Is Polygamy Eternal?

[Sara H]

 I have been giving a lot of thought to polygamy as of late, and I must say that I am fairly astonished at how strongly we may believe in the practice. Permit me to use this diagram with two lines to help you comprehend how I'm starting to think that it's possible that our church practices polygamy more than I originally thought it did. Therefore, there is a line that extends horizontally across the picture and signifies our everlasting existence, the blue line. This line does not have a beginning or an end because we believe that we have eternally existed. Our relatively brief existence here on earth, sometimes known as our mortal life, is represented by the vertical red line. Is it accurate to say that we hold the belief that polygamy is the norm for everything to the left of the red line, our pre mortal existence which is included within the scope of "within the blue line, eternity"? And that the extremely little time we spend here on earth, the red line, is only monogamous due to the fact that the federal government has made it illegal for us to practice polygamy? And that everything to the right of the red line, post mortal existence, will also be a polygamous reality?

 

 

[blackstrap]

Unless you are only considering the LDS perspective, your vertical line does not hold as there are cultures and religions where polygamy is fine .

[Pyreaux]

There were Mosaic laws that forced men into polygamy, and no doctrines against polygamy. There are Western laws against polygamy due to Roman laws against it; it is why multiple mistresses are legal, while polygamy is not. As if the fornication is right but taking responsibility for them all is morally wrong.

Is it eternal? Depends. It is not, if there is an even number of exalted men and women, all entitled to a spouse. In that case the polygamists need to be broken up. If there are more exalted women than men, how else can they all be sealed?

Are you on some sort of deconstruction journey after reading some sort of CES Letter type thing? You just discovered seer stones and now polygamy?

Edited September 11, 2023 by Pyreaux

[webbles]

I don't even know how to answer this.  Are there people who are polygamists in the Celestial Kingdom?  I believe so.  Have they always been polygamists?  No, because you don't get sealed to anyone till you have a mortal body.  So, if I happen to be be polygamist after my death (doubtful), then my polygamy line would start after my mortal life.  I would not have been polygamist before my mortal life.

Also, I don't believe everyone will be polygamist in the Celestial Kingdom.  The math just doesn't add up.  Since all children who die before the age of accountability will go the Celestial Kingdom, and there are more young boys who die than young girls, and there have been a lot of children who have died over all the years, I expect close to an equal amount of men and women in the Celestial Kingdom.  So the number of polygamists would be extremely small.

[2BizE]

Yes, according to early church leaders, polygamy is a requirement for the celestial kingdom. There are plenty of quotes from church leaders around this. Remember, polygamy was implemented as part of the restoration of all things, or as President Nelson likes to call it, “The Ongoing Restoration.”

[nuclearfuels]

5 hours ago, Sara H said:

Is it accurate to say that we hold the belief that polygamy is the norm for everything to the left of the red line, our pre mortal existence which is included within the scope of "within the blue line, eternity"? And that the extremely little time we spend here on earth, the red line, is only monogamous due to the fact that the federal government has made it illegal for us to practice polygamy? And that everything to the right of the red line, post mortal existence, will also be a polygamous reality?

Is it accurate to say that we hold the belief that polygamy is the norm for everything to the left of the red line, our pre mortal existence which is included within the scope of "within the blue line, eternity"? IMHO, yes.

And that the extremely little time we spend here on earth, the red line, is only monogamous due to the fact that the federal government has made it illegal for us to practice polygamy? IMHO, yes - and that's only in the US. Many countries have legallized the practice based on thier non-Christian faiths, which recommend the same practice, polygamy.

And that everything to the right of the red line, post mortal existence, will also be a polygamous reality? IMHO, yes.

Generally - I don't think it's our place to tell God how He and His Council should run things.

Is Polygamy Eternal? 

I certainly hope so.

 

[Calm]

3 hours ago, Pyreaux said:

If there are more exalted women than men, how else can they all be sealed?

If there are more exalted men?  Given there are more males born than females and more males die prior to accountability. 

[Pyreaux]

2 hours ago, 2BizE said:

polygamy is a requirement for the celestial kingdom. There are plenty of quotes from church leaders around this.

No, there isn't. If your source would be Brigham Young who said in the Journal of Discourses that says to be exalted or "gods", you need to be "polygamists in your heart", was meant a generalized willingness to obey, to accept the calling to practice polygamy if they are asked to take someone in charitably, and not reject it for your business and political reputation. 

