So when a journalist at the Pew conference asked Professor Bushman about the historical justification for polygamy, which thrived in Mormon circles before the church outlawed it in 1890, he framed it as a “perplexing problem for Mormons” themselves because it is “so contrary to Mormon contemporary ideas of family.” He also floated a practical-sounding theory, that roughly half of all plural wives were converts to Mormonism who lacked husbands or older brothers in the Mormon community; plural marriage provided male protection.
Bushman knows this is nonsense... for him to "float" the theory (perpetuate the lie), is inappropriate in my opinion.
~dancer~
Here are Bushman's actual words:
We now have a fine-grained study of polygamy in one community where we know every family in the community and all of the details about them. And what polygamy seems to have been was a way in which young women without male protection – no father, no older brother, no near relative to care for them – were absorbed into Mormon society. Polygamy went up when the immigration rates went up. And the young women who came into these families in this little town were young women in that position. Not all of them – but that was the single most common type of plural wife. More than 50 percent of them fit this description. So it was a way of caring for people and may have contributed to the resilience of the society.
I think he is referring to Kathryn Daynes's study of nineteenth-century Manti in More Wives Than One: Transformation of the Mormon Marriage System, 1840-1910 (Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 2001), but I could be wrong.
I don't have the book in front of me but according to B. Carmon Hardy it "shows that because polygamy was encouraged, numbers of marginalized women who would likely never have married at all became polygamous wives and mothers." See "'That Same Old Question of Polygamy and Polygamous Living:' Some Recent Findings Regarding Nineteenth and Early Twentieth-Century Mormon Polygamy," Utah Historical Quarterly 73, no. 3 (2005): 219; http://history.utah.gov/history_programs/utah_historic_quarterly/documents/UHQSummerBook.pdf.
In any case, I don't think Bushman just made this up.
What would immigration patterns in Manti have to do with Joseph Smith marrying dozens of women? The bit about it being to provide them with male protection is absurd, since he kept the marriages top secret, so it's not like anyone would have known hey, don't mess around with this lady, she's Joseph's bird, and he'll make you pay. No, the whole point of everyone knowing that a lady had menfolk to protect her was subverted by Joseph's secrecy and lying about it. Likewise, why would Joseph marry all those already-married women? They clearly already had menfolk in their lives to provide protection, and again the relationship, such as it was, with Joseph Smith was top secret. Since very few of the plural "wives" of Joseph Smith cohabited with him other than occasional one-night stands, it's difficult to conceive in what way this arrangement could possibly have contributed to the "protection" of these women.
A perfect case in point is Helen Mar Kimball. Was her father Heber C. not providing protection enough for her, so that she had to secretly marry Joseph Smith? Bogus, bogus, bogus.
Dr. Peterson, Dr. Bushman may well be a competent, honest scholar, and all that that entails, however it's my belief that he has crossed the line by attempting to engage in a historically-based apologetics, and so he's necessarily locked in to trying to explain things that are really inexplicable outside of theories that tend to make Joseph Smith look bad. Since the goal is to help Joseph Smith avoid looking bad to the extent possible, and promote his looking good, I feel that Dr. Bushman is going too far and supporting incredible theories. I totally agree with Truth Dancer on this one - I think this "protection" argument is weak in the extreme, possibly approaching disingenuous.
Mormonism ceased being a compelling topic for me when I finally came to terms with its transformation from a personality cult into a combination of a real estate company, a SuperPac, and Westboro Baptist Church. - Kishkumen
What percentage of adult males had plural wives and what were the average number of plural wives in Utah circa 1870? It seems to me that polygamy had the effect of making it much tougher for young men to get married and probably reduced fertility.
We now have a fine-grained study of polygamy in one community where we know every family in the community and all of the details about them. And what polygamy seems to have been was a way in which young women without male protection – no father, no older brother, no near relative to care for them – were absorbed into Mormon society. Polygamy went up when the immigration rates went up. And the young women who came into these families in this little town were young women in that position. Not all of them – but that was the single most common type of plural wife. More than 50 percent of them fit this description. So it was a way of caring for people and may have contributed to the resilience of the society.
That may have been a net effect of polygamy during early Utah, but as Sethbag pointed out, none of that was the impetus for polygamy by any means. Dr. Bushman is conflating one with the other, or else being disingenuous.
