[GCFL-discuss] Poygamy

[Discussion of the Good, Clean Funnies List]

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).

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.

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.

Siarlys

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.

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).

On Wed, 8 Nov 2006 20:26:50 -0800 (PST) "Discussion of the Good, Clean
Funnies List" <gcfl-discuss at gcfl.net> writes:
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.  
Frank


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