[Pyreaux]

1 hour ago, Calm said:

If there are more exalted men?  Given there are more males born than females and more males die prior to accountability. 

4 hours ago, webbles said:

The math just doesn't add up.  Since all children who die before the age of accountability will go the Celestial Kingdom, and there are more young boys who die than young girls, and there have been a lot of children who have died over all the years, I expect close to an equal amount of men and women in the Celestial Kingdom.  So the number of polygamists would be extremely small.

Hmmm, I learned something. I'd last heard there were more women than men on the earth, but I suppose that didn't account the birth rates and the mortality rates of men.

Edited September 11, 2023 by Pyreaux

[juliann]

Good grief.  This again?

[smac97]

3 hours ago, 2BizE said:

Yes, according to early church leaders, polygamy is a requirement for the celestial kingdom. There are plenty of quotes from church leaders around this. Remember, polygamy was implemented as part of the restoration of all things, or as President Nelson likes to call it, “The Ongoing Restoration.”

Well, no:

Quote

No presiding Church leader has ever taught that polygamy is required for exaltation irrespective of when and where a person is born on earth. Between the 1840s and 1890, the issue was obedience, not some unique eternal blessing attached to the practice of plural marriage.

Statements made between 1852 and 1890, when plural marriage was treated as a commandment, can be easily quoted out of context to create the appearance that Church leaders taught that all men in the Celestial Kingdom would be polygamists.

The CES Letter repeats the most common quotation, which is from Brigham Young who made a statement in 1866 that is also very popular with Mormon fundamentalists:

“The only men who become Gods, even the Sons of God, are those who enter into polygamy. Others attain unto a glory and may even be permitted to come into the presence of the Father and the Son; but they cannot reign as kings in glory.”  

However a new transcription of this discourse from George Watt's Pittman shorthand shows that the expectation to practice polygamy was totally dependent upon whether a people had the privilege to do so. There is no mention that all men and women in the Celestial kingdom will be polygamists:

This new transcription demonstrates that twice Brigham Young emphasized that a person must have the "privilege" to practice plural marriage or there was no expectation to practice polygamy.

Another similar statement comes from an 1878 discourse by Elder Joseph F. Smith. He taught:

Some people have supposed that the doctrine of plural marriage was a sort of superfluity, or non-essential, to the salvation or exaltation of mankind. In other words, some of the Saints have said, and believe, that a man with one wife, sealed to him by the authority of the Priesthood for time and eternity, will receive an exaltation as great and glorious, if he is faithful, as he possibly could with more than one. I want here to enter my solemn protest against this idea, for I know it is false. 

Alone this quotation can be read to mean that all men, irrespective of when and where they lived, were required to enter plural marriage to be fully exalted, which is a common interpretation by modern polygamists.   However, toward the beginning of the talk Joseph F. Smith clarified:

It [plural marriage] is a principle that pertains to eternal life, in other words, to endless lives, or eternal increase. It is a law of the Gospel pertaining to the celestial kingdom, applicable to all gospel dispensations, when commanded and not otherwise, and neither acceptable to God or binding on man unless given by commandment, not only so given in this dispensation, but particularly adapted to the conditions and necessities thereof, and to the circumstances, responsibilities, and personal, as well as vicarious duties of the people of God in this age of the world.

Apostle Smith's statement that plural marriage is "applicable to all gospel dispensations, when commanded and not otherwise, and neither acceptable to God or binding on man unless given by commandment" is perhaps the best available summary of the eternal position of polygamy in LDS history.

D&C 132: 18, 38 describe the condemnations to individuals who assume to practice plural marriage without the authority of the "one" man holding the sealing keys (v. 7).

Wilford Woodruff recorded in his journal on February 12, 1870, that a Church member, John Holement, “made a long speech upon the subject of polygamy. He contended that no person could have a Celestial glory unless he had a plurality of wives.” In response, President Brigham Young clarified that “there would be men saved in the Celestial Kingdom of God with one wife.”  

On February 10, 1873, in the Salt Lake School of the Prophets, a question was raised regarding the truthfulness of the claim that “no man who has only one wife in this probation can ever enter Celestial Kingdom.” Wilford Woodruff “expressed disagreement and John Taylor said ‘he did not believe [it].’” 

