Posted by:
rt
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Date: October 22, 2014 02:08PM
Latter-day Saints believe that monogamy—the marriage of one man and one woman—is the Lord’s standing law of marriage.1
rt: Except that D&C 132 says differently and calls it everlasting. This is only partly offset by OD 1; church policies still facilitate polygamy.
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In biblical times, the Lord commanded some of His people to practice plural marriage—the marriage of one man and more than one woman.2
rt: there is no such commandment in the Bible anywhere.
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After receiving a revelation commanding him to practice plural marriage, Joseph Smith married multiple wives and introduced the practice to close associates.
rt: except that there is no record of such a commandment until 10+ years after Joe started boinking the maid in the barn.
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This principle was among the most challenging aspects of the Restoration—for Joseph personally and for other Church members.
rt: except that there is no record of Joe ever finding it challenging, apart from keeping it a secret from his wife and the bulk of his followers.
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Plural marriage tested faith and provoked controversy and opposition. Few Latter-day Saints initially welcomed the restoration of a biblical practice entirely foreign to their sensibilities.
rt: not to mention that it was against the law.
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But many later testified of powerful spiritual experiences that helped them overcome their hesitation and gave them courage to accept this practice.
rt: how many? As many as would always have a hard time with it? More? Less?
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Although the Lord commanded the adoption—and later the cessation—of plural marriage in the latter days, He did not give exact instructions on how to obey the commandment. Significant social and cultural changes often include misunderstandings and difficulties.
rt: this is what makes Mormon polygamy unique. There is no social or cultural change to compare it to.
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Church leaders and members experienced these challenges as they heeded the command to practice plural marriage and again later as they worked to discontinue it after Church President Wilford Woodruff issued an inspired statement known as the Manifesto in 1890, which led to the end of plural marriage in the Church.
rt: well, almost the end anyway.
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Many details about the early practice of plural marriage are unknown.
rt: Examples? What is meant by "details"? Why is this important? To create plausible deniability? Play dumb?
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Plural marriage was introduced among the early Saints incrementally, and participants were asked to keep their actions confidential.
rt: or, in other words, lie about it. From the beginning, lying was a prerequisite for the Mormon practice of polygamy.
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They did not discuss their experiences publicly or in writing until after the Latter-day Saints had moved to Utah and Church leaders had publicly acknowledged the practice. The historical record of early plural marriage is therefore thin: few records of the time provide details, and later reminiscences are not always reliable.
rt: except when they fit the Mormon narrative, like Joe's later reminiscences of his first visions. Also, the volume of the record was influenced by all the lying and the secrecy going on, and the destroying of the printing press of thoses who did want to document the practice.
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Some ambiguity will always accompany our knowledge about this issue. Like the participants, we “see through a glass, darkly” and are asked to walk by faith.3
rt: no ambiguity here whatsoever.
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The revelation on plural marriage was not written down until 1843, but its early verses suggest that part of it emerged from Joseph Smith’s study of the Old Testament in 1831.
rt: is this one of those later reminiscences?
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People who knew Joseph well later stated he received the revelation about that time.4
rt: Funny how they quote a report from 1878 here. What about the people who knew Joe all too well and thought he was just chsing skirt?
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The revelation, recorded in Doctrine and Covenants 132, states that Joseph prayed to know why God justified Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Moses, David, and Solomon in having many wives. The Lord responded that He had commanded them to enter into the practice.5
rt: Good call from the Lord, who forgot to include this little detail in the Bible.
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Latter-day Saints understood that they were living in the latter days, in what the revelations called the “dispensation of the fulness of times.”6 Ancient principles—such as prophets, priesthood, and temples—would be restored to the earth. Plural marriage was one of those ancient principles.
rt: except that it wasn't. It was a cultural practice of a genocidal bronze age clan of sheep herders.
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Polygamy had been permitted for millennia in many cultures and religions, but, with few exceptions, was rejected in Western cultures.7
rt: and for good reasons which shall go unmentioned here.
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In Joseph Smith’s time, monogamy was the only legal form of marriage in the United States.
rt: and in Mexico and Canada.
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Joseph knew the practice of plural marriage would stir up public ire. After receiving the commandment, he taught a few associates about it, but he did not spread this teaching widely in the 1830s.8
rt: because there was no such teaching during the 1830s. Just philandering.
