To be fair, he did his level best to fix that.
(I know you were setting that joke up, so I had to oblige.)
I’ve always felt that Joseph Smith had a tiger by the tail with the religion he started and truly didn’t know how to let it go. I think a few televangelists over the years have had similar problems. Of course in Jesus Christ Superstar Judas thinks this is exactly what has happened to Jesus.
Brigham Young preached that Jesus probably had multiple wives. Is this something that’s still talked about?
No, absolutely not, though there is a folk belief that Jesus was married. After all, you can’t get to the Celestial Kingdom without being married, so a single Jesus just doesn’t compute.
Almost all of Brigham’s teachings are filed under “Wacky Stuff that We Don’t Believe.” Just as embarrassing, the early polygamist Mormon leaders taught the Heavenly Father was also a big polygamist and that we are all spiritual children of his many, many wives.
Trivia I only recently learned but have confirmed in reliable sources:
Brigham Young had a son who was what we would today call a drag queen!
The son was Brigham Morris Young and he was about number 35 of Brigham’s 57 children. That is to say he lived as a man (with a wife and 10 kids no less), but he also occasionally dressed and sang as a woman with a woman’s name (Madam Pattirelli), and apparently it was not a camp act but actual opera. He has a wikiwith a picture of his drag persona.
Coincidentally, Brigham Young was only ever photographed with one of his dozens of wives, and it happened to be with Morris’s mother. No idea why as she doesn’t seem to have been one of his favorites. Picture. He was their only child and was named Morris after her first husband.
I’d love to know what his wife and kids and mother thought of his alterego.
More than that I’d love to know whether he was more comfortable as Morris or as Mm. Paterrini.
First reaction: Fascinating!
Second: Considering the Tabernacle Choir, Morris must’ve had a hell of a voice.
Third: Is it just me, or does Brigham Young look like a meaner, vintage, better-dressed version of George “Goober” Lindsey?
Yes, interesting, isn’t it?
I don’t know if you have seen this site by a gay ex-Mormon, but here is a quote.
As you probably know, Mormonism has a horrible record with LGBT rights, and there are an unfortunate number of LDS gay youth kicked out of their homes, becoming homeless, leading to prostitution (ironically, including closeted gay Mormons), drugs and the whole nine yards.
For years, the Tabernacle Choir was the place to belong for LDS gays, and apparently this “sin” (the gay part, not the singing) was known but overlooked by the authorities.
You’re right about the mean part. Arguably, he has more (white) blood on his hands than anyone else in American history outside of wars.
Missed the edit window.
Homosexuality in Mormon art goes way back. To quote from the same article.
In fairness, Oscar Wilde wasn’t much kinder in his review of the Mormons.
Streetcar conductors as gay stereotype- that’s one I never knew before. (I knew that Whitman’s lover was one, but then he also had flings with soldiers and teachers so I didn’t connect the occupation with the image.)
Following up on your earlier question about Emma Smith and her rehabilitation in Mormonism, I have confirmed that the 1979 article I quoted was the earliest one.
In the Mormon book of modern revelations, Doctrine & Covenants, God calls her an “elect lady.” She is completely rehabilitated now, as evidenced by this talk by a councilor in the Young Women’s General Presidency.
Obviously implying that Emma was such a person.
It does look like not only did her second husband, have a child, Charles, by an affair in 1864, the year Emma turned 61 and her husband was 58, when the mother was unable to care for the child, she asked Emma to do so. Emma took in the son in 1868, when the son would have been four, and then four years later, Emma asked Nancy, the mother, to come and live as a maid.
She died in 1879, and asked Nancy and Lewis to marry after her death to provide proper parentage for Charlies.
What a woman.
Could you clarify the bolded? (I’m not all that knowledgeable about LDS history - feel free to fight my ignorance).
I know the LDS church has caused lots of bad things. But even considering the Meadow Mountains Massacre, I don’t see how Young has as much blood on his hands as, say, Tim McVeigh.
I did say “arguably” because of the lack of documentation, uncertainty and a question of responsibility, intention, and direct actions or negligence
McVeign’s act of terrorism resulted in 168 deaths while the MMM had 120. There are questions about how much the Mormons were responsible for the Gunnison–Beckwith Expedition massacre, which resulted in eight deaths. There were a limited number of unofficial executions which probably were tied to Young’s enforcers. All of these would probably not add up to 168.
However, over two hundred people lost their lives in the 1856 Willie and Martin hardcart companies in preventable disasters. Brigham had designed the hardcart system.
Brigham had ordered the saints in Europe to come as quickly as possible, but failed to take steps to ensure it would work.
The more direct negligence comes from Brigham’s response to hearing that not only were the two handcarts in trouble, but so was the ox team he had commissioned to carry merchandise for his stores and a steam engine. He ordered that the rescue teams help his team first, and forbid them from leaving the steam engine (which was never used) to take on the dying handcart members.
A total of about 6,000 pioneers died in transit and many of those deaths could have been prevented had they not rushed them before the transcontinental railroad was completed in 1869.
