Posted on 01/01/2012 4:51:53 PM PST by Colofornian
n Utah, the issue of polygamy is a very sensitive topic. Should the topic of one man marrying more than one wife somehow come up in a conversation, watch the eyes roll and folks run away from the conversation. So, needless to say, this is not an issue generally dealt with over the picket fence.
However, when a Mormon is willing to discuss the issue, it’s amazing how many folktales are used. For one, it is commonly asserted that polygamy was necessary back in the pioneer days of Brigham Young because there were not enough men for the women. (Note: According to all statistics I have seen, there NEVER was a time when Mormon men outnumbered Mormon women at any time in the Utah Territory.) Thus, having a man take two or more wives is somehow touted as actually being helpful to the women, as otherwise they would have ended up as Old Maids. (In case you’re wondering, being single for many years is NOT a good thing in Mormonism.) The men who sacrificed themselves in this way are almost made out to be heroes, as if they were taking one for the team so that women would have a chance at the celestial kingdom. I once had one Latter-day Saint tell me that the male/female ratios actually became close to 50/50 in the 1890s when the Manifesto abolishing polygamy was given, so the practice had somehow served its purpose and was no longer needed. Really.
Hence, imagine my surprise when I discovered that, according to a recent survey from Trinity College called “Mormons in the United States, 1990-2008” (Salt Lake Tribune, 12/15, p. A1), there appear to be many more Mormon women than Mormon men in the state of Utah. Consider these statistics: In 1990, a total of 53 percent of the Mormons in Utah were females (55% in the rest of the country). Eighteen years later, though, in 2008, there were 60% LDS females in Utah compared to 40% males (52% in the rest of the country).
In other words, if you’re female in Utah, there’s a good possibility you will be sitting home on Saturday night. Imagine, this equals three women for every two men in Utah. Go to a Saturday night dance and there are 60 girls to only 40 boys. Some are getting left out. For returning 21-year-old male missionaries, these are some pretty good odds when coming home. I can only wonder if there will soon be an influx of Mormon males moving to SLC from other parts in the country as well? Even with Vegas so close, these odds have to look pretty good.
Since Utah Mormons have a problem of too many females and not enough males, the question needs to be asked: Should the Mormon Church propose making polygamy legal once more? After all, there are possibly some women who won’t be able to attend the temple as married women unless willing men can lend a hand. There must be some willing married Mormon males out there who might be willing to do their duty and get married to two, maybe even three women. After all, if God intended polygamy back in the old days to provide assistance to the women, it seems like this practice ought to be reconsidered once more.
Of course, this is not going to happen. But the next time a Mormon uses the “too many women, not enough men” argument for support of 19th century polygamy, ask if they believe Mormonism’s prophet will soon be told by God to reinstitute this practice because many LDS women don’t have worthy husbands. Odds are, they’ll say “no.”
Sorry forgot to actually ping you, counselor.
Having multiple members of the First Presidency praise it at multiple General Conferences isn't officially acknowledging it? Their speeches aren't vetted? And if they misspeak, it's not cleared up for the followers? My brain goes all twistificated just trying to pre-grasp the pre-existence logic in that.
I believe the correct doctrine to be cited in this context is: "Finders Keepers." Apparently my legal education has just been lying around, cluttering up the house...
They can’t mispeak, they speak for God. They get around it by proclaiming that the current prophet is more important than previous prophets, but if that were true, why do the still sell the old prophets books and sing “Praise to the Man”.
I must carefully state while screen is not observed that Spousal Unit's legal advice more closely resembled the Chewbacca Defense than Palsgraf. I am frequently gape-mouthed when 'legal advice' is given because face-palming is vigorously discouraged. On the other hand, I can't fill out the mandatory public school forms required to teach second-graders; she can. Said forms appear to be a random collection of words such as "paradigm." I didn't have a paradigm when I was in the second grade, much less multiple theory level task-specific paradigms and I turned out rather presentable.
We now return you to polygamy.
Osmosis?
That’s because you are a Teacher.
(And you’ve been together so long you guys can finish each other’s sentences...)
LEPROSY??
Let’s get back to that PORN thing...
My wife rolls them eyes yet again when I tell a lame joke to a waitress that I’ve told dozens of times before.
“Dear; you need to get new material!”
“Dear, I don’t as long as I keep getting new AUDIENCES!”
That's ok; since Wiki itSELF isn't 'officially recognized' either!
(Anyway, that's what Winston told me.)
Except when they don't!
Cue Howie Mandel asking...
Official? or NOT official?
