Posted on 04/06/2008 5:27:22 AM PDT by SkyPilot
Local and state officials entered the temple of a secretive polygamist sect late Saturday, said lawmen blockading the road to the YFZ Ranch near Eldorado.
The action comes hours after local prosecutors said officials were preparing for the worst because a group of FLDS members were resisting efforts to search the structure.
The Texas Department of Public Safety trooper and Schleicher County sheriff’s deputy confirmed that officials have entered the temple but said they had no word on whether anything occurred in the effort.
The incursion into the temple caps the three-day saga of the state’s Child Protective Services agency removing at least 183 women and children from the YFZ Ranch since Friday afternoon. Eighteen girls have been placed in state custody since a 16-year-old told authorities she was married to a 50-year-old man and had given birth to his child.
Saturday evening, ambulances were brought in, said Allison Palmer, who as first assistant 51st District attorney, would prosecute any felony crimes uncovered as part of the investigation inside the compound.
“In preparing for entry to the temple, law enforcement is preparing for the worst,” Palmer said Saturday evening. They want to have “medical personnel on hand in case this were to go in a way that no one wants.”
Apparently as a result of action Saturday night at the ranch, about 10:15 p.m. Saturday, a Schleicher County school bus unloaded another group of at least a dozen more women and children from the compound.
Although members of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, or FLDS, have provided varying degrees of cooperation to the sheriff’s deputies and Texas Rangers searching the compound, all cooperation stopped once authorities tried to search the gleaming white temple that towers over the West Texas scrub, Palmer said.
“There may be those who would oppose (entry) by placing themselves between law enforcement and the place of worship,” Palmer said Saturday afternoon. “If an agreement cannot be reached … law enforcement will have to — as gently and peaceably as possible — make entry into that place.”
Sect members consider the temple, dedicated by then-leader of the sect Warren Jeffs in January 2005 and finished many months later, off-limits to those who are not FLDS members, said Palmer, who prosecutes felony cases in Schleicher County.
Palmer said she didn’t know the size or makeup of the group inside the temple.
The earlier refusal to provide access was even more disconcerting because CPS investigators have yet to identify the 16-year-old girl or her roughly 8-month-old baby among the dozens removed from the compound, Palmer said.
“Anytime someone says, ‘Don’t look here,’” she said, “it makes you concerned that’s exactly where you need to look.”
The girl told authorities in two separate phone calls a day apart that she was married to a 50-year-old man, Dale Barlow, who had fathered her child, Palmer said.
The joint raid included the Texas Rangers, CPS, Schleicher County and Tom Green County sheriff’s deputies and game wardens from the Texas Department of Parks and Wildlife.
Although CPS and Department of Public Safety officials have described the compound’s residents as cooperative, Palmer disagreed.
“Things have been a little tense, a little volatile,” she said.
Authorities removed 52 children Friday afternoon and 131 women and children overnight Friday. About 40 of the children are boys, said CPS spokeswoman Marleigh Meisner.
No further children have been taken into state custody since Friday, when 18 girls were judged to have been abused or be at imminent risk for abuse. CPS has found foster homes for the girls, Meisner said, and will place them after concluding its investigation.
Meisner declined to comment on the fate of the 119 other children and said authorities were still searching the ranch for others Saturday evening.
“They’re in the process of looking,” she said. “They’re literally about halfway through.”
in what way -
Rev911: how so ?
"Having a great desire to be connected with the Prophet, Joseph, he (my father) offered me to him; this I afterwards learned from the Prophet's own mouth."
-Helen Kimball
...."After which he said to me, 'if you take this step, it will ensure your eternal salvation and exaltation and that of your father's household and all of your kindred."
Helen Kimball
_________
it was a forced union, and her acceptance was claimed to ensure the salvation of her immediate family....
Now the practice may not still be a part of todays mormonism, however, it was a distinct part of what Smith practiced and is consistent with current FLDS practice - making flds practices an othodoxy
Bears repeating.
But some have had a "burning in the bosom"! 
I do. It’s my gall bladder.
But, is it something you would stake your eternal life on?
I wouldn’t stake my life on any feelings or impressions.
