“Families are Forever” reads the plaque, its vinyl modern font letters set against an artful antique finish. It’s the catch-phrase of modern Mormonism, a way of life for the most devout and the last holdout belief for those who struggle or find themselves at odds with other doctrines or policies. Though our perfectly packaged version of history may have some flaws we might discover later, the one thing we can rally behind is how much we love our families, how they’ll be “forever.”
These precious relationships that mean so much to us are not just an earthly (“temporal” is the word we hear) experience, they are ours to keep forever. Yet because of our history, there is a dark shadow looming on the forever family, and next to its plaque on the shelf of many Mormon homes sits the unresolved issue of polygamy.
Ask Mormon Girl (AMG) addressed the topic this week, suggesting, urging and almost demanding we give it voice with the repeated line “We need to talk about polygamy.” She writes:
I’ve seen the very real feelings it generates in people close to me. I’ve seen white-knuckling, and anger, and heard wives extract promises from husbands, and siblings tell siblings they don’t really count as “Mormon” if they so much as remain silent when the issue of polygamy comes round. Put it on a shelf? Hide it away? When we are taught to be a knowledge-seeking people? The fact is, Mormons live with polygamy every day. Even when we repress it.
There was a time even the mention of polygamy could make me lose my appetite for days, I was unable to get through more than a few pages of Todd Compton’s In Sacred Loneliness. The nausea isn’t from disgust at others who freely choose the practice and for whom I wish nothing but love, happiness and the legal freedom to define a family for themselves, but at the idea that it would be required of me in some backhanded test of righteousness. I like to think I’m a very generous person, but there are two things I don’t share: a big sloppy plate of dessert with several spoons, and my husband. I learned as a teenager in seminary about polygamy as the higher, celestial law, and I’ve never found any church doctrine denying it. I have feminist friends and relatives whom I love, respect and admire who are resigned to the idea that this is how they will spend eternity. You can argue that people don’t believe in it, the problem is those people are not the ones defining doctrine.
I’ve often silently wondered what it must be like to not have polygamy as even a blip on my radar. At a Girl’s Night Out with those who don’t have Mormon ties, I wonder at how care-free my friends are, never having had a discussion with their husband about whether he’d want another wife, whether he’d be willing to have another wife. Never making a pact that while you know he’ll remarry when you’re gone, you don’t want him to be sealed to her. Never having to read D&C 132 and hear a lesson about celestial marriage where polygamy was either embraced or was left as the big elephant in the room. Never being told that if the thought of being required to practice polygamy makes you feel disgusted or repulsed, it is because you are wrong — it is selfishness and if you still feel that way, you won’t be worthy enough to be admitted to the Celestial Kingdom (the only place where families actually are “forever” in Mormon doctrine).
Women are consoled with the policy that the first wife always has the choice, and yet the story of our own Emma Smith, the matriarch of the restored gospel, tells us otherwise. At the end of it all, we’re left with the notion that while we can choose not to participate, that choice carries the consequence that we might be choosing to be alone, unable to remain with the righteous husband with whom we’ve worked so hard to build that “forever family.”
Unlike any other Mormon doctrine or historical indelicacy, this one affects us personally in our most intimate relationship. Keeping an eternal perspective only makes it worse.
Polygamy is a curiosity to these friends of mine, and they approach it with an easy-going detachment that makes me envious. Shows like “Big Love” and “Sister Wives” make them want to talk jovially about it, and while it’s fun to define whom we’d want as a sister wife, what part of the household chores we’d take on, their light-heartedness doesn’t have the dark undercurrent mine does. There’s no possibility for them that at the next church-wide meeting the prophet could drop the other shoe, so to speak, and reinstate the practice (I realize this is the slimmest of possibilities, yet it still looms).
Unlike AMG who received tweets from men about how repulsive they find the practice, I never hear the Mormon men in my life talk about it with the emotion the women do. They are able to remain as detached as my girlfriends joking about how they have no interest in trying to please multiple wives given their track record with just one. Maybe their response is because as far-fetched as polygamy might be as an option for them, the choice is really theirs to make. Modern husbands are in a no-win situation, required to choose in a hypothetical situation whether they’d side with God or their wife, either choice calling into question elements of their character. And while as Mormon legend has it Joseph Smith was threatened by an angel with a flaming sword were he not to participate, I must admit it would be nice to hear a Mormon man say he’d take the flaming sword.