"Now if any of you will deny the plurality of wives, and continue to do so, I promise that you will be damned;
and I will go still further and say, take this revelation, or any other revelation that the Lord has given,
and deny it in your feelings, and I promise that you will be damned.
Brigham Young - JoD 3:266 (July 14, 1855)
Compare to...
~ Wilford Woodruff, 4th LDS President
It must be rough; being a MORMON; and have to rationalize SO many conflicting things in their CHOSEN religion!
(We now look into 21st century America; where Gobbledegook is King.)
THANK you for bringing Chewbacca into my life again!
I had him on another computer that had died and I lost all of my MORMON comebacks. I had to search FR many, many times to try to get them back and had forgotten ol’ Chewy.
He sounds SO much like a MORMON ‘apologist’ - no evidence; just “That makes NO sense!”’
Kinda like THIS fella...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6EBsLOJv-yI
And when they AIN'T...
Only a teacher in the Scouting sense. An academic lawyer, huge firms (son says I'm not a lawyer but that I write two 140-page terms papers a week for a living). And I was joking about osmosis, because I don't speak at all about the law at home and that shows in Spousal Unit's legal advice given by phone. On the other hand, she has the empathy for human suffering that God intended to give Mother Teresa's younger sister.
Does that apply to D&C 101 from the time it was received until July 1843 when D&C 132 was 'received'?
Because Joseph Smith has some 'splaining to do as his pre-deamnation briefing about at the least the following:
Fanny Alger (if LDS Historian Todd Compton's discovery of the self-serving Alger post-dated family marriage record is correct, and it wasn't a "dirty, nasty, filthy affair" as Book of Mormon Oliver Cowdery said on January 31, 1838, leading to his excommunication) (for one of many sources, see Joseph Smith: Rough Stone Rolling (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2005, the award-winning book the Columbia University professor and practicing LDS historian Richard Lyman Bushman).
Lucinda Morgan Harris
Louisa Beaman
Zina Huntington Jacobs
Presendia Huntington Buell
Agnes Coolbrith
Sylvia Sessions Lyon
Mary Rollins Lightner
Patty Bartlett Sessions
Marinda Johnson Hyde
Elizabeth Davis Durfee
Sarah Kingsley Cleveland
Delcena Johnson
Eliza R. Snow
Sarah Ann Whitney
Martha McBride Knight
Ruth Vose Sayers
Flora Ann Woodworth
Emily Dow Partridge
Eliza Maria Partridge
Almera Johnson
Lucy Walker
Sarah Lawrence
Maria Lawrence
Helen Mar Kimball
Hanna Ells
Elvira Cowles Holmes
Rhoda Richards
Desdemona Fullmer
Olive Frost
Hmm. Curious timeline. I think even Compton now places Alger at 1834, but I'd have to confirm it.
In fact it is a bit too close to home for me as you might note. I hope they are paying her. At least I hope they all re-stock my liquor cabinet in my SLC home.
”a collaborative effort to improve the coverage of Mormonism on Wikipedia.”
There’s even an outstanding request that members help cleanup the article on Criticism of the Latter Day Saint movement, and request for specific needed articles, such as “Marriage in The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.”
Although FAIR discusses the work of editing Wikipedia, FAIR lets its guard down in one comment:
“[A]ssertions made in LDS-themed Wikipedia articles are therefore treated just like any other critical (or, if one prefers, "anti-Mormon") work.”LDS Apostle/Member of the Quorum of Twelve Boyd K. Packer1 lives. Note that any articles critical of the church are anti-Mormon, not untruthful articles critical of the church.
I pointed out that with respect to the 1890 Manifesto, extensively documented work by D. Michael Quinn, Ph.D., is treated by as a claim, which a statement that the actual number of post-Manifesto marriages was "only about 250 citations needed" was treated as fact. And that the day after I wrote about this, a citation appeared in Wikipedia to a Neal Maxwell/FARM’s approved, faithful-history source for the 250 marriages claim.
Wikipedia also cited a claim regarding the gradual end of polygamy made on the www.lds.org website to Gospel Principles regarding Polygamy, noting that the lds.org site was last reviewed in May 2011. Since May 2011, perhaps because of Warren Jeffs, the world-wide Gospel Principles of the entire LDS church have been changed to state that polygamy ended with the 1890 Manifesto (without mention of the 1904 Manifesto, or the hundreds or thousands of post-Manifesto polygamous marriages, including those blessed and entered into by members of the First Presidency and their families).