Enjoy your posts, however, you over emphasize the pseudographical books- Jasher and 1 Enoch to near equivalency with the bible. There are no evidences that either of these works are a valid and true account of what they say they are representing - hence prefix pseudo. There are at least three different “Book of Jasher”s in existence and scholars aren’t sure that any of them is the one referred to in the Old Testament. See here for more details
http://answers.org/bible/jasher-book-of.html
1 Enoch is a second pseudographical work that some mormons love to associate as one that was removed. Close examination indicates 5-6 different authors over a period 200 bc - 200 ad wrote the ‘book’. The bulk was written during the Maccabean period and parallels have been identified by some between the writings and events. Although clearly older in origin than what is allegedly extant in jasher, detailed examination shows it is not truly from Enoch. More on its internals can be found here:
http://www.Christian-thinktank.com/qwhendan3b.html
Therefore, while nice stories in some ways, they do not carry scriptural authority.
then i guess i'll never be a mormon - i no longer have a gallbladder :0
The children seem to be receiving good care while they go through this process. Texas is a good state. Baptist Child and Family Services is on top of it.
I notice DU that in your list of family & sexual sins you didn't list incest. Why not? (Could it be because of LDS history on this matter?)
The following multi-paragraph excerpt is from http://www.utlm.org/newsletters/no91.htm:
"Fanny Stenhouse was at one time had been a firm believer in Mormonism and had even allowed her husband to take another wife." She wrote: "It would be quite impossible, with any regard to propriety, to relate all the horrible results of this disgraceful system.... Marriages have been contracted between the nearest of relatives; and old men tottering on the brink of the grave have been united to little girls scarcely in their teens; while unnatural alliances of every description, which in any other community would be regarded with disgust and abhorrence, are here entered into in the name of God...It is quite a common thing in Utah for a man to marry two or even three sisters.... I know also another man who married a widow with several children; and when one of the girls had grown into her teens he insisted on marrying her also... and to this very day the daughter bears children to her step-father, living as wife in the same house with her mother!"(Tell It All, 1874, pages 468-69)
An entry added to Joseph Smith's private dairy after his death confirms that Smith believed a man could be married for eternity to his own sister. It appears under the date of October 26, 1843, and reads as follows: "The following named deceased persons were sealed to me (John M. Bernhisel) on Oct[ober] 26th 1843, by President Joseph Smith: Maria Bernhisel, sister; Brother Samuel's wife, Catherine Kremer; Mary Shatto (Aunt)... [eight other names follow] \ John M. Bernhisel \ Recorded by Rob[er]t L. Campbell, July 29th 1868." (An American Prophet's Record: The Diaries and Journals of Joseph Smith, Edited by Scott H. Faulring, 1987, page 424) The reader will notice that Joseph Smith sealed John M. Bernhisel to his own sister. If the doctrine of Celestial Marriage were really true, in the resurrection John Bernhisel would find himself married to his own sister Maria Bernhisel!
Joseph Smith, the first Mormon prophet, asserted that "God himself, who sits enthroned in yonder heavens, is a man like unto one of yourselves..." (Times and Seasons, Vol. 5, pages 613-14) He also taught that God was married and had billions of spirit children in the pre-existence. In other words, according to Smith's theology, we were all born of God and his wife and lived as his sons and daughters before coming to earth. [End utlm citation]
IOW, since LDS believe we already are brothers and sisters in the alleged "pre-existent" life before being born, what's wrong with marrying same said brothers and sisters on earth? (IOW, nobody on earth even qualifies as a non-brother or sister!) To cite LDS apostle Bruce R. McConkie from a devotional he gave at BYU, "Our relationship with the Son is one of brother or sister in the premortal life and one of being led to the Father by him while in this mortal sphere. That's why we get quotes from Brigham Young like the following:
"Then I reckon that the children of Adam and Eve married each other; this is speaking to the point. I believe in sisters marrying brothers, and brothers having their sisters for wives.... This is something pertaining to our marriage relation. The whole world will think what an awful thing it is. What an awful thing it would be if the Mormons should just say we believe in marrying brothers and sisters. Well we shall be under the necessity of doing it, because we cannot find anybody else to marry. (The Teachings of President Brigham Young, Compiled and Edited by Fred C. Collier, Vol. 3, pages 362, 368)
Again citing http://www.utlm.org/newsletters/no91.htm, "Mormon scholar Jessie L. Embry, of the church's Brigham Young University, acknowledged that as late as 1886 Lorenzo Snow, who became the fifth prophet of the Mormon Church, still secretly held to the belief that brothers and sisters could marry. Embry cited from the journal of Apostle Abraham H. Cannon to prove the point": ...Abraham H. Cannon, an apostle recorded in 1886 that he talked with 'Pres. [Lorenzo] Snow about various doctrines. Bro Snow said I would live to see the time when brothers and sisters would marry each other in this church. All our horror at such an union was due entirely to prejudice and the offspring of such union would be healthy and pure as any other. These were the decided views of Pres. Young when alive, for Bro. S. talked to him freely on this matter.' (Journal of Mormon History, 1992, page 106)
I sense a tanner-spasm magnitude 6.1 building
What blasphemy.
