Why did the Mormons stop allowing polygamy? Were they caving in to society or did the powers that be suddenly decide that polygamy is wrong?
Since this is GQ, we’ll start you off with the Official Mormon View:
From History of Plural Marriage: “Following a vision showing him that continuing plural marriage endangered the temples and the mission of the Church, not just statehood, President Wilford Woodruff issued the Manifesto in October 1890, announcing an official end to new plural marriages and facilitating an eventual peaceful
resolution of the conflict.”
There are various other articles on the topic on the Plural Marriage page of the All About Mormons website.
Basically, it seems the official LDS response is “we weren’t ever doing anything wrong, but that doctrine was causing bad relations with the Gentiles, compromising the basic mission of the Church, and wasn’t necessary to the faith (as opposed to, say, sending out missionaries to preach the Mormon gospel).” (My paraphrase.)
The Mormons ended polygamy because they wanted Utah admitted to the union. It wasn’t going to happen if they didn’t get rid of polygamy.
A century later, they got rid of racial discrimation because they didn’t want to lose their tax-exempt status.
Both were said to have been based on revelations from God. God sure has convenient timing.
I think the Mormons are being fairly up-front about the whole polygamy thing. They basically seem to say “we don’t think we were doing anything wrong, but it was threatening the peace, it wasn’t essential to our faith, so we decided to ‘go the extra mile’ and get rid of it (at least until the Second Coming).” Their position on Blacks and racism seems to be a good bit more shifty and hypocritical to me.
Not too informed about this, though you might want to read about the damage polygamy can do at http://www.polygamy.org - some chilling stories and (mostly unproven but I’m not arguing theories) about how it inevitably leads to incest.
I asked some mormons at my door “what’s up with polygamy” once and they said “polygamy is mentioned in the doctrine but it’s given less precedence than respecting the laws of the land.” So I said, “If it was perfectly okay in whatever land you were living to be polygamous then, would you?” Mormon 1:“Yes.” Mormon 2:“I don’t think so.”
I guess it’s always some back of the mind male fantasy of “wouldn’t it be nice if…” but reading some of that polygamy.org stuff put a scare in me.
Let me get this straight. You are scared by reading propaganda produced by people who have a religious crusade against someone else’s religious practices? Whoa, you must end up scared an awful lot…
I read what was posted there. What they are complaining about is not inherent to polygamy, and can occur in monogamy as well, in some form or another. Abuse, sexual pressure, controlling behaviour, etc. are hardly new or limited to any given type of marriage, whether polygamy, polyandry, monogamy, or sleep-with-whoever-you-like.
I am inevitably compelled to mention a few facts whenever someone brings up Mormon polygamy, just because I find the doctrines so fascinating. (The following comes mostly from the father of some very good Mormon friends I had when I was growing up, who himself had been a Mormon minister).
Unlike other Christian denominations, Mormons have two forms of marriage; a marriage “for time” that ends in the death of one of the parties, and an eternal marriage in which the souls of the husband and wife will remain united in heaven forever. (I find this a very romantic notion). The latter form of marriage can only be executed in certain carefully circumscribed manners; particularly, it must be done in a Temple.
If a woman is eternally married to a man, and then is widowed, she may remarry - but only for time. When she gets to heaven, she will be married only to her first husband.
If a man is eternally married to a woman who dies, however, he has the option to remarry for time or eternally. And if he remarries eternally, he will be married to both wives when he reaches heaven.
So, in a sense, the orthodox Mormons still practice polygamy; specifically polygyny. They just don’t practice it in this life.
This raises all sorts of interesting questions whose answers I don’t know, like what happens if one or both spouses * doesn’t * get to heaven. Do they stay united in Outer Darkness too? (Shades of * What Dreams May Come *!)
I have also seen Mormon explanations that go like this:
Polygamy was necessary to increase the population of the struggling Mormon community in the early days. Once that time ended, so did polygamy. So it’s kind of an emergency measure, appropriate for some times but not for others.
Basically what toadspittle and MEbunker said. Especially toadspittle. There is a reference in the Book of Mormon (Which I’m too lazy to find) that said basically, polygamy is important for creating members in a new Church. However, God can command when to start it, and if He says stop, you had better stop.
First off, there is only a few people who will go to The Outer Darkness. The Sons of Perdition. If you are a Son of Perdition, (and I doubt very much that you are) you have a lot bigger problems than marriage.
But, if both spouses don’t enter the Celestial kingdom, rather, they go the Terrestial, than they are NOT united. They can only be united if the reach the Celestial, and they can only reach the Celestial if they are united. In the Terrestial and the Telestial (There is no “Hell”) you may have friends, however, you may not have spouses. You must spend eternity “alone”. No Romantic love, no sex. Just companionship and friendship, IIRC.
