Posted on 03/04/2014 4:15:25 PM PST by 2ndDivisionVet
Brady Williams and his five wives are the stars of a new reality series on TLC. The six Williams family members decided to go public with their story in order to dispel myths about polygamy, including about sexual relations between Brady and his wives.
"All of America is having sex," Brady told HuffPost Live. "It's no big deal to answer [questions]. We're not perverted, we're not twisted. We're normal – we're just normal times five."
However, Dean Gregory Alan Thornbury of the school of theology at Union University in Tennessee has been quick to point out that polygamy, even within "Christian" families, makes void God's command for one man and one woman to "become one flesh," as it is written in the Bible. He notes that the nouns used in this command are singular for a reason, in reference to the Garden of Eden, in which Adam and Eve were brought together by God -- one man, one woman.
The Williams family is the second polygamist family to be featured on TLC. Kody Brown and his four wives have starred in their own series for four seasons. The Brown family, like the Williams, wanted to go public in order to dispel myths about polygamy and religion. In fact, the Williams family has the Brown family to thank for allowing them to safely live in Utah.
Brady Williams and his five wives.
The Brown family sued the state after being "forced" to leave for practicing polygamy. The Browns won the lawsuit and now other polygamists are able to practice their beliefs in the state of Utah without fear of persecution.
"It's a first step in the right direction toward the de-marginalization of polygamists," Brady told the Associated Press soon after the court decision came down. "Women are not a commodity and they shouldn't be treated as such. There needs to be complete symmetry within a marriage."
However, there are others who feel that the Utah ruling sets a dangerous precedent for the institution of monogamous marriage.
"Same-sex marriage advocates have told us that people ought to be able to 'marry who they love' but have also always downplayed the idea that this would lead to legalized polygamy, a practice that very often victimizes women and children," Tony Perkins, president of the Family Research Council, said in a statement after the ruling. "But if love and mutual consent become the definition of what the boundaries of marriage are, can we as a society any longer even define marriage coherently?"
The Williams family has 24 children and will be featured in the series, which returns on Sunday, March 9 at 10 p.m. EST on TLC.
ell, I can see having someone else to clean the toilet and do the laundry! But Mr Kitty is all mine and I wan’t want to share him with someone else!!
Yep. Mr. GG2 is a one woman man and I’m it. :-)
**’We’re Not Perverted or Twisted’**
HA!
**’We’re Not Perverted or Twisted’**
We’re from France. :-)
The harsh truth is that gay people didn't destroy marriage, contraception among Christians did.
The acceptance of serial civil divorce and remarriage also played it’s part. Folks became conditioned to think it’s just another lousy state contract that can be broken and resumed between any parties the state allows. Not that the acceptance of bc within marriage didn’t have a lot to do with it also.
Freegards
The Anglican Church has much to answer for, IMHO.
Sure does sound like you are.
Yes. They’re nuts.
If it wasn’t Henry it would have been someone else, in my opinion. Reagan actually signed the first no fault divorce state law, something I recall he regretted. If one’s definition of marriage is decided by whatever judges, politicians, or the voting majority think it can be at any one time, it is eventually bound to be wrong.
Freegards
Am I understanding you correctly, that you believe polygamy is the correct form of Christian marriage?
ALL OF THEM said that they each had ONE wife and one wife is enough.
A man with four wives has to treat ALL of his wives equally. That is impossible, of course, and/or he must be STINKING rich to afford to buy ALL of them everything they want.
This fool's liar's man's story of the "harmony" of the multiple wives is a CROCK.
Mark 10:9
8 AND THE TWO SHALL BECOME ONE FLESH; so they are no longer two, but one flesh.
9 What therefore God has joined together, let no man separate.
.
Pretty clear to me.
Amen.
Polygamy and homosexual activity are both perversions prohibited in the New Testament. To say one is more acceptable than the other is like saying that lying is more acceptable than murder, which is likely true, but why not avoid both?
New Testament[edit]
Three passages in the pastoral epistles (1Timothy 3:2, 1Timothy 3:12 and Titus 1:6) state that church leaders should be the “husband of but one wife.” This has been read by some Christian sects as a prohibition of polygamy, others argue that polygamy is allowed, but not for church leaders, still others argue that the passage refers only to church leaders not divorcing their first wives. Walter Lock in his 1990 book argues it may simply refer to marital unfaithfulness[12] since “no Christian, whether an overseer or not, would have been allowed to practice polygamy.”[13]
One flesh[edit]
Although the New Testament is largely silent on the issue, some point to Jesus’ repetition of the earlier scriptures, noting that a man and a wife “shall become one flesh”.[14] However, some look to Paul’s writings to the Corinthians: “Do you not know that he who is joined to a prostitute becomes one body with her? For, as it is written, ‘The two will become one flesh.’” They claim this indicates that the term refers to a physical, rather than spiritual, union.[15]
Cleave to wife[edit]
Most Christian theologians argue that in Matthew 19:3-9 and referring to Genesis 2:24 Jesus explicitly states a man should have only one wife:
Have ye not read, that he which made them at the beginning made them male and female, And said, For this cause shall a man leave father and mother, and shall cleave to his wife: and they twain shall be one flesh?
