While most people see the Mormon renunciation of polygamy as a humiliating kick in the crotch, they don't appreciate the coup that occurred when Mormons said, "Okay. We'll stop." Nobody really thought that Mormons would just stop. Nobody just stops. How in the world can you claim to be on God's errand, with peculiar beliefs and practices, and then just renounce them - or at least the most distinctive card in your deck? For some Mormons, the answer was that you can't. Believing themselves to be the sons of John Taylor, the last Mormon prophet to advocate polygamy, the Fundamentalists want to be martyrs. They want to imagine some kind of apocalyptic end game, where God comes down and wipes out everybody except the polygamists.
Modern Mormonism comes from a coup that occurred within the Mormon Church. Unwilling to become outlaws and unbound to a practice that had become the federal government's rationale for sweeping the Mormons out of a strategic crossroads of the West, Modern Mormons gave up the practice - and virtually killed its power over them. In doing so, they opened the way for Mormons to become part of the American mainstream. In fact, over the next fifty years, Mormons would not only be welcomed back into American life. They would become a major icon representing the squeaky clean image of a new age. While Mormons are casually laughed at as out of step with fashion, the Mormon focus on community and family life has made Mormon culture a highly-respected subculture, one that increasing numbers of Americans look to for moral leadership.
Two things stand in the way of progress: kooky Fundamentalists with machine guns and child brides, and hard sell missionary tactics that look like something out of an Amway convention.
Time for the FLDS to renounce polygamy and come back to the fold (or become ex-mormons and start posting on RfM and elsewhere).
One of the posters on another forum mentioned that he has worked with young boys from the FLDS culture in Las Vegas, who sold themselves for money after they were routinely tossed out of the FLDS community so as not to provide competition for the hand of the teen brides.
Another poster commented:
Quote: You comments blew me away. How horrible. What does the FLDS do to its children? To think that they throw out so many young boys who basically have no job skills and have to sell their bodies in order to survive. I thought it was just the girls that were being abused and now it seems that many of the boys are also abused. May God have mercy on these poor kids and protect them.
Blew me away too. This is one result of driving the young boys out that I had never considered. They would have to hustle to make it in the world. Where their counterparts from mainstream society would be going to high school, these kids are on the streets. Even worse, they are so ill prepared to fend for themselves due to their unusual upbringing.
It doesn't seem they would have to rennounce anything regarding plural marriage except today's current practice of it.
Yeah, if Joseph Smith says it is fine and dandy to deflower young girls, then all is well. If WJ makes the same claim, it must be renounced.
If Joseph Smith wants to take another man's wife it is A-OK, but if WJ wants the same thing, shame on him.
If Joseph Smith thinks women are possessions to be basically bought, traded, and owned, good for him. If WJ agrees it is a horror.
If Joseph Smith feels God wants him to break the hearts of God's daughters and engage in an abomination, no problem. If WJ gets the same direction from God, he is being deceived.
:-(
I tire of men using God as an excuse to engage in abominations and cruelty.
~dancer~
"The search for reality is the most dangerous of all undertakings for it destroys the world in which you live." Nisargadatta Maharaj
I don't think Mormonism is that far from openly renouncing polygamy. I've seen quite a difference in my short life time on how they deal with the issue. When I was younger they used to defend it. Now they refuse to speak about it at all, and when they do, they speak of polygamy in a negative light. Most members are ignorant to the idea of plural marriages in the temples and I've seen women sealed to multiple partners as well.
And when the confederates saw Jackson standing fearless as a stone wall the army of Northern Virginia took courage and drove the federal army off their land.
Brigham Young having many wives was just as abominable before the Lord God, just as exactly the same as Warren Jeffs having many wives is abominable before the Lord God.
"And I've said it before, you want to know what Joseph Smith looked like in Nauvoo, just look at Trump." - Fence Sitter