Distinct polygamy concerns

[carbon dioxide]

2 hours ago, Buckeye said:

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. 

Polygamy does not have to make women subservient.  Monogamy can make a woman subservient.   The problem is not monogamy or polygamy but the individuals involved.  Polygamy does not exclude most men from marriage.  There will always be a certain percentage of the population that will not want to marry.  A certain portion that will engage in serial polygamy and so forth.  If even 10% of the population engages in polygamy, there still will be enough women to go around.  It not a formula that if one says polygamy can be ok that the entire population needs to engage in it.   If you choose to call polygamy evil, that is fine.  A lot of people would say monogamy or marriage is evil and they remain single.  However in terms of how God sees polygamy, it is not always evil.  

Edited July 7, 2022 by carbon dioxide

[smac97]

3 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.

The impact of polygamy was . . . a very mixed bag.  It worked very well for some, so-so for others, and "horribl{y}" for yet others.

But yes, polygamy did tend to impose significant burdens on men, and this is often overlooked.

3 hours ago, Buckeye said:

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.  

I think this is a false dilemma.  I feel quite comfortable rejecting both (i) and (ii).  Rejection of (i) is self-evident.  As for (ii), this one also fails because it presupposes that there is no remedy (eschatalogically speaking) for those who fail to marry in this life.

There is a third option, namely, a belief that the Lord will, on occasion, mandate the practice of polygamy by those under covenant, and that this practice is otherwise categorically prohibited.  See D&C 132, Jacob 2, etc.

3 hours ago, Buckeye said:

Even if just a few men practice polygamy, that means some portion of men will be excluded from eternal marriage.

Not so.

3 hours ago, Buckeye said:

And I don’t buy the argument that only a small potion of saints practiced it.

I think Pres. Hinckley may have misspoken when he indicated to Larry King that "between two percent and five percent of our people were involved in {polygamy}." 

Apparently scholarship posits that "{t}he extent of the practice of polygamy in the Latter-day Saint community was virtually impossible to calculate" in the late 19th century, that "{m}odern scholars have arrived at various estimates" and "'studies of individual {19th-century} communities show a wide variation in the incidence of plurality,'" but that "'perhaps the best estimates of the number of polygamous families among late-nineteenth-century Latter-day Saints range between 20 and 30 percent.'"

3 hours ago, Buckeye said:

That may have been factually true because we practiced it for only a few decades, but our teaching was that all should practice it.

No, that is not our teaching.

3 hours ago, Buckeye said:

And why not? If something is good we desire all to receive it.

There are some things that are "good" depending on the circumstances.  Sex outside of marriage is sinful, whereas within marriage it is holy and beautiful.

3 hours ago, Buckeye said:

Polygamy is simply evil.

With respect, I disagree.  Polygamy is very difficult, to be sure.  

3 hours ago, Buckeye said:

There’s no way to square it.

Yes, there is.  D&C 132.  Jacob 2.  The Bible.  We must "square" our perceptions with these authorities.

3 hours ago, Buckeye said:

The impact on women is harmful. 

Many of the staunchest supporters of polygamy in the 19th century were . . . 19th-century women in polygamous relationships.

Again, polygamy was a difficult and harmful practice for some.  For others, it worked quite well.

Presentism can color our perception of history.

Thanks,

-Smac

[The Nehor]

2 hours 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. 

Are you about to endorse polyamory?

[Raingirl]

36 minutes ago, juliann said:

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.

 

 

 

You make some good points. 
 

I personally wouldn’t be able to sit through a man teaching a polygamy lesson in RS, no matter what he taught about it. However, I also wouldn’t sit through a polygamy lesson taught by a woman if she put any kind of positive spin on it. 

[smac97]

2 hours ago, bluebell said:

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.

I would be interested in seeing more historical/sociological data on that, but I suspect your assessment is correct.

2 hours ago, bluebell said:

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.) 

Yep.  Definitely an asymmetry there.

2 hours ago, bluebell said:

In general, polygamy is a multiplication for men but a division for women.  Men get more of something and women get less. 

Part of the "more" the men got was . . . the obligation to provide for more wives and more children.

2 hours ago, bluebell said:

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. 

I also imagine that some men had difficulty "emotionally connect{ing}" with more than one wife.  Divided affections.  I cannot comprehend how to do that.

2 hours ago, bluebell said:

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.

Agreed.

Thanks,

-Smac

[The Nehor]

3 hours ago, teddyaware said:

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.

Isn’t that a perfect description of many of our offshoots who tried to do both?