The LDS Church, through its newspaper The Desert News, has has written aboutthe struggle it faces to define the face of Mormonism in Wikipedia (and the persecution it faces from other editors; persecution being the race card of LDS argument).
All is not happy within the Wiki/LDS collaborative camp. I chose one - and only one - of the Wiki administrators who has been involved in the Wiki/LDS collaboration, JzG. I saw "LDS" on a master list of quotes in the Wiki/LDS editing log and clicked on him/her, which took me to the month in which he/she made the comment. In June 2007 alone, JzG, a Wiki Administrator (not Just an editor) publicly expressed frustrations, just a few of which were:
LDS folks can be painfully sincere, terribly insistent, and utterly unable to perceive their own bias.
to be open here I will say that I have serious problmes with the LDS myself so I am not going to get too involved here. Damn, I nearly said call the cavalry, sorry, Jeff, I have to learn not to use that one, it's seriously tactless. (referring to LDS constant re-editing of Mountain Meadows article)
The Cherokee comment is perfectly reasonable, the LDS comments are not, I will talk to him about them. Although to be fair they are no more POV than the average LDS editor's contributions
LDS are kinda creepy. So are scientologists, fundies and many other religious zealots. (In response to brouhaha among collaborative editors' battle over one editor's comment that 'the LDS are kinda creepy."
That's about a third of the way down his comments for the month. And he's one of many, many, many administrators trying to deal with the collaborative effort to improve the coverage on Mormonism. I don't think all of the collaborators get along well with others.
There is a temptation for the writer or the teacher of Church history to want to tell everything, whether it is worthy or faith promoting or not. Some things that are true are not very useful.
And:
”It is an easy thing for a man with extensive academic training to measure the Church using the principles he has been taught in his professional training as his standard. In my mind it ought to be the other way around. A member of the Church ought always, particularly if he is pursuing extensive academic studies, to judge the professions of man against the revealed word of the Lord. Many disciplines are subject to this danger. Over the years I have seen many members of the Church lose their testimonies and yield their faith as the price for academic achievement.”
And:
They would that some historians who are Latter-day Saints write history as they were taught in graduate school, rather than as Mormons.
And:
There is no such thing as an accurate, objective history of the Church without consideration of the spiritual powers that attend this work. There is no such thing as a scholarly, objective study of the office of bishop without consideration of spiritual guidance, of discernment, and of revelation. That is not scholarship. Accordingly, I repeat, there is no such thing as an accurate or objective history of the Church which ignores the Spirit.
And:
If we who research, write, and teach the history of the Church ignore the spiritual on the pretext that the world may not understand it, our work will not be objective.
And:
Teaching some things that are true, prematurely or at the wrong time, can invite sorrow and heartbreak instead of the joy intended to accompany learning.
And:
That historian or scholar who delights in pointing out the weaknesses and frailties of present or past leaders destroys faith--A destroyer of faith--particularly one within the Church, and more particularly one who is employed specifically to build faith--places himself in great spiritual jeopardy. He is serving the wrong master, and unless he repents, he will not be among the faithful in the eternities.
And:
It matters very much not only what we are told but when we are told it. Be careful that you build faith rather than destroy it. It matters very much not only what we are told but when we are told it. Be careful that you build faith rather than destroy it.
The speech continues to instruct LDS historians to disclose only such portions of LDS history as promote the faith of LDS members, and not to write about anything that casts the LDS church or its leaders in an unfavorable light. The Mantle is Far, Far Greater Than the Intellect, LDS Apostle, Boyd K. Packer, Fifth Annual Church Educational System Religious Educators' Symposium, 22 August, 1981. This speech was soon enforced by excommunication of the September Six and subsequently by excommunication of many other LDS historians who dared to print truthful, but non-faith-promoting history.
It's a big Elephant. It walked into the room by 1834-1835 after first appearing in a hayloft vision to Emma Hale Smith. Contrary to folklore, the Elephant never absolutely and completely left the room Some Elephants don't even have an 'F" on their circus hats.
The Ode to the Elephant #132 is still considered beautiful poetry.
But the First Rule of Elephant Club is don't talk about Elephant Club.
Any word on the Jeffs deadline?
Thanks for all of your efforts SM, as many of us have mentioned here before, SLC is on a “cleansing campaign”.
Cleansing anything they can find that is “unflattering” or contradictory to their teachings.
I believe that at some point, they will have achieved about 99.99% purity and that any who seek truth will not be able to find it.
There’s a Jewish community center in Utah?! I hope she’s getting paid as well.
Seriously, I have no idea, other than libs are never consistent.
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