How could any man let Joe the prophet boff his wife? The mere suggestion of it would get him broken bones, or worse, if he tried it on a man that respected and loved his wife and had an ounce of testosterone in him. I'm not for men thinking they rule, especially not in some patriarchy, but why didn't they PROTECT their wives and daughters from these assaults?

Because they are prophets and are going to take your family to heaven? Sorry, but if you let Joe do your 14 year old because of that promise you are nothing but a higly-paid pimp and you've turned your own daughter into a prostitute! Honestly, what else can you call it?

I know many LDS men who will be very assertive at work, in the gym, etc., but turn into total bitches in the face of the ridiculous demands of the LDS church. I don't get it. I would LOVE for Joe to ask for my daughter! I would LOVe a bishop to ask inapropriate Qs to my duaghter in an interview.

What is wrong with these men???????

I wonder the same thing. I sure would not want to go out with such sissy asses.
I am also a bit surprised that some of the women didn't cut his little member off and shove it up his ass while he was sleeping or fake praying or whatever he did when he wasn't screwing someone's daughter or wife.

Simple:

Mormon men who aren't leaders ('yet') figure 'if I do it right, then I'll get the privileges & respect that the other guys do Now'!

more sex & respect from my wife, respect from children/family & others.

Remember the STORY of the guy who was a school janitor & SP, the principal was a Bp in his stake?
That was told For A Reason!



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 11/22/2014 02:09PM by GNPE.

No. They are just human.

I can understand insulting the church, and insulting individual asshats in it. I don't understand the urge to demonize large groups of people.

That seems to happen more and more on this board lately. It's a turn-off.

You are right...I stand corrected. I am simply amazed at the things that these men let slide, even agreed to. I realize that the pressures might have been great on them, and as Bluorchid said they might have even been threatened as I know JS did to many men.

Maybe in some twisted way they thought they WERE protecting their wives and family by such actions, but it is incomprehensible to me.

Maybe the last remnants of feudal society were not purged from them yet?

Either way I should not lump them all in together, despite what I see as a massive failure to protect their children and their wives from predation then and now.

Of all the things in history... really, crazier shit has happened.

Mormon men in general arnt different from anyone else.

The idea of what happened is implausible on many levels because of what you said. Who the hell is going to let some guy have his wife?

This is a far out theory--but it makes me wonder if blackmail was involved or other types of personal threats to coerce the situation. You know once you are in the mafia your life is not your own anymore and pissing off the boss is curtains. Once you were in Joseph's cult you may have found yourself in the same circumstances.

I get the feeling Joseph could make your life miserable if you crossed him. I doubt destroying the Expositor was the only instance of intimidation Joseph was guilty of. I'm sure there was a pattern and many of these husbands may have fallen victim to a lot more than they knew how to handle. But who knows? I think you had to be there to really get it.

Anyway, I'll end now before I seque into the Kennedy assassination with my theorizing.

if you don't think that a relentless message of "You're not good enough" isn't damaging to the psyche, you're Wrong.

Mormon men may say 'Boy! there's a job (leadership) I Wouldn't Want', but I think LDS are raised to believe that it's important to become leaders. Then, consider the wives that gloat / swoon over leaders, PUSH their husbands in that direction.


You don't think Mormons seek the adoration/veneration/adulation that TSM gets? Wouldn't YOU like everyone to stand when YOU enter the room?

That's a good point. It's a powerful motivation for men in the church.

That's a common thing in cults, where the leader gets away with having sex with married women or teenage girls. The men have been brainwashed to believe that it's an honor if the leader or prophet in the case of Joseph Smith, to sleep with their wife or daughters. Jim Jones and David Koresh both used their status as the leader to sleep with the female members of their cults.



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 11/22/2014 02:47PM by adoylelb.

I seem to recall the same thing occurring in the White House in the 90s, and everyone from the wife to the feminists explained it away, or said how awesome it would be if it would have happened to them.

The point is that it's a tribe thing. It's not exclusive to religious organizations.

How about anecdotal evidence?

When I was twelve and my brother was ten we lived in a small Pennsylvania town in which we were among a tiny handful of Mormons. My brother and I were hanging out in a weedy vacant lot behind our neighborhood when we found some old rusty sheets of chicken wire. I got the idea to fashion the wire into a dome and cover it with weeds so it formed a kind of a rude teepee. We called it our fort.

One of the neighbor men, a forty-year-old with the demeanor of a bully, destroyed the fort while we were sitting in it. He dragged the chicken wire over the back of my brother's neck, gashing it wide open. The bully man yelled at us as we walked home, and I called him a bastard. When my Mormon father found out about the episode, he blamed my brother and me for causing trouble with the neighbor. We were 12 and 10.

Later the neighbor came over to my house and stamped on my feet with his hard soled shoes until I cried. This was at my own home with my mother watching. When Dad got home, he didn't want to hear about it. On the night before Halloween, some other boys and I threw corn cobs at the bully's storm door, breaking the glass. My father was furious with me. Today I hate him far more than the bully.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 11/22/2014 09:36PM by donbagley.

that's horrible!

Don't forget, some of the guys were "away" on missions--(in my best Church Lady voice): "How conveeeeenient!"

Also, if you really swayed by Smith's Svengaliism, you really would believe you'd be blessed/punished depending on how you reacted to his offers.
And, I'll bet some of the husbands/fathers/women/girls really thought it was only supposed to be "spiritual".

I mean the guy was the charismatic leader of a cult, he could do whatever he pleased, because he knew the sacred secret of Xenu. Or was that another guy.....

You have to remember that back in those days, women were conditioned to be powerless. They couldn't vote, own property, serve on a jury (they're too "sentimental"), and had a whole laundry list of social restrictions. Most men viewed women as pets at best.