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When God commands a difficult task, He sometimes sends additional messengers to encourage His people to obey. Consistent with this pattern, Joseph told associates that an angel appeared to him three times between 1834 and 1842 and commanded him to proceed with plural marriage when he hesitated to move forward. During the third and final appearance, the angel came with a drawn sword, threatening Joseph with destruction unless he went forward and obeyed the commandment fully.9
rt: the angel with the flaming sword, the Mormon equivalent of the "God made me do it" defense.
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Fragmentary evidence suggests that Joseph Smith acted on the angel’s first command by marrying a plural wife, Fanny Alger, in Kirtland, Ohio, in the mid-1830s. Several Latter-day Saints who had lived in Kirtland reported decades later that Joseph Smith had married Alger, who lived and worked in the Smith household, after he had obtained her consent and that of her parents.10
rt: this is new to me, I have to look into this late reminiscence of 1903. The question, though, is how Joe pulled this off 5 years before the sealing power was restored by his buddy Eli.
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Little is known about this marriage, and nothing is known about the conversations between Joseph and Emma regarding Alger. After the marriage with Alger ended in separation, Joseph seems to have set the subject of plural marriage aside until after the Church moved to Nauvoo, Illinois.
rt: this seems like a good point to insert Oliver Cowdery's contemporary reminiscences of this filthy, nasty affair, no?
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The same revelation that taught of plural marriage was part of a larger revelation given to Joseph Smith—that marriage could last beyond death and that eternal marriage was essential to inheriting the fulness that God desires for His children. As early as 1840, Joseph Smith privately taught Apostle Parley P. Pratt that the “heavenly order” allowed Pratt and his wife to be together “for time and all eternity.”11 Joseph also taught that men like Pratt—who had remarried following the death of his first wife—could be married (or sealed) to their wives for eternity, under the proper conditions.12
rt: which is still true in the Mormon church today.
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The sealing of husband and wife for eternity was made possible by the restoration of priesthood keys and ordinances. On April 3, 1836, the Old Testament prophet Elijah appeared to Joseph Smith and Oliver Cowdery in the Kirtland Temple and restored the priesthood keys necessary to perform ordinances for the living and the dead, including sealing families together.13
rt: what do you know, just five years after Joe hooked up with Fanny.
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Marriages performed by priesthood authority could link loved ones to each other for eternity, on condition of righteousness; marriages performed without this authority would end at death.14
rt: ah yes, the old Mormon conditionality of love & marriage.
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Marriage performed by priesthood authority meant that the procreation of children and perpetuation of families would continue into the eternities. Joseph Smith’s revelation on marriage declared that the “continuation of the seeds forever and ever” helped to fulfill God’s purposes for His children.15 This promise was given to all couples who were married by priesthood authority and were faithful to their covenants.
rt: so having loads and loads of kids in the afterlife is still on? Mainstreaming must be over...
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For much of Western history, family “interest”—economic, political, and social considerations—dominated the choice of spouse. Parents had the power to arrange marriages or forestall unions of which they disapproved. By the late 1700s, romance and personal choice began to rival these traditional motives and practices.16 By Joseph Smith’s time, many couples insisted on marrying for love, as he and Emma did when they eloped against her parents’ wishes.
rt: An interesting illustration of Joe's true attitude toward marriage and family relations.
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Latter-day Saints’ motives for plural marriage were often more religious than economic or romantic. Besides the desire to be obedient, a strong incentive was the hope of living in God’s presence with family members.
rt: not just hope, Joe promised his brainwashed minions that they would be saved if they sacrificed their daughters and wives to him.
BTW, my blood pressure is rising.
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In the revelation on marriage, the Lord promised participants “crowns of eternal lives” and “exaltation in the eternal worlds.”17 Men and women, parents and children, ancestors and progeny were to be “sealed” to each other—their commitment lasting into the eternities, consistent with Jesus’s promise that priesthood ordinances performed on earth could be “bound in heaven.”18
rt: and if that isn't enough of an incentive, there's always the threat of destruction.
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The first plural marriage in Nauvoo took place when Louisa Beaman and Joseph Smith were sealed in April 1841.19 Joseph married many additional wives and authorized other Latter-day Saints to practice plural marriage. The practice spread slowly at first. By June 1844, when Joseph died, approximately 29 men and 50 women had entered into plural marriage, in addition to Joseph and his wives. When the Saints entered the Salt Lake Valley in 1847, at least 196 men and 521 women had entered into plural marriages.20 Participants in these early plural marriages pledged to keep their involvement confidential, though they anticipated a time when the practice would be publicly acknowledged.
Nevertheless, rumors spread. A few men unscrupulously used these rumors to seduce women to join them in an unauthorized practice sometimes referred to as “spiritual wifery.”
rt: how different Joe's disgusting psychological manipulation was.