However, polygamy was so important to Brigham, that his entire focus was on creating a place where the Mormons could continue the practice, regardless of the costs in lives. That issue was the essential reason behind the struggles between the “Brighamites” and the Federal government, with the resultant actions such as the gathering of the saints to Utah, the Utah war and the MMM.
Had the Brighamites elected to discontinue polygamy and stop its cult-like practices, the LDS church would have been able to remain in the Midwest without these deaths. However, the church would have been completely different than it is now. Both the quantify of deaths and Brigham’s degree of responsibility cannot be proven precisely, but I stand by my statement.
I’m struck especially by the difference in the two links here about Zina. The LDS Angel of Mercy article doesn’t even mention her marriage to Smith, it describes her legal husband’s mission assignment as “abandonment,” it’s just so very disingenuous… I cannot imagine the kind of doublethink one would have to maintain to believe in the precepts of the Mormon church, especially in the current age of ready information.
And hey, Smith’s 14 year old wife would be nearly twice the age of Mohammed’s wife. You dig deep enough anywhere, you’re eventually gonna hit something.
This exactly. Thank you for understanding what I’ve struggled to say.
This issue is enlightening because it clearly demonstrates the doublethink necessary to remain a true believing Mormon. The facts are clear, irrefutable, and prove beyond a reasonable doubt that the official canonized version of Mormon history has been deliberately falsified. No doubt that was the case for many other religions, but the difference, as one noted non-Mormon scholar of Mormonism, is that for most of the other major religious movements, we only have the versions written by the winners. We don’t know what the losers were saying.
The concept that Smith restored the Christ’s original church is canonized. There is an official version of Joseph meeting God and Jesus when he was 14, then having an angel come when he was 17, eventually obtaining the Golden Plates which he translated as the Book of Mormon, he and Oliver Cowdery had the priesthood restored to them and then they formed the church now known as the LDS church.
In order to become a member, one must be baptized, prior to which the candidate must correctly answer the following questions.
(my emphasis.)
The 87,000 missionaries out trying to convert people into tithe-paying members. They teach a set of lessons which include the canonized version of history.
Investigators are taught this, they are asked to pray to God for a spiritual confirmation that this is the Truth, and if they accept it, then they can be baptized.
This is also similar to the questions which faithful members must answer in order to go to the super secret temple in order to perform the rites necessary to get to the Mormon Only VIP Heaven.
This really puts a lot of members into a bind, because it’s increasingly clear to many that the official version is bogus. It also really, really pissed off a lot of people who realize that they’ve been taken in. The sense of betrayal is unbelievable to people who have never been in a cult. (References available for anyone who really cares to know why the history can be shown to be an invention.)
It used to be easy to hide everything prior to the Internet age because all of this information could be dismissed as “anti-Mormon.” I personally know a Mormon scholar who was excommunicated in the early 1990s for writing material which is tamer than the material given in the essay.
The polygamy essay itself is a masterpiece of disingenuousness. As just one of many examples, it states the the only exception to God’s rule of marriage being only and exactly one man and one woman is when God commands otherwise, for the purpose of “raising up seed” (e.g. having more children). The referenced footnote sends you on a wildgoose chase, referring to a footnote another recently published essay on Utah polygamy. That footnote (not the essay, but only the footnote) acknowledges that second and subsequent polygamous wives had fewer children than non-polygamous wives. So they are contradicting themselves, but you have to chase it.
Again, the problem is that unlike telling kids that Santa is real, the church is making these claims, in the name of their god, to adults, and demanding a king’s ransom in tithing and time.
Since the evidence is so overwhelming, basically the only option for people is to doublethink. I quoted this comment from a true believing Mormon earlier in the thread, but I’ll post it again. This is in response to the essay.
Emphasis in the original.
Shut your eyes. Put your fingers in your ears and loudly repeat “The Emperor has clothes.”
You mean, – The sense of betrayal is unbelievable to people who didn’t realize they ARE in a cult…
Still, I don’t see anything here that’s any more, or any less, crazy than any other religion. Me, I wonder how people remain Catholic after learning that their Church has been a pedophile support group for at least a century.
But what do I know?
I remember reading somewhere that an oversized percentage of converts that the LDS receives in Japan are teen girls primarily for this reason. Most people there don’t really care too much to look into the faith. Heaps of teen girls go gaga over the cute Western boys who don’t drink, smoke, or sleep around and end up spending more time with them, and end up converting.
I find it hilarious that someone might become a Mormon as an act of rebellion.
A bunch of true/false questions you’re obviously supposed to mark true, and some essay questions you know up front so you can easily google them beforehand and keep them in your phone. Piece of cake.
Perhaps they give you a pass for 95%.
Like say, ‘I agree to everything except tithing’.
My main problem with the Mormon episode of South Park and the Book of Mormon is that the message seems to be “So what if it isn’t true? If it makes their lives better, what’s the harm?”
The harm being Proposition 8, and women being told that they risk damnation if they don’t keep having babies or if they leave an unhappy marriage, or being required to give 10% of your income even if you’re on welfare to one of the richest churches on Earth. It’s not all fairy tales and smiles.