<p><a href=“http://www.i4m.com/think/sexuality/polygamy_sex.htm[/url]”>http://www.i4m.com/think/sexuality/polygamy_sex.htm</a></p>
<p>Joseph Smith, on whether a woman had any say in polygyny:</p>
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<p>Sarah Pratt, at 57, on her husband courting teenagers:
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<p>Martha Hughes Cannon, on her husband’s refusal to support her once he lost interest in her:
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<p>I want to know how they afford all those wives. I have my hands full keeping one in the style to which she’s accustomed. Then we add the daughters…no wonder men die earlier.</p>
<p>conyat, really interesting link</p>
<p>the very basis of LDS practices, and it leaders and their love of polygamy, and then the subsequent denial of it as some sort of problem that was disconnected to the church, and then the kind of covering up of it in history, not a denial that it was there, but a kind of saying, Oh no, not us, just them cultish people, when it fact it was part of the very foundation of the church is quite scary, IMO</p>
<p>One of the sites I read (not one I linked here) was by a member of one of the hierarchy families. She said that denial is a huge problem. First off, the church encourages them in developing their family tree to count only the offspring of the wife who bore their ancestor and not the children of any other wives. This makes it harder to avoid marrying people who might carry the same genetic issues.</p>
<p>Another problem is the insistence that the hierarchy children are perfect specimens, period. She says some families end up letting chronic health issues such as epilepsy and asthma go untreated rather than face the possibility that something might be wrong. If these things are true, it’s very sad.</p>
<p>Are there any Mormons on this forum?</p>
<p>I just wonder how Baptists, Born-Agains, or other non-Mormon Christian denominations would react if some aspect of their religion were being dissected this way.</p>
<p>Well, that has already happened, but at least there were some representatives of that faith present, who had a chance to speak up. And, as I recall, they didn’t like it.</p>
<p>I’m sure if there were any Mormons present, they would offer a different perspective.</p>
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<p>What a shock you came to this conclusion, cgm. :rolleyes:</p>
<p>Conyat - In poking around that site you are quoting, it’s pretty clear that it’s a hard-core anti-Mormon site. Using that as an authoritative source on Mormonism is a lot like using “The Protocols of the Elders of Zion” as an authoritative source on Judaism.</p>
<p>And come to think of it, anti-Mormonisn really isn’t any prettier or more admirable than anti-semitism.</p>
<p>Courer, these are direct quotes from Mormon women and from Joseph Smith himself. I don’t think their words should be buried just because some people may not like what they had to say. These women had no ability to stand up for themselves in their own time; I don’t think they should be robbed of it now. </p>
<p>And as for the children, the historical record shows very clearly that girls were given as additional wives to powerful men in some cases even before they would have reached puberty. They don’t deserve to be forgotten either.</p>
<p>It’s true that I’m anti-child predation, and I’m against adult women being traded–and treated–like chattels, but I don’t equate that with being anti-Mormon, since I don’t believe that the contemporary LDS church is for those things.</p>
<p>We have a similar kind of denial about slavery in Louisiana. I know hundreds of white Louisianians who can trace their ancestry back before the Civil War, and I’ve only met one person who ever admitted that his or her family enslaved human beings. Not the others, no how, no way. </p>
<p>As for the one who admitted it, she could hardly avoid it; her family still owned the old plantation land. And she always insisted that she didn’t know what all the fuss was about…her family always treated the people it enslaved “very kindly.” </p>
<p>So while I am sensitive to the fact that present-day Mormons may not like hearing that polygynous wives were unhappy; that history shows they were predominantly not widows in need of support; and that many of them were below the marrying age of the time, I’m not going to dishonor these women by pretending that what happened to them wasn’t real.</p>
<p>The problem with using highly-biased sources that are venomously opposed to a given religion is that, like “The Protocols of the Elders of Zion,” the quotes contained in it may be taken out of context, distorted, or simply made up. </p>
<p>The other problem is that this thread has gotten away from being a mildly entertaining discussion of one odd-ball aspect of an unusual religion and is quickly heading down the black path of simply bashing that denomination. I think leadragon was starting to wince at that too in post #65. Anti-Mormonism, Anti-Semitism, No Popery movements, etc. – they are all ugly and unworthy of those who claim to embrace Freedom of Religion.</p>