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Before joining the Mormon church, I remarked on the whole “convenient timing” issue to a missionary. She responded, “Well, convenient or no, I enjoy belonging to a church which can change at the behest of divine intervention, as opposed to one that refuses to adapt to new situations.” Not what everyone looks for in a religion, but I happen to appreciate it myself.
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That being said, we still have a lot of baggage to clear up about the racial discrimination issue. Unfortunately, church leadership has always liked to make things appear like Church policy isn’t changing at the behest of popular opinion, which is why we can often be a bit slow at changing things.
Oh well…
Akash
P.S. [hijack] I had this exchange with an “activist” at Brown University.
Me: The school’s new president is Mormon. Interesting.
Activist: I can’t believe they did that! Mormons hate black people!
Me: No we don’t. We were slow to learn, true, but at least we got over it.
Activist: Oh yeah? Would you marry a black woman?
Me: Actually, I am marrying a black woman. Funny you should bring that up!
Activist: [shamed silence]
Getting married on Dec 20th if I can survive law school exams! Any advice for pre-wedding jitters? Post them in my jitters thread: http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?threadid=49696[/hijack]
Some of my mother’s cousins are Mormons. I met them a family reunion a few years ago. I asked one about polygamy, and he asked me what I thought the reason was. I gave the population increase stock answer.
He said no, it was because of the terrible persecution of Mormons in those days, during which a lot of the menfolk were killed off. And so polygamy was sanctioned to provide for all those widowed wives and fatherless children.
Anything to this? I’m just repeated what my cousin said.
Nope–that’s a Mormon UL promulgated by Mormons themselves. First of all, while persecution of Mormons was a shameful episode in American history, very few people were actually killed, certainly not enough to effect male/female ratios by themselves. I’ve also heard this UL stated as, “Women are much more spiritual than men, so a lot more women than men joined the church in those days, and they needed to get married, so…” Hmm…
Comparatively few Mormon men had more than one wife (<10% IIRC), and there were plenty of men for the available women. In addition, at least a few polygamists had a bad habit of marrying other men’s wives (while husbands were still living!). Also, a small number of single women were posthumously married to Joseph Smith.
All of these disparate facts suggest that the intention of polygamy was not to materially provide for widows. What was the real intention? Who knows–my own limited reading of historical texts suggest that a lot of practicing polygamists didn’t know the reason either, but did it because they respected the divinely-appointed authority of church leaders who recommended polygamy. In any case, my one wife-to-be is more woman than I can handle; polygamy is not an attractive option to me, and I’m glad it’s gone today!
Akash
Yikes! I promise not to allow my spelling to affect any more of my posts!
Also, I’d like to point out that you couldn’t just marry 3 or 4 wives whenever you wanted. People were called to it. So the average Mormon man probably only had one wife. However, some men were chosen to have 2, 3, 4, or more. It wasn’t an every man for himself, drunken orgy of randomness. The majority of the men were carefully chosen and carefully paired with women.
a bit of a hijack, but this is how fucked-up Mormons are
I might add that Mormons not only “seal” Mormon spouses after death, they “seal” other married couples once they find them in genealogy records. They also “baptize” these dead people. They think that if you do this after death, the person’s soul will become a Mormon and go to whatever kingdom good Mormons go to.
On a Mormon genealogy website, I found that some of my ancestors (who were religious Lutherans and probably would have been PISSED) have been “baptized” and “sealed” to each other. I was infuriated until I remembered that the whole religion is a bunch of hogwash anyway. 
Interestingly, tsarina, the place to debate the relative merits of Mormonism is Great Debates. The place to call Mormons “fucked-up” is the BBQ Pit (or, preferably, not at all).
Please be mindful of this in the future.
Interestingly, manhattan, I don’t care who I piss off. And I don’t really feel like starting a “Mormons are idiots!” thread right now.
Just trying to enlighten the masses on some Mormon traditions (using my own interpretations, which could piss a few people off - big deal).
OK, everyone, back to the OP.
I don’t care who you piss off, either. I do care, deeply, where you do it. And if you desire to retain your posting privileges, you care deeply, too.
The ones that wierd me out are the “mormons” who are NOT part of the Main LDS church. Incest, Pedophilia, and even worse, a completely brainwashed way of living from cradle to grave. Those poor women, and their kids have no idea of what they are doing is wrong, nor any real concept of any other form of living.
Note- altho they consider themselves “Mormons”, they are not part of the LDS church that we are all familiar with, in fact, at least one was kicked out. There are several other, offshoot churches, who follow the book of Mormon, but are not part of the orthodox LDS Church. Note, that not all the offshoots practice Polygamy, but at least one’s primary reason for continueing is polygamy.
I personally don’t have a problem with polygamy, provided that it is indiscriminant. That is, a man can have several wives, or a woman can have several husbands. And that they all know what they are getting into.
So is there any agreement on why it was initially started? Not as a way of attracting people to the church?
FloChi