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When this was discovered, the men were cut off from the Church.21 The rumors prompted members and leaders to issue carefully worded denials that denounced spiritual wifery and polygamy but were silent about what Joseph Smith and others saw as divinely mandated “celestial” plural marriage.22
rt: "carefully worded denials" = bullshitese for "lying"
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The statements emphasized that the Church practiced no marital law other than monogamy while implicitly leaving open the possibility that individuals, under direction of God’s living prophet, might do so.23
rt: and more lying.
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During the era in which plural marriage was practiced, Latter-day Saints distinguished between sealings for time and eternity and sealings for eternity only. Sealings for time and eternity included commitments and relationships during this life, generally including the possibility of sexual relations. Eternity-only sealings indicated relationships in the next life alone.
rt: interesting how convenient little undocumented details just pop up when you need them, the thin-ness of the historical record notwithstanding.
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Evidence indicates that Joseph Smith participated in both types of sealings. The exact number of women to whom he was sealed in his lifetime is unknown because the evidence is fragmentary.24 Some of the women who were sealed to Joseph Smith later testified that their marriages were for time and eternity, while others indicated that their relationships were for eternity alone.25
rt: cut the BS, there were 30+ wives and he had sex with a bunch of them.
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Most of those sealed to Joseph Smith were between 20 and 40 years of age at the time of their sealing to him. The oldest, Fanny Young, was 56 years old.
rt: this would be a good point for a neat table, wouldn't you think?
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The youngest was Helen Mar Kimball, daughter of Joseph’s close friends Heber C. and Vilate Murray Kimball, who was sealed to Joseph several months before her 15th birthday.
rt: in other words, she was 14. Pity that they don't include the fact that Joe already approached her when she was 11, nor the disgusting predatory tactics he used the break the Kimball family.
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Marriage at such an age, inappropriate by today’s standards, was legal in that era, and some women married in their mid-teens.26
rt: BS, plural marriage was not legal and the average age of marriage was not 14, nor was the age gap between Helen and Joe normal in those days. He was a pervert by today's and contemporary standards.
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Helen Mar Kimball spoke of her sealing to Joseph as being “for eternity alone,” suggesting that the relationship did not involve sexual relations.27 After Joseph’s death, Helen remarried and became an articulate defender of him and of plural marriage.28
rt: keep defending the indefensible, you morons. Jesus, those brainwashed fools would still gladly offer their teenage daughters to any conman calling himself prophet today. There is plenty of testimony from Helen and others in her position that they saw the whole thing as a sacrifice, a price to pay. But let's ignore that and pretend that this is all just dandy.
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Following his marriage to Louisa Beaman and before he married other single women, Joseph Smith was sealed to a number of women who were already married.29 Neither these women nor Joseph explained much about these sealings, though several women said they were for eternity alone.30 Other women left no records, making it unknown whether their sealings were for time and eternity or were for eternity alone.
rt: oh please, so much more is known about these cases. Lying bastards.
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There are several possible explanations for this practice.
rt: I bet you don't wanna hear mine...
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These sealings may have provided a way to create an eternal bond or link between Joseph’s family and other families within the Church.31 These ties extended both vertically, from parent to child, and horizontally, from one family to another.
rt: this is actually true: they used polygamy to build an inner circle of church leadership that would be connected through kinship and marriage. It's an ancient way of keeping power and money out of the hands of the masses. It's concommitant practices are nepotism and inbreeding, the effects of both of which are visible in Utah society to this day.
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Today such eternal bonds are achieved through the temple marriages of individuals who are also sealed to their own birth families, in this way linking families together. Joseph Smith’s sealings to women already married may have been an early version of linking one family to another. In Nauvoo, most if not all of the first husbands seem to have continued living in the same household with their wives during Joseph’s lifetime,
rt: if they weren't sent away on a mission, that is.
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and complaints about these sealings with Joseph Smith are virtually absent from the documentary record.32
rt: how convenient. Maybe because the hubbies in question also got fresh booty as a reward for their loyalty? On another note, I seem to remember a story about PP Pratt and a Hector McLean? And what about Orson Pratt, didn't he have a serious falling-out with Joe over his wife?
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These sealings may also be explained by Joseph’s reluctance to enter plural marriage because of the sorrow it would bring to his wife Emma.
rt: such a considerate husband, my heart melts.
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He may have believed that sealings to married women would comply with the Lord’s command without requiring him to have normal marriage relationships.33
rt: why would he think that, if the Lord's command required him to take only virgins?