[The Nehor]

2 hours ago, Obehave said:

I am pretty sure I know exactly where spirit babies come from, or how resurrected people reproduce.  I expect to get an even stronger confirmation to tell me I am right when I actually create my first spirit son or daughter in heaven.

We know Ahab. You tried to explain it before. It did not go well.

[The Nehor]

1 hour 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 . . .

That is a thin branch considering the evidence of other polygamy beforehand.

[The Nehor]

2 hours ago, Buckeye said:

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. 

Wait…..what? You think historically monogamy has made spouses equals? Maybe more equal but equal? Ummmmm……gonna go with no on that one.

[The Nehor]

25 minutes ago, smac97 said:

But yes, polygamy did tend to impose significant burdens on men, and this is often overlooked.

I mean, yeah, but the burden did not fall as hard as it did on women generally. And why focus on this in a Relief Society lesson?

[carbon dioxide]

1 hour ago, Raingirl said:

You make some good points. 
 

I personally wouldn’t be able to sit through a man teaching a polygamy lesson in RS, no matter what he taught about it. However, I also wouldn’t sit through a polygamy lesson taught by a woman if she put any kind of positive spin on it. 

I don't agree with much of what she said but she is correct in the sense of the problems of men talking about the subject to women.  Women and men just will see the subject in very different viewpoints.  Juliann views polygamy with "ickiness" and I am sure other women agree.  Men don't view it in that manner.  Many women would see it as an issue of inequality.   I don't think men would see it in that way.   I think the best way to teach the subject if it is going to be discussed if let the women teach it to women and men teach it to men.   The men do not discuss it with the women and the women do not discuss it with men.   Then peace will prevail.  

 

 

 

[smac97]

44 minutes ago, juliann said:

Always treat polygamy as a discarded piece of our history that didn't work out well, not as something still in play.

Like animal sacrifice.  Something in our past that came from God, was difficult to understand and obey back in the day, is difficult to understand and unpleasant to think about now, and is not presently practiced.

44 minutes ago, juliann said:

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." 

A very solid point.

44 minutes ago, juliann said:

Fourth, reading and researching it won't help with finding reasons because the problem is it's ickiness, not knowing more about it.

I think "knowing more about it" helps mitigate the "ickiness."  We need to account for presentism, deep-seated cultural expectations, etc.

44 minutes ago, juliann said:

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. 

Brian Hales does not seem to be "discarding" these accounts (twenty from nine witnesses) :

Quote

The harshness of the described threats has caused some researchers to discount the sword portion of the story, considering it a later embellishment.  Historians know that on occasion, storytellers may elaborate their details. The substance of the story may still be based on solid truth, but is inflated for effect. In other words, “it gets better with the telling.”
...
A review of Joseph Smith’s previous heavenly manifestations fails to identify any analogous types of threats. Even when he and Martin Harris lost the 116 translated pages of the Book of Lehi, the reprimand was milder (see D&C 3:4–6, 5:21, 10:1–2, 37). Throughout all of Joseph’s interactions with deity, no other episodes of life-threatening proddings were reported. On the other hand, Joseph Smith’s foot-dragging may have provoked the heavens as never before.

Perhaps this situation was unique in the Prophet’s life. Being imperfect, he admitted he had faltered on other occasions. He reportedly confessed: “I have my failings and passions to contend with the same as has the greatest stranger to God. I am tempted the same as you are, my brethren. I am not infallible. All men are subject to their passions and sinful natures. There is a constant warfare between the two natures of man.” It seems that in most instances, he immediately responded to the course corrections required of him.  The command to practice polygamy appears to be the only occasion where a forceful admonishment was required to elicit obedience.

Several accounts relate how Joseph appeared to have felt genuine fear at the time. Mary Elizabeth Rollins Lightner recalled that the sword-threat was not symbolic: “Joseph told me that he was afraid when the angel appeared to him and told him to take other wives. He hesitated, and the angel appeared to him the third time with a drawn sword in his hand and threatened his life if he did not fulfi ll the commandment.”  Erastus Snow claimed that Joseph had “to plead on his knees before the Angel for his Life.” On another occasion, Joseph reportedly affirmed: “God commanded me to obey it [plural marriage]. He said to me that unless I accept it and introduce it, and practice it, I, together with my people, should be damned and cut off from this time henceforth.”
...
It also possible that Joseph’s poignant memories about the fiasco caused by the Alger union dissolution prompted him to dawdle before engaging in further plurality. The chronology further supports the likelihood that sometime before April 5, 1841, when the Prophet was sealed to plural wife Louisa Beaman in Nauvoo, the angel returned for a second visit to admonish Joseph to use the sealing authority and to obey the earlier directives. 