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<p>If you have evidence the quotes were made up, I’d be very interested to hear it. All you have now is an unsubstantiated accusation against the author, who has documented many of his sources.</p>
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<p>Sorry, but I don’t see how presenting factual information is bashing the religion. Even the Mormon church admits that Smith married teenagers as young as 14 and that this was not the norm for his time.</p>
<p>Do we decide that it’s anti-Catholic to acknowledge the victims of the priest-abuse scandal…and demand they be silenced?</p>
<p>Is it anti-Protestant to acknowledge the fact that some clergy taught that it was a sin to help an enslaved human being escape?</p>
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<p>It isn’t anti-Mormon to cite historical facts about polygyny any more than it’s anti-American acknowlege that slavery or the internment of Japanese Americans happened. Idmom made it clear at the beginning of the thread that everyone knew we were talking about the church of the 1800s and not today.</p>
<p>Sorry, but I’ll never believe that you preserve freedom by Orwellian revisionism and ruthless surpression of any historical facts that people might find uncomfortable.</p>
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<p>Exactly. </p>
<p>Case in point: How would the Christians react if the Pagans on this forum started a thread about the witch trials, in which 2 million women were murdered over the course of 200 years, based on “Exodus 22:18 -“Thou shalt not suffer a sorceress to live.” Put to death any woman who does evil magic.” and the Christians were not present to present another point of view?</p>
<p>The witch trials were obviously a dark era in Christianity and no longer embraced by most Christians. To say that polygamy is part of the foundation of Mormonism is like saying burning women at the stake is part of the foundation of Christianity.</p>
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Maybe, but maybe not given that church sanctioned polygamy hasn’t existed as part of LDS in any LDS member’s lifetime any more than the typical Catholic identifies with the crusades or other religions identify with certain historical aspects of their religion. I would assume it’s something as foreign to them as it is to non-members. I think most are living more in the present.</p>
<p>I’m not a member of the LDS religion but I’ve met quite a number of Mormons and have been quite impressed with the values of most I’ve met including their morals, commitment to their community, and focus on their family. I’m generalizing of course but it’s just something I’ve noticed.</p>
<p>Leal, I’ll admit that some of the posters here would go ballistic if you mentioned the witch trials. I know, I mentioned Salem once in a discussion about whether a state religion would be a good thing for the US, and almost got my head taken off for it by the dominionists in the thread. </p>
<p>According to one of them, a non-fundamentalist poster isn’t even allowed to quote something a fundamentalist poster said if that quote makes the fundamentalist look bad. Poor curmudgeon got the dickens scolded out of him for linking to a misogynist post by a young dominionist after the dominionist called some of the women in a thread “blasphemers”.</p>
<p>But that kind of hostility toward history and empiricism is simply not a good thing for society. Do we remain silent about abuses just because people don’t want to hear about them? Should we never again mention the Tuskeegee Syphilis Study because the children and grandchildren of the doctors who ran the study aren’t here to justify why it was done? </p>
<p>Are we forbidden to point out that until 1967, the original inhabitants of Australia (the so-called Aboriginees) were legally classified as “flora and fauna” and not as humans? After all, there’s no white Austrailians on this thread to defend and explain this classification. </p>
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<p>A more accurate comparison would be that it’s like saying slavery was part of the foundation of the United States. </p>
<p>I don’t think it’s fair to talk about the founding of the US without acknowledging the contributions of the African Americans who were brought here in chains. And I don’t think it’s fair to pretend that the wives and mothers of the hierarchy families had no role in the founding of their religion and culture.</p>
<p>ETA: For a perspective from a formerly devout Mormon on polygamy. <a href=“http://www.exmormon.org/mormon/mormon351.htm[/url]”>http://www.exmormon.org/mormon/mormon351.htm</a></p>
<p>I can find no reason to doubt this man’s sincerity or his diligence in sourcing his material.</p>