In 1884, First Presidency Counselor, George Q. Cannon, stated that, “He believed there would be men in the Celestial Kingdom that had but one wife.”  First Presidency Counselor John Henry Smith recalled in 1900 that “President Young once proposed that we marry but one wife.”

Thanks,

-Smac

[The Nehor]

So what is the timetable on a sealing ordinance for an eternal “friends with benefits” setup?

[JLHPROF]

1 hour ago, The Nehor said:

So what is the timetable on a sealing ordinance for an eternal “friends with benefits” setup?

Never - unless by benefits you are thinking about sharing the work of the kingdom.

[rpn]

God doesn't force anyone to do anything.   That would override agency and agency matters to Him and to the Plan itself.   No one in the celestial kingdom will be forced into Polygamy. 

[Calm]

56 minutes ago, rpn said:

God doesn't force anyone to do anything.   That would override agency and agency matters to Him and to the Plan itself.   No one in the celestial kingdom will be forced into Polygamy. 

When you think about it, you become exalted by aligning your will with God’s Will, so by the time we get to exalted status where eternal marriage and therefore possibly polygamy comes into play, if God desires polygamy to be part of eternity***, we will be asking him to participate because we also desire it…not because we have become some sort of Stepford doll or puppet of God, but because we have grown to perfect understanding of the eternal value of polygamy and so will see how we should practice it were appropriate or we will choose to only have one of our marriages confirmed by the Spirit if monogamy is God’s Will for us.  Anyone who is exalted will have God’s level of perfect wisdom, perfect understanding, and most important perfect love because we are in perfect oneness with God.  I do believe we may have different values of things we like and dislike based on individual personalities, but in regards to what we think of right and wrong, morality, that will match God’s Will.

*** By polygamy, I mean either men or women could have multiple spouses

Edited September 12, 2023 by Calm

[Calm]

19 hours ago, Pyreaux said:

Hmmm, I learned something. I'd last heard there were more women than men on the earth, but I suppose that didn't account the birth rates and the mortality rates of men.

Yes, there are more adult women, but more male children…except in places where abortion or infanticide has killed off significant numbers of females.  Iirc, this more males born percentage appears to be consistent over history based on archaeological research, though since there were a lot more people living than remains discovered and studied, this can’t be guaranteed. Maybe if @katherine the great sees this post she can confirm or correct, since it has been eons since my anthropology class.   
Added:  just looked up and the historic ratio is 100 females to 105 males at birth, though currently it’s at 107 males due to abortion practices in certain places.

Higher maternal stress resulting in more miscarriages, which is more likely to happen to males being the weaker sex***, as well as less frequent intercourse and age are associated with closer girl/boy ratios.  Supposedly ‘male’ sperm is also weaker than ‘female’ sperm (the X chromosome sperm is larger and can last up to three days) and dies off quicker.

***technically I am wrong here in that more males survive till birth than females (guess we are pickier about how we want to come into the world), which is what I get for going off memory and top hits when looking for confirmation of memory that happened to be baby sites rather than academic research, my bad.  Ben gets the correct info up, thank goodness; men being weaker appears to apply mostly after birth.   

Edited September 12, 2023 by Calm

[Benjamin McGuire]

59 minutes ago, Calm said:

Added:  just looked up and the historic ratio is 100 females to 105 males at birth, though currently it’s at 107 males due to abortion practices in certain places.

The actual rate of gender by fertilization is pretty close to even (100 to 100). The gap is created because more female embryos fail than males do during pregnancy. In early pregnancy, more male embryos have genetic irregularities (this may be the real application of the supposedly weaker sperm). This means that a small part of this gap is created by embryos that are not viable - which favor females. Then, up until around 20 weeks of development more female embryos than males die. Between 20  and 28 weeks, survival rates by gender are roughly equivalent, and then it shifts towards male embryos having a lower chance of survival than female embryos. The 105 to 100 ratio takes all of this into account.

