In before accusations of hate!
I had a personal tour of the RLDS in Illinois at Nauvoo. Very interesting. Also saw the jail where Joseph Smith Jr. was kept and the window he jumped from when shot. The people at both places were very friendly and welcoming. Nice folks but .....
Polygamy is actually an Old Testament practice, which was never challenged in the New Testament.
Women and men are free to do as they like, which is less demeaning than demanding that they conform to some other person’s arbitrary societal expectations. Whatever that may be, it is not freedom.
(Mormons are still not playing with a full deck of cards, but not for this.)
Related threads:
Essay: Mormon founder had teen bride during early days of faith when polygamy was practiced
A real conundrum. ..
We abhore the whole 72 virgins being raped for eternity in Allah’s whorehouse but, Joe gets a pass?
“The thing is I DON’T CARE. I find it a repellent, dehumanizing practice that reduced females to brood mares and turned Utah into a pious stud farm.”
Joe Smith was no California Chrome. Seriously what did those chicks see in him?
I can guarantee you that polygamy will be enthusiastically welcomed when the Slat Lake City prophets change their minds.
Anyone wanna start a betting pool when that will happen?
you realize going into the past just opens you up for comparisons to the church and it’s dealings/scams in the past
(want your dead grandmother to live in a nice condo? pay more on sunday!)
does polygamy ever work in the opposite direction....one wife, several husbands????
I have a great-great-great-grandfather who was killed by an Indian in Southern Idaho.
His widow entered into a polygamist mairrage with a friend of his, who raised the kids as if they were his own.
I don’t know about all of the polygamist mairrages, but in this case it worked out perfectly. A young widow and her children were taken care of in a very inhospitable frontier environment.
Possibly, God knew my ancestors plight as well as others and this was his solution for dealing with the welfare of the early Latter Day Saints while they were fulfilling Isiah’s prophecy”
...and in the last days, the Mountain of the Lord’s House shall be established in the Tops of the Mountains and all nations shall flow unto it!”
....which is kind of funny, while Brigham Young wanted the State to be called Deseret,,,anti-mormons snubbing the Church named it “Utah” which in the Ute language means “Tops of the Mountains” thus fulfilling Isaih’s 3,000 year old prophecy.
In 1831 Joey Smith tried to force 12 year old Mary Elizabeth Rollins to have sex with him.
—Smith Tells 12-Year-Old Mary Elizabeth that God Has Commanded Him in a Vision to Marry Her and that a Sword-Bearing Angel Threatened to Kill Him if She Didn’t Obey (Sound Familiar?)—
Authors Linda King Newell and Valeen Tippetts Avery report Smith’s snag line as follows in “Mormon Enigma: Emma Hale Smith—Prophet’s Wife, ‘Elect Lady,’ Polygamy’s Foe”:
“Mary Elizabeth Rollins claimed that Joseph had a private conversation with her in 1831; she was 12 years old.
“She said Joseph ‘told me about his great vision concerning me. He said I was the first woman God commanded him to take as a plural wife.’ [letter from Mary Elizabeth Rollins Lightner to Emeline B. Wells, summer 1905, LDS Archives]
“Although she did not become a plural wife of Joseph’s until a number of years later, that early conversation planted a seed that Mary Elizabeth long remembered.”
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Feb 15, 1845 - Sidney Rigdon asks, in the LDS newspaper MESSENGER AND ADVOCATE “Did the Lord ever tell any people that sleeping with their neighbor’s wives and daughters had any thing to do with preparing the way of the Savior’s coming[?]” Ridgon’s daughter, Nancy, had been approached by Joseph Smith and asked to become a secret plural wife. This caused a rift between Rigdon and Smith.
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“I shall have wives and children by the million, and glory, and riches and power and dominion, and kingdom after kingdom, and reign triumphantly.”
Brigham Young, Journal of Discourses V.8, Pg 178-179
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July 6, 1862 - Brigham Young preaches: “Monogamy, or restrictions by law to one wife, is no part of the economy of Heaven among men. Such s system was commenced by the founders of the Roman empire. . . .The scarcity of women gave existence to laws restricting one wife to one man. Rome became the mistress of the world, and introduced this order of monogamy wherever her sway was acknowledged. Thus this monogamic order of marriage, so esteemed by modern Christians as a holy sacrament and divine institution, is nothing but a system established by a set of robbers. . . . Why do we believe in and practise polygamy? Because the Lord introduced it to his servitors in a revelation given to Joseph Smith, and the Lord’s servants have always practiced it. ‘And is that religion popular in heaven?’ It is the only popular religion there, for this is the religion of Abraham, and, unless we do the works of Abraham, we are not Abraham’s seed and heirs according to promise.”
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Feb 15, 1885 The SALT LAKE TRIBUNE editorial: “The essential principle of Mormonism is not polygamy at all, but the ambition of an ecclesiastical hierarchy to wield sovereignty; to rule the souls and lives of its subjects with absolute authority, unrestrained by any civil power.”
