Looks like they're at it again:

http://www.lds.org/topics/plural-marriage-and-families-in-early-utah?lang=eng

I wonder if they rushed it out, because of recent events. Just read the first three paragraphs so far and counted as many lies already.

Seems the church is taking queues from Miley and Madonna, No publicity is bad publicity. If no one is noticing you...take your clothes off.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 12/17/2013 12:20AM by goojabee.

What, nothing about child brides, 14 year old wives, and polyandrous family's. I guess its the deep history is still a little to tough to stomach...

Funny how they completely skipped over Joseph's polygamy.

MLS Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Funny how they completely skipped over Joseph's
> polygamy.


A mere oversight.

The SL Tribune article mentioned that 16 and 17 and sometimes younger girls married into polygamy. I haven't actually read the actual "essay", but I assume Peggy mentioned that because the "essay" mentioned it. So they even got that dirty laundry out there. You know, in a way, this is good. You, me, WE were ALL right. How many of us were treated like we were one of Satan's minnions when we mentioned stuff like this to family members? Probably most of us. But we were right...

Please links to essays 1 and 2.

Go to http://www.mormonthink.com/

On their homepage scroll down to "Top Current Stories"

Essay no. 1 was on The First Vision
Essay no. 2 was Race and the Priesthood

The links are there. MormonThink will always have the links available for you.

I think I've figured out what it is that makes me so angry about these essays. It is that they can say so much more than they ever have before (post-manifesto polygamy, BY was the racist, multiple accounts of the first vision, etc.) but at the same time still manage to be so deceptive.

Wow, that sure was a whole lot of nothing. There was about 2-3 sentences of worthwhile information and the rest was meaningless blather.

This essay is not satisfying. It is incomplete and deceptive.

It seems like a meaningless fluff piece, designed to move us along so that we quit focusing on the controversy of the last two essays.

weak, weak and weak

"Mormons do not know fully why God instituted plural marriage, the essay says..."


So, I suspect when it is legal again under the laws of the land, they will say that they are waiting for God to tell them they can practice it again. And of course God won't talk to them so they will just keep things as they are.

It is a pretty convenient, but lame ploy, profits admitting that God doesn't seem to speak to them any more and they don't know why.

"Plural marriage did result in the birth of large numbers of children within faithful Latter-day Saint homes."

I wonder how that works. I've never been able to figure out how several wives can increase the total overall offspring.

Exactly, it still takes 9 months to birth a child. Having a polygamous husband doesn't speed up the process-just weakens the gene pool for the next generation. In fact, I would imagine the birth rate would slow down given that women are only fertile a few days out of a month. Lies. . lies. . and stupidity!!

The operative phrase is "within faithful Latter-day Saint homes". By concentrating large numbers of wives *under* LDS leaders (i.e. faithful LDS), the number of offspring for those men increases significantly.

"Mormons do not know fully why God instituted plural marriage,.."

Mormons also do no know why blacks were not given the priesthood.

But they do know they are the one true church?

Riiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiight......

Gees,every time I think I've seen everything from TSCC, they do something else. The deception in this disgusts me all over again. Polygamy addressed inequal economic status? No, it left women alone to support themselves and their children in a world where economic opportunities for women were few or non-existent. Polygamous wives and their children lived in poverty unless the wife was the favorite. And as others noted, what of 14-year-olds pressured into sexual relations in order to ensure their family's salvation and the parents who willingly pushed their daughters into such situations? If I hadn't resigned already, I would do it over this drivel.

Jesus, that was an aggravating read. It's primarily galling in that it addresses none of the primary problems with the institution of polygamy - the ugly, reprehensible details that prompted so many of us to distance ourselves from Mormonism.

By refusing to address Joseph Smith's marriages to underage girls (14!!! Four-fucking-barely-a-teen, you apologist shitbags!!!), his wife swapping and wife stealing, his use of spiritual extortion and coercion, and the threats of public character assassination and physical brutality against those who objected to his his sexual deviancy, they've not really given any satisfactory answers.

These essays are meant as a smokescreen to make it appear as if the church is being open about the "difficult questions" without providing any substance. As was pointed out before with the issue of people of African descent being denied the priesthood, these aren't intended to be read by the faithful; their very existence is supposed to be proof enough that the church has nothing to hide. That it enrages ex-Mormons and the few fringe members who dare to question authority is not much of a concern to them.

And that, again, is how they fail, because they once again don't understand the power of the internet or the fury of an ex-Mo scorned. You think they would have learned their lesson in 1844, when a mob of furious gentiles and disaffected Mormons put bullets in Joseph and his brother after they tried to hide their illicit activities, but here they are again.

The authors are hoping that the membership is not familiar with the Manifesto and that they don't connect the dots or the statements below:


"Only the Church President held the keys authorizing the performance of new plural marriages.o use his influence to convince members of the Church to do likewise."

