The polygamy thing works great for new religions because it is a sure fire way to easily create more adherents from a small amount of stock. Indoctrinating children from birth is way easier than converting adults.
98I believe that Satan has a hold of you.
I believe that the Lord God has sent me here.
And I believe that in 1978 God changed his mind about black people.
-"I Believe" from The Book of Mormon (the musical)
55I see that show every time I go to NYC, its required.
8We got the golden plates!
6
I don’t think anyone was framing Mormons as the good guys
Even by the standards of organized religion, Mormonism is very weird. Cf Ruby Franke. The early history is absolutely wild, and in Utah they still have tons of money and power and everyone acts like it’s just a normal thing.
47The early history is absolutely wild, and in Utah they still have tons of money and power and everyone acts like it’s just a normal thing.
Replace Utah with USA, and it's the same thing with a lot of shit.
8
Now imagine how much the christian god's mind was changed by the roman government
44Well, given that not long after the emperor converts it became deadly to possess the version of Jesus's sayings which claims he said "Let one who has become wealthy reign, and let one who has power renounce <it>" (allegedly said at the time when Tiberius was the first emperor to inherit the kingdom due to dynastic claim vs accomplishments and had abandoned ruling to party but wouldn't turn over the position to anyone else) - probably just a wee bit of mind changing.
9Yeah those wee bits have grown considerably the last several hundred years
2
To be fair, Joseph Smith wrote "The Articles of Faith" well before polygamy was abolished, which states:
- We believe in being subject to kings, presidents, rulers, and magistrates, in obeying, honoring, and sustaining the law.
So the belief that polygamy still has value may remain. Or it may not. It's hard to tell without a change in the law.
32Mormons still practise polygamy sort of. They have "sealings" which is marriage forever, not just "'til death do us part". If a widow is to remarry, she needs to break the sealing to her dead spouse if she wishes to be sealed to get new one (or she could stay sealed to her first spouse and only marry the second until death).
A widower, however, doesn't need to break the previous sealing. He can be sealed to multiple women no problem. Essentially polygamy, but only in the afterlife.
37Can confirm. If any Mormons are reading this and think it's made up-- ASK YOUR BISHOP what happens if you were to die or have a civil divorce and you or your spouse wants to remarry in the temple.
They don't teach this openly, and your bishop may beat around the bush but this is all true.
6
I've hung out with a bunch of Mormons and while they personally felt it was weird now, because they have grown up in a monogamous nation, the church itself would definitely gear up to switch back, if it was legal.
That would be a process, though. They are currently taught that it is morally fine, but following the laws of the land is important, and basically treat it like part of their history. On an individual level, the ones I know seemed fine with that, even those that had an active role in the church.
12It's also not that strange in more secular contexts, see this article about polyamory in general. So I think it makes sense for people to be okay with the concept of plural marriage, while not wanting to engage with it themselves (e.g. it wouldn't work for me).
8
I think organized religion is always a risk for causing trouble, but this Mormon God's flexibility is exactly the kind of anti-extremist leadership I'd like to see more of if we are going to keep doing the religion thing. Now if only he would get cool with beer and coffee.
26The funny part is that Mormon god was only flexible when it suited Joseph Smith.
I mean, it's kinda oddly coincidental that God spoke to JS and told him that polygamy was ok right after his wife told him she was furiously against it, don't you think?
26Honey, that was God, he just called and said it's totally OK for me to be into both you AND your sister. He said you really should chill about it.
13
Utah has a legal limit on the amount of alcohol that can be in cocktails because of those puritans lmfao
11Now if only he would get cool with beer and coffee.
And birthdays and people who don't believe in him
9Extremist anti-religion is way better. Then we won't have to compromise on weak-ass beer too.
5
Why is polygamy even illegal in the first place?
21Because gender bounded polygamy causes serious social issues. Look at the FLDS for examples of it in modern day. My stance is to remove the gender bounding and enforce strict minimum age to marry laws. But yeah, 18th century USA wasn’t going to let women have multiple husbands much less let men have multiple husbands and women have multiple wives.
32Yup, I think we should change the whole notion of marriage. Basically, the government would provide sets of contracts that grant certain privileges for certain responsibilities, like tax benefits for sharing financial responsibility. People can pick and choose among the various contracts, and there could be a "marriage" bundle that roughly corresponds to today's notion of marriage. Marriage than becomes a religious ceremony that people are free to define themselves, separately from any legal commitments.