What’s a *tanner-spasm*?
Yup. Now you're getting a true picture of real Mormonism.
You fail to mention your many (false) assumptions with this statement.
First of all you assume that polygamy (what I would call "formal adultery") was the "end-all" practically speaking over "informal" adultery. Let's take a look at the some the hazards of being an LDS plural wife in the 19th century which undermine your assumptions, shall we?
(1) How is "spending all your time with only one wife" favorable for extra plural wife? (One discussion as to whether to admit Patriarch John Smith to the Salt Lake School of the Prophets was discussion about how he spent his time with only one of two wives). (see B. Carmon Hardy, A Solemn Covenant, p. 51)
(2) How is literal abandonment of extra wives that occurred in many LDS families when its "Manifesto" went through such a "plug" for polygamy?
If statements by Mormon authorities were contradictory [in the post-Manifesto years], their private life-styles were even more so. Some ceased living with their plural wives in strict accordance with public comments about the meaning of the Manifesto. In fairness, it should be said that the church asked no one to forsake or abandon his wives. Rather, they were told to continue to support them but not to live with them... (Hardy, A Solemn Covenant, p 144, 146 citing Seymour Young and George Q. Cannon as examples).
(3) If, as you say, formal polygamy was better than formal or informal cohabitation, then do you want to explain why LDS leaders thought otherwise in 1887 and 1888?
According to Hardy, Utah introduced a proposed constitution of 1887 & was seeking to hand out misdemeanors for bigamy & polygamy "but the relevant section said nothing about unlawful cohabition, rendering it as useless as the federal law of 1862. Written comments fromleaders to one another indicate that the provision was purposely worded to allow plural marriage to continue. As Franklin S. Richards, the church's attorney, explained to Joseph F. Smith, if the constituion were ratified, they could then 'fix the penalties, administering them themselves, and so leave 'cohabitation unrestricted.' (Richards Correspondence from June 28, 1887)...An exactment by the legislature the next year, utah's first marriage law, also avoided the phrase 'unlawful cohabitation,' forbidding only formal bigamy...' (Hardy, A Solemn Covenant, p. 53)
(4) If polygamy was so great, why were LDS 19th-century apologetics about it so base? Hardy devotes a full chapter to how LDS regarded it as sexually superior--not for erotic or orgy reasons--but for what they regarded was the "opposite"--associating prostitution and the resulting ill-health with monogamy, etc.
Benjamin F. Johnson remembered that Joseph Smith taught him that plural marriage was the only means by which prostitution could be eliminated. (A Solemn Covenant, p. 16)
Not from a personal perspective necessarily (between couple) but from a Joseph Smith policy perspective, Johnson's remembrance shows that a true purpose of plurality (not the only one) was in effect to have an "in-house" prostitute. How base is that for 19th LDS to have embraced that vantage point? Hardy cited other LDS who thought that mass polygamy would "eliminate sexual wickedness" and LDS general authority/legislator, William Gibson, who after-the-fact claimed to have voted against the Manifesto, called it "the best antidote to sexual sin." (A Solemn Covenant, p. 145, citing William Gibson, who was quoted in "Polygamous Issues," DN, March 28, 1896.)
"The need for prostitution...was seized on by Mormons as evidence that monogamy was manifestly an incorrect system of marriage...From the 1850s until the end of the century, Mormon writers and speakers struck at what they considered their detractors' hypocrisy for criticizing Mormon marriage when, as the First Presidency affirmed in 1886, adultery and prostitution were the consequences of the monogamic arrangement.... (A Solemn Covenant, p. 89, citing "An Epistle of the First Presidency..." March 1886, Messages 3:68...Hardy cites in the same footnote about 8 other sources from Heber C. Kimball to Brigham Young to John Taylor to George Q. Cannon to apostle Erasmus Snow).
(5) So there ya go! The embracing of polygamy naturally led to an elitist position where polygamists looked down upon, frowned upon, and even openly dismissed or criticized "monogamy!" When you have an LDS "prophet" in 1886 claiming that adultery and prostitution were the consequences of monogamy, that's a major, major problem!!!