So I understand why we don’t talk about it. There aren’t any real “fixes” for what you do when you take it down from the shelf and talk about it. If you get to the place where you decide that you trust that the ugly pit in your stomach is the spirit leaving and you reject the idea that polygamy will ever be your test of righteousness, you’re still left with a dent in your faith of prophetic power, rejecting a fundamental belief of the early church that’s been taught in your lifetime as the celestial law. And when you start removing items from the shelf, you realize how interconnected they are, and risk having them all come tumbling down, including that beloved plaque you spent so much time making, the one that says “Families are Forever.” Then what?
Then, getting comfortable being uncomfortable, you pick up the pieces of your faith, put your plaque back together embracing all its imperfections and go on free from the burden of the weight of that shelf. If only it were that easy.
How have you made peace with polygamy?
All four of my grandparents descended from polygamists, and I can remember my parents talking about it all the time, but I guess I dodged a bullet because I don’t remember ever thinking or being taught that I would someday have to live that way.
Reading Compton’s work was also a watershed moment for me. What struck me was that so many of these women converted, came to Nauvoo, were married to Joseph Smith, and then forgotten, all in the space of 3 or 4 years. I hate it that it feels like we have just discarded them.
For what it’s worth, I have come to the conclusion that Joseph Smith was in the process of coming out in open revolt against industrial capitalism (cf. the early, abortive attempts at communitarian economic arrangements) and the Victorian model of the family when he died. He was experimenting with different ways of forming kinship, and the sealings that were just beginning in Nauvoo were intended to be more meaningful that blood relation. We quite naturally think of libido as a primary motivator when we think of some of the younger wives, but in fairness, we need to remember that JS jr. also sealed himself to women in their 70s. When a man in his early 30s marries a woman 40 years his senior, I think we need to realize that there is a lot more going on here than an attempt to satiate his lust.
Thanks Mark. I admire the communitarian attempts Joseph made, but I’m neither here nor there in trying to justify Joseph’s motives for polygamy. FWIW, I don’t remember ever being surprised by learning that Joseph had plural wives, but I was surprised when I learned Emma wasn’t on board with it. I think I imagined this idea that they both thought it was hard, but knew God wanted it and so they did it together, if that makes any sense. The secrecy involved calls into question other loftier motives for me, though I don’t deny their existence. And that secrecy is also what made me feel vulnerable to a backhanded righteousness test.
Thanks for this. I wrote a post on this topic recently: http://www.gbbothsidesnow.blogspot.com/2011/12/emma-and-eliza.html
I never made my peace with it. But I do agree that it’s something that must be talked about more, not less. And, like you, I would like to hear from more LDS men on this.
Love the way you put this, thanks for the link:
“To say that God once demanded it of some and now forbids it of all invites doubt. Not just doubt in God, but doubt in the safety and stability of our most private, precious relationships. It suggests to women that betrayal – or the feeling of having been betrayed – may be asked of us at any moment, and that our feelings would be yet another sacrifice on the altar of devotion.”
Yes–love that comment, galdralag.
I grew up believing that I would someday have to practice polygamy, that it really was the “higher law.” After I was married, it bothered me, but I put it on that shelf and didn’t think about it a lot until I started researching the lives of my female ancestors about four or five years ago. The stories of plural marriage in my own family are so tragic and brought me to tears. As I researched the doctrine behind the practice, I was torn apart at implications for my own life, at least in the eternities. I read everything I could find written about it, which only brought me more despair. I realized that to accept plural marriage (as in, one man and multiple wives) was to accept that women are lesser than men, and that was something I simply could not accept. So I asked myself, “What if plural marriage isn’t a true principle? What if it really was not from God?” As I let this new idea sink in and allowed myself to disbelieve in plural marriage, I felt as if an immense weight were taken off my shoulders. Of course, that only made me question lots of other things too and truly rocked the foundation of my faith, but I decided that I was willing to walk that path of doubt in order to be rid of the polygamy burden. My whole view of faith, God and the LDS Church has changed as a result, but I am not sorry for it. I have a more nuanced faith and personal spirituality now, and I am at peace with the whole issue of polygamy.
