Posted on 03/17/2009 3:10:36 PM PDT by Erin Brown
CBS merely brushed off the controversy that upset many members of the Mormon Church when interviewing HBO’s “Big Love” star Bill Paxton on March 16, 2009.
The TV series about a Mormon polygamist has not surprisingly gotten plenty of attention in its three years on air. This time, however, “Big Love” is causing trouble because the March 15 episode showed a highly sacred Mormon temple ceremony. CBS’s The Early Show host Chris Wragge mentioned the controversy during an interview with Paxton:
read more here: http://www.cultureandmedia.com/articles/2009/20090316141843.aspx
(Excerpt) Read more at cultureandmedia.com ...
***Last time I look, there were no Mormon polygamist. The church outlawed it before Utah became a state.***
Way back in 1976 the TODAY show had a special on UTAH in which it was stated that an estimated ten thousand Mormons in Utah were still polygamous.
Hey, that was on STARZ just the other night! I missed it! Bummmer. ( I only watch for the itellectual part.:-)
Then I guess the today show was wrong. The church outlawed it as part of Utah becoming a state.
“.......Sealing husband to wife (AKA “temple marriage”)
......Sealing of Parents to Children (done when the parents had children before they were married in the Temple and done for the dead)”
I’ll assume this is more the 25% of the faith.
placemark
Way back in 1976 the TODAY show had a special on UTAH in which it was stated that an estimated ten thousand Mormons in Utah were still polygamous. [Ruy Dias de Bivar]
The estimates are higher now. I haven't seen Utah-specific numbers like what's being referenced here, but estimates of 25,000-30,000 are in polygamous families.
Also, the church didn't "outlaw" it. First of all, the church wasn't a legal jurisdictional entity. It had no legal power to create polygamy and likewise had no legal power to "de"-create it.
And even then, the LDS church continued to solemnize 220-250 additional plural marriages on the sly -- many in Juarez, Mexico -- between 1890 and 1910...even after giving a public manifesto saying they were bringing it to a halt.
Well, blink again -- at least if the Mormon jesus returns:
From an LDS apostle in a book that has the audacity to call itself "Mormon Doctrine" and widely available in LDS bookstores today:
"Obviously the holy practice (of polygamy) will commence again after the Second Coming of the Son of Man and the ushering in of the millennium." (LDS apostle Bruce R. McConkie, Mormon Doctrine, 1966 edition, see pp. 577-579 for context)
Not necessarily. You must be “temple worthy” to have these done. And estimates are only 25% of LDS are worthy at any point in their lives.
Work for the dead is done only by those who have already gone through for themselves.
Just because it’s ‘private’, ‘secret’ whatever, they have no right to stop others from depicting it. Nobody has a right to not be offended. As a Christian there are people doing things that offend my religion all the time, often deliberately. They have that right, just like I have the right to criticize what they are doing.
Now I think if the Mormons had a legal leg to stand on (slander/libel) or something like that, because the show was intentionally depicting something about them incorrectly to knowingly push a false, negative view, then that is a different matter. I am sure they would have brought a suit in court if this was what was occurring.
Otherwise they might not like it, but the show is perfectly within its rights to show a depiction of ANY religious ceremony of ANY religion ANY time it wants to. They could show a Scientology ceremony and (of course be sued) but they’d be in their rights to do so. No religion gets a ‘hands off’ while we still have free speech in this country.
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I found this on wikipedia - interesting!
An 8 year old (Bill) Paxton was in the crowd waving when President Kennedy emerged from the Hotel Texas in Ft. Worth the morning of Nov. 22, 1963. There are pictures at the Sixth Floor Museum in Dallas where the young Paxton can clearly be seen astride the shoulders of an unidentified man
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That IS interesting. Thanks for posting.
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Why did you quit the church?
Let me first list reasons I DID NOT LEAVE. I did not leave becuase I never had a testimony (in fact, I had a very strong testimony), I did not leave because I wanted to sin, sleep around, drink coffee, smoke, gamble, etc. (none of which I did before or after I left the church) I did not leave becuase I was offended or didn’t want to pay tithing I (I was a full tithe payer). And I did not leave because it “was too hard to live the Gospel” or I would rather sleep in on Sundays (I was a TBM, faithful to the last detail and looked forward to meetings on Sunday).
When I was LDS, I accepted a lot of the doctrine that is appalling to outsiders. When I was LDS, I had no problem with Jesus being married and having children, the Adam-God doctrine, that God was LITERALLY (through martial relations) the Father of Jesus Christ. That Mary had a “second husband”, that Jesus was the firstborn spirit child of God and Lucifer was the second (that they were ‘spirit brothers’). That God had once been man, that there were other gods, that God had a God. I even had no problem with polygamy in eternity and that Christ would re-institute it here on earth. These were doctrines that I had learned in LDS church meetings, through discussions with other members, through reading mainstream LDS authors, and the LDS prophets and apostles. When I took a Mission Prep class at BYU and was told not to tell “investigators” of these beliefs, I could not understand why. If it is the truth, then we should be honest.
I was told by several people that I had a better grasp of LDS theology than many” lifers” (I was a convert).
And I HATED “anti-mormons”, violently. I had heard about “the Godmakers” and was FURIOUS. I wanted to wipe them off the face of the earth. My attitude was “How dare they attack the one true Church, they will be sorry when they die.” I wanted to fight them.