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Feb 27, 1889 - LDS political newspaper SALT LAKE HERALD’s article titled, “FAILED MARRIAGES,” regarding “the report of the Labor Commissioner Wright, presented last week, on the statistics of marriage and divorce in the United States from 1867 to 1886 inclusive,” with following: In 1870 Utah had highest rate of divorce out of all states and territories. In 1870 Utah’s rate was one divorce per 185 marriages. National averages was 1:664. States with lowest divorce rates are South Carolina at 1:4,938, Delaware at 1:123,672, New Mexico at 1:16,077, North Carolina at 1:4,938, and Louisiana at 1:4,579. In 1880 Utah had tenth highest rate of divorce out of all states and territories. In 1880 Utah’s rate was one divorce per 219 marriages, which was more than twice the national average of 1:479. In twentieth century, divorce rates for LDS temple marriages starts out three times higher than this “divorce mill” rate for early Utah civil marriages.
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Nov 1, 1890 - Date for which U.S. President William Henry Harrison’s amnesty declaration for LDS polygamists does not cover “unlawful cohabitation.” According to Harrison’s proclamation no Mormon polygamists will be prosecuted for illegal cohabitation committed before this date if they refrain from such cohabitation after this date.
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Nov 1, 1891 - Apostle Marriner W. Merrill preaches at the Logan Tabernacle “that not only plural marriages had ceased in the Church but that Brethren should not live with their plural families hereafter, but observe strictly the law of the land in this matter.” On the stand with him is Apostle Joseph F. Smith who later has children by his plural wives. This illustrates a difference between public statements and private beliefs by leaders of the Church concerning the extent of the President Woodruff’s Manifesto.
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Apr 2, 1892 - At a meeting of the Twelve Apostles they discuss whether or not to continue to cohabit with their plural wives. Heber J. Grant records that Apostle John Henry Smith said that “cohabitation was all right. The Lord had revealed to him that plural marriage was true and he did not want to throw off any of his responsibilities. He felt the brethren should take their wives out of Utah so that they would not be liable to the law in case they lived with them.” Grant also writes, “ [Quorum] Pres[iden]t Lorenzo Snow had nothing to day about the brethren living with their wives.”
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Aug 4, 1897 - Apostle Heber J. Grant records: “[Apostle] George Teasdale felt that every man who had taken an oath to sustain the constitution of his country and subsequently voted in favor of the Edmunds Tucker law, was a covenant breaker. Plural marriage was one of the principles approved by Almighty God, and the Church of Christ cannon be fully established on the earth without this principle. Referred to many of our young girls who were marrying outsiders, and said that he believed that God would yet open the way so that our young women who were willing and anxious to become virtuous wives and honored mothers would have the privilege of doing so, and there would be no necessity of marrying non Mormons. . . . It is becoming a very serious question as to what is to be done with our young girls who do not wish to marry non-Mormons. Felt impressed in his very soul that God will open the way so that the bonds of the Gentiles may be removed, and our young people will be permitted to live all the principles of the gospel.”
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Mar 8, 1904 - Apostle, and U.S. Senator, Reed Smoot’s 25-year-old personal secretary, Carl A. Badger writes: “I believe, that we all feel that the case is much more serious than it was ever thought it would be. . . . “ The Senate investigation on seating Smoot has just begun and lasts for three more years. Concerning Church President Joseph F. Smith’s recent testimony before the committee Badger writes: “The admissions made by President Smith have aroused great newspaper indignation, . . .” President Smith had admitted to continuing to live with his plural wives after the manifesto in violation of both the laws of the land and of the church.
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May 21, 1906 - Royal G. Smith is born to Mary T. Schwartz Smith a plural wife of Church President Joseph F. Smith. Joseph F. Smith is arrested, after returning from a trip to Europe, on a charge of illegal cohabitation, and released on his own recognizance. Under considerable pressure, the case is brought to trial, and on November 23, 1906, Joseph F. Smith pleads guilty and was fined $300
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Feb 22, 1914 - Sugar House Ward Bishop John M. Whitaker records in his diary: “For a long time before this meeting, about ten years when it commenced, I had been called before the Stake Presidency a number of times for teaching that anyone who took a wife after the Manifest in 1890, had done contrary to the laws of the land and also the law of the church and were living in adultery, and this aroused President Taylor and John M. Cannon to such an extent they told me I was out of harmony with them, and I had more than once offered them my resignation as Bishop of Sugar House Ward, but they never took it and then they told me what they had done, married immediately after the manifesto, . . .”
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Only through celestial marriage can one find the strait way, the narrow path. Eternal life cannot be had in any other way. (Deseret News, Church Section, November 12, 1977, Salt Lake City, Utah)
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To keep this thing relevant to the topic of the thread, Amasa Lyman was converted and knew Joseph Smith and his revelation about multiple wives. Lyman had eight wives. They are listed on wikipedia under his name.
I found a picture of David's stone on findagrave; the whole cemetery is there. It's a beautiful stone. Before all I had seen was a transcription of it.
My gr gr grandfather is buried there along with other relatives. There is no history of Mormonism in my direct lineage that I've been able to find but they did baptise for the dead my gr gr gr grandparents in Northern New Hampshire.