It is my understanding that there are still people who practice polygamy, either illegally in the U.S. or legally in countries where it is accepted. In these religions (FLDS and Islam), is a man with more than one wife allowed to fuck multiple wives at the same time? Is the idea that they’re your wives and you are free to do whatever you want with them behind closed doors, or is there some kind of religious rule that you can only have sex with one of them at a time?
I actually have researched the issue with Fundamentalist and 19th century Principle era Mormonism (a big distinction twixt the two, incidentally). IANA Mormon but I had a near obsession with the life of Brigham Young for a couple of years and still have a huge interest in the Fundie sects. Get to those in a second.
I don’t know as much about Islam, but I do know that the religion makes no bones [no pun intended] about sex being for pleasure as well as procreation, and it allows concubines, so while I doubt Muhammad ever said anything on the matter I can’t imagine it’s a big deal or no-no. It definitely wasn’t in Chinese culture: there were even manuals and drawings of how to perform 3-ways.
Mormonism:
The sex life of Joseph Smith is a sensitive subject but basically “it was what it was at any given moment”. It wouldn’t surprise me in the least to learn he enjoyed three-ways as he was a bit malleable. (For example, several of his early plural wives were women who were married [including the wife of Orson Pratt, about whom more in a moment] even though the revelation about plural marriage clearly said “if a man espouse a virgin” she is his.)
While Smith was a closeted polygamist (though it obviously wasn’t a well kept secret), Brigham Young was very open once he got to Utah. As he was not a well educated man (went to school nine days in his life) his sermons were as apt to be folksy advice and general observations as they were theological in nature, and of course he addressed the issue of plural marriage a good bit. One of his big pieces of advice was that a polygamist should have as many houses as his income would allow, the ideal being one for every wife (not always feasible- in fact Young, one of the richest and most married of the polygamists, housed as many as 12 wives in the dormitory like Lion House, most of them the older or childless women he was married to [lots of his marriages- probably most- were platonic] though he did build or rent private homes for most of the ones he was actually sleeping with [he had children with 16 women and probably consummated at least a few more marriages that didn’t result in kids). He personally lived in Beehive House which is connected to Lion House by a large office and waiting room, but maintained a separate bedroom from Lucy Decker, the wife who presided over Beehive House (also his first plural wife; they had 7 children together biologically plus her 2 from a previous marriage and several adopted). Young advocated a schedule system for sex with his wives, actually marking the doors with a chalk X at Lion House or going to his various homes around the city (his believed favorite wife for many years, Emmeline Free, had 10 children with him and lived a few doors down), but he also visited fairly frequently even with the childless/platonic wives. He also had wives who lived on farms and at his summer house in St. George (that one, Lucy Bigelow, wasn’t platonic-she had three daughters with him- though she was somewhat out of favor due to… well, long story [involves her sister and one of their daughters]), but usually wound up back in his own bed. (It is known that he still visited and occasionally spent the night with his senior wife, Mary Ann [second but the legal one- he married her when his first wife died] who lived in “White House”, a small cottage behind Beehive and Lion House.)
UNTIL he married Amelia Folsom. Total harpie she, the other wives hated her with a purple passion (especially the fact he essentially made them wait on her) and he even shared her bed most nights, or she his while waiting for her mansion Gardo House to be completed. (It was designed by her father, who also designed the temple and was also a cousin of Francis Folsom, wife of Grover Cleveland.) After Amelia he basically had to sneak off to see his other wives- only had 2 kids after he married her in fact (neither with her), though he was in his late 60s.
Anyway, more detail than you needed about him specifically, but the point is that “one wife at a time” was very much the ideal in Mormon polygamist households of the era. Orson Pratt, probably the most educated of the Mormons (autodidactic mostly, but he was extremely well read) wrote voluminously including many practical (but non canonical) manuals on plural marriage. He did not speak directly to the issue of threesomes, but he did state the importance of every wife having her own unique marriage with the husband; again, if circumstances allowed she was to have her own house, at very least her own room in the house, and her time with her husband was sacrosanct. (He also implored them not to physically discipline the children of another wife.)
Point is: it was continually preached that when you were with a wife, you should be with her alone. Threesomes would be a violation of that. OTOH, nothing about this was really canonical, more on the order of practical advice, and there were men who lived with 2 or more wives in one room houses so I’m sure it came up [no pun intended]. (Young himself shared a 3 room cabin with several of his wives while in Winter Quarters, and his successor Lorenzo Snow lived in a one room house with 6 wives for a time when he first reached Utah territory, so it probably happened.)
