No. As somebody who grew up in Utah in a very isolated, very LDS community (I’d say about 99.9% were LDS), and somebody who lives in Salt Lake City now, I can tell you unequivocally that there are no practicing polygamists in the LDS Church. Nobody secretly condones polygamy. There are no prominent LDS figures everybody “knows” is really a polygamist. It’s a part of the church’s and the state’s history, but that history is now nearly 120 years gone.
Are you qualified to assert that Warren Jeffs does not represent the true intent of God with respect to the Mormon religion? Is anyone?
I wanted to post this, but see that it’s already here. But I’ll second **cormac’s ** assertion that this is a very good way to understand the Mormon church as it exists today. The history of today’s church is really the explanation for many of the misconceptions people hold about the Mormons, as well as some well-grounded beliefs that are also part of mainstream thinking about Mormons, I believe. The book is, in fact, mind-boggling if you don’t know anything about this religion. xo, C.
That’s not relevant.
A: Luther is a catholic.
B: No he’s not, he broke away from the Catholic church.
Contrapuntal: B, are you qualified to assert that Martin Luther does not represent
the true intent of God with respect to the Catholic religion? Is anyone?
B: 
A: (whispers to B): Let’s move away slowly.
-FrL-
So I’m confused. That book appears to be about the Fundamentalist CoJCoLDS, not the CoJCoLDS. I guess it contains passages about the split or something?
-FrL-
From what I can glean, the book is about a murder that happened amongst members of the Fundamentalist LDS church. How is it that it’s supposed to give me an understanding of the Mormon church as it exists today?
-FrL-
Half of the book describes some of the events that caused the Mormons to move to Utah, explains the origins of polygamy as a doctrine in the Mormon church, and gives a version of an event in Utah history in which a convoy of settlers from Arkansas were killed (the Mountain Meadows massacre.)
Much of the book is a history of the Mormon religion, as well an explanation of the various fundamentalist sects.
Arnold: Yes, I’m familiar with those cites.
It seems to me that the thrust of your argument is that you are confused. I am unconvinced that your confusion is reason enough to label my post as irrelevant.
At any rate, it is of no matter. I could declare myself the true earthly representative of God’s plan for Mormonism, and no one would have any standing to refute me. I could be the true Pope for all you know. Are you qualified to assert that I am not? Is anyone?
How do you know that God does not really want all Lutherans to be Catholics? Or all Two-Seed-In-The-Spirit-Predestination-Baptists to be Rastafarians? Do you presume to know the mind of God? Please enlighten us, oh Maestro, and we will edge ever closer to your wondrous enlightening spirit.
[Moderating]
Frylock and Contrapuntal, several of your recent posts are not really pertinent here. If you want to snipe at each other, please take it elsewhere.
Contrapuntal, for the sake of this thread, I think we may take “the Mormon Church” to mean the currently most mainstream branch of Latter Day Saints, that is, the “official” one headquartered in Salt Lake City.
Colibri
General Questions Moderator
Well, it’s kind of been answered, but yes and no.
Officially, in practice and principle, the mormons do not endorse or practice polygamy. Originally the order was to not practice it if your Country/State/whatever specifically outlawed it, and then expanded to include polygamy regardless. I know plenty of mormons (there’s a nice pocket in Tucson and 6 or so are part of my regular group of friends), and none of them endorse polygamy, none of their parents are polygamous, and as far as I know no official church leaders are “really polygamous, but shhhh don’t tell anyone.”
Officially, in practice and principle, a mormon man can have his soul sealed to multiple women and be polyagamous in the afterlife/heaven (while a women cannot do the same with a man).
But as its been stated some some towns (mostly out in Northern Arizona and Southern Utah, but some other ones like the Texas one above) that are not endorsed by or even part of the official Church of Latter-day Saints still take part in earthly polygamy. The government typically turns a blind eye to the practice so long as there’s nothing such as underaged sex happening though.
Whether someone is a mormon or not is an empirical, sociological question. Jeffs can say whatever he wants, it doesn’t make him a member of the organization legally titled “The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints.”
Irrelevant. It may be that all Lutherans should be Catholics. That doesn’t mean all Lutherans are catholics.
It may be, then, that all mormons should be polygamists. That doesn’t mean that polygamists really members of the LDS church.
I said your comments about what God wants are irrelevant and I meant it. It would be exceeding strange, then, if I myself were to opine about what God wants people to believe. My very point is that all of that is completely beside the point.
-FrL-
Ahh… oops. I posted once more already but will refrain from now on.
Contrapuntal, we can take the discussion elsewhere if my last post didn’t satisfy you.
-FrL-
Except that for years, the elected Mormon offcials would turn a blind eye to the practice. Not that it was just the Mormon officials, mind you.
How many years? And how long ago? Is this a recent thing, like within the last 20 years, or a “just after the practice was discontinued by the church” sort of thing?
To be honest, I have nothing against polygyny [and would love to see polyandy legalized also] HOWEVER what I object to is the way these idiots go about it.
Most people agree that education is good, and can make a more rounded person - I prefer a rationalist who decides to believe despite the lack of solid evidence over a bible pounding fundie that only knows certain select passages of the bible because they really have never bothered to read it and only get it interpreted…and I believe that there needs to be a voluntary link between people to make a good strong marriage.
If the damned polygynists would educate the kids, and restrict marriage to voluntary and over 18 only, and within a reasonable age range [like 10 to 20 years difference maximum between man and woman] it would be just fine.
It is in the secretive linking of juvenile girls to older men. To be honest, if they restrained themselves to over 18 only marriages, it wouldnt be anywhere near the stupid news story opportunity and people wouldnt be so up in arms.
Yes. Apologies if this was covered earlier in the thread and I missed it, but I’ve always heard statehood would not have been considered without an official renunciation of polygamy by the church and that the church leaders continued to turn a blind eye to it after 1890.
Polygamy is explicitly forbidden in the State Constitution
+1
I would say a better analogy would be Warren Jeffs is to LDS as Fred Phelps is to Baptist. Having lived in Arizona a good bit of my life, I have known quite a few members of the LDS church. If any of them were polygamous, they were keeping it well hidden. As a libertarian, OTOH, I have known a number of folks in poly relationships – polygyny, polyandry or mixed bag, take your pick.
Polygamous LDS folks have been up in northern Arizona since at least the early 1950s and probably long before that. The location was handy for them because, being south of the Utah border, that state’s officials had no jurisdiction and, being north of the Grand Canyon, they were a long ways from the county seat in Kingman. In 1953 there was a half-hearted effort by Arizona officials to root them out. They (the officials) had their collective head handed to them and there had been no real will to repeat the experience – until Jeffs came upon the scene.
Under-age sex slaves aside, Jeffs and his followers had been committing tax-fraud, skimming money from the public school system and using it to teach their kids in a ‘private’ school, plus lining their own pockets. It was about the only way a man can support four wives and thirty children in a rural area with no industrial or technical base whatsoever – and not much agriculture besides. This Phoenix New Times article way back in 2003* details what was going on. Finally goaded into action, Arizona officials seized control of the school district and began administering it directly.
That, and the no longer could be ignored statutory rape charges was the beginning of the church’s legal problems. Jeffs fled arrest, various lesser lights were arrested and the rest, as they say, is history.
*None of the other papers in the state were covering the story in Colorado City at the time. Search the PNT site with “Polygamy in Arizona” as a phrase to get the whole series of articles.