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To be fair, I think most Christians would suggest that these marriages were tolerated--or perhaps even disapproved by--God; not that they were ordained by Him. Abraham's and Jacob's polygamy led to plenty of heartache; and even in Mormon teaching it was David's and Solomon's lust for additional women that proved to be their spiritual undoing.

If I hadn't been so tired when I wrote this post, it probably would have been more concise. Its longer than it should be but I think it still makes the point I want it to. In 2013, the last time our federal parliament gave some serious thought to same sex marriage, the church asked us to communicate our thoughts and feelings on the topic to our local Member of Parliament. I did so, and one of the lines I used in my letter was similar to the line Vort took in the news conference posting – that if we allowed same sex marriage because not to do so was unfair, unequal and discriminatory against gay couples who wanted to get married – then there was no longer any logical argument for banning daddies who wanted to marry their daughters or women who wanted to marry their dogs. A few weeks later, Senator Cory Bernardi, a government Senator and ferocious right wing hard core Christian, started making public statements along exactly the same lines. He was very strongly condemned from all sides, even his own, and after a week or two he stopped making such statement. Last year, the government wanted to remove a few words from Section 18C of the Racial Discrimination Act which would have had the effect of reducing the number of grounds on which a person could be sued for discrimination. These two events have led me to think a bit about discrimination and exactly what it is, or might be. It seems to me that the essence of discrimination is when a group that possesses a particular characteristic or attribute, is treated differently by other groups because they possess that particular characteristic or attribute. In the recent case, the attribute in question was being gay and the difference treatment was differential access to housing and jobs. If that sort of behaviour is indeed discrimination, which of the following is, and is not, discriminatory: Limited access to housing because of gender preference Limited access to housing because of a person's height Limited access to housing because of ethnic origins Limited access to housing because of inability to pay the rent Limited access to housing because of the poor condition of the house Limited access to jobs because of colour Limited access to jobs because of inadequate training or not having the correct qualifications Limited access to heaven because of sin Limited access to disabled parking spaces because of not having a disability Marriage only between a man and a woman Marriage between same sex couples Marriage between people and animals Limited access to baptism and temples because of sin Does God discriminate against those who are not worthy to enter the celestial kingdom by not allowing them entry? I certainly hope He does, otherwise there is no point in striving to meet the entry requirements. Is there a temple recommend question that discourages us from associating with certain groups or people who propagate certain beliefs? Is not the whole temple recommend interview process a means of discriminating between those who can and those who cannot enter the temple? I think that all of us, every week, need to be making decisions that involve a degree of discriminatory practice – eg, do I praise my son (different treatment) for a job well done (a characteristic)? Do I avoid my neighbour (different treatment) because he swears and is drunk (a characteristic) all the time? Do I refuse to employ the American gardener (different treatment) because he charges more than double what the Mexican gardener charges ( a characteristic) Do I make a different decision about someone or something or should my decision be influenced by (a difference) an attribute that that person has that is good or bad (a characteristic). If we answer yes to that question, we are practicing a form of discrimination. I hope we are making these kinds of decisions every day. My point is that discrimination is a necessary, unavoidable, important, and everyday, although usually unrecognised part of life. There is good discrimination and bad discrimination. The line between the two is often blurred and quite mobile. To simply reject something on the grounds that it is discriminatory may be failing to recognise the true nature of discrimination. The trouble seems to arise when people can’t agree on what is acceptable basis for discrimination.

vort

So moving back to the human practice of polygamy and not the animalistic breeding habits of domesticated cattle... I found this excerpt (non LDS) interesting: Food for thought.

Before I submit this to our tech people, I wanted to find out if it was just me having the problem. Do any of you experience lag times when trying to like a post or respond to a post?

