Episode 28: The Other “P” Word
Cynthia and Susan are joined by their friend Holly Gaetano to discuss the biggest elephant in the room. In what ways might polygamy—past, present, and/or future—affect the lives of Latter-day Saint women today?
Notes & Quotes:
The Ghost of Eternal Polygamy: Haunting the Hearts and Heaven of Mormon Women and Men, by Carol Lynn Pearson
I dispute that the church grew because of polygamy for the following reasons:
1) A large portion of the church, including Joseph's own family, left the church because if it.
2) In 1852, when polygamy was publicly announced 6000 Saints immediately fled Utah.
3) Between 1852 (when polygamy was publicly announced) and 1853 convert baptisms collapsed and remained much lower for decades. (I saw one graph that shows convert baptisms fell 85% between 1852 and 1853 and stayed much lower ever after.)
4) It remains a leading cause for many refusing to join the church. (I personality think the Church would be 2 or 3 times larger without polygamy ever existing. The Jehovah's Witnesses began 50 years after our church and have more active members. So why shouldn't we be even larger than them?)
5) Polygamy resulted in tens of thousands of forced bachelors in the church whose wives were stolen from them by men often old enough to be their grandfather. Thousands of men had to leave the church altogether to find wives.
6) Studies show monogamous couples in Utah in the 1800s had more children per woman than polygamous couples. These forced bachelors would have likely produced more children (in nuclear families that the Church teaches is the healthiest!) than polygamous men.
I question whether 132 was a mixed bag. Where some of it is from the Lord. And some of it God allowed to be influenced by the adversary. (With negative consequences that resulted in the Nauvoo Expositor affidavits.)
132 completely contradicts Jacob 2.
Which condemns the Nephites for using David and Solomon as justifications for polygamy. Yet 132 starts out by doing just that! Also claiming that Isaac was a polygamist, when he was not.
"These things" throughout Jacob 2 refers to the abominations of polygamy. And yet in verse 30 it has been claimed that "these things" refers to Jacob's entire sermon so as to create a loophole. Which makes no sense.
God allows his prophets to make major mistakes seen in Joseph loosing half of the Book of Mormon. Why could not He have allowed Joseph and other Church leaders to make a mistake with polygamy?