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<p>Marite: I suspect that most polygamists (except for the leaders perhaps) are pretty poor. The TV shows I saw spotlighted towns in Southern Utah/Northern Arizona that had large polygamous populations. Large % of the people on welfare and homeschooled their kids. Pretty scary…</p>
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<p>Same here. My son was part of a Mormon homeschool group for awhile, and they were very warm and welcoming. I was impressed by how NICE most of them were, much more so than the other homeschool co-ops we’d experienced previously that were affiliated with the more, um, mainstream religions. That is just a generalization of course, but it was our experience.</p>
<p>The Mormons I met were quick to point out that polygamy is NOT endorsed by their religion today. The way they explained it to me was that it was similar to the fact that the radical fringe fanatics who blow up abortion clinics are not representative of mainstream Christianity.</p>
<p>I am not LDS myself either, but because they were so nice to me, and because I saw firsthand the prejudice directed towards them when we were at the other co-op (they were called ‘cult’ and not welcome) I tend to speak up for them when they’re not here to defend themselves.</p>
<p>I agree, conyat, that history should not be buried. Most religions, nations, and any other group of people have some skeletons in their closet, and we can all learn from them. I just hope that people are willing to consider all the sides of the issue and not just be so quick to stereotype Mormonism as ‘that weird cult that embraces polygamy.’ And, I would hope that those of other religions, including the mainstream, would be equally willing to have their old issues examined as well before they put someone else’s on the chopping block.</p>
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<p>See, Leal, not one person in this thread did that. Not one.</p>
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<p>So have posters in this thread. People have gone to great pains to make it clear that the historical expression of polygamy is the topic and the contemporary FLDS, but not the contemporary LDS. We shouldn’t have to put that disclaimer in every post once it’s been established.</p>
<p>I think it’s prejudiced to assume that anyone discussing historical facts about polygyny by Smith and his followers must by definition anti-Mormon.</p>
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<p>I got no problem with that. I love my faith enough to acknowledge its faults. My loyalty to it doesn’t depend on a false image of it. So if you have any dirt about what Stone and Campbell were up to on the American frontier (besides their shocking distribution of communion to all comers and not just their own sectarians), let’s hear it.</p>
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<p>True…you are right that prejudice can work both ways. It is true that I may be a bit more protective towards Mormonism and assume prematurely. I apologize for any inadvertant prejudice or assumptions.</p>
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<p>Glad to hear that! But no, I’m not interested in bringing up any dirt. No need to take the focus away from the topic of the thread.</p>
<p>^Not only that conyat…but I think it is incredibly important to shine a light on the practices of the FLDS that victimize children, defraud taxpayers and violate our laws. If it were a bunch of nutjobs claiming to be Lutherans, I’d want the same light in their faces too.</p>
<p>Historically, the unsavory facets of the origins of the Mormon Church are no different in magnitude than those of my faith, or any other. Ask the Mennonites…they know.</p>
<p>That is what I love about CC…I have learned quite a bit, and I don’t place or judge good religious people</p>
<p>However, I do think it is imperative that they understand the real history of their faith, just as we need to understand the real way that the Indigenous People in the America’s were treated, slavery, etc</p>
<p>History is ugly, and should never be sugar coated or explained away or twisted, that does no one any good</p>
<p>The Good and Bad and the Ugly should be brought into the light, and while in this day and age, most Mormons are against polygamy, it was a huge part of their past, and was one of the main tenents of the founders, and the prophets To this day, the fundamentalist mormons are basically just doing what the “modern” mormons predecessors did, and to try and pretend it is not connected in a very strong way is denying part of where they came from</p>
<p>The Fundamentalists can claim they are the true Mormons, as they are not doing much different from Joseph Smith and Brigham Young</p>
<p>If they really believed polyhamy was wrong, they would distance themselves in much more public ways, IE change the name of BYU</p>