My TBM wife keeps insisting that polygamy's main purpose was to provide widows and unmarried women, who she says outnumbered men, the chance to marry. I very much disagree with her but I have no hard facts or statistics to back up my stance. Can anyone help me out here?

We are both reading the Essay on Polygamy in order to discuss it later. I'm disappointed in the essay but it does admit to some things formerly unknown. Full disclosure would be great. Partial disclosure is misleading to the reader.

Check this out:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B18W3AgWXw6zMUllRW85bXc0RWc/view

Page 47 is where the tidbit on polygamy begins. Excellent read.

The best parts about this detail your wife is struggling with is on the number of women (8-11) that Joseph was sealed to that WERE ALREADY MARRIED to men WHO WERE STILL ALIVE. Not widowed women. Not divorced women. MARRIED WOMEN.

If the idea of polygamy was to provied divorced, widowed, and unmarried women that outnumbered men with a chance at the CK, then why the hell was Joseph marrying other mens' wives?

Oh i forgot to mention, the sources for all the information are cited below the text on that document.

The Mormonism Research Ministry has addressed it.

http://www.mrm.org/polygamy-more-women

They tried to convert more women to fill the polygamy demand but when that didn't work, they married girls at ever younger ages before others snapped them up.

I can't think of anything more damning than for a church to refuse to help widows and orphans unless they gave into forced plural marriages and offered up their bodies to lecherous old rich guys. Sounds more like prostitution than charity.

Decent people help those in need without requiring sex and household toil.

Cheryl Wrote:
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> I can't think of anything more damning than for a
> church to refuse to help widows and orphans unless
> they gave into forced plural marriages and offered
> up their bodies to lecherous old rich guys. Sounds
> more like prostitution than charity.

That was the case with my g-g-g-g-grandmother.

Converted in Australia with her new hubby. "Gathered to Zion." The pair were sent to Parowan to "colonize." Hubby turned out to be a lazy, no-good, wife-and-child-beating asshat. So she divorced him, after a suspicious "accident" that killed their only child. Was told she was on her own -- no help from anybody for anything -- unless she became wife #2 to g-g-g-g-grandpa.

Oh, and she was 20 at the time.

THANK YOU!!!!!

You cut to the chase.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 11/13/2017 04:47PM by relievedtolearn.

For example, see this from the 1890 census

https://books.google.com/books?id=sKJCAQAAMAAJ&pg=PR73&lpg=PR73&dq=percentage+of+Utah+population+that+was+female+in+1850&source=bl&ots=BNdoEyrQnH&sig=W1x0DYIfAhvvimNCmSelyvV2ELo&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwis5u3CtrzXAhUG-2MKHZ3vCNs4ChDoAQhHMAc#v=onepage&q=percentage%20of%20Utah%20population%20that%20was%20female%20in%201850&f=false

Notice on page lxxiv the number of males (110,462) vs. the number of females (97,442). Also notice the number of females per 100,000 males in 1880 and 1870 (93,216 and 96,700 respectively)

I have seen similar data from 1850 through 1940 showing similar results, but can't find it right now.

At least one of the Brethren disagrees with your wife. She needs to be called to repentance.

John A. Widtsoe, "Evidences and Reconciliations," pp. 390-91:

"Plural marriage has been a subject of wide and frequent comment. Members of the Church unfamiliar with its history, and many non-members, have set up fallacious reasons for the origin of this system of marriage among the Latter-day Saints.

"The most common of these conjectures is that the Church, through plural marriage, sought to provide husbands for its large surplus of female members. The implied assumption in this theory, that there have been more female than male members in the Church, is not supported by existing evidence. On the contrary, there seem always to have been more males than females in the Church. Families – father, mother, and children – have most commonly joined the Church. Of course, many single women have become converts, but also many single men.

"The United States census records from 1850 to 1940, and all available Church records, uniformly show a preponderance of males in Utah, and in the Church. Indeed, the excess in Utah has usually been larger than for the whole United States, as would be expected in a pioneer state. The births within the Church obey the usual population law – a slight excess of males. Orson Pratt, writing in 1853 from direct knowledge of Utah conditions, when the excess of females was supposedly the highest, declares against the opinion that females outnumbered the males in Utah. (The Seer, p. 110) The theory that plural marriage was a consequence of a surplus of female Church members fails from lack of evidence."

Oh, good one. And of course this, like Cheryl's comment above--that a widow ought to be taken care of in any decent religion without the obligation of sex and toil----both are right on.

The church wasn't trying to take care of people: Gawd said it was his plan for progression---that's why it's celestial marriage, right?

It's kind of funny how we can get distracted trying to find rationality to explain away what was happening instead of their own explanation, that Gawd said to do it!!!!!

There's something sly I've always thought that "take care of widows" BS: even if they don't come right out and say it, they imply that there were a bunch of widows because the mormon men were killed off during persecutions and the women and children were driven westward.

Lies lies lies.

Tom Padley Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> My TBM wife keeps insisting that polygamy's main
> purpose was to provide widows and unmarried women,
> who she says outnumbered men, the chance to marry.
> I very much disagree with her but I have no hard
> facts or statistics to back up my stance. Can
> anyone help me out here?
>
> We are both reading the Essay on Polygamy in order
> to discuss it later. I'm disappointed in the essay
> but it does admit to some things formerly unknown.
> Full disclosure would be great. Partial disclosure
> is misleading to the reader.

I'm quoting myself. Is that like talking to myself? :D

Anyhow, my wife is now enlightened due to Quote Weasel's reference to John Widstoe. An apostle to the rescue!! How bizarre is that? My TBM wife now understands early pioneer demographics. And we had an interesting discussion about polygamy today, although she didn't get all the facts because we only went as far as the essay could take us. She has no interest in reading Todd Compton's "In Sacred Loneliness." I read most of it several years ago but had to put it down because it made me sick. One of my biggest shelf breakers by far.