"After the Manifesto, monogamy was advocated in the Church both over the pulpit and through the press." (What about in the councils of the Church and is private discussions with members? What message did continued plural sealings send?)

"On an exceptional basis, some new plural marriages were performed between 1890 and 1904, especially in Mexico and Canada, outside the jurisdiction of U.S. law; a small number of plural marriages were performed within the United States during those years. In 1904, the Church strictly prohibited new plural marriages."

"all were required to obtain the approval of Church leaders before entering a plural marriage."

Might I add that plural marriage was illegal at the tune in BOTH Canada and Mexico. So much for "honouring and sustaining the law".

This one is my favorite "Although some leaders had large polygamous families, two-thirds of polygamist men had only two wives at a time" Some leaders ? You mean Smith & Young right. They give snake oil salesman a bad name!

Only two thirds had a second wife because the higher ups were snatching up wives as fast as they could.

The article is fairly brief and focuses on polygamy between 1847 and 1890 (after Joseph Smith). The article states "Latter-day Saints do not understand all of God’s purposes for instituting, through His prophets, the practice of plural marriage during the 19th century."

The article postulates that per the Book of Mormon, polygamy may have been instituted to increase the population. However, this makes little sense because a group of women can have far more children if they each have their own husband instead of sharing one man. For example Brigham Young reportedly had 55 children by some 29 child-bearing capable wives but had those women had their own husbands they may have had 150 or more children in total. This reasoning only makes sense if there was a shortage of men but census records show that there were always more men than women in Utah during that time period.

The article completely avoids the most troubling issue that knowledgeable LDS have on polygamy which is the way Joseph Smith practiced it. Joseph Smith practiced polyandry where he married other men's wives as well as polygamy. Joseph married 33 women of which 11 were married to other men. Although many LDS believe that Joseph did not have sexual relations with those women, many faithful historians acknowledge that there is evidence he did. Often Joseph would send men on missions overseas then marry their wives. Also not mentioned is Joseph's marriages to young girls as young as 14 and to what lengths Joseph went to hide these marriages from his first wife Emma.

The article also makes it seem that all the LDS women were more than willing to practice the principle and to defend it. The very sad stories of women like 14 year-old Helen Kimball who was pressured to marry Joseph Smith and to keep it a secret as she was promised exaltation for her family and faithful men like Henry Jacobs who had his wife Zina taken from him and sealed to Joseph Smith and later to Brigham Young.

To get a more complete view on polygamy and the many problems not discussed in the LDS article, read MormonThink's section on polygamy. http://www.mormonthink.com/joseph-smith-polygamy.htm

This is hilarious! They don't even TRY to address any of the REAL controversial topics. They think--as I used to--that just the idea of polygamy at all IS the controversy. As all of you have so aptly recognized, it is so, so much uglier than that. We and they know it is impossible for them to address the uglies. There is simply NO answer that leaves the church still standing. I would just love to be a fly on the wall as they wring their hands about the pros and cons of what to say and what not to say. What a joke!

I thought that these essays were supposed to explain in greater detail some of the troubling issues related to Mormonism.

Essay #l was a retread of an old Ensign article. It gave links to the various versions of the first vision, but not a side by side comparison. It would take three hours of link chasing to get the meat from that essay.

Essay #2 attempts to make BY responsible for the racism in the church, but leaves the reader with more questions than answers.

Essay #3 leaves the troubling questions of polyandry and JS polygamy out entirely. What exactly did it clarify? Most members knew that polygamy was practiced after the manifesto.

The real problem here is that most members don't even know that these essays exist. The Salt Lake Tribune religion reporter is going to do her level best to get the word out about the essays and to ask some of the questions that they raise, but the fact is that the dyed in the wool Utah Mormon is never going to read her column because they only read The Deseret News.

If the LDS Church actually wanted members to know the truth, they would publish the truth under the signature of the First Presidency and the Twelve Apostles. That is never going to happen.

I didn't even need to read the essay to know the last paragraph would gloss over the crap-fest of JS' fake revelation about "raising up seed" (which, by the way, is very detailed, so how can TBM's say they "...do not understand all of God’s purposes for instituting...plural marriage..."?) and deliver a faith-promoting conclusion that includes all the great buzzwords--hey--it was even better! It threw in the "life was hard/ sacrifice" meme as well!

Play the drinking game as you read all the well-worn cliché words:

"For many who practiced it, plural marriage was a significant sacrifice. Despite the hardships some experienced, the faithfulness of those who practiced plural marriage continues to benefit the Church in innumerable ways. Through the lineage of these 19th-century Saints have come many Latter-day Saints who have been faithful to their gospel covenants as righteous mothers and fathers, loyal disciples of Jesus Christ, and devoted Church members, leaders, and missionaries. Although members of the contemporary Church are forbidden to practice plural marriage, modern Latter-day Saints honor and respect these pioneers who gave so much for their faith, families, and community."