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This could explain why, according to Lorenzo Snow, the angel reprimanded Joseph for having “demurred” on plural marriage even after he had entered into the practice.34 After this rebuke, according to this interpretation, Joseph returned primarily to sealings with single women.
rt: or Joe couldn't remember what lie he told when to whom and winged it, and Lorenzo, who liked young booty just as much as his prophet (remember Minnie?), was willing to believe anything.
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Another possibility is that, in an era when life spans were shorter than they are today, faithful women felt an urgency to be sealed by priesthood authority.
rt: so many possibilities, so much speculation, so little evidence yet the obvious conclusion is carefully avoided.
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Several of these women were married either to non-Mormons or former Mormons, and more than one of the women later expressed unhappiness in their present marriages. Living in a time when divorce was difficult to obtain, these women may have believed a sealing to Joseph Smith would give them blessings they might not otherwise receive in the next life.35
rt: PAAS - Polygamy As A Service, hahaha.
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The women who united with Joseph Smith in plural marriage risked reputation and self-respect in being associated with a principle so foreign to their culture and so easily misunderstood by others.
rt: ironically, they risked the same at Joe's evil hands if they refused his advances. Man, what a despicable narcissist he must have been. If anyone deserved to be summarily shot, it was Joseph Smith
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“I made a greater sacrifice than to give my life,” said Zina Huntington Jacobs, “for I never anticipated again to be looked upon as an honorable woman.” Nevertheless, she wrote, “I searched the scripture & by humble prayer to my Heavenly Father I obtained a testimony for myself.”36
rt: was she the one married to Henry? How did that go? And then pawned off to Briggie after horny Joe's demise? Mormon polygamy, an eternal spring of morality and virtue.
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After Joseph’s death, most of the women sealed to him moved to Utah with the Saints, remained faithful Church members, and defended both plural marriage and Joseph.37
rt: and many moved to Briggie's harem because getting married to one prophet just doesn't cut it for those eternal blessings.
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Plural marriage was difficult for all involved. For Joseph Smith’s wife Emma, it was an excruciating ordeal. Records of Emma’s reactions to plural marriage are sparse; she left no firsthand accounts, making it impossible to reconstruct her thoughts.
rt: not impossible, just unpalatable.
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Joseph and Emma loved and respected each other deeply.
rt: my assessment: they were two fraudsters that were doomed to stay together for better or for worse.
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After he had entered into plural marriage, he poured out his feelings in his journal for his “beloved Emma,” whom he described as “undaunted, firm and unwavering, unchangeable, affectionate Emma.”
rt: that's what all wife abusers do, first treat their spouse like crap, than cry crocodile tears and beg for forgiveness.
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After Joseph’s death, Emma kept a lock of his hair in a locket she wore around her neck.38
rt: how touching.
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Emma approved, at least for a time, of four of Joseph Smith’s plural marriages in Nauvoo, and she accepted all four of those wives into her household. She may have approved of other marriages as well.39 But Emma likely did not know about all of Joseph’s sealings.40 She vacillated in her view of plural marriage, at some points supporting it and at other times denouncing it.
rt: like all women who stay with their abusers, she may have hoped against hope that next time, things would be different... Also, as long as she stayed with Joe, the money would keep pouring.
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In the summer of 1843, Joseph Smith dictated the revelation on marriage, a lengthy and complex text containing both glorious promises and stern warnings, some directed at Emma.41 The revelation instructed women and men that they must obey God’s law and commands in order to receive the fulness of His glory.
The revelation on marriage required that a wife give her consent before her husband could enter into plural marriage.42 Nevertheless, toward the end of the revelation, the Lord said that if the first wife “receive not this law”—the command to practice plural marriage—the husband would be “exempt from the law of Sarah,” presumably the requirement that the husband gain the consent of the first wife before marrying additional women.43
rt: what do you mean, "presumably"? You mean it's not in the Bible? Who knew!
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After Emma opposed plural marriage, Joseph was placed in an agonizing dilemma, forced to choose between the will of God and the will of his beloved Emma. He may have thought Emma’s rejection of plural marriage exempted him from the law of Sarah.
rt: more likely that he was just a selfish, cheating bastard.
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Her decision to “receive not this law” permitted him to marry additional wives without her consent.
rt: too convenient. Isn't it marvelous (if you're a Mormon man).
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Because of Joseph’s early death and Emma’s decision to remain in Nauvoo and not discuss plural marriage after the Church moved west, many aspects of their story remain known only to the two of them.
I'll leave the rest to the board, I'm fed up with it for now.