I am not sorry either CatherineWO. When in the throws of the nausea and disgust, I used to hate that I even had to contemplate this, but as a result of my dealing with it, I wouldn’t trade my faith now for the carefree version I once envied in my girlfriends (which I realize is projecting, there are other issues they deal with which I do not).
As a heretic I don’t qualify for a temple recommend anyway, so the whole polygamy issue is really not anything I would have to worry about. If you can’t pass a temple recommend interview anyway whether or not you are practicing the “principle” is irrelevant. In any case polygamy was never about sex. It was about power. Much like a capitalist economy, them that has, gets. Men in power get more wives, men without power don’t get any and are thus miss out on salvation, or what non-LDS call “heaven”. Really, rather than being so concerned about having to share your husband in the celestial kingdom, consider all the men who would be shut out of heaven entirely if polygamy were still the law of the land. If you have to share your husband in heaven, at least you’re in heaven and not a ministering angel, a perpetual also-ran for time and all eternity.
As a single woman you would still have the possibility of being “chosen” in the afterlife, but as a single man, what do you do when all the virgins are gone? When they have all chosen Br Joseph and Br Brigham and Jeffrey R Holland and David Bednar, and you’re alone?
Bob,
I had only looked at this from a perspective of power of men in their relationships with women, never in with other men. Very interesting ideas. And this idea of power is what probably had women like me feeling like we would be required to live it, otherwise we would have had to admit to ourselves that maybe our husband wasn’t as desirable as a Br Joseph or Elder Bednar.
For the moment I have come to the tentative conclusion that is very possible that Joseph Smith was rethinking and moving away from polygamy before his death. I think it is pretty clear that polygamy (or more accurately polyandry) as JS was experimenting with was very different from what happened in Utah under BY. Thus I don’t think that anyone need to accept polygamy as a doctrine. I think at best we don’t know. We can at the very least admire those who made that sacrifice while we mourn the tragedies involved. I honestly don’t think the current leadership knows what to make of it either.
Neither the JS nor the BY forms of polygamy appeal to me, but I agree that we can admire those who made sacrifices. I’m glad you were able to make the “we don’t know” answer work for you, and it’s really a fair one. But given the rhetoric and current practices, it’s not an answer I think works universally.
I got to place where I couldn’t shelf it anymore. I read everything about polygamy and polyandry. I also read about slaves, wives and concubines in Asia. I got to a place where after reading about this practice in many cultures and many countries, I decided that every once and a while it was a pretty dang good or dare I say 1% of the time it was better than a regular marriage because of ample money, privacy and space for each woman and her children and some mutual respect. I get that apologists will point to this. In the end after many years of reading, I had a daughter and I resigned. I am truly, truly at peace. I still love my Mormon roots and my Mormon heritage which also included polygamy for all my great great grandmothers. I have read my grandmothers stories of how they became the 3rd, 5th, and second wives to men much older them they were. In the end, I couldn’t dismiss my any of these women. I loved them too much to shelf their lives, their pain and my belief is that in heaven they are still living this way. I don’t think polygamy in modern day is from God. I resigned, I would consider coming back once the men address this, once they apologize to women and children, once they make heaven equal. But as long as there is a silent shelf, as long as this pain and suffering is silence, when Mormons feel they are persecuted for no reason and misunderstood while NOT talking about polygamy, it is an institution that I can no longer support. A blog with open, honest dialogue such as this, I do support and love. I love the people, and I love my heritage and I am hoping one day the institution will right a wrong they made and then hoped would just fade away.
Trish,
I love your comment and have great respect for the way you have dealt with this.
Bob’s comments highlight an unfortunate reality about polygamy: although women’s lives were indelibly affected by it’s practice, at it’s heart, polygamy was a penis-measuring game where women were simply the measuring stick. Or to use another game metaphor, it’s a game of chicken where the “winner” is he who unswervingly adheres to the faith principle that is considered “most difficult” in order to prove himself to his peers. Sadly, that’s a tactic used by suicide cults to separate the true disciples from the mere followers, the ones who will inherit the greatest glory over the rest of the flock. Either way, women become objects and possessions as men “compete” to be more “worthy” to increase their earthly and heavenly mansions. Undoubtedly, many (most?) of the men who took extra wives would deny that they viewed women thusly, and to their defense, what choice did they have other than to accept, given the intense social pressures in Nauvoo and SLC and environs in the mid-to-late-19th century. Still, there’s no way to put a positive spin on such an unfortunate, repugnant practice, as it was implemented among the LDS.