Same with Don Bradley (same link) :

Quote

Researcher Don Bradley argues that contemporary evidence for at least some of the elements can be identified.  Assistant or Associate President and Church Patriarch Hyrum Smith did not accept the principle of plural marriage until May 26, 1843.21 In the weeks just prior, he and others plotted to entrap Nauvoo polygamists, possibly not realizing that Joseph was one of them.  Levi Richards recorded a portion of Hyrum’s May 14 discourse:

Quote

I attended meeting at the temple in the afternoon. Hyrum Smith addressed the people . . . . He said there were many that had a great deal to say about the ancient order of things as Solomon and David having many wives and concubines, but it is an abomination in the sight of God. If an angel from heaven should come and preach such doctrine, some would be sure to see his cloven foot and cloud of darkness over head, though his garments might shine as white as snow. A man might have one wife but concubines he should have none.

Bradley theorizes that this 1843 quotation may have been referring to the same sword-wielding angel, but without mentioning the sword. Hyrum may have been responding to rumors he and others had heard, rumors that were true and had originated with Joseph Smith, but would not be recorded in detail until years later.

Moreover, one of the earwitnesses to this story was Mary Elizabeth Rollins Lightner, plural wife to both Joseph Smith and Brigham Young.  So when you say we should "read the accounts of the wives, in their own words, to give them their place in history," I assume you mean listening to her as well.

I am not suggesting that we are obligated to accept the "angel and sword" story, only that we are not obligated to discard it either.  As Elder Melvin J. Ballard put it (from the same link as above), “The statement . . . concerning the angel appearing with the drawn sword is not a matter that is in our own church history. While it may be all true, the church has not pronounced it authentic nor has it contradicted it.”

Thanks,

-Smac

[bluebell]

1 minute ago, The Nehor said:

I mean, yeah, but the burden did not fall as hard as it did on women generally. And why focus on this in a Relief Society lesson?

It could also be argued that usually, the men were free to choose to accept that extra burden of taking on another wife but the previous wives were not always free to choose to accept the new wife. 

Plus, spreading resources thin by adding another wife affected the women and previous children and not just the husband.  The man had more mouths to feed and support, but the women bore some of that burden by having even less access to their spouse (because he had to work more) and by having to divide the resources available among more people than before, given them access to less than they previously had.

[carbon dioxide]

1 hour ago, bluebell said:

It could also be argued that usually, the men were free to choose to accept that extra burden of taking on another wife but the previous wives were not always free to choose to accept the new wife. 

Plus, spreading resources thin by adding another wife affected the women and previous children and not just the husband.  The man had more mouths to feed and support, but the women bore some of that burden by having even less access to their spouse (because he had to work more) and by having to divide the resources available among more people than before, given them access to less than they previously had.

That may be  true in a normal application but suppose a billionaire married 10 women.   He has the resources to take care of all the women and kids and enough to spare to support 100 additional wives.  In this example, resources is not an issue and one that can be used against him having 10 wives.  In fact the best argument to be made is the billionaire should not get married is if he gets a divorce, it may be a financial disaster for him.  The women will do just fine.

Edited July 7, 2022 by carbon dioxide

[bluebell]

16 minutes ago, carbon dioxide said:

That may be  true in a normal application but suppose a billionaire married 10 women.   He has the resources to take care of all the women and kids and enough to spare to support 100 additional wives.  In this example, resources is not an issue and one that can be used against him having 10 wives.  In fact the best argument to be made is the billionaire should not get married is if he gets a divorce, it may be a financial disaster for him.  The women will do just fine.

This application is so extraordinary that it seems pretty useless to even consider.  

Edited July 7, 2022 by bluebell

[juliann]

28 minutes ago, smac97 said:

 

I think Pres. Hinckley may have misspoken when he indicated to Larry King that "between two percent and five percent of our people were involved in {polygamy}." 

Apparently scholarship posits that "{t}he extent of the practice of polygamy in the Latter-day Saint community was virtually impossible to calculate" in the late 19th century, that "{m}odern scholars have arrived at various estimates" and "'studies of individual {19th-century} communities show a wide variation in the incidence of plurality,'" but that "'perhaps the best estimates of the number of polygamous families among late-nineteenth-century Latter-day Saints range between 20 and 30 percent.'"

