Simplicio and chacoguy are both right, in a way. This is not a sustainable plan–it’s the family planning equivalent of a pyramid scheme. If this were how it was working in reality, then the fundamentalist Mormons would be able to completely overrun the planet with their exponential population growth within 2-3 centuries.
Certainly at some point the growing population necessary to sustain polygamy will hit problems. But there are plenty of monogamous societies that have had large amounts of population growth as well. When they excede the local carrying capacity, they either invent better farming methods or send out colonists to found new communities.
And from the Mormon point of view, we’re living in the end times, so the world being filled up with too many Mormons several millennia down the road probably isn’t something they worry about.
Why? They’ve officially repudiated it, haven’t they? If they’re not preaching it, it’s not their responsibility, the past be damned.
I was wondering; what happens to older wives (50-70 years old) who are suddenly alone, due to their husbands being excommunicated or death? Are they dumped out on an interstate as well?
No. They are “assigned” to other men.
Neither they nor their new husbands have any say in the matter.
Simplicio, the big flaw in your plan is assuming the older males will want to share the younger females. When the older males in polygamous communities get rid of the younger males, that means even more younger females are available for them. They don’t stop at just two girls, they take as much underage pussy as they can get and getting rid of the teenage boys is less competition.
Except the women who are mainstream LDS are the ‘extras’ as it were, and have been taught the FLDS are heretics, while the extra young men who are FLDS have been taught the same about mainstream LDS. Some might budge from that mindset in order to marry, if they were all in one place and had the opportunity to do so w/o retribution from the respective churches but that’s unlikely to happen.
There are two main problems to your pyramid scheme.
First, the FLDS say a man needs at least three wives, not two.
Second, the old geezers running the show don’t want to stop at three. These guys have dozens of wives. Jeffs has probably claimed hundreds of women for himself. There is no way human women can pop out enough girl children to keep these old perverts happy, it’s just not physically possilbe. So the younger competition has to be disposed of.
They have not officially repudiated it, although they spin it as such.
They have simply temporarily suspended the practice, after being forced to by the federal government, and the doctrine is still official.
No one has ever repudiated the statements that a man must be polygamous in order to enter the highest degree of glory in the after life. That isn’t stressed now, but it also hasn’t been rejected either.
So, I think it’s valid to ask the Mormon church if the teachings are valid or not, and if so, then how will the math work.
Does it count if my next door neighbor who’s an LDS in good standing repudiates it? She’s not one to challenge LDS doctrine so I don’t see her as being somehow rogue.
I read somewhere that the mainstream LDS missionaries active in Japan tend to convert a lot of young girls, to the point where there is a serious lack of Mormon husbands for them, which is a problem expecially because of their marriage doctrines.
John D. Fitzgerald, who wrote the Great Brain books for kids, also wrote a less fictionalized version of his upbringing in Utah territory, titled Papa Married a Mormon.
His mother’s parents were converts to the Mormon faith, and emigrated to the US to become part of the westward migration. At one point, after the family is settled, their bishop visits(he has three wives himself) and tells the father he should marry another wife. One of the reasons is that at that time there were more female converts than male, and the church hoped to get them married off. But the bishop doesn’t insist when the proposition is rejected.
Also, the book says the bishop respected the difference in beliefs as to whether plural marriage was necessary.