Posted on 12/09/2014 3:47:08 AM PST by Colofornian
...When ushered into the master bedroom of the Mormon patriarch Brigham Young at his winter home in St. George, Utah, a few years ago, I felt duty-bound to ask an obvious question: Where did the other women sleep?
Other women? The church tour guide blushed, and laser-stared me as if I’d blasphemed the Mormon Moses.
I wondered about arrangements and jealousies, the conjugal timing of a man who was married to 55 women, by most accounts. I didn’t ask about the sexual acrobatics of the great pioneer, just the spreadsheet logistics of managing all those spouses.
...The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints...has had a particularly hard time reconciling its radical founding principles with its white-bread contemporary image. Imagine Mitt Romney with a harem, and you have some idea of the kind of men who planted a new church in the West.
So, it’s been fascinating to watch the reaction to the acknowledgment last month by Mormon leaders that Joseph Smith...took as many as 40 wives. Some...women were also married to other men. One of his brides was a 14-year-old girl, or as church officials put it in an essay, she was “sealed” to Smith “several months before her 15th birthday.” Well, that changes everything.
Smith...came to his decision only under duress, the church explained: A sword-wielding angel forced him to take up a life of sanctioned promiscuity...
And there was a creepy grooming aspect in how the Mormon founder picked his brides. Mary Elizabeth Rollins was 12 years old when Smith told her...God had commanded him to take her as a plural wife, according to the author Linda King Newell. She later married him at 23, wife No. 9...
Remember when Mitt Romney tried to explain how his ancestors came from Mexico?...In fact, they were sexual fugitives...
(Excerpt) Read more at dailyastorian.com ...
(Indeed. Sounds like that without computers, A Master Control Tower for Brigham's bedroom should have been constructed).
Oh...and for those who embraced the myth that polygamy enhanced "large families" ... that just "ain't so." At least from historical studies comparing women who had sanctioned promiscuous husbands (polygamists) vs. wives whose husbands were monogamous. Studies have shown that the average number of children per mom was reduced by one child for those in plural-union arrangements.
Take Brigham Young, for example...55 wives...but only 57 kids...Essentially one child per mom...hardly even close to the 19th-century "average."
* Smith marrying women -- as in the double digits -- who were ALREADY married (& remained married to these other men)
* Smith marrying a 14 year old
* Smith "grooming" a 12 year old to become his wife #9.
Your link doesn’t work.
Here’s another: http://www.nytimes.com/2014/11/30/opinion/sunday/timothy-egan-sex-and-the-saints.html
"Sexual fugitives" indeed!
Many Mormons either moved to Mexico so that the polygamous lifestyles could be lived beyond the reach of authorities...or, as B. Carmon Hardy outlines in his book, Solemn Covenant: THE MORMON POLYGAMOUS PASSAGE...many Lds would head to Mexico to have an additional plural wife sanctioned by the Mormon Church...and the trip would "double" as a yet "another" honeymoon for the polygamist.
If you want to get the "skinny" on historic Mormon polygamy, I'll mention two books in the next post -- two books, which, coincidentally, were mentioned in a Salt Lake Tribune article that ran the same day as this article (Dec. 2, 2014).
A bit misleading. She was 23 when he "married" her.
It is probable some of the women Smith, and particularly Young, married were wives "in name only."
It is also possible some of those already-married women Smith married were "for eternity," to take effect only in the afterlife.
This story is complex and really rather appalling. I think it's bad enough without misrepresenting any of it.
I am really unclear why the article claims the LDS just fessed up. This has all been public knowledge for decades or perhaps a century.
Well on Dec. 2, The Salt Lake Tribune ran this piece:
Rolly: Deseret News rejects ads for Mormon polygamy books
A brief excerpt of that Dec. 2 article reads:
"The Salt Lake Tribune recently ran ads for Signature Books promoting two of its books about polygamy in the LDS Church’s early days, "In Sacred Loneliness" by Todd Compton and "Mormon Polygamy" by the late Richard Van Wagoner, which was originally published in the 1980s. The ads did not appear in the LDS Church-owned Deseret News. The paper refused to run them. That puzzled Tom Kimball, marketing director for Signature Books, since The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints recently released several essays about Mormon polygamy, shedding light on the subject and acknowledging the plural marriages of LDS founder Joseph Smith. In fact, the church essays cite "In Sacred Loneliness," which won an award from the Mormon History Association. When Kimball asked why the Deseret News would turn down an innocuous ad on a historical issue LDS officials are attempting to address, he was told by an editor that polygamy is just too hot of a topic."