Polygamists do not dispute that in marriage “two shall be one flesh”, they only disagree with the idea that a married man can only be “one flesh” with one woman. Assuming the man is married, the fact that a man can even be “one flesh” with a harlot apparently does not negate his being “one flesh” with his wife.[16]
Husband of one wife[edit]
Many critics of polygamy also point to the Pauline epistles that state that church officials should be respectable, above reproach, and the husband of a single wife.[17] Hermeneutically, the Greek phrase mias gunaikos andra, is an unusual Greek construction, and capable of being translated in three possible ways: 1) “one wife man,” (prohibiting plural marriage) or 2) “a wife man” (requiring elders to be married) or 3) “first wife man” (prohibiting divorcees from ordination).[18] Some claim that if these verses refer directly to polygamy (definition 1 above) it supports the acceptance of polygamy because if polygamy were outlawed there would be no need to have laws prohibiting leaders from being polygamists. One would only need a law prohibiting polygamy by leaders if polygamy was accepted among lay persons. (Definition possibilities 2 and 3 above are, of course, already polygamy friendly.)
In the time around Jesus’ birth, polygamy (also called bigamy or digamy in texts) was understood to have had several spouses consecutively, as evidenced for example by Tertullian’s work De Exhortatione Castitatis (chapt. VII.).[19] Saint Paul answered this problem by allowing widows to remarry (1 Cor. vii. 39. and 1 Tim 5:11–16). Paul says that only one man women older than 60 years can make the list of Christian widows, but that younger widows should remarry to hinder sin. By demanding that leaders of the Church be a one woman man, Saint Paul excluded remarried widowers from having influence. This was a more strict understanding of monogamy than Roman law codified, and it was new and unusual that the demand was made on men. “One man women” or mias andros güne was the name for widows who had only had one husband in their lives. This expression is the mirror of mias günaikos andra and highlights how that expression is to be understood.[20]
On this subject William Luck writes:
Thus it is most probable that the qualifications list sees the “husband of one wife” as a condemnation of porneia—sex with an unmarried woman, though doubtless the clause also prohibited adultery—sex with someone else’s wife, polygyny was out of sight and mind. The issue is not the number of covenant relations the man had—he would only have had one at a time, since the empire was monogamous—but his womanizing. This of course does not eliminate the grievous sin of marrying and divorcing in order to have sexual relations with a number of women. But that too is not the issue in polygyny.[21]
Early Church period[edit]
See also: Marriage in ancient Rome
Jewish polygamy clashed with Roman monogamy at the time of the early church:
“When the Christian Church came into being, polygamy was still practiced by the Jews. It is true that we find no references to it in the New Testament; and from this some have inferred that it must have fallen into disuse, and that at the time of our Lord the Jewish people had become monogamous. But the conclusion appears to be unwarranted. Josephus in two places speaks of polygamy as a recognized institution: and Justin Martyr makes it a matter of reproach to Trypho that the Jewish teachers permitted a man to have several wives. Indeed when in 212 A.D. the lex Antoniana de civitate gave the rights of Roman Citizenship to great numbers of Jews, it was found necessary to tolerate polygamy among them, even when though it was against Roman law for a citizen to have more than one wife. In 285 A.D. a constitution of Diocletian and Maximian interdicted polygamy to all subjects of the empire without exception. But with the Jews, at least, the enactment failed of its effect; and in 393 A.D. a special law was issued by Theodosius to compel the Jews to relinquish this national custom. Even so they were not induced to conform.”[22]
Tertullian, who lived at the turn of the 2nd and 3rd centuries, wrote that marriage is lawful, but polygamy is not:
“We do not indeed forbid the union of man and woman, blest by God as the seminary of the human race, and devised for the replenishment of the earth and the furnishing of the world and therefore permitted, yet singly. For Adam was the one husband of Eve, and Eve his one wife, one woman, one rib.”[23]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polygamy_in_Christianity
Ye, it is, and they all look retarded.
“Freakier” than two men using their exhaust ports as pseudo vaginas? Or a “tongue and groove” relationship?
I don’t suppose you’re talking about wood flooring?!
“But you want that same thing for all the other “moochers” who aren’t in a polygamous relationship, too, right? Or are you aiming to single them out?”
If it was up to me, all moochers — whether polygamous or in the most God-blessed marriage in the history of the universe, would be put in jail for crimes against producers. Publicly, however, I would just ask for them to not leech off the system and not cause undue hardship to the taxpayers.
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