Joseph Smith & Polygamy

You many have noticed how opinionated I am. ....... I just am. And I think I am now fully prepared to express my opinion about Joseph Smith and his polygamous activities. I'm not good with brevity, but in the interest of your sanity, I will try.

I didn't know Joseph Smith had more wives than Emma until I was 33. I'd heard such things from anti-Mormon, Satan-persuaded LIARS, but I KNEW it wasn't actually true.

It's true. And the church said so. Read their essay of lds.org HERE.

It's received national and international media attention, and has upset a whole lot of very sincere Mormon folk, particularly those who were born in the church and are of my generation...the 20-somethings through 50-somethings. Why? Because we didn't know. Seriously.

I could make all sorts of points about spin the church used in the essay, about how and why my generation was deceived by the church, about why some people knew and others didn't, about the differences in reaction betwixt the Mormon Corridor, the rest of the US, and other countries...but it's all be discussed. For me, there are only a few points that really need to be made.

Briefly, the "revelation" on "plural" or "celestial" marriage was for one reason and one reason alone: to raise up seed to the Lord. The girl in question had to be a virgin, and the other wife/wives had to give their consent. Those were the rules as the "Lord" outlined them, right?

Well, then. First, Emma didn't know about many, if not most, of these marriages...and by the end of Joseph's life, had demanded that he forsake his other wives for only her. She did not give her consent. That makes him an asshole. Also, the revelation discussed how if Emma specifically refused her consent, the Lord would destroy her. She outlived Joseph. Either the Lord lied, or Joseph just said that because he wanted the threat to persuade her to allow him to get it on with other ladies. That makes him a total swine.

Second, Joseph married other men's wives, slept with them, and sent them back home to their husbands...except, of course, for the few women whose husbands he sent on missions to get rid of them. That's a douche bag thing to do, of course, but it gets worse. Not all women who marry - even then! - are virgins, and women who have husbands usually consummate their marriages, even if they, like most married folks, don't have daily sex, which means that if they were virgins before the were wed, they weren't went Joseph Smith bedded them. That makes him a lying, Lord-disobeying nymphomaniac, if I'm not mistaken.

Third, many of his wives report that he told him an angel had threatened his life with a flaming sword if he didn't marry them. Now, I know what you're thinking: who am I to doubt angels with flaming swords??? But I've doubted so many other things that this one more can't possibly hurt, which means that Joseph used the story as a sort of less-than-gentle persuasion to bed a multitude of women, and that makes him a ridiculous, narcissistic fabricator.

Fourth, yes, Joseph had sex with most of his wives. Yes. Yes, he did. You can claim he didn't, but then you'd be arguing that he let down god, whose sole purpose in re-instituting polygamy was to raise up the proverbial seed. Was Joseph not sharing his seed? Was he spilling his seed upon the ground, as the scriptures say? (PS: The only time I've ever been thankful for the KJV archaic language was while reading that passage to my kids.) If so, he wasn't raising up seed, and his polygamic practices were unrighteous and worthy of the Lord's condemnation. So either he was boinking underage girls and married women, or he was damning himself.

Mostly importantly, though, women of the period married on average in their early-to-mid-20's. Helen and Lucy, two of Joseph's wives, were 14 and 15, respectively. No, they're not prepubescent girls, which means he's not TECHNICALLY a pedophile, but they are very young pubescent girls, which makes him, instead, a HEBEPHILE. (And an EPHEBOPHILE, too, for that matter: someone attracted to underage, slightly older teens.) But I look at my darling daughter, not yet a teen, and I don't see a particularly big difference between a pedophile and a hebephile, and since very few people have even heard of a hebephile, I'm just gonna call it like I see it: Joseph Smith was a pedophile.

AND a prophet...right? Sorry. Even if I COULD wrap my mind around translating golden plates buried in the woods via a rock in a hat, or old Egyptian copies of the Book of Breathings for Hor translated into the Book of Abraham, or a prophet of god running for president..........I cannot get my mind around an asshole-swine-douche bag-lying-nympho-ridiculous-narcissistic-pedophile prophet.

[In my best Dana Carvey voice: "Not gonna do it."]