When talking about intent for the purposes of moral decisions, we basically mean "why am I doing this." You take the medicine knowing full well you're going to become drowsy, but that's not the reason why you took it. You took it for the pain, and becoming drowsy is a side effect you're willing to endure. On Vort's scenario, I'll start by saying that I honestly think more details are needed on the exact cause of what's killing the mother, but I will try to muck my way through it anyway. First, I'm going to skip intent and weighing the good/bad, because I don't think there's much debate on that part of it. I will move on to the intrinsic evil bit. I'll start by saying that directly killing the child is an intrinsic evil. That means you cannot ever "cut it out", use abortion inducing drugs, ect. You can not do any of those things even if it means the death of the mother is probable. The reason for this is because that baby, even if it isn't viable, is still a human being with every bit as much right to live as the mother. Prolonging one person's life for any number of years does not justify ending another's, even if death is inevitable. Now, as for what treatment options are available, again some of the details here matter. If the uterus was defective and is the reason the mother and baby would die, then removing the defective uterus is licit. If the woman has some sort of condition apart from the uterus that is the reason why she is likely to die, then she can pursue treatment for that condition, but she would not be allowed to cut out the uterus (as in this scenario it has nothing to do with the condition). And there have been three replies since I started typing. When did this thread blow up so much? :)

I did see your examples they had the same problem mine did. If someone knows what the results are of an action they are about to take; chooses to take that action anyway then they intended for that results of that action to happen. They simply justify it that something else was more important. If you know that cutting out the tube will cause the infant to die.. then cutting out the tube means you intended at some level for the infant to die. It sucks, its a hard choice, you wished you had other options, but you made the best choice you can. If I know that stabbing my daughter would kill her. And I do it to stop a bomb that would kill us both, then at some level I intended my daughter to die. It sucks, its a hard choice that I wished I never had to make, but I made the best choice I could. I can see intent covering when we don't know what is going to happen... But when we have knowledge of what is going to happen, we can't the say known consequence wasn't what we intended, the best we can say is we wished it wouldn't have happened.

Yes.

When it comes to determining how literally to take the Old Testament, I tend to take the same approach as I do with the Gospels. So, we all know that the four Gospels all tell the stories of Jesus' ministry, but there are definitely irreconcilable differences between the three if you want to try to form a coherent timeline that accounts for all of them. I personally think that the reason for this differences is that each Gospel writer, lead by the inspiration of the holy spirit, made alterations to the narrative in order to reflect some greater divine truth. In other words, we can learn more from the Gospels precisely because they deviate from actual events. That being said, there's enough of the actual events in there that we can suppose that we have a pretty good idea of how Jesus' life actually played out. Applying this to the Old Testament, I think that the authors of the various books probably did deviate from how actual events played out in places. After all, I don't think most Christians would say that the Creation accounts in Genesis 1 and 2 are literal, particularly since they contradict one another in places. That being said, where the scriptures deviate from actual events, they make that deviation in the name of a greater truth. That being said, I do think a plurality of wives existed in the Old Testament, that it was allowed for in the Law of Moses, and it is something we have to account for. From the Catholic view, we have two "versions" of marriage: sacramental and natural. The latter, which would include all those Old Testament examples, is definitely most properly understood in the context of one man and one woman married until death, but allowances can (and often times were) made that deviate from that norm. Sacramental marriage between two Christians is a much less fluid affair, with the rules must more strictly enforced. All that aside, I do think anatess hit this one on the head. If marriage is eternal, then you even in a monogamous society you have to be able to account for polygamy in the afterlife (in the case of marriage after death). If marriage ends at death, then it's kind of a mute point.

This is more for Claire, but you might still enjoy discussing it with your husband CatholicLady. The implications of the revelation on polygamy should lead to a good discussion between you and your boyfriend. The revelation teaches that marriages can be eternally binding. It goes through a few scenarios (sounding somewhat legalese). If you are not married for eternity, but rather only until death frees one of you from the covenant, then you have no claim on each other after this life. There's two scenarios here. If the two of you are married and the officiator pronounces it to be binding "forever and ever and always" or whatever phrasing is desired, that's really just a grand deception. The ordinance (sacrament) must be "by [the Lord's] word" by someone "anointed and appointed unto this power". Priesthood authority and all that. The only place where this can be done is in the temple. Additionally, if the two of you are married in the temple by someone with authority (we use the term "sealed" for this, or sometime "temple marriages", and even "celestial marriage") you must continue faithful. This is captured in the clause "sealed by the Holy Spirit of promise". If one of you breaks the covenant, God will not force the other to be bound. The blessings of such are glorious (and referenced in another one of your threads): I would encourage you to have a discussion with your boyfriend about what kind of marriage he envisions for the two of you.

