proven through historical experience. The institution places spouses as equals and does not exclude vast swaths of our brothers and sons from participation. 
 

In contrast, polygamy is fatally flawed as an institution because it places women subservient to men and because it excludes most men from marriage.  There’s no redeeming the flawed, and indeed evil, institution of polygamy. 

[teddyaware]

56 minutes ago, ksfisher said:

Or maybe they just don't understand it.  It's ok to say that you don't understand one of God's commandments.

I believe within that the ranks of today’s ‘woke” Latter-Day Saint women, it will be exceedingly difficult to find even a few who are somewhat willing to embrace an explanation that will vindicate the Church’s practice of polygamy, especially when accepting the doctrinally correct explanations will immediately set them at odds with their resistant friends. And when the ability to receive the correct answers requires a degree of godly wisdom and spiritual receptivity deep enough to plumb the depths of the more profound mysteries of the kingdom of God, rongo is faced with a near impossible task because the doctrinally correct answers will not be at all gratifying to the mind of the natural man (woman).

Edited July 7, 2022 by teddyaware

[Buckeye]

3 minutes ago, teddyaware said:

I believe within that the ranks of today’s ‘woke” Latter-Day Saint women, it will be exceedingly difficult to find even a few who are somewhat willing to embrace an explanation that will vindicate the Church’s practice of polygamy, especially when accepting the doctrinally correct explanations will immediately set them at odds with their resistant friends. And when the ability to receive the correct answers requires a degree of godly wisdom and spiritual receptivity deep enough to plumb the depths of the more profound mysteries of the kingdom of God, rongo is faced with a near impossible task because the doctrinally correct answers will not be at all gratifying to the mind of the natural man (woman).

You speak of being awake as if it’s somehow negative. Yet our hymns extoll the slumbering nations to awake and arise. Thank God for our valiant women who have and are awaking. Would that more men followed their example. 

[rongo]

1 hour ago, bluebell said:

@rongo, please don't attempt to explain to a group of women how awesome having or being a sister wife is.  🤦‍♀️

Roger that!

[Tacenda]

1 minute ago, rongo said:

Roger that!

You mean Rongo that!

[YJacket]

19 hours ago, rongo said:

We moved into a new ward in April, in an area where we don't have connections. I was asked by the new Relief Society president (called two weeks ago) to address the Relief Society sisters about polygamy, because of concerns that have been expressed that are keeping some sisters away from church or tempting them to formally leave the church. 

What specific concerns with polygamy am I missing in preparing for this? I have . . .

1. Polygamy, period (concern about it being of God, ever, under any circumstances)

2. Caving to political pressure in ending it (concern that the Church followed man and not God)

3. Lying to hide and cover up polygamy (discomfort with lying under any circumstances)

4. Need for the Second Manifesto (1890 didn’t end it outright).

5. Polyandry (Joseph Smith being sealed to other men's wives)

6. Joseph Smith’s teenage wives (concerns about his sealings to women under 18)

7. Polygamy today via sealings to additional spouses (concerns that polygamy will be part of the hereafter, as denoted by sealings to multiple spouses).

7a) Incongruity/disparity between men and women additional sealings. 

8. Modern-day offshoots = 19th Century Mormon polygamy (concerns that polygamy among modern-day offshoots illustrates how it functioned from the 1840s to the early 20th century). 

9. Bad and demonstrably incorrect folk explanations (e.g., more women than men, etc.). 

10. Required for exaltation? Doctrinal shift on this?

---

Thanks in advance for any subtopics under this heading that I'm overlooking!

 

Well, you could just blow up the whole system and tell them JS never instituted polygamy, fought against it his entire life, worked to excommunicate any who practiced it.  You could tell them Nauvoo rather than being a virtuous city had an extremely seedy underbelly of prostitution and creating counterfiet money.  That the prostitution was with women on the outskirts of town (i.e. the poor areas) who traded sex for food.  That one of BY's first polygamous wives was not approved by Joseph, that that wife left her husband and 7 kids, she brought 2 of them with her and the infant who's name was Brigham Young Cobb died on her way to go live with her lover; that in the court divorce documents in the 1850s no mention of religious duty to God was found; she just simply stated that she loved BY more and that her love for her husband had grown cold.  And that in any other circumstance we would clearly conclude that whatever man this woman went to was committing adultery, and that having a child named after your next "husband" while currently married to another man would be a very huge indicator that the child was the product of an adulterous relationship.