Because let's, for just a moment, make polygamy a little more personal: Just like Joseph when he married Helen, my husband is now 37. Unlike Helen, who was 14 when she married Joseph, my kids' favorite babysitter is 15. That's a few months TOO OLD to be Smith's youngest wife...and a couple decades too young to marry my husband. (Incidentally, I went on a date with a 34 year-old when I was 19. It took us 2 hours to realize we had ABSOLUTELY NOTHING in common...and the date ended shortly after he made crack about how I was only half a dozen years older than HIS ELDEST CHILD.) If I asked my husband if he'd like to be married to - not even have sex with, but just be married to!!! - a 14 year-old, his answer would involve a few unhappy swear words. I should know. I'm an ex-Mormon, which means I've already asked. Take into account our young-but-not-tiny daughter being not too far behind her sitter, and the fact that one HAS SEX with one's wife, and the answer is ABSOLUTELY NOT.

You, however, may not have a 37 year-old husband or a 15 year-old sitter, so let's try a different tack: remember that long, warm, welcome-to-the-family hug you probably got from your father-in-law on your wedding day? Imagine for a moment that he is a polygamist, and that as he hugs you, he is simultaneously battling an erection and his own jealousy, wishing he'd gotten to you first.

It is, of course, possible that your father-in-law wasn't present for some reason, or you've never known the man who would've been your father-in-law, so let's go a different direction. Joseph, of course, never made it to age 57, like Lorenzo Snow, who married a 15 year-old at that age. That's a difference of, what, 42 years? Or John Taylor, for that matter, who was 78 when he married a 26 year-old, for a difference of...FIFTY TWO YEARS. Now, Mormons tend to have kids young, and their kids tend to have kids young, and...anyway, say you had a child at 26 (which, by LDS standards, isn't all that young, and happens to be how old I was with my first child), and your child has a child at 26, making you a grandparent at 52. Now imagine your husband's best friend, also 52, shows up for the post-baby-blessing celebration at Grandma and Grandpa's - yes, you and your spouse! - and leers at the tiny little girl in the bassinet, then elbow-bumps your husband and says, "I get dibs." And because of how this polygamous world works, you know that maybe 18 years from now his 70 year-old body will climb on top of the 18 year-old body of your granddaughter and introduce her to the wonderful world of sex...and then see her in a week or so when it's her turn in rotation.

Aah, the joys of celestial marriage.

Look, the bottom line, in my view, is simple: Joseph was a horny, narcissistic hebephile pig, and everything else aside (and I could go on for days about that "everything else"), I cannot give any prophetic credibility to his existence. Them ain't just "imperfections" or "acting as a man"...them's serious, serious mental and psychological issues. And for 200 years, the church has worked tirelessly so that people like me, born into the church, don't discover the demons in Smith's closet.

It's a trust issue. I cannot trust that he was any sort of prophet, and I cannot trust the church to be honest or forthcoming about their own history, because even when they are, they defend a hebephile and spin that history to appear "more transparent", but still manage to cloud the issue and blame  ignorance of Smith's polygamy on their most loyal members.

That's my 2 cents. Please comment with yours! :) 'Gina

How Prophetic

It's been a while. (Hey, I've been busy. This whole "reality" thing is involved!) That said, something occurred to me this morning, and I absolutely HAD to post it...just in case it turns out I'm a prophet!

I've heard for MONTHS now that the lds church will shortly be announcing that civil ceremonies prior to temple ceremonies will not pose the standard "Now you have to wait a year to be sealed" problem with which we in the United States currently struggle. First it was supposed to be announced in the April general conference, then in the October general conference.

It hasn't been announced.

But that doesn't mean it won't yet. There are a host of Mormons who would (almost) kill to have the U.S.-only policy changed. (Note: we've been jealous of our U.K. friends for years, who marry first, and can be sealed thereafter whenever they want.) There has been considerable pressure on the church for the last number of years to change the policy (which policy was not always there), and though the church likely considers it "lowering their standards", they will most likely yet bow to popular pressure.

It wouldn't be the first time.