I think he is referring to Kathryn Daynes's study of nineteenth-century Manti in More Wives Than One: Transformation of the Mormon Marriage System, 1840-1910 (Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 2001), but I could be wrong.
I don't have the book in front of me but according to B. Carmon Hardy it "shows that because polygamy was encouraged, numbers of marginalized women who would likely never have married at all became polygamous wives and mothers." See "'That Same Old Question of Polygamy and Polygamous Living:' Some Recent Findings Regarding Nineteenth and Early Twentieth-Century Mormon Polygamy," Utah Historical Quarterly 73, no. 3 (2005): 219; http://history.utah.gov/history_programs/utah_historic_quarterly/documents/UHQSummerBook.pdf.
B. Carmon Hardy doesn't know the facts. There were always more males in Utah than females, so they likely would have married and become mothers. Even so, because polygamy was encouraged, many males became marginalized and were prevented from marrying and becoming fathers.
"Finally, for your rather strange idea that miracles are somehow linked to the amount of gay sexual gratification that is taking place would require that primitive Christianity was launched by gay sex, would it not?"
This is just a slight variation on: polygamy was mainly designed to take care of widows and orphans.
It amazes me every time a believer offers this theory, because it is just so insulting to the early LDS. Do they not realize they are implying that the LDS community would not take care of their needy members unless the males were MARRIED to the females in question?????
Is this really what they want to portray about early LDS? That within the community, at large, there were means to take care of single women, widows, and orphans, but these people could only avail themselves of that help if they agreed to MARRY one of the men?
How can the proponents of this theory not see how disgusting it is?
If the early LDS community would not, spontaneously out of compassion, take care of these vulnerable members of their community, couldn't the more compassionate leaders ASSIGN people to take care of them? Kind of like an expanded home teaching assignment?
by the way, I strongly encourage posters to avoid the diversionary issue of Bushman's character or possible lying. Please. This just allows the primary topic to NOT be addressed - which is that apparently early LDS wouldn't take care of their needy unless the females agreed to become polygamous wives (according to this theory).
We hate to seem like we don’t trust every nut with a story, but there’s evidence we can point to, and dance while shouting taunting phrases.
*I posted the following two posts prior to reading the entire thread...
Bushman knows this is nonsense... for him to "float" the theory (perpetuate the lie), is inappropriate in my opinion.
We differ, I guess, about what's inappropriate.
In my view, it's inappropriate to brand someone a liar simply because he views things differently than you do.
No.. we do not differ. I agree it is inappropriate to brand someone a liar simply because he or she views things differently than do I.
I did not brand Bushman or anyone a liar... in fact Bushman was being completely honest as he "floated" a theory that was not true (assuming the article correctly portrayed Bushman's statements).
He did not say the lie was true... he "floated" a theory he knows to be incorrect. A very "nice" way of promoting a non-truth while not actually lying.
As I said, shame on Bushman.
~dancer~
Last edited by Bing [Bot] on Sun Jul 29, 2007 3:29 pm, edited 2 times in total.
"The search for reality is the most dangerous of all undertakings for it destroys the world in which you live." Nisargadatta Maharaj
In any case, I don't think Bushman just made this up.
I do not think Bushman made it up nor I do not think he is lying... not at all.
I think he knows that Joseph Smith did not start polygamy to take care of the poor single girls and women.
I think Bushman cleverly "floated" a theory that was incorrect.
I'm open to learning here... did Joseph Smith mention anything about starting polygamy to help the poor girls and young women and single women?? Did Joseph Smith marry other men's wives to protect them? Did the girls he married need protection and help because they did not have any male family members?
I don't see it.
~dancer~
Not to derail the thread but... (smile), I always wonder why people who use this excuse (that woman couldn't survive without getting married), get the idea that a man had to marry a girl or women in order to help her. Societies all over the world had long been involved in helping the poor and needy. Ya know? :-)
"The search for reality is the most dangerous of all undertakings for it destroys the world in which you live." Nisargadatta Maharaj
WOW. I didn't even know about this Carmon Hardy book!
for what it's worth, I think Hardy is right, but also share Dr. Shades' understanding that there were more men than women in Utah. How can both be right? Because the latter quantity is derived from the census, which, of course, includes both LDS and non-LDS. The excess of men in Utah was because of the mining industry, not because of the Mormons.