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<DIV>Frank, I doubt that very much. Most societies that practice polygamy
justify it, in part, by the need to take care of single and widowed women. When
only men can own property, that can have a certain back-handed truth to it.
Among the Puritan and Pilgrim settlements (two different things, Plymouth and
Massachusetts Bay) any single person, man or woman, was assigned a family to
live with, if they had none, simply because it was not good to be alone. (This
was not necessarily marriage, but placed them within a household).</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>As Lance mentions, polygamy was a doctrine from the very beginning, for
which Joseph Smith cited explicit instructions to himself from God, via the
angel Moroni, the golden plates inscribes with strange runes, and whatever other
revelations he told his followers about. It was a duty for a man to have as many
wives as possible.</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>Nearly every church, not only in modern times but back to colonial times,
has had more women than men, sometimes six times as many. But I know of few
societies where the only way to provide for them is for each man to have six
wives.</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>Siarlys</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>P.S. Kateinmo, the U.S. had not recently outlawed polygamy when the Mormons
decided to remove it from their doctrine. None of the 13 colonies, nor any
subsequent state, made any provision for polygamy in its code. Mormons were
persecuted for, among other things, polygamy, while still in Nauvoo, Illinois.
What the U.S. had just done is sent the Seventh Cavalry to enforce federal
jurisdiction over Utah Territory, where the Mormons had thought to establish the
independent State of Deseret. The Mormons basically had the choice of being
subjugated, or of accepting federal law and becoming a state on terms accpetable
to the rest of the U.S. Which does, as you say, make the "revelation"
suspect.</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>Christianity certainly has some gross skeletons in its closet, as does
Islam. Jesus would never have been a Christian, Karl Marx declared during his
lifetime that he was not a Marxist, and Joseph Smith would never condone the
modern Mormon church (or possibly even Brigham Young's reformulation of
it).</DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV>On Wed, 8 Nov 2006 20:26:50 -0800 (PST) "Discussion of the Good, Clean
Funnies List" <<A
href="mailto:gcfl-discuss@gcfl.net">gcfl-discuss@gcfl.net</A>> writes:</DIV>
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<DIV>By way of information for those who may not know, one of the
reasons the 'Mormons' practiced polygamy was because in the early days
of the church there were many more women than men in the church. This
was a way to help provide for and take care of these women. </DIV>
<DIV>Frank</DIV>
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