Besides being raised to "know their place", they became followers of patriarchy on steroids. So it's no wonder that Joseph was like a fox with his own private henhouse.

I don't think that's universally true. There are many accounts of women homesteaders and school teachers, nurses, etc. who were as tough as nails and well respected.

But it seems to me that it was the WOMEN who were put under intense psychological pressure.

Imagine 14-year-old Helen Mar, having been told that no less a personage than GOD had commanded her to marry Joseph, that not only she, but her parents as well, would be cast into Outer Darkness if she refused, (and she somehow got the notion that sex wouldn't be involved anyway), AND her father, especially, was pressuring her.

SHE did not have reference material available to her like we do today. She didn't dare confer with peers. She didn't have the degree of backbone that many 14-year-olds do today. She was alone, under intense pressure, and terrified for herself and her family.

What kind of chance did the poor child have, but to give in?

It's been a while since I read "In Sacred Loneliness," but I don't think Heber and Vilate were all that keen on the idea either, initially, until Joseph threw in the stuff about the whole family being eternally damned.

They BELIEVED Joe's con game, which was their terribly tragic error. Joe should have been shot a lot sooner than he was - maybe by Heber - and it would have saved a lot of trouble right there.

Funny how the guys are made to be the only problem. And yet we have women brainwashing kids in primary and at home to follow the prophet. Young women refuse to marry guys unless they go on a mission. And wives limit access to sex if their guy isn't being the loyal priesthood leader she wants him to be.

Then of course, if he chooses to leave the church and "be a man", women often take the kids and divorce the guy. Then we wonder why they are wimps. Seems that many women want a guy who will place his primary devotion to the church.

And by the way, when JS was taking the father's daughter, the mother surely could have thrown herself down and fought viciously to save her. But she went along with it.

Women want the same respect as men, but apparently they are supposed to get a pass for the same behavior. They want special victim status.

Speaking as a spineless castrato of nearly 40 years, I can wholeheartedly answer yes to the OP's question.

It took me until I was well into my adult years for my testicles to descend and a spine to grow where there had previously only been jelly.

Part of me gets really angry at myself when I think of how long it took me to grow up. But I can also see how I was conditioned to be that way from the time I was born.

SERIOUSLY!! That was the first thing that attracted me to my husband...he was a manly, type A man. It was so sexy to me and so foreign...of course he was not Mormon, so that explains it.

Shouldn't the word be castrati ???

Yes, thanks.

Most Mormon men are inactive. We're looking at something like 2/3rds of men stop going to church and spend their Sundays doing whatever they want to do.

It is likely that most Mormon men don't fit any stereotype that you are thinking of.

Well, he WAS tarred and feathered once, nearly castrated, and was later murdered. So not everyone put up with it.

But because he wielded so much power, I bet the men who couldn't bear to sell out their wives or daughters just tried to stay out of his way.

Cult leaders, gang leaders, bullies, clique leaders, dictators, etc - they all seem to surround themselves with loyal supporters (toadies?) who kind of have to sell their souls to please the one in power so he will use his power bestow occasional favors on them.

OP seems to hold testosterone in very high regard and considers "bitch" the ultimate insult. Who says the women wanted to be protected by a big strong man? Maybe they took responsibility for their own decisions. Yeah, I know, what a concept.

Condescending sexist clap trap.

I'm sorry if the language was overly colloquial and disrespectful. I will try to speak more respectfully in the future.

This post wasn't about the women. Many of them did speak for themselves and were shunned and ruined. There's a lot to say for and against the actions of these women, but this post is just about the men--husbands and fathers--who cower and cave when they should have been and should still be standing for their wives and daughters.

No one opposed the treatment of the women and girls in many cases, and it's infuriating to me. In fact, their own fathers were trying to guilt them into plural marriage; and their own fathers allow bishops and SPs to question them inappropriately, or shame them, etc.

Did/do the mothers allow it too? Absolutely. But I'm not talking about them.

As a father and a husband, I couldn't and wouldn't take it, and I don't care if it was Joseph the prophet or Bishop Prurient or anyone else. Trust me, my daughter can stick up for herself, but she knows she has a dad that ALWAYS has her back. Every time I've gone to the mat for her she has been very grateful, whether it's sexist or not. I'm sorry for these girls and women who didn't and don't have that support. I'm ashamed for their spouses and fathers. How much would it have meant to Helen Mar Kimball, Nancy Rigdon, or Zina Huntington?

but 2 brothers are out of the church now. You did not pick on my father's children or he came after you.

He would have NEVER shared his wife (and he would never have had more than one wife). In fact, when we were talking about my mother's polygamist grandparents once, I asked my dad if any of his relatives were polygamists and he told me his family wasn't that stupid.

He would never have sold out his daughters. If my dad had been alive in those days, he would not have been Mormon. I have NO DOUBT.

I know many Mormon men who would NOT put up with this, but they don't have to face it right now. They are definitely not all the same.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 11/22/2014 11:42PM by cl2.

I would submit that the LDS/Mormon train is a run-away that has Run Over people of lots of descriptions, both genders.

without any consistency of application & enforcement ('discipline') or 'quality control' , could it be otherwise?

No, it couldn't.

We now witness the facade of crying from the pulpit which has to be the pinnacle of castrato cowardice.

Real men have a reason to cry.

So anyway. . . . . not to nitpick but the preferred plural form is 'castrati'.

Plenty of Mormon men have quite a bit of testicular fortitude. The super-LDS guy who was the call center director for Galileo Processing when I worked there several years ago was well-known for nailing at least half of the females who worked there.