At a stake conference in northern Utah in the summer of 1900, Apostle Matthias F. Cowley spoke on plural marriage and referred to the 'evils of monogamy.' (A Solemn Covenant, p. 189, original source was Clawson Diaries, Aug. 25, 1900)
LDS apostle Orson Pratt urged the Saints to do all they could to purge from their own and their children's memories knowledge of Christian marital tradition. ("Celestial Marriage," Seer 1 Nov. 1853, p. 173. Similar comments in JoD vol. 12, p. 92, 1867. )
(6) Finally, in an era in which divorce was not common, the final assumption of yours that I challenge is that plural marriage didn't prompt divorce: "We also know that divorce in such families was more extensive than heretofore believed..." (A Solemn Covenant, p. 17) I mean come on, look at what an additional cohabitator adds to the dynamic of the relationship. Sarai's reaction to mistreat Hagar (Gen. 16) is Exhibit A.
It gets worse. As B. Carmon Hardy wrote in A Solemn Covenant: "Critics who found the Latter-day notion of a sentient man-become-god difficult, already embarrassed by the suggestion that He kept bed, were thunderstruck to be told it was with a plurality of companions." (A Solemn Covenant, p. 97)
Hardy documents in a number of places that a key reason why LDS refused to abandon polygamy even after the manifesto is because the term "celestial marriage" isn't just named that because they thought marriage was forever. It's because they thought God had plural wives in heaven and they needed to emulate Him--to become like Him. They even used the term, "the (family) Order of Celestial marriage." In 1889, Orson Spencer wrote that the plural households of gods was a condition to which all LDS households should aspire: the family order which God established with Abraham and the patriarchs was the order observed among celestial beings, in the celestial world. (Spencer, Patriarchal Order).
I'll comment more on this later in a future post, but P-Marlowe's earlier comment on this thread that polygamy is the heart of the Mormon gospel is right on. The above comment from Spencer, I believe, is among the reasons why LDS find it harden to totally abandon polygamy.
As Brigham Young grandson Eugene Young, in The North American Review, pointed out as early as 1899, the Manifesto only "suspended" polygamy--it didn't root it out. Eugene Young said that the LDS prophet could bring it back at any time, and that he wouldn't even need to make an announcement he could do it quietly. Hmmm...The AP carried an article today saying that an informal survey shows that polygamous numbers are up from 30,000 to 37,000 since the Year 2000.
The fact that the LDS tie polygamy to "The First Family," (well, the "First Family" for this universe, anyway); the fact that LDS claimed polygamy "restored" ALL things--including the family lifestyles of the patriarchs; the fact that polygamy was an absolute necessity in the latter 19th century for glory & being deemed "worthy" (Joseph F. Smith); the fact that some folks commented that polygamy was the "very point essence and culmination of the lifework and mission" of the Smith brothers; the fact that polygamy was so closely tied to having more children so that the pre-existent spirit doctrine could kick in--more spirits down here; the fact that LDS apologists like FAIR folks to this very second argue that a reason for polygamy was to give LDS a distinctive character in contrast to Protestants; the fact that LDS' sealing authority was all bound up in polygamy; the fact that LDS linked polygamy in an almost eugenics type of regeneration of mankind with some comments in the latter 19th century...this and many other reasons show that when P-Marlowe said that polygamy was "the heart and soul" of the Mormon gospel, and when DelphiUser then denied that, somebody needs to go back and take another historical look at the very roots of this faith!!!
Interesting about Ann Carling. I didn't see that before,.
As to the verses I mentioned, lets look at them closer.
Just 22 verses after Moses writes “Thou shalt not commit adultery” we find this, written in the Law: It's doesn't matter wither we're talking about servants, or not, it's clearly about laws protecting 2nd wives. Whay would that matter to God who said no adultery?
Exodus 21: 10 If he take him another wife; her food, her raiment, and her duty of marriage, shall he not diminish.
Further in Deuteronomy 21, we have more laws protecting children of plural wives:
15 ¶ If a man have two wives, one beloved, and another hated, and they have born him children, both the beloved and the hated; and if the firstborn son be hers that was hated:
16 Then it shall be, when he maketh his sons to inherit that which he hath, that he may not make the son of the beloved firstborn before the son of the hated, which is indeed the firstborn:
17 But he shall acknowledge the son of the hated for the firstborn, by giving him a double portion of all that he hath: for he is the beginning of his strength; the right of the firstborn is his.
And, probably one of the most clear references that these relationships were approved by the Lord is this one:
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