In general Mormon polygamists were very prudish about sex, and that’s probably a lot more true today than it was 125 years ago. Dorothy Allred Solomon is the author of two memoirs on growing up the daughter of Dr. Rulon Allred (google his name if interested), a Fundie cultleader who was murdered in his Salt Lake office in the 1970s by members of the Lebaron Cult (fictionalized as the Greens on BIG LOVE incidentally), a thoroughly messed up rival cult. Solomon recalls her father, who had a dozen wives and more than 50 children, being proud of the fact he had never seen any of his wives naked save for when he was delivering their babies (he was a chiropracter and homeopath and tended most of the family’s medical needs with one or the other), and NOTHING was explained to children about sex. (She referred to her brother learning the facts of life from their dad only after he found the book EVERYTHING YOU EVER WANTED TO KNOW ABOUT SEX BUT WERE AFRAID TO ASK in the son’s possession and giving him the browbeating of a lifetime, but then taking the boy for a long ride to explain a few things to him- the brother was 22 at the time.) In other words- Rulon, even though he was married to identical twins who shared a house, would never have had a three-way.
Allred-Solomon states that the sexual repression in the family, especially with TVs and “sex all around”, proved disastrous in their family, leading to at least a few cases of brother-sister and cousin-cousin incest due to teen curiosity, close quarters, and total ignorance, and lots of really effed up relationships. (Solomon herself is a monogamist but still close to many of her polygamous relatives.)
The problem with most of the Fundie Mormons is that isolation, paranoia, inbreeding, hypocrisy, power madness among leaders, etc., has led to a huge degree of a small class of “elect apostles” (like Warren Jeffs and his inner circle in the most famous branch) who basically do whatever the hell they want and then justify it later if they feel like it. One cult, the Kingston family, not only practice but openly preach incest- half-brother/half-sister marriages were the norm for most leaders, and one daughter was beaten severely when she refused, in her mid-teens, to marry her half-uncle (the half-brother of both her parents). The Kingstons are filthy rich, incidentally- the Harry Dean Stanton character on BIG LOVE is, I think, based on the Kingston patriarch, who [unlike Stanton’s character] was inbred and homicidal but also was a brilliant business man with interests in slot machines, small casinoes, liquor, and bars (which he did not see as hypocrisy but as profiting from the vices of people who were damned anyway).
According to people who’ve left pretty much ALL of the major polyamous Fundamentalist Mormon cults (the official FCLDS, the Allreds [or Apostolic Brethren], the Kingstons [which is more than just their family, though relations are impossibly complicated], the LeBarons [largely absorbed or disbursed now, but absolute horrors in the 70s and 80s with some branches still in effect- they had compounds in Mexico and Guatemala as well as Arizona, Utah, and Idaho), sexual perversion ran rampant. Child molestation is extremely common; Dorothy Solomon said her own father- a man she had a complex love-hate with, became almost suicidal when he learned one of his sons was molesting his grandchildren and that to him it was anathema of anathemas, but among the current generation it became much more widespread and, per Solomon, she’s heard from several refugees from the cults, including a few of her own relatives, of father’s convincing their daughters that it’s their paternal right and duty to take their virginity. And of course Jeffs is accused of molesting and raping (statuatory in some cases and forcibly in others) underaged boys and girls, and some of the “Lost Boys” who have left the cult turned to prostitution because they were already “experienced” and had no other way of earning money with no education to speak of and what they had by way of education being perverted (U.S. History and Algebra According to the Prophet).
So point: on the compounds of today, weird sex, consentual and non-consentual, is rampant. The more traditionalist polygamous Mormons of today and the originals were a lot more “Victorian”- threeways wouldn’t have happened, or at very least wouldn’t have been talked about, and the “one wife per night” rotation was almost granite, which meant on the night you’re with April you’re not even going to see Bernice and Claudia, let alone bed them.
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Another odd thing about 19th century Utah: the women were in many ways among the least oppressed in the nation, and I honestly believe that many women in plural marriages (always a minority of women) entered into them completely willingly; many even proposed to their husbands. The Utah Territory was also the first to grant adult women across the board the rights to vote, own property/conduct business in their own names without having to be legally declared a free dealer, etc., and while they weren’t allowed to serve in high church offices they were allowed to enter the professions more often than their eastern counterpoints. Many Mormon women (including one of Brigham Young’s many widows, Zina, who received numerous awards for her charity work in Hawaii from non-Mormon organizations) were extremely outspoken in not wanting Utah to become a state because to do so would actually cost the women rights, and it did- they lost the right to vote.