bytor, the point is that women are the limiting factor when it comes to producing children. As long as there is at least one man to impregnate them, the number of women decides how many children are born. The number of men is irrelevant (as long as each woman can be impregnated). So to say that polygamous couples produce more children on average than monogamous couples is counterintuitive and almost certainly wrong. Your own example proves it: The fifty-five couples consisting of Brigham Young and each of his wives produced, on average, one child. The couple consisting of you and your wife has produced two children, double Brother Brigham's average output. Sure, each polygamous man will have more children if he's making them with multiple women. But those women will not produce more children overall than they would if each had her very own husband instead of all being married to the same guy. So the "higher fertility rate" argument leaves me deeply unconvinced. When you couple in the serious loss of genetic diversity by having fewer fathers in the population, I understand the logic of polygamy even less. But that doesn't mean I don't believe it's necessary and commanded of God on occasion. I do. I just don't understand it, and I don't accept counterintuitive and undemonstrable arguments in its favor, like that there were waaaaay more women than men or that the average polygamous wife bore more children than her monogamous sister.

Comparing humans are not like cattle ranching. Limitations of your analogy: 1) Cattle ranchers have a higher female to male ratio (of cows). This is the ranchers get rid of the bulls. I don't think you're suggesting we get rid of male humans . 2) The breeding cycle of cows is different vs humans. A lady cow makes it very obvious when she's fertile. Human ladies not so much. 3) Having excess bulls makes the bulls fight each other for mating privileges (another reason ranchers don't keep them around). I'd like to think human males are bit more civil

Bulls don't produce meat, and they don't produce milk. They aren't as big or strong as castrated bovine (usually called "oxen", though this term technically refers to any bovine used as draft animals), and their testosterone gives them a nasty temper, so they are not valuable for plowing fields or pulling carts. They consume resources and don't produce a darn thing except bull piss and manure. In fact, from a rancher's viewpoint, bulls are good for exactly one thing: To impregnate cows. So ranchers keep only one bull because only one bull is needed to do the job, and they don't have to pay for all the other useless bulls hanging around eating the hay, charging at ranchhands, and fighing each other. We may assume that human males, unlike a rancher's view of bulls, have actual intrinsic value. So the comparison is not valid. Nevertheless, the point remains: One bull with twenty cows is unlikely to produce more calves than two (or five, or twenty) bulls with twenty cows. I see absolutely no reason to suppose that, on average, one husband with multiple wives will produce more children than multiple husbands with one wife each.

The question is, if the farmer had 10 heifers and 10 bulls, would he have more or less success than with 10 heifers and 1 bull. The result, ultimately, would likely be the same (edit: or just as likely less offspring overall with only 1 bull). Therefore, multiple heifers per bull does not create more children unless there is a shortage of bulls. The logic of raising up seed being related to a numbers game, therefore, is contingent on there being more women than men.

Sure, they could. It's possible that six women all married to the same man might produce as many children as if each had her own husband. But six husbands have six times the money-earning and homestead-building capacity of one man, and that's a big influence on how many children a woman can (or is willing to) have. On the whole, I see no reason to suppose that a man with six wives will produce more children than six men with one wife each.

If six women were married to one man, I would not expect those women to have more children as a group than if each woman were married to a different man. If anything, the latter arrangement (one woman per man) seems like it would, on average, have a better chance of producing more children.

Vort

1-800-pizza

Of course 2 Samuel 12:7-8 certainly strongly implies the Lord approved: "And Nathan said to David, Thou art the man. Thus saith the Lord God of Israel, I anointed thee king over Israel, and I delivered thee out of the hand of Saul; And I gave thee thy master’s house, and thy master’s wives into thy bosom, and gave thee the house of Israel and of Judah; and if that had been too little, I would moreover have given unto thee such and such things."

I always kept a bag of Frito's on my pantry shelves for a quick meal the kids loved. This meal was given to me from a sister in the ward after I had just had a baby. 1 bag Fritos (probably any corn chips would do) 1 to 2 cans chili with beans (depending on family size) 1 diced tomato shredded lettuce Grated cheese Sour Cream Heat chili on stove. Place a handful of fritos on a plate. Dish several spoonfuls of hot chili over it. Add shredded lettuce, tomatoes, and grated cheese to taste. Then add a dollop of Sour Cream. Some of my kids didn't like tomatoes, so they didn't add the tomatoes. Some didn't like lettuce. And they usually didn't add the sour cream. They can add what they like and how much they like to it. This may not be the most nutritious meal, but it's filling, and my kids would eat it every time.