And of course that pisses off a whole bunch of us, not that they would change their policies, but that we got SCREWED. Of all my family and extended family, I had ONLY MY PARENTS in the sealing room when my husband and I were married. Everyone else was outside. My husband had his parents, one brother and his wife, and an aunt and uncle. That was IT for family that got to witness our union. Yes, it sucked, and yes, we sucked for thinking that that was the way it had to be. (In other words, I'm as bitter with myself as I am with the church, but the amount of disgust and ridicule we'd have had to endure had we made any other choice, combined with the inevitable limiting of our "progression" in the church hierarchy [I'd likely never have been a YW president, and he'd likely never have been either an EQ president or bishopric member!] made us feel like we had no choice in the matter.) But this is not about our personal feelings.

This is about how I believe the church will indeed bow to the people...but spin it to make it look like they are the victim, bowing to the pressure only because they absolutely had to thanks to Satan's control of the nasty United States government. The church, in other words, will play the victim.

What exactly does that look like?

There is considerable political pressure on all states, Utah included, to recognize marriage between homosexuals. The church - and many others - have wrongfully claimed that if homosexual marriage is legal, they will be forced to perform such marriages. This is not true, but it makes Christians sounds persecuted, and Christians love nothing more than feeling persecuted. Mormons have taken a particular shine to feeling persecuted, as evidenced by a handful of instances throughout church history. (That was sarcasm, by the way. It just doesn't translate via blog. There are infinitely more than a handful of instances, of course, but my most favorite recent "we're being persecuted!" moment was the church's recent release of a short film addressing garments and why they're not weird. Riiiiiight.)

And so, as homosexual marriage is legal in more and more states (and will, if people in this country are still possessed of any common decency, become legal across the board), the church leaders in Utah will use the political pressure placed upon them to cry foul, persecution, and destruction of religious freedom. I believe that at some point in the not too far distant future, the church will pull the following:

1. They will give one last desperate plea to the rest of the Christian world for support upholding heterosexual marriage as the one and only, demonstrating how slammed they have been by the media and gay activist groups, and begging for the hand of Christian friendship so that they can be yet more mainstreamed by Christians.
2. They will make a huge showing of having to change their policies because the government is blackmailing them by threatening their tax-exempt status, or because the country has become horribly wicked and the lord told the prophet to separate the church from the practices of the world, or because they (and other faiths!!! See, we're just like you!) are having their religious liberties curtailed so that evil and unnatural practices can be upheld, and... 
3. THEREFORE they will NO LONGER be conducting ANY WEDDING in ANY BUILDING, WHATSOEVER and WHEREVER. All marriages will henceforth be civil marriages, conducted civilly by the empowered individual of your choice.
4. Temples will NO LONGER perform ANY MARRIAGES, but SEALINGS ONLY.
5. In order to be sealed in a temple, individuals MUST FIRST have been married by civil powers.
6. They will stare tragically at the cameras, have their press department spin the dickens out of it, and sit back contentedly when young engaged couples first bemoan the added costs of their weddings, but then revel in the fact that everyone can be present for their vows.
7. The Utah economy will enjoy a slight bump, at least for those in the wedding business, as families now plan civil weddings, receptions (which will still be allowed in church buildings so as not to piss off tithe payers), and after-sealing parties/luncheons/etc.

And there you have it. When the church DOES announce their change in policy - which change has long been planned to mollify the masses - it will be at a politically beneficial juncture so they come out looking not like they bowed to member pressure, but like they are victims of persecution by an unrighteous government...and probably a Democrat-led government, at that.

I do prophesy in the name of the Flying Spaghetti Monster, Amen.

Now, let's see just how much better a prophet I am than Tom Monson, shall we?

I'm (Officially) an Ex-Mormon, by Regina Samuelson...Coming Soon!

Hello, all! I've been away for a while now, primarily because I'm hard at work on a follow-up to I'm (No Longer) a Mormon, tentatively entitled I'm (Officially) a Ex-Mormon! I just finished a section in it last night that references a much-discussed illustration done by my husband, mentioned back in book 1, and I wanted to share it with all of you.

Please keep in mind, this was done during sacrament meeting nearly 3 years ago...when we were BOTH True-Believing Mormons. It's very telling: even then we were thinking. REALLY thinking.

Enjoy, and please be on the lookout for periodic announcements related to book 2!

Much love,
Regina

PS: You'll probably have to click on it to see it properly, and you will also likely note the typed text behind the list on the left. This was done on the back of an old lesson handout! :)