Perhaps Reloy3 could help me out with this one. It’s unclear even to most faithful Mormons. If the woman remarries after being widowed, then I suppose she would be sealed to two husbands. To my knowledge, unsealings are just. Not. Done. In the mainstream church. What the FLDS do is, as usual, a whole other kettle of fish. I was always taught that men could have mutiple wives in the afterlife, but women could not have multiple hubands. I really just don’t know (and never really cared because it’s a nonissue for me, seeing as how I never planned to sealed to anyone, nor marry in the temple). Your idea that the second marriage would be for time only sort of sounds right/rings true to me. I bet that’s how it’s handled.
In a divorce situation, the stake president will contact the previous husband to obtain his permission for his ex to be sealed to a new husband. I think. Reloy, what do you know about this?
I think that the children–even those from the second husband–remain sealed to (read: property of) the first husband. I know of several exmos who were told that their children with the 2nd husband actuallybelong to the first.
I think she’s planning something. JJ was standing right there the entire time Adaleen went on that rant to Nikki about how all of this was “Heavenly Father’s will”. Is she trying to get enough evidence to expose Alby’s sexual activities?
They’ve been building up to this since series one. How is Barb going to react? The only way I see her responding with anything less that pure rage against Bill is if he lies to her and says Ben was already gone when he got home.
I’ve actually been enjoying Bill running for state senate because it’s going to result in everything crashing all around him. I want to see the entire family exposed, Bill either losing the election or being refused his seat, at least one wife leave him, Homeplus & Weber Gaming collapsing, etc. Margene did lose control on air, but she meant everything she said.
When Joseph Smith died most of his plural wives married big shots in the Mormon hierarchy to whom they were sealed for time only. They remained sealed to Smith for eternity.
None are known to have had children with Smith (there are some who had children some speculate may have been Smith’s) but several had children with their next husband. Several married Brigham Young, including Emily Dow Partridge (who had 7 children with Young) whose sister Eliza, also a widow of Smith, was married to Heber Kimball, whose 14 year old daughter Helen had married Joseph Smith.
What I’ve wondered is who these children and their descendants ‘belong to’ in the afterlife: Smith’s widows will be his wives, not Brigham Young’s, but will their children be counted as Young’s or- as in the Levirate (in which the children of a woman who marries her dead husband’s brother are considered the legal children of her first husband) are they regarded as Smith’s.
Another woman who married both Smith and Young wasZina Diantha Huntingdon. She married a man named Henry Jacobs with whom she had a son before Smith ordered her to marry him; after Smith died she evidently returned to Jacobs and had another son, about which time Brigham Young received a revelation that Zina was to be his wife and she really wasn’t married to Jacobs anyway because that had been dissolved when Joseph married her, so she left Jacobs (whom she never legally divorced) and married Young, with whom she had a daughter. Jacobs by way of compensation was given the right to take more wives and took at least two, but was excommunicated from an argument over performing a plural marriage without permission from the church. He continued to write love letters to Zina for the rest of his life, often asking her to return to him and be his sole wife, but she stayed with Young. Jacobs was an apostate for about 25 years or so before his children with Zina convinced him to return to Utah and the church as an old man.
In eternity Zina will be one of however many gazillion wives of Joseph Smith (who in addition to the many he married in his lifetime was wed posthumously by many more). Since she was married to Brigham Young for time only she will not be his, but presumably will have some sort of custody rights to their daughter and her many descendants. She was never sealed to her first husband, and it is unclear whether he was in good standing with the church when he died, so he may or may not have an afterlife that involves some friendly visits with the ex.
Two ironies about descendants:
Zina Huntingdon, the woman who never divorced her first husband and later married two men who already had many other wives, had a daughter, also named Zina, with Brigham Young. Zina Young, Jr., was the great-grandmother of novelist Orson Scott Card, who has taken it upon himself to be the defender of traditional forms of marriage against attack by others, for you wouldn’t want homos to make marriage wacky.
One of Heber Kimball’s great granddaughters was a woman named Winifred Shaughnessy. She became an actress and changed her name to Natacha Rambova in large part to distance herself from the stigma of being the descendant of the most married man in America (Kimball had at least 45 wives and more than 60 children) and related by many other marriages to Joseph Smith. She married the most famous man of her day- Rudolph Valentino. Here’s the irony: he wasn’t legally divorced from his first wife and was arrested for bigamy following their marriage.