This way you don't need prenups or whatever, you only sign the documents each party is comfortable with. If you're in a polyamorous relationship, you might combine finances with half of your partners, share hospital visitation rights with a separate half, etc, and you could marry all or some of them. Custody of children would be between biological parents or, if waived, assigned legal parents/guardians based on the contracts signed.
That's a bit complicated, but it would make things a lot more flexible. Individual contracts could be limited in number of people involved, but you could choose to sign different contracts with different people.
3I like the way the Denobulans in Star Trek handle marriage. Every woman has up to three husbands and every man has up to three wives. I wouldn't like to live under strict marriage rules of any kind, but that seems far better than Earth's rules.
1
Polygamy =/= Polyamoury. Polygamy involves one person (almost always a man) having multiple spouses, often economically and legally dependent on him, which tends to result in abuse (quite surprisingly), as well as a surplus of people who remain single, which has its own set of problems. You probably have a good idea of what polyamoury is. Because historically we've mostly seen the former (in the case of the US, with the Mormons and its branching sects), but not the later, laws have been written to deal with the issues provoked by the former, but admittedly it's about time to allow polyamoury to have its own legal framing.
8Tax reasons. You can have as many partners living with you as you want, but once past one "official" partner, it would get super complicated. Plus one wife would be able to hire the other partners as a way to disguise income and keep everyone just under the personal....wait. you can do that anyways.
6You could set rules specifically for polyamourous marriage when it comes to taxes. I don't really see anything ethically wrong with the practice in and of itself when it's consensual to all and not just a scheme for bullshit like tax breaks/evasion or human trafficking.
I think official marriage is weird anyway. It's just a ritual stemming from religion that has been co-opted by governments to deal with stuff that doesn't matter to people who just wanna be together. 🤷🏻♂️
11I’m sorry, do you seriously think that recognition of polyamorous unions would make the tax system even 0.1% more complex than it already is?
1
Note that slavery was abolished in 1865 and the civil rights movement started in 1950s-1960s.
And in 1978 mormon god said that black men can have the priesthood which is mormon god's way of saying black men are treated as equals now. (Women, regardless of race, never were treated equally and still aren't).
The Mormon church likes to celebrate the fact that black men are treated equally but they never mention that this was 110 years after slavery was abolished and still ~3 decades after the civil rights movement started. Mormon God sure has great timing.
But polygamy is actually still alive and well in the Mormon church, and i mean the actual Mormon church and not an offshoot. The Mormons stopped practicing polygamy outright but it is still alive in how they actually treat marriage.
Under mormonism they marry you for eternity. Except if your spouse wants a divorce or they die then you are no longer married from a civil law perspective. If a woman wants to get married again then she needs to have special permission from the Mormon prophet which i believe they do to release her from the Mormon eternal sealing. To do this they also try to get the ex-husbands approval (and too bad if he's dead). Where this gets interesting is that if the husband wants to remarry then he can. No strings attached. He can have as many eternal sealings as he wants. No permission needed from the prophet or wife. Just can have only one civil marriage at a time but if you get a civil divorce then a man can easily get another eternal marriage and a woman cannot. Basically this means that Mormons are letting men practice polygamy in the afterlife. It's wild.
But this just one example of how women aren't treated equally in the Mormon church. And don't get me started on LGBTQIA+. But if you ever hear someone say mormonism likes the the gays they are gaslighting you. They believe that being gay is a sin and you can only be accepted at arm's reach if you're gay, but never do anything gay, and conform to your gender. Telling someone you accept them while believing part of them they can't change is a sin is Olympic level mental gymnastics. But welcome to Mormonism!
19But if you ever hear someone say mormonism likes the the gays they are gaslighting you.
There are a lot of members that don't agree with the church's approach to the LGBTQIA+ community. They hope to change things from within and don't always leave because they hold out hope things will change. Not all mormons are the fuckin mindless whack jobs, though there are plenty of those around. Plenty are really normal people and they disagree with the way the church handles certain topics.