Though I doubt they’d have voted for three ways.
Don’t know if this answers a damned thing, but it’s a subject I always enjoy writing about.
In Islamic Cameroon I don’t think it would have happened. Wives generally lived very separate lives- usually they had their own house in a compound (but may even live in a different city all together) and were responsible for their own children, fields, and household. The husband had his main house in the compound and would spend each night eating (and presumably sleeping) with a different wife.
It’s not like here where we think of husbands and wives as a team. People lived rather independent lives within marriage. It wouldn’t be uncommon to only see your husband a few times a week. And it wasn’t usually a very emotional relationship, except in that “well we’ve lived with each other all this time” sense. Companionship was for same-sex friends. Marriage was more about children, status and the practicalities of keeping a household going.
Usually relationships among wives weren’t great. In a situation like that, nobody is going to think they are getting a fair deal and there are plenty of fights about money, children, etc. Women tended to regard their co-wives as a fact of life, the way a woman in a loveless marriage might tolerate a mistress. Anyway, it’s not like they were cooking dinner together every night and gossiping like sisters.
Finally, Cameroon at least wasn’t the most sexually in touch place. Women got married at a young and age and didn’t really have a chance to explore their sexuality. Privacy was at a minimum. And nobody really talked frankly about sex. So sex was usually a semi-clothed thing that happened very quickly. I knew one woman whose husband didn’t even notice that she was pregnant until she popped out the baby! People had some very strange ideas about homosexual activity (all gays are in secret cults who sacrifice family members for great riches) and the whole idea of lesbian activity was pretty murky to people.
So in short, I don’t think it would have happened.
The traditional versions of Hinduism and Taoism didn’t seem to have a problem with it. In fact, there were extensive writings on how to best conduct them.
Wow Sampiro, thanks for the exhaustive and fascinating summation. I’ve got a condo in Utah, and it as my knowledge grows, things start getting curioser and curioser. You too even sven!
William Clayton was Joseph Smith’s clerk and scribe. They worked very closely. William married Margret ____ (can’t remember). His first wife is Ruth. The following is a journal entry that seems to verify that it did happen…
24 August 1843, Thursday
Nauvoo 2
Thursday 24.
At night I asked mother (his mother-n-law) if Margret
might sleep with Ruth & me she appeared very rebelious & would not
consent but said we might do as we had a mind.
do you have a source for this ‘cite’ that you can reference?
(and please note that this is a 5 year old thread)
What happens in Colorado City stays in Colorado City.
I do not believe that Islamic law ever addresses the practice directly.
Over at Aqoul.com, however, there’s an article discussing whether group sex is “halal” or “haram.”
One fatwa on the subject (unfortunately, the article fails to mention which Islamic authority issued the fatwa in question) explains that, first, according to Islamic law, a woman may never see another woman’s awrah; second, that according to a certain hadith, it is forbidden to “discuss affairs of the marital bed in public”; and thirdly, that yeeesh, dude, no way, that’s fucking disgusting.
The article reaches another conclusion:
What an unbelievably great post.
I know it’s a zombie, but still, the hell with the rest, that’s the story I want to hear.
A biography says her daughters were born 1852, 1856, 1863…
Sounds like with that many wives, BY had difficulty making the rounds with any frequency…
The Pagans I’ve known who were in polygamous relationships had no problem with it. “All acts of love are acts of worship.”
…three ways approve of YOU!
There was an interesting episode of ‘This American Life’ on NPR about factions, which describes a huge split in a small polygynist Mormon community over this very issue.
Five years after the OP and I’m an hour and a half late to mention the True and Living Church of Jesus Christ of Saints of the Last Days and the Hearts and Flowers doctrine.
{contemplative silence, followed by enthusiastic clapping}
Stranger
That, and the articles that follow it on that same page, are some of the better stuff I’ve ever read on the internet.
Thank you.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Sampiro
Don’t know if this answers a damned thing, but it’s a subject I always enjoy writing about.
+1
Should be a macro on my keyboard.
Which sort of “pagans” were they? It’s a pretty broad term, you know.
I see this thread is an old one that I missed on the first go-around.
The answer for Judaism (in which polygamy is premitted by Biblical and Talmudic law, and was only banned since around the year 1000) is absolutely not. I can’t find the exact cite right now, but the Talmud says that one should not be thinking of one woman while having relations with another, even if they’re both his wives. Certainly if all three are doing it together, this sort of thing would be inevitable.