I mean, that's what I'd do if I was asked to do what you were . . .

[MustardSeed]

38 minutes ago, teddyaware said:

I believe within that the ranks of today’s ‘woke” Latter-Day Saint women, it will be exceedingly difficult to find even a few who are somewhat willing to embrace an explanation that will vindicate the Church’s practice of polygamy,

 I believe within the ranks of healthy Latter-day Saint women....

FTFY

[Duncan]

2 hours ago, Buckeye said:

I’m not sure if this has been covered, but the impact of polygamy on men is horrible and often overlooked. I agree with all the concerns about the impact on women, but for me the impact on men is at least as bad and much less discussed.

Simply put, because roughly equal numbers of men and women exist, to accept polygamy as practiced by the church (ie, multiple wives per husband), one must either (i) believe that men are inherently less valiant than women or (ii) accept that huge numbers of men will be excluded from exaltation for no fault of their own.  Even if just a few men practice polygamy, that means some portion of men will be excluded from eternal marriage. And I don’t buy the argument that only a small potion of saints practiced it. That may have been factually true because we practiced it for only a few decades, but our teaching was that all should practice it. And why not? If something is good we desire all to receive it. 

Polygamy is simply evil. There’s no way to square it. The impact on women is harmful. And the impact on men is just as harmful. Just ask any of the mothers of FLDS “lost boys”

I remember reading about a young man in Utah that practiced polygamy and he got divorced. He said something that stuck with me, "I was obedient but not very wise" 

[rongo]

28 minutes ago, YJacket said:

Well, you could just blow up the whole system and tell them JS never instituted polygamy, fought against it his entire life, worked to excommunicate any who practiced it.  You could tell them Nauvoo rather than being a virtuous city had an extremely seedy underbelly of prostitution and creating counterfiet money.  That the prostitution was with women on the outskirts of town (i.e. the poor areas) who traded sex for food.  That one of BY's first polygamous wives was not approved by Joseph, that that wife left her husband and 7 kids, she brought 2 of them with her and the infant who's name was Brigham Young Cobb died on her way to go live with her lover; that in the court divorce documents in the 1850s no mention of religious duty to God was found; she just simply stated that she loved BY more and that her love for her husband had grown cold.  And that in any other circumstance we would clearly conclude that whatever man this woman went to was committing adultery, and that having a child named after your next "husband" while currently married to another man would be a very huge indicator that the child was the product of an adulterous relationship.

I mean, that's what I'd do if I was asked to do what you were . . .

Good thing it's me and not you, right?

[juliann]

20 hours ago, rongo said:

We moved into a new ward in April, in an area where we don't have connections. I was asked by the new Relief Society president (called two weeks ago) to address the Relief Society sisters about polygamy, because of concerns that have been expressed that are keeping some sisters away from church or tempting them to formally leave the church. 

What specific concerns with polygamy am I missing in preparing for this? I have . . .

1. Polygamy, period (concern about it being of God, ever, under any circumstances)

2. Caving to political pressure in ending it (concern that the Church followed man and not God)

3. Lying to hide and cover up polygamy (discomfort with lying under any circumstances)

4. Need for the Second Manifesto (1890 didn’t end it outright).

5. Polyandry (Joseph Smith being sealed to other men's wives)

6. Joseph Smith’s teenage wives (concerns about his sealings to women under 18)

7. Polygamy today via sealings to additional spouses (concerns that polygamy will be part of the hereafter, as denoted by sealings to multiple spouses).

7a) Incongruity/disparity between men and women additional sealings. 

8. Modern-day offshoots = 19th Century Mormon polygamy (concerns that polygamy among modern-day offshoots illustrates how it functioned from the 1840s to the early 20th century). 

9. Bad and demonstrably incorrect folk explanations (e.g., more women than men, etc.). 

10. Required for exaltation? Doctrinal shift on this?

---

Thanks in advance for any subtopics under this heading that I'm overlooking!

 

First, a woman should be doing this but you are likely more knowlegable than some random person.  This is a good list. I would start with the difficulty of researching polygamy and how it has always been formulated around the husbands with the wives as an afterthought to the point we don't even know their names. An example is how they count polygamist "families" as one entity, i.e., a man's family.  That leaves out all the wives who had their own families. 