I’ve wondered if there is an anthropological term for the Adaleen-JJ union or the Zina/Brigham Young union mentioned above. It’s happened for thousands of years.
Marriage has always been used as a way of forging alliances between families/tribes/nations/etc., but in polygamous cultures there’s an extra twist: possessing the wife or women of a former leader is seen as an announcement of your own power. In addition to the plural wives of Joseph Smith who were divvied up by Young and Kimball and others, his legal wife Emma received proposals galore. (For those who don’t know her story, she denied that her husband had ever practiced polygamy and remained east when the Mormons moved west, her son forming the Reorganized Church of Jesus Christ of LDS (aka Community of Christ) hqd in Independence, Missouri; she did remarry but it was as the monogamous wife of a non-Mormon [Major Lewis Bidamon].)
In the Bible when King David was chased from Jerusalem by his son Absalom he left behind several concubines, all of whom Absalom shagged (“Only the king can shag these women, and I just shagged them, ergo— who’s the king? WHO’S THE KING!?”), then when David died and his sons Adonijah and Solomon each have factions supporting them as his successor Adonijah requested David’s concubine Abishag (who though young and beautiful was never penetrated by David [who was old and feeble] and thus was still a virgin; Solomon saw this as a clear usurpation attempt and it caused a war. There are incidents from Egyptian and Persian and southeast Asian history as well of newcomers trying to cement their legitimacy through marriage to a former member of the imperial harem, and even from monogamous European societies.
Does anybody know if there’s a name for this? It’s not the same as the marriage of a woman who holds a hereditary position in her own right (e.g. the Empress Zoe of Byzantium, who wed three consecutive men solely to make them Emperor), but the marriage of a former leader’s wife who does not have the power to make an emperor but is an ancillary legitimacy.
Not really. From what Bill’s said, he was thrown out at 14 before he had any idea why he was being thrown out, much less had given cause to be. Ben is 18, and has flirted with, come on to, and even written a friggin’ love letter to Margene. Ben is no innocent in his expulsion; he played a much more active role than Bill did. He is much more able to take care of himself due to being older, and no doubt Bill will do quite a bit more to help get him set up (maybe at college?) than was ever done for Bill.
Don wanted to help Bill’s campaign as a way to atone for his jealousy of Bill. While it’s pretty clear he didn’t volunteer to take the bullet, I think the reality of the situation is a far cry from the unforgivable crime against humanity people in the thread have been hanging on Bill.
Of coure it has been clear for several seasons now that no matter what happens on the show, dopers will consider anything Bill does as totally evil and hypocritical and he’s just the biggest jerk ever! Never mind that most of the criticisms are ridiculous. (Like, for example, how Bill is a horrible hypocrite for the FRAUD of covering his immediate family with health insurance from the company he owns.)
Slightly changing the subject, how do family members refer to relatives when this wife reassignment leads to multiple ties? Cara Lynn’s father is to be married to her grandmother. Is Dad/J.J. her step-grandfather? Is Granny/Adaleen now her step-mother? Her biological mother, Nikki, is also her step-sister, being that Cara Lynn & Nikki can both claim Adaleen as a (form of) mother. Holy cow, how do they keep track?
The more I think about it, the more curious I become about FLDS. It’s sort of a morbid curiosity, like a traffic accident that I can’t help but watch. I may have to invest in some books by former FLDS members for their take on it.
Actually it was me who brought up FRAUD (although I did it in lowercase) and I was referring to Don and how he’s supposed to be so morally upright but doesn’t mind that particular thing because it benefits him.
I’m not a Bill hater, although there are times I wonder where his brain is. Having said that, why would it matter that he owns the company? It’s still fraud to doctor the books to make it look like these women work there so they can gain benefit from the business. Contrary to what a lot of business owners would like us to believe, owning a business doesn’t make one exempt from the law while participating in illegal activities. That’s just silly
Nikki has referred to Sarah as her daughter before, and Alby referred to himself as her uncle (both times when talking to Scott). Once Barb went to Roman to tell her to leave her family alone and he responded, with apparent sincerity, “You are my family”, so they do seem- in the Big Love paradigm anyway- to regard the extended relationships as on par with blood relationships. Of course on the individual level all bets are off.
