Column: Sex and the Latter-day Saints [Mormons admit the past]

DailyAstorian.com (NY Times News Service) ^ | Dec. 2, 2014 | Timothy Egan

[Colofornian]

...When ushered into the master bedroom of the Mormon patriarch Brigham Young at his winter home in St. George, Utah, a few years ago, I felt duty-bound to ask an obvious question: Where did the other women sleep?

Other women? The church tour guide blushed, and laser-stared me as if I’d blasphemed the Mormon Moses.

I wondered about arrangements and jealousies, the conjugal timing of a man who was married to 55 women, by most accounts. I didn’t ask about the sexual acrobatics of the great pioneer, just the spreadsheet logistics of managing all those spouses.

...The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints...has had a particularly hard time reconciling its radical founding principles with its white-bread contemporary image. Imagine Mitt Romney with a harem, and you have some idea of the kind of men who planted a new church in the West.

So, it’s been fascinating to watch the reaction to the acknowledgment last month by Mormon leaders that Joseph Smith...took as many as 40 wives. Some...women were also married to other men. One of his brides was a 14-year-old girl, or as church officials put it in an essay, she was “sealed” to Smith “several months before her 15th birthday.” Well, that changes everything.

Smith...came to his decision only under duress, the church explained: A sword-wielding angel forced him to take up a life of sanctioned promiscuity...

And there was a creepy grooming aspect in how the Mormon founder picked his brides. Mary Elizabeth Rollins was 12 years old when Smith told her...God had commanded him to take her as a plural wife, according to the author Linda King Newell. She later married him at 23, wife No. 9...

Remember when Mitt Romney tried to explain how his ancestors came from Mexico?...In fact, they were sexual fugitives...

[Elsie]

Ouch!

[Elsie]

At least it’s a LINK.

I doubt it would last long here if posted...