From the Book of Mormon. Jacob chapter 2 27 Wherefore, my brethren, hear me, and hearken to the word of the Lord: For there shall not any man among you have save it be one wife; and concubines he shall have none; 28 For I, the Lord God, delight in the chastity of women. And whoredoms are an abomination before me; thus saith the Lord of Hosts. 29 Wherefore, this people shall keep my commandments, saith the Lord of Hosts, or cursed be the land for their sakes. 30 For if I will, saith the Lord of Hosts, raise up seed unto me, I will command my people; otherwise they shall hearken unto these things. emphasis mine

Doctrine wise it starts in D&C 132 https://www.lds.org/scriptures/dc-testament/dc/132?lang=eng And ends in Official Declaration 1 https://www.lds.org/scriptures/dc-testament/od/1?lang=eng

It's no ones business but your own, you don't have to tell the bishop if you don't want to. There is no requirement to state changes in your relationship status to the bishop at all. Furthermore unless you want his advice in the matter (and I'm not sure why you would since he is probably not a trained marriage counsler) then and only then should you tell him....I would limit my tell of my personal situation to him in terms of asking for help with spiritual growth and lack of priesthood leadership in the home if this is important to you.

Mordorbund likes getting compliments and has an awesome profile picture (Does that work ) [edit] Maybe I should have said mordorbund likes people to talk about mordorbund :)

Oooh!! OOOh!!!! Do me next!!!

Tell your bishop. This is not some minor occurrence. No one will think you're just grabbing attention simply for telling your bishop about this problem. He may ask for permission to share the news with certain others, such as the Relief Society president, in order to coordinate help. My advice is to tell him immediately about your life situation. I am very sorry to hear your husband is acting in such a dishonorable way. Good luck.

My husband recently had a dream about our daughter. She was flying around, wearing a big S on her shirt. I then had a dream about going birthday shopping for this same daughter and finding a supergirl shirt for her. We have concluded that our daughter is Supergirl.

Haha...I admit, the light bulb didn't come on till just a couple of posts ago....

Don't forget ....we got rules to follow here....otherwise this place would run amok.......Lol

Since Vort is a username for a real person. I don't think Vort can be used as a name for a fictional character, unless there is an actual fictional character named Vort. Same goes for the name Oprah. :) M.

The logic is that monogous marriages produce more kids because the women gets exclusive access to a man's seed (more opportunity to make babies).

I flatter myself that I'm an "LDS defender", at least in spirit. But I don't buy the imbalance argument. As far as I can see, that's nonsense. The book of Jacob tells us that God commands plural marriage when he will "raise up seed" unto himself. It doesn't say that polygamous marriages produce more children than non-polygamous marriages; this seems counterintuitive, and I would be quite surprised if it were true. But there must be some reason that God's raising up seed to himself requires (or benefits from) polygamy. Dedication? Establishing patriarchal lines? Some genetic reason we don't yet fathom? A social reality among human beings we aren't aware of? I have no clear idea, but I do accept God's word in the Book of Mormon.

I would certainly not go that far, but I agree with much of what you say. In some ways, I wish the Church Scouting program would follow "regular" BSA much closer, e.g. having ALL Aaronic Priesthood YM involved in the Scout troop instead of breaking them up into Scouts/Varsities/Ventures. As for the Saturday night / Sunday morning campout rule, I fully support that. Sunday is sacred and we should go out of our way to treat it as such, even if that means we miss important camping time that we might otherwise have.

I think Holy writ is largely silent on whether God approves or disapproves, but it is fairly apparent that it was practiced in ancient times and restored in latter times and will be apart of the Eternal realms.

But that doesn't cover the many others. Moses, in particular.

How do you reconcile Abraham, Jacob, David, Solomon.....and many others having multiple wives?

Sam Winchester

This is a huge topic. I'm sure your question will attract a swarm of comments. In fact, I see them arriving now as I compose this reply. It helped me to realize that many things in the LDS church seem unusual to outsiders, but that these things have clear roots in the Old and New Testaments: polygamy, baptism for the dead, washing and anointing, garments, etc. But I don't think I'll ever understand the polygamy thing. I have read LDS defenders state that polygamy was required to "build up Zion" because of imbalance in the ratio of men to women, but I've read other writings that deny this. One of the most prominent LDS historians (Richard Bushman) said on a podcast that we'd probably "never crack" the puzzle of why polygamy appeared in the early Church. (He is not a General Authority of the Church and this is his academic opinion.) If you're curious, there is a web site called FairMormon that is a sort of Wikipedia for Mormon issues. The section on polygamy is quite thorough and you might find it interesting. I see now that 6 more responses have appeared in this thread, so perhaps someone has already mentioned it. http://en.fairmormon.org/Joseph_Smith/Polygamy

Mormons believe in modern day revelation. The Lord to Joseph to practice polygamy in the 1800, along with some other church members. In 1890, the Lord told the then-prophet that it was time to end the practice. So it ended. The links estrandling75 gave will give more detailed info.