Second, don't miss the point. Polygamy is about inequality, as in the above example, several women are considered the same as one man. What comes with this are the feelings about it for women, that outweighs all of the research/facts/history. And it never gets addressed. The most damaging response ever is "we don't know." That leaves the future wide open. The only thing we don't know is what to do with this piece of history and why it happened. The best thing you could do for women is close it off with the Manifesto and the Proc....as well as official statements saying it is over. (I'd really emphasize the Proc because only rich men financially supported wives and as fathers, some kids didn't even know them. It is in direct violation of the Proc) Always treat polygamy as a discarded piece of our history that didn't work out well, not as something still in play.

The usual response of men being sealed to multiple wives now is easily answered by what you are already aware of, women are being sealed to more than one husband. It is also important to note that the CHI dictate that wives would have to choose one husband when sealed to all dead husbands has been removed. The minute people have to throw in polyandry, assigning women positions as wives usually gets bogged down and stops. Also, except for the first wive, JS was being sealed to married women. Polygamy started with polyandry (see 132:41 where women are allowed to be with another man with a "holy annointing.")There will be some women who insist they would love the idea and it would be great to have help crap. A well crafted reminder that this demeans women and places them in secondary positions would be helpful. As well as how hurtful this is to so many women who do fear being in a secondary position. 

Third, polygamy was already dying, it isn't a sustainable practice. It resulted in men picking off younger and younger women. No one should ever be talking about polygamy as if it was always the same. It changed dramatically and needs to be addressed by era, not as "polygamy." 

Fourth, reading and researching it won't help with finding reasons because the problem is it's ickiness, not knowing more about it. In my experience, it only gets ickier the more you do find out. What is helpful is to read the accounts of the wives, in their own words, to give them their place in history. About the sword and angel, modern scholarship is discarding these handed down after the fact stories (like the crickets and seagulls.) There is nothing from JS himself, others attributed it to him. That isn't a solid source. If I recall, it originated from one person. 

For me, the test in how someone views women is if they are able to include polyandry, like JS did, without needing to play games about sex. If they can't do that, women are in a secondary position to men and those people aren't really discussing polygamy, they are only maintaining men's superiority and right to acquire women at will. And I would be sure to tell the women that if any married man ever ever talks about acquiring more wives at some point that he be made to make a trip to the bishop's office for lusting after women.

 

 

 

Edited July 7, 2022 by juliann

[bluebell]

1 hour ago, Tacenda said:

You mean Rongo that!

[juliann]

1 hour ago, teddyaware said:

I believe within that the ranks of today’s ‘woke” Latter-Day Saint women, it will be exceedingly difficult to find even a few who are somewhat willing to embrace an explanation that will vindicate the Church’s practice of polygamy, especially when accepting the doctrinally correct explanations will immediately set them at odds with their resistant friends. And when the ability to receive the correct answers requires a degree of godly wisdom and spiritual receptivity deep enough to plumb the depths of the more profound mysteries of the kingdom of God, rongo is faced with a near impossible task because the doctrinally correct answers will not be at all gratifying to the mind of the natural man (woman).

And here is why we know polygamy isn't doctrinal. Look at what it turns men into.

Which reminds me, Pres. Hinckley's TV statement that polygamy isn't doctrinal would be a good addition. Anybody who insists that he didn't say what he clearly said can surely come up with multiple statements from him gently correcting that perception.....not. 

[YJacket]

1 hour ago, teddyaware said:

I believe within that the ranks of today’s ‘woke” Latter-Day Saint women, it will be exceedingly difficult to find even a few who are somewhat willing to embrace an explanation that will vindicate the Church’s practice of polygamy, especially when accepting the doctrinally correct explanations will immediately set them at odds with their resistant friends. And when the ability to receive the correct answers requires a degree of godly wisdom and spiritual receptivity deep enough to plumb the depths of the more profound mysteries of the kingdom of God, rongo is faced with a near impossible task because the doctrinally correct answers will not be at all gratifying to the mind of the natural man (woman).

I am as far away from "woke" as someone can probably get and I still think polygamy was not of God that JS did not teach it, practice it, nor encourage anything like it.  That from time to time in certain specific instances in scripture God has allowed it is vastly, vastly different than what the Church taught after JS was killed.