They actually have a sense of humor about the weird relationships in real life and on the show. In an early episode Adaleen was telling one of Roman’s little girls (by a younger wife obviously) about how she’s her own grandmother (her father was married to one of Roman’s daughters which makes her the stepmother of her stepmother or something like that), and there are similar stories in the many memoirs I’ve ready by former FLDS and other polygamous cult members.
There were several guides written in the 19th century on how to conduct a polygamous household. Orson Pratt (considered “the intellectual” early Mormon) wrote one- per the sections I’ve read of his book the biggest problems seemed to be wives correcting the children of sister wives. (Orson Pratt had at least 10 wives and 45 children and unlike Young and Kimball spent most of his life in poverty, so he wrote some about economics as well; part of the reason he was often out of favor with his superiors was that his first wife Sarah, briefly a wife of Joseph Smith [who took her after she married Pratt] was one of polygamy’s harshest critics, secretly raising all of her children to despise it and later coming out of the closet altogether when her husband- in his late 50s and broke- married a teenager- that’s when she started writing about her hatred of The Principle and her disgust with Mormon leaders who practiced it; many of her children apostasized as well, which was a major embarrassment to their father.)
The biggest slams against Bill in these threads all series long are framed as “Bill is a huge hypocrite because he does x to benefit himself.” First and foremost, it is not evil or wrong or hypocritical in any way to do something to benefit yourself. Second, Bill has never done anything to benefit himself. Everything Bill does is to benefit his family. There is very little you can do to benefit your family while being legitimately hypocritcal to a faith that holds family above everything else. Hell, there may not be anything at all that would be hypocritical if done to help your family in such a religion.
Many have posted time and again about how Bill is hypocritical and evil. Bill is neither of those things. He isn’t even stupid. (Naive to a fault, though.)
What Bill is is a deeply devout, genuinely religious man. He is never hypocritical to his faith. He continually struggles with doing the right thing by his faith. He is, in fact, the exact opposite of how he’s usually painted in these threads.
I agree that it’s clearly stupid to try and run for State Senate. But you have to realize that Bill honestly, genuinely believes that god himself personally told him to do it. Of course he knows it’s going to be a hard road; he’s explicitly said that about a thousand times this season. But god told him to do it, so by god come hell or high water he’s sure as sugar going to try his darndest to get it done.
It’s also been well established that Bill and those raised like him couldn’t possibly care less about outsider’s rules. They simply do not apply. As such, there is absolutely nothing wrong with putting his immediate family on his work’s insurance. At worst it’s hurting outsiders, which we learned several seasons ago is actually a good thing. Nothing wrong with it. Nada. Zilch. Not hypocritical.
What’s been happening, I think, is that people are offended by his belief system, and so they feel the things he does are wrong by definition. And if he’s supposed to be some religiuous guy who is doing things that are “wrong”, he must be a hypocrite. The thing is, they aren’t wrong for him. That’s simply the viewer’s baggage being dumped all over him.
Yes they mistreat their women, and yes that is objectively bad. (Control your woman? Yuck.) But that’s not bad to them. That’s part of them being not-hypocritical to their religious beliefs.
Yes it was scummy to start hitting on a waitress when you’re already married. FOR US. For him, he felt that the waitress (Anna?) was destined to be part of their family forever. He did not enter into it lightly; in fact, I would bet a nontrivial sum of money that he went into that relationship with more commitment than most of us go into our own real-life relationships. He believed it was ordained from on high. The gnashing of teeth about how evil he was for sleeping with her was beyond ridiculous. He demonstrated almost superhuman willpower to resist her advances as long as he did, then was wracked with guilt about it. That was a failure on his part. Gee, he’s human; let’s string him up! It is not hypocritical to be a human being. Then when she cheated on him many viewed that as justified, despite it being clearly and obviously a world of difference.
Yes kicking your son out of the house is bad. (Dick!) But his son is carrying on a longstanding mutual emotional affair with your wife. What the heck are you supposed to do? Remember that everything you do is in service to your family, particularly your wives. You must preserve your marriage(s) above all other things. So how do you save your marriage to a woman who is in the process of falling in love with your son? Son’s gotta go, at least for a while. And that’s exactly what Bill does. Totally in character. Totally NOT hypocritical.