So here the Mormon Church sees fit to publish this Fall its own essay on polygamy. Such an essay cites one of the above-mentioned books. But when the publisher of said book attempts to advertise in the Mormon-Church-owned Deseret News, the ad gets rejected as "too hot."
(More typical censorship by the Mormon Church)
Mormons: Doncha want to read about the sexual lifestyles of your spiritual ancestors...what your leaders "patronizingly" deem as "too hot" for you?
A man who can juggle 55 wives must be quite a diplomat.
There's a HUGE difference between covering the subject directly and forthrightly and either censoring it, or covering it indirectly.
For example, many bios are written by Lds leaders on their historical "prophets." ALL of the Mormon prophets through part of World War II were polygamists (Grant being the last).
When you look thru most Lds church bios, and books, on these "prophets" -- the polygamous wives are usually not addressed.
For example, Emma Smith is often cited as Joseph's wife. But the rest of his "wives" are not.
(Or iron-fisted enough)
So wait, Kristy is a psychologist, and presumably college-educated, and she believes, among other things, that the Nephites are one of four groups (including the Lamanites, Jaredites, and Mulekites) who supposedly settled in the ancient Americas?
It's not just the polygamy that gets me about mormonism. It's the obvious scientology-like-fabrication aspect of their religion that amazes me. How can people with functioning brains accept this tripe?
Take Brigham Young, for example...55 wives...but only 57 kids...Essentially one child per mom...hardly even close to the 19th-century "average."
I don't know about you, but 55 wives, 57 children, and one husband strikes me as a pretty large family. }8^D
On a serious note, each can draw his own conclusions, but it is, to say the least, pretty sketchy behavior for "men of God"...
:)
Indeed!
(Of course, had those 55 women married a monogamist, you're talking HUNDREDS of kids!)
‘I am really unclear why the article claims the LDS just fessed up. This has all been public knowledge for decades or perhaps a century.’
Take a sample of 100 LDS members and see how many always knew a) that Joseph had many ladies b) that some were teens c) that a number of them were already married to other men d) that Joseph did not tell Emma. I’ll guess less than 5%.
You may be right. I always got the impression this history was open but that most carefully ignored it.
I’m not LDS, but I’ve known about much of this for decades.
Large billboard outside Harold B. Lee Library December 12, 2005
I read a book about Romney’s polygamous ancestors. They had to move to Mexico in order to keep up their polygamous practices
I imagine some of those wives were only temporary.
and just think, 55 mothers in law.
and Mormons don’t drink alcohol!
(Yes, which is why the author labels them as "sexual fugitives")
Anthony W. Ivins was the Juarez stake president from 1896 to 1907 or 08. (He was called to be an Lds "apostle" in 1907).
His son, H. Grant Ivins, wrote a 14-page piece about polygamy in Mexico:
Polygamy in Mexico as Practiced by the Mormon Church, 1895-1905
VERY eye-opening!
{One Lds leader -- part of the top three in the hierarchy of the church instructed Ivins to lie about the Lds practice of polygamy: To indicate the desire on the part of the Church Presidency to keep these marriages secret and even to maintain secrecy as to the practice of polygamy, my father told me, “almost in the same breath, George Q. Cannon said, ‘Now Brother Ivins, if you have occasion to meet Porfio Diaz, President of Mexico, we want you to tell him that we are NOT practicing polygamy in Mexico.” At a much later date, during the Smoot Investigation, my father was invited (I use the word advisedly) to come to Washington and testify that they were not practicing polygamy in Mexico. I use the word “invited” because my father did not go to Washington. He told me that he refused to go on two grounds: “It is none of the Senate’s business what the Mormons we're doing in Mexico, and further, I refused to perjure myself.” (page 2)}
Here's another interesting quote from page 4 of the testimony written by Ivin's son:
That the practice carried on in Mexico was known to the General Authorities cannot be doubted. Many of them visited the Colonies where they could not fail to become aware of what was going on. Among those who came to Mexico on official Church business, some of them many times, were John W. Taylor, Mathias F. Cowley, Hyrum Smith, son of Joseph F. Smith, A. Owen Woodruff, son of Wilford W oodruff, Heber J. Grant, Amasa M. Lyman, B. H. Roberts of the Council of Seventy, and President Joseph F. Smith. These men, with few exceptions, preached with fervor the doctrine that plural marriage was a pre-requisite to celestial exaltation. They urged the young men in the Colonies to accept and practice the principle. Many of them brought pressure to bear on my father to take a second wife, a pressure which he steadfastly resisted. He once said to me, “The Doctrine and Covenants says that those to whom the doctrine is revealed should accept and practice it. It has never been revealed to me that I should do so.” (page 4...link above)
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