So I bought the book “the Truth about the Godmakers”. I also bought other apologetic books by the Browns and Hugh Nibley. I set out to be an LDS apologist. This was pre-FARMS/FAIR days (Sunstone was alive and well as I remember). I never read “anti” literature, I just read the responses. I believed that the LDS church could stand on its own merits and that it would withstand scrutiny. “Bring it on” was my motto. I believed what a General authority said that the LDS church on Joseph Smith, that either he was a prophet and the Church was true, or he wasn’t and it was a fraud (IDR which authority said it.)
I learned Egyptian Hieroglyphs and Demotic (took a leave of absence and went to UCLA for the coursework) in order to prove the Book of Abraham was what it said it was. It is easy for me to learn languages and I had already had several years of both Hebrew and Latin by that point. I was bothered by the fact that the texts on the facsimiles did not match the BoA and I was familiar enough at that point with Egyptian religious practices (My major at BYU was Near Eastern Studies) to recognize the canopic jars in Fac. #1. When I discussed this problem with my bishop and another friend I was told “well, Joseph translated them, but not in the way you normally translate text. He put down what the Hieroglyphs were SUPPOSED to mean.” That made absolutely no sense to me. I had been doing translations for years. Translation means translation, taking something from one language and putting it in another translation. When doing translation work (I did a little on the Dead Sea Scrolls at BYU as an assistant to my Hebrew professor there), you NEVER put in what you THINK should be there, you translate WHAT is there, checking for nuances and context. But as hard as I tried (and I really tried) there was just NO reconciling the texts.
I started to read the Journal of Discourses. Now, remember that I agreed with some of the more “peculiar” doctrines found there. I remember discussing something in there with another LDS friend and their response was “we don’t believe that anymore”. I responded “Why not? They are prophets and apostles, God gives us a prophet to lead us and give us scripture. All the words of the prophets are scripture. The early saints considered their words to be scripture. Does God change doctrine?” He responded “well, sometimes they speak as a man, not as a prophet.” That made no sense. How could we know if a prophet was speaking as a prophet or as a man? The early LDS saw the words of Brigham Young, Orson Pratt, and Joseph Smith – among others – as words from God, now I am being told they are of man?!? God does not change. I believed he evolved and progressed, but I also believed that his gospel (the LDS gospel) was the same one he had to follow to become God. “The Gospel is eternal.” So I also believed that Scripture should not be changed, which is what I saw the dismissal of the early LDS leaders to be.
One day I was reading in one of the apologetic books an attempt to reconcile several “first vision” accounts. I was surprised when I saw that there was more than one version! I thought there was only one. So again, I went into research mode and started researching. These were not minor differences. They were big. Again, I could not reconcile the differences, they were too great. It was frustrating and heartbreaking.
I was surprised to find out that JS denied practicing polygamy after he had already started the practice. I wondered, “if it is from God, then be honest”. Much the same reaction
Then I found out about the “kinderhook plates” which supposedly contained examples of “reformed Egyptian” from the Book of Mormon. There was absolutely no way that was anything close to Hebrew or Egyptian. I had studied both and it could not be reconciled. That may have been ‘the straw that broke the camel’s back’. If Joseph Smith could not actually translate Egyptian, doctrines he taught were no longer accepted, kept changing the accounts of the first vision (which I am sorry, but a visit up close and personal with God would be SEARED into anyone’s mind), and copied these graphics from which he supposedly “translated” the BoM which were in actuality nonsensical, then he could NOT be a true prophet.
Therefore, according to my own General Authorities, he must be a “false prophet” and since the LDS church stood on his testimony, then the LDS church fell.
There were other things going on in my life, ways that God planted seeds and humbled me, like the Christian bookstore owner in Provo who would order me books like the Apocrypha and on the Nag Hammadi Libraray that I could not get at Deseret Books, that were factors in me becoming a Christian, rather than an atheist. Too many leave the LDS and “throw the baby out with the bathwater.” But those experiences really had nothing to do with why I LEFT.
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It’s a TV show, for Pete’s sake!
I don’t think they’ve done anything to offend the Mormons.
And what a TV show it is. This show takes a subject which many of us have often wondered about, polygamy, and looks at both the good and the not so good.
It turns it around and examines all of the angles.
How do you satisfy three wives without taking viagra?
What are the risks of losing your eyesight - especially if you’re taking a teensy bit more than prescribed.
Is it really cheating if you’re meeting one of the wives on the side in a hotel room without the knowledge of the others?
Is the prairie skirt still a fashion statement?
Who gets the kids if one of the wives dies?
How long will your neighbors believe that your “babysitter” never has a boyfriend and conveniently has a house bordering your backyard?
Who controls the money?
Then it very quickly twists it into a Rubik’s Cube of a puzzle and let’s us watch a very talented cast including Jeanne Tripplehorn and Bill Paxton as they try to work it out under a very unconventional set of circumstances.
The stories are fantastic, with wonderful characters at every level.
Harry Dean Stanton as Roman Grant is an absolute masterclass in acting; his tiny, shriveled exterior does nothing to prevent us from fearing his powerful, commanding leadership role as the so-called prophet of the compound.
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You’ve posted this once before, but I enjoyed reading it again. It is a blessing, as are you.
awww. Cuddles.
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