1Hello, I'm well aware that there can be good-intentioned people in the mormon church, however, I'd ask you to consider what it means to stay a member of an organization whose teachings lead to LGBTQIA+ youth committing suicide at a prevalence higher than other states? How can you be a member of an organization that doesn't, really, treat women equally when you stop to think about it? There are a lot of warts in the mormon church, and they have rewritten the history and have been gaslighting their members about it. You've been told that people will just try to spread lies about the church, and that the church is true so you don't need to question it. But if the church is true then it should be able to stand up to scrutiny of your own research.
Just because you think you are doing some greater good by trying to change the mormon church from within doesn't mean you're not oppressing LGBTQIA+ directly or indirectly. Consider this-- does someone joining the KKK with the intent to change it from within make them not a racist? How many years can they be part of that organization before they are complicit?
I'm sorry if any of this seems too harsh, these are just things I wish I would've thought about a few decades sooner. Best of luck in whichever path you take.
4
The Jehovah's Witnesses have this problem too. Their workaround is that "their [anonymous] governing body has had new revelations and insights" so now it works like this.
For a cult to survive the death of its founder, it needs to be picked up by a strong right-have man who can reform it into something that'll survive - but not in a way that will alienate all the followers.
I suspect the Mormans do something similar. Do they have a patriarch or use an elder counsel?
18The mormons have a living prophet, who personally receives revelations with a 'direct line' to God somewhat like the catholic pope.
They also believe that these rules and their changes are necessary, as God sets the rules required to spread his faith. Polygamy is usually thought of (for lds) as a temporary act used to grow his re-created church via birth. Once it became a detriment, he saw it fit to disallow.
It's a powerful idea that makes it impossible for a person to see contradictions in a constantly changing religion. Any contradictions are simply God working in mysterious ways. He said what was needed, and now something new is required
12grow... via birth
I've never heard that argument. I've instead heard that there were more women than men, so plural marriage was a way to provide for those women since men were the primary breadwinners. The men who engaged in plural marriage were generally well off, and many didn't actually have children with all of their wives.
2
Anonymous governing body you say 🤬☠️👁️📿🙏🤣
4Eh, while the issues are correct, I don't recall the governing body being that anonymous; they just didn't talk about it much in meetings. The body is listed on their website: https://www.jw.org/en/jehovahs-witnesses/faq/governing-body-jw-helpers/
No women of course, and not all had pictures so I can't be sure, but didn't see much people of color, though I do recall some in the past.
In my experience growing up in the cult, one of the things that sorta helped it not feel like one was the lack of deifying the founder and body. While they do teach their own history of it, it wasn't a large part of the worship. There's lots of other cult hints like isolationist and punishment by group shunning and stuff of course.
2
As for the last part they must of had some awesome power to enslave "demons" for so long. I wonder how the mental gymnastics worked on that one?
17At least in previous history, Soloman was probably involved. /s
4
17My favorite argument is that I was given access to Super God when I a child. Which gives me access to Super Heaven when I die. It's waaaaay better that regular heaven. You keep praying to regular god or whatever, you mud dwelling peasant. I'll be looking down on you from Super Heaven and laughing for Extra Eternity.
15Eternity just seems like so much work, when can I just die?
6but have your tried Extra Eternity for Men?
3The Order of the Stick pointed out that the ability to hyper focus gets stuck at 11 for the dead. The main character spent about 6-8 months dead and didn't notice until 4 months had passed. No need to sleep, eat, or use the restroom makes time pass unnoticed.
2
Ah yes, the highest degree of the celestial kingdom, reserved only for married (m-f) Mormons, where polygamy is allowed but only for men to have multiple wives, not vice versa.
Much better than those telestial peasants. Muahaha
5
When you realize that the Mormon church is a business it makes more sense.
13When you realize that the
Mormonchurch is a business it makes more sense.12The church is a business the way 99% of jobs being equivalent to slavery.
0
This actually makes Mormon God sort of more reasonable compared to other, stubborn gods, right? I mean making their followers lives easier by letting them to not confront civic government makes sense...
10Holy (ofc not really) shit TIL
3Also don't forget that utah limits the amount of alcohol in cocktails because of those puritans. Don't be framing mormons as the good guys here
3That's why Scientologists > Mormons
-39I think Mormons are what Scientology wants to become: Enough power and money to control an entire state government while being accepted as regular Americans. (Mitt Romney)
43The scientologists did manage to bend the arm of the entire federal government (hence my remark above which apparently irked some mormons).
See Operation Snow White if you're not familiar with the story. It's far from the only thing that sect has done.
3