The current shift towards abortion practices cannot be separated from the development of the ultrasound - relatively cheap ultrasounds account for the vast majority of pre-birth gender based selection caused abortions. This is only a part of the challenge though. The other part (not linked to abortion) is that within societies where there is increased benefit to having boys, parents are more likely to stop having more children after having a boy. This adds to any imbalance of having more boys by increasing the impact of biological factors. The use of abortion didn't really do much to move the needle on the ratio until the availability of cheap ultrasounds ran into the one child policy in China - where, instead of having children until the desired boy was born, parents stopped having daughters at all. It is important to note that even where this occurs, it doesn't shift the needle very far - however, it doesn't have to shift very far to create significant population imbalances.

The real problem with using this sort of idea (more women than men) to justify a principle like polygamy is that the numbers still aren't really there. We have the problem of discussing when someone has experienced enough mortality - does a person become a person when conception occurs? While we look at the gap between males embryos that survive significantly past conception and female embryos that survive significantly past conception, the gap isn't very large. At the same time, the gap between conceptions and embryo viability more generally is huge. The rough estimates are that 70-75% of fertilized embryos do not survive - and the vast majority of these (roughly 60%) die in the first week or two (before women are even aware they may be pregnant). Seen from this perspective, the idea of weaker male sperm may have some impact on actual birth ratios, but has only a very minimal effect on embryo viability. Most female embryos are just as un-viable as the male embryos. If Mormonism adopted the view that life begins at conception, this would mean that more than 2/3 of the human population will enter the Celestial Kingdom without ever going through the mortal experience. In general, though, Mormonism doesn't formally adopt this position and the closest we get is some sense that life begins at some point later in the pregnancy, at which point, a majority of failed pregnancies are male - which would tend to inflate the number of men in the Celestial Kingdom, not reduce it.

Polygamy is only sustainable in mortality because you can offset gender cohorts in a generational sense. That means that polygamy can be sustainable (in limited percentages of the population) when older men marry younger women. It is not generally sustainable otherwise - if we are allowing everyone a chance to have a marriage.

[Calm]

3 minutes ago, Benjamin McGuire said:

he actual rate of gender by fertilization is pretty close to even (100 to 100). The gap is created because more female embryos fail than males do during pregnancy.

Do you have a reference because the sites I used to refresh my memory had the reverse, that more miscarriages happened with males iirc.  

[Calm]

Never mind a reference, found something.  Thanks for the correction.  Excellent explanation and commentary, btw.

https://www.biorxiv.org/content/10.1101/418186v3.full#

 

Quote

Given an equal sex ratio at conception, we can only explain the excess of human males at birth by greater loss of females during pregnancy. I propose that the bias against females during human development is the result of a greater degree of genetic and metabolic “differentness” between female embryos and maternal tissues than for similarly aged males, and that successful implantation and placentation represents a threshold dichotomy, where the acceptance threshold shifts depending on maternal condition, especially stress. Right and left ovaries are not equal, and neither are the eggs and follicular fluid that they produce, and I further hypothesise that during times of stress, the implantation threshold is shifted sufficiently to favour survival of females, most likely those originating from the right ovary, and that this, rather than simply a greater loss of males, explains at least some of the variability in the human sex ratio at birth.

Quote

A comprehensive study of the human sex ratio from conception to birth^[26] shows an initial large loss of male embryos in the first week or so, followed by a longer period of female-biased loss in the first trimester. As a result, the cohort sex ratio is male-biased from the end of the first trimester, and remains this way until the last few weeks of pregnancy, where male-biased stillbirth^[27] likely comes into play.

Quote

Pregnancy is a conflict between mother and offspring.

Ain’t that the truth…

Edited September 12, 2023 by Calm

[Calm]

36 minutes ago, Benjamin McGuire said:

Seen from this perspective, the idea of weaker male sperm may have some impact on actual birth ratios, but has only a very minimal effect on embryo viability. Most female embryos are just as un-viable as the male embryos

The whole male as the weaker sex is just me tweaking noses after having lived with the “women are weaker” (but really meaning “women are weak”) routine (mentally and emotionally as well as physically) for too much of my life. 😛 

I have run into too many men (in and out of church) who say they are protecting me (by not sharing rather important info with me) when they are just protecting themselves from what they see as extra work or confrontations (when they hide mistakes). Women protect ourselves too, but we don’t usually try to turn it into being respectful and chivalrous, etc. using “women are weaker” as justification

Edited September 12, 2023 by Calm

[Freedom]

trying to answer this question is like asking a 5 year old to give marriage advise. We have no idea. We are infants compared to what life will be in the next life. What of the woman who was married to 5 men? There is no point speculating because we are too small minded. If God is a 10 on the intellectual scale, the difference between an ape and a human would be too small to measure so we would both be 1. WE have enough to manage our affairs in this life, we will understand the fullness of the plan in the next. Work on your mortal relationship, do not spend time trying to future out your eternal relationships. 