 

And here is the perfect example of the erasure of women in research that I referred to earlier. A count of families means nothing when it comes to numbers. It needs to be a count of people within that family, especially wives. The percentages will change depending on what they count. People were in and out of marriages. Do children in the women's families count in the estimate of who participated? That would greatly expand numbers. If someone was in a polygamist marriage for a couple of years but then married monogamously for the rest of their lives, does that count? What about those like my great grandfather who briefly had two wives but one died?

 

Quote

Yes, there is.  D&C 132.  Jacob 2.  The Bible.  We must "square" our perceptions with these authorities.

Unfortunately, it rarely happens. That is why most people do not know that 132 allows for polyandry. The verses about the Lord stepping in because of the suffering of the women and children is always ignored for the snippet where the Lord says if he wanted polygamy, he would tell them. Funny how he doesn't tell them to do polygamy, though....right?  

Quote

 

Many of the staunchest supporters of polygamy in the 19th century were . . . 19th-century women in polygamous relationships.

Again, polygamy was a difficult and harmful practice for some.  For others, it worked quite well.

 

This has gotten to the point where it is intellectually dishonest. You know darn well that those staunch public defenders were writing private journals that were anything but happy. Until you can come up with stats, it is also intellectually dishonest to pull the "for some" card. My best guess is it was the majority who were harmed....because women were the majority, and that is not even counting the children who had no relationship with a father. 

32 minutes ago, smac97 said:

 

Part of the "more" the men got was . . . the obligation to provide for more wives and more children.

I also imagine that some men had difficulty "emotionally connect{ing}" with more than one wife.  Divided affections.  I cannot comprehend how to do that.

 

But only the rich men could provide. This isn't rocket science. Nor were goods always dispersed equally. I feel safe in estimating that almost all polygamist wives worked...with most supporting their own families. It is astonishing to me that men didn't seem to feel an obligation to support all their children from what I can see. The whole point was in acquiring women, not in supporting them. As for emotionally connecting, the wives were the man's glory, not necessarily love.  BY is probably the worst example of blatant favoritism and lack of support for the unfavored wives. BTW, it was the wives who were being instructed to not love their husbands as a way of escaping Eve's Curse. Yup, comes everywhere from Eliza to BY. Funny how the men were never held to Adam's curse.....

As for the very very tiresome bumper sticker about how great polygamy was for many....I can't recall his name right now, but a prominent early leader wrote an autobiography/diary and lauded his wives for their love for each other. His first wife hated the second wife. But you would have to go to her diary to know that. That is why so many say things like "some" had a hard time while many thought it was the bees knees. We only use the male perspective. 

[carbon dioxide]

1 hour ago, bluebell said:

This application is so extraordinary that it seems pretty worthless to even consider.  

I am sure there are few rich Muslims in the Middle East who have more than one wife right at this moment.

[bluebell]

9 minutes ago, carbon dioxide said:

I am sure there are few rich Muslims in the Middle East who have more than one wife right at this moment.

But we teach that the polygamous marriages of those Muslims are not condoned by God.  

I honestly have no idea what you are trying to do with this line of reasoning, sorry.

[Tacenda]

16 minutes ago, juliann said:

And here is the perfect example of the erasure of women in research that I referred to earlier. A count of families means nothing when it comes to numbers. It needs to be a count of people within that family, especially wives. The percentages will change depending on what they count. People were in and out of marriages. Do children in the women's families count in the estimate of who participated? That would greatly expand numbers. If someone was in a polygamist marriage for a couple of years but then married monogamously for the rest of their lives, does that count? What about those like my great grandfather who briefly had two wives but one died?

 

Unfortunately, it rarely happens. That is why most people do not know that 132 allows for polyandry. The verses about the Lord stepping in because of the suffering of the women and children is always ignored for the snippet where the Lord says if he wanted polygamy, he would tell them. Funny how he doesn't tell them to do polygamy, though....right?  

This has gotten to the point where it is intellectually dishonest. You know darn well that those staunch public defenders were writing private journals that were anything but happy. Until you can come up with stats, it is also intellectually dishonest to pull the "for some" card. My best guess is it was the majority who were harmed....because women were the majority, and that is not even counting the children who had no relationship with a father. 

But only the rich men could provide. This isn't rocket science. Nor were goods always dispersed equally. I feel safe in estimating that almost all polygamist wives worked...with most supporting their own families. It is astonishing to me that men didn't seem to feel an obligation to support all their children from what I can see. The whole point was in acquiring women, not in supporting them. As for emotionally connecting, the wives were the man's glory, not necessarily love.  BY is probably the worst example of blatant favoritism and lack of support for the unfavored wives. BTW, it was the wives who were being instructed to not love their husbands as a way of escaping Eve's Curse. Yup, comes everywhere from Eliza to BY. Funny how the men were never held to Adam's curse.....