Yes, asking Don to take the fall was a scumbag move. Bill looked like he was going to puke when he brought it up. But he has to; god friggin’ told him personally to run for State Senate, and if this scandal hits Bill he will let god down. Not in a vague, generic “I sinned” sense, but in a “I failed to build the ark I was given blueprints for” kind of way. Simply not an option. You have to do what you have to do. We should all be grateful that his delusional word of god didn’t tell him to sacrifice his son like in that bible story. So again, asking Don to take the bullet was absolutely NOT hypocritical, and it was NOT done for shallow, self-serving reasons.
Here’s the dictionary definition of hypocritical: “professing feelings or virtues one does not have.” There hasn’t been one instance in the entire run of the series of Bill being hypocritical. Not one. There may have never been a more genuine character on television. Totally fucked up beliefs to be sure, but he is 100% true to them.
(And don’t get me started on all the baggage laid at Scott’s feet for taking advantage of Sarah. Yeah, he really used her up and spit her out but good, right? I think what’s going on is the intrinsic misogyny in the faith these characters believe in riles up the female viewers into such a lather that they go ballistic and start dumping all over the male characters just to “get even” or something.)
Wow, that’s a lot of answer. Let me repeat, my comment about FRAUD was in regards to Don and not Bill. I realize they both were doing it to help their families, but it’s still illegal. That’s was my point.
Also, female here and I don’t think I’ve ever “dumped on” any of the characters. It’s a TV show, not a women’s studies course.
You indicted both of them for it, but that’s not even the point. The fraud they were commiting was not in any way wrong from their point of view, and thus it was not hypocritical of them to do it.
The posters here, though (obviously) not in this thread. There was much Scott bashing in the episode threads during the early part of their relationship. Mainly along the lines of him being a manipulative scumbag just using Sarah for sex.
Has Bill been formally excomunicated like Barb has? He clearly became a member of the LDS Church after being expelled from the compound and was something of a celebrity in church circles. I don’t recall his status even being mentioned when Barb was excomunicated. I can’t see him even bothering to show up to defend himself before the tribunal like Barb did. Does the LDS Church excomunicated people in absentia?
If you aren’t doing anything wrong from your point of view, there is nothing laughable about you being a moral compass pretty much by definition.
Your use of the word “disgustedly” was apparently much harsher than you intended. Otherwise I have no ability to reconcile you “laughing disgustedly at their [lack of morals]” while “not dumping on any characters.”
If you say so, if you say so. Personally, I can’t get so invested in television shows that I feel the need to defend every sling and arrow flown in a character’s direction but YMMV.
So if HomePlus and Weber Gaming went under and Bill and Don decided to sell drugs to support their families that wouldn’t be a problem? I’m sure that people who feed their families while dealing drugs think they’re doing right.
I daresay Bill’s households live a bit better than the average Utah family (from what I’ve seen while in Utah) so why can’t he pay for coverage for his wives and children and maybe not have three houses? You can justify any behavior if you choose to, it doesn’t make it right.
Still, this is a little more thought than I want to put into my entertainment so feel free to carry on without me.
I am not an expert on this, either, but your understanding on this, Dogzilla, mirrors my own. A man can be sealed to multiple wives if there are serial marriages after deaths or divorces. Women cannot. There are marriages without sealings in the second case. However, the sealings can be “undone” if a woman wants to marry the new husband in a temple sealing - it just takes some permission from people up the heirarchy. Such “un-sealings” are kept fairly confidential, but (anecdotally) are becoming more common. They are usually from divorces rather than, deaths though - particularly from divorces caused by abuse.
I do believe that the first husband is notified of the new sealing (or the “un-sealing”) in some cases - if the ex-husband is still an active member. I do not believe they are asked their permission.
I do not believe that the children of the second marriage are sealed to the first husband.
He clearly became a member of the LDS Church after being expelled from the compound and was something of a celebrity in church circles. I don’t recall his status even being mentioned when Barb was excomunicated. I can’t see him even bothering to show up to defend himself before the tribunal like Barb did. Does the LDS Church excomunicated people in absentia?