[Buckeye]

On 9/12/2023 at 11:04 AM, Benjamin McGuire said:

The actual rate of gender by fertilization is pretty close to even (100 to 100). The gap is created because more female embryos fail than males do during pregnancy. In early pregnancy, more male embryos have genetic irregularities (this may be the real application of the supposedly weaker sperm). This means that a small part of this gap is created by embryos that are not viable - which favor females. Then, up until around 20 weeks of development more female embryos than males die. Between 20  and 28 weeks, survival rates by gender are roughly equivalent, and then it shifts towards male embryos having a lower chance of survival than female embryos. The 105 to 100 ratio takes all of this into account.

The current shift towards abortion practices cannot be separated from the development of the ultrasound - relatively cheap ultrasounds account for the vast majority of pre-birth gender based selection caused abortions. This is only a part of the challenge though. The other part (not linked to abortion) is that within societies where there is increased benefit to having boys, parents are more likely to stop having more children after having a boy. This adds to any imbalance of having more boys by increasing the impact of biological factors. The use of abortion didn't really do much to move the needle on the ratio until the availability of cheap ultrasounds ran into the one child policy in China - where, instead of having children until the desired boy was born, parents stopped having daughters at all. It is important to note that even where this occurs, it doesn't shift the needle very far - however, it doesn't have to shift very far to create significant population imbalances.

The real problem with using this sort of idea (more women than men) to justify a principle like polygamy is that the numbers still aren't really there. We have the problem of discussing when someone has experienced enough mortality - does a person become a person when conception occurs? While we look at the gap between males embryos that survive significantly past conception and female embryos that survive significantly past conception, the gap isn't very large. At the same time, the gap between conceptions and embryo viability more generally is huge. The rough estimates are that 70-75% of fertilized embryos do not survive - and the vast majority of these (roughly 60%) die in the first week or two (before women are even aware they may be pregnant). Seen from this perspective, the idea of weaker male sperm may have some impact on actual birth ratios, but has only a very minimal effect on embryo viability. Most female embryos are just as un-viable as the male embryos. If Mormonism adopted the view that life begins at conception, this would mean that more than 2/3 of the human population will enter the Celestial Kingdom without ever going through the mortal experience. In general, though, Mormonism doesn't formally adopt this position and the closest we get is some sense that life begins at some point later in the pregnancy, at which point, a majority of failed pregnancies are male - which would tend to inflate the number of men in the Celestial Kingdom, not reduce it.

Polygamy is only sustainable in mortality because you can offset gender cohorts in a generational sense. That means that polygamy can be sustainable (in limited percentages of the population) when older men marry younger women. It is not generally sustainable otherwise - if we are allowing everyone a chance to have a marriage.

Excellent analysis. Thank you. 
 

My view, in a nutshell, and speaking collectively, is that polygamy is bad for women and worse for men. Women end up in unequal marriages (ala The Bachelor) and most men end up cut out of marriage entirely. I believe it was a mistake all along. 

[gopher]

On 9/11/2023 at 3:01 PM, 2BizE said:

Yes, according to early church leaders, polygamy is a requirement for the celestial kingdom. There are plenty of quotes from church leaders around this. Remember, polygamy was implemented as part of the restoration of all things, or as President Nelson likes to call it, “The Ongoing Restoration.”

Maybe the restoration of all things won't be complete until it becomes a requirement to be in a plural same sex marriage to be exalted in the celestial kingdom.

[Tacenda]

2 hours ago, gopher said:

Maybe the restoration of all things won't be complete until it becomes a requirement to be in a plural same sex marriage to be exalted in the celestial kingdom.

Hope you're joking. Wait, I saw that.

Edited September 14, 2023 by Tacenda

[The Nehor]

2 hours ago, gopher said:

Maybe the restoration of all things won't be complete until it becomes a requirement to be in a plural same sex marriage to be exalted in the celestial kingdom.

Fingers crossed for October Conference.