As for the very very tiresome bumper sticker about how great polygamy was for many....I can't recall his name right now, but a prominent early leader wrote an autobiography/diary and lauded his wives for their love for each other. His first wife hated the second wife. But you would have to go to her diary to know that. That is why so many say things like "some" had a hard time while many thought it was the bees knees. We only use the male perspective. 

Much like obituaries, many don't tell the whole story.

[carbon dioxide]

1 hour ago, bluebell said:

But we teach that the polygamous marriages of those Muslims are not condoned by God.  

I honestly have no idea what you are trying to do with this line of reasoning, sorry.

Just arguing that "spreading resources thin by adding another wife affected the women and previous children and not just the husband.  The man had more mouths to feed and support, but the women bore some of that burden by having even less access to their spouse (because he had to work more) and by having to divide the resources available among more people than before, given them access to less than they previously had." may be true, it is not necessarily true.   A rich man would be exempt from this reasoning.  They have all the resources to feed all the mouths and may not need to work more. 

[juliann]

30 minutes ago, smac97 said:

 

I am not suggesting that we are obligated to accept the "angel and sword" story, only that we are not obligated to discard it either.  As Elder Melvin J. Ballard put it (from the same link as above), “The statement . . . concerning the angel appearing with the drawn sword is not a matter that is in our own church history. While it may be all true, the church has not pronounced it authentic nor has it contradicted it.”

Thanks,

-Smac

You are seriously going to argue over a word, "discard?" This is why your extended posts become too much to read. You then admit that even the church hasn't pronounced it authentic. Yet that is one of the most ubiquitous polygamy stories ever. Discard means to get rid of something that isn't useful. I think that sums it up. Things that we rely on that are not authenticated are not useful, in fact, this is the very type thing that has hurt us badly when it comes to the many folk tales we have relied on as if they were doctrine. We lose members over that. 

So when we have statements that are decades after the event (as in the cricket story)we would be wise to tread carefully. Personally, I find it of little use...and almost silly....to put out the sword story as absolute proof and then have to say "but it's not authenticated!" before somebody beats you to it and makes you look like a little on the dishonest side. So, yes, discard. 

[juliann]

2 minutes ago, carbon dioxide said:

Just arguing that "spreading resources thin by adding another wife affected the women and previous children and not just the husband.  The man had more mouths to feed and support, but the women bore some of that burden by having even less access to their spouse (because he had to work more) and by having to divide the resources available among more people than before, given them access to less than they previously had." may be true, it is not necessarily true.   A rich man would be exempt from this reasoning.  They have all the resources to feed all the mouths and may not need to work more. 

So how many of the polygamist families (I am using this useless term because I am referring only to the man) were rich? 

CFR

While you are at it, how many wives were supporting other wives? Yes, that happened. 

[YJacket]

50 minutes ago, The Nehor said:

That is a thin branch considering the evidence of other polygamy beforehand.

It is not.  The thin branch is that Joseph practiced it.

When a person goes to original sources, looks at the actual contemporary documentation, the original source documentation there is no evidence that JS ever practiced it, sanctioned it or condoned it. Everything that says he did was either written long after he was dead, or doctored sources that said the opposite of what he said.

The shocking truth is actually how little evidence exists for Joseph and polygamy not how much.

Go read the Joseph Smith papers.  They are a fun read.  Go read EVERY SINGLE letter written BY, FROM or TO Joseph Smith over the last 3 years of his life.  There is absolutely nothing there to indicate any bit of polygamy.

Go read a Voice of Innocence and how Joseph Smith commissioned a public reading of it at least three times in a general body of members.  There is no evidence for it.

[bluebell]

9 minutes ago, carbon dioxide said:

Just arguing that "spreading resources thin by adding another wife affected the women and previous children and not just the husband.  The man had more mouths to feed and support, but the women bore some of that burden by having even less access to their spouse (because he had to work more) and by having to divide the resources available among more people than before, given them access to less than they previously had." may be true, it is not necessarily true.   A rich man would be exempt from this reasoning.  They have all the resources to feed all the mouths and may not need to work more. 

Is the "billionaire rich man scenario" relevant to our historical practice of polygamy though?  

[carbon dioxide]

1 hour ago, juliann said:

So how many of the polygamist families (I am using this useless term because I am referring only to the man) were rich?

I am not arguing from historical examples but just general application.  If a rich man, regardless of whom they are or when they live, has more than one wife, it would not necessarily be a problem of resources for him.   I understood your argument but just pointed out that it not true in all cases.