Agreed, there really were no winners in this system.
I don’t buy it–any of it. It’s too many layers of weird/crazy/deceit/deception for me.
Did you ever think you had to buy it?
Nah. I really didn’t. It’s always been in my crazy-stuff-that-I-can’t-be-trifled-with box.
What DIDN’T occur to me until more recently is the bigger question: if the church/church leaders were wrong about this, then . . .
So yeah, I don’t think that polygamy came from God. So I guess other stuff church leaders say doesn’t come from God, either.
I’m okay with that now, but it took a while to be okay with that. ;)
Heather, this describes my experience as well. I always took it with a grain of salt and would have argued with you if I’d been told it was going to part of my heaven. Of course, I wasn’t really understanding the history/teaching of the church, but it took me a while to get that.
Oh well, I guess it is incumbent upon me to present the other side.
I do respect all of you who have grappled with the issue of Mormon polygamy and come to terms with it in your own lives. My beliefs about the origins of the practice are somewhat along the lines of Mark’s: “I have come to the conclusion that Joseph Smith was in the process of coming out in open revolt against industrial capitalism…and the Victorian model of the family when he died. He was experimenting with different ways of forming kinship, and the sealings that were just beginning in Nauvoo were intended to be more meaningful than blood relation.”
I retain the use of the word “polygamy” when referring to Joseph Smith’s practice, because as we know, his marriages included polyandrous as well as polygynous unions. I find great interest in considering that love and the familial model might be inclusive rather than exclusive. I see polygamy as an extension of the law of consecration. This is something I would like to embrace. Rather than seeing it as limiting, I believe that polygamy is soul-expanding, teaching a way to love which is grand and ennobling. I want to learn to love in that way. I think that is what Joseph was striving for, difficult as it may have been.
I do not see polygamy as anti-feminist. There are indeed problems with the structure of polygyny as configured by Brigham Young. I compare this with the hierarchical structure we have in the Church today. Though it may be implemented by kind and noble men, and cause no overt misogyny, it is by its very nature oppressive to women. I believe that this hierarchy is not an intrinsic part of the Church of Jesus Christ, and that one day Adam and Eve will enjoy objective equality, whatever form this may take. I believe the same about polygamy in its highest, celestial form.
I respect the remarks that have been made above. I agree with Joanna Brooks that discourse about polygamy is important, and I’m glad to see this blog post which furthers that discussion. However, I wonder what might happen if modern LDS were willing to let go of their fear. Could a more holistic view of love and marriage be possible? (LIke Mel, I see no change forthcoming on the current LDS policy and support of earthly monogamy, so indeed this can only be theoretical for devout Latter-day Saints. But it does have implications for the next life.)
I’d like it to be known that there are women and men with traditional Mormon backgrounds who do not wish to cause you pain, but who embrace celestial plural marriage as a beautiful, valid, and God-sanctioned form of love and marital union.
Hey, Bored in Vernal. I get what you’re saying. Plenty of people the world over have had families/marriages that were bigger than one husband-one wife. And I think consenting adults should be able to arrange their lives in whatever fashion they choose.
My problem is with the deceit and the manipulation with which it was implemented. Not cool for someone claiming to be a prophet of God.
BiV
I love your view of polygamy though I don’t believe I ever wish to practice it. I don’t wish for Mormon doctrine to exclude it, rather my distaste comes from manipulation and deceit that were involved as practiced under JS and BY. Ranking it as a higher law for those who are more moral or less selfish continues that manipulation in the form of a backhanded righteousness test. For those who have the economic and religious power to make a true choice to live it (and that would not include deceased women who have no ability to offer their blessing on an additional wife sealed to their husband), I wish only the best.
You GEMTAM defender, you. Perhaps I’ll take you with me on my tribal missionary journeys. ;)
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