What blasphemy.
Yup. Now you're getting a true picture of real Mormonism.
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!!!