It's Catholic Theology. Removing a damaged felopian tube, is not wrong. The unborn child dying is an unintended consequence. This is different from directly aborting your baby with the sole intent of killing your baby. <--That is always wrong, no matter what. :)

hmm I recollect something about policies on fund raising for lds scout troop being changed. It may be allowed now, i'd have to double check.

I think this also has something to do with the personality of different people. To some people debate is debate, and not personal. To some debate is conflict. To some debate is boring. etc... When you have all sorts of people coming together online it is really easy to misunderstand where a person is coming from and how they feel about things, it makes communication really hard. [edit] I've notice for example that Eowyn doesn't like disagreement but shows great compassion, while Anatess will run right into the roil and not be phased. Vort tends to pick apart ideas and present them from another angle. The Folk Prophet is very willing to state bluntly what he thinks is right. Margin of Error is a bit unconventional, (he's? not been quite so active on the forums since i've been here, so idk him? very well). A small sample of people, but I think that the coming together of all of these people and perspectives is a beautiful thing. Pam is the almighty admin. And Palerider takes bribes ;P and i tend to be more interested in the debate-ish threads....shame on me

Watching cartoons, etc., does not have anything to do with being a man or not. Providing for one's family physically, emotionally, mentally, and spiritually, with selflessness, service, care, tenderness, sacrifice, etc... Those are the characteristics that make a man a man.

As I understand it, CA is actually not breaking ground in this area, 23 other states already have this type of ban in place. As much as I like to bash my state for these kinds of things, it seems they are actually late to the party for once.

I'd be fine with my hubby telling me about his dream with another woman, but all he ever dreams about is MMA fighting or snowboarding or skydiving lol

I'm probably too open to a fault. But I tell my husband everything. It's worked for us.

I have recently completed the basic set of training for Scoutmasters. As far as I know, the above is mostly untrue, especially touching manuals and how things are governed. It is certainly true that LDS troops tend to be run much differently from other, non-LDS units. It is also true that, while there are exceptional LDS troops, in general LDS units have a poor reputation among other Scout troops, and often (not always) deservedly so. Our unique system of "calling" Scout leaders rather than having normal volunteers (I would say "true volunteers") is probably at the root of this. It's also a problem that our troops tend to be microscopically tiny. If we could include all Scout-aged young men in the troop, it would often come closer to the regular numbers for a troop (15-30 Scouts). It would also allow implementation of many of the Scouting principles of the older Scouts teaching the younger Scouts what's going on and how to do things, and allow for some actual patrol-building and spirit.

Dreaming is amazing. It's one of the few times our mind can be utterly, ruthlessly honest with itself. As befits my tendency to see down-to-earth explanations for many seemingly miraculous occurrences, I suspect that many of the "divine" or "revelatory" dreams we have are a result of our brilliant minds, far smarter and more honest and observant than we are, making sense of our lives and of the world around them. But don't misunderstand; it's no less miraculous for this. For myself, I would never tell my wife if I dreamed of another woman. The more intense the dream, the less likely I would be to share it with anyone, least of all Sister Vort. :)

I agree that the ends are the same, and perhaps even better, if the illicit means of treating the condition are employed vice the licit means. As the old saying goes, though, "the ends do not always justify the means." What the Catholic Church has determined here is that the good of minimizing the harm done to the mother in this case is not justified by the means of directly aborting the child, for the reasons stated in the original explanation. Again, I don't expect you guys to agree, any more than I necessarily agree on the LDS position. Our definitions of what makes a thing "good" or "evil" differ too much for us to entirely reconcile on this. That problem even is rooted in deeper issues on how God created the world (either as an organizer of pre-existent matter or creation "ex nihilo"). In case you were wondering, St Augustine originally came up with our definition of good to deal with the "problem of evil." Basically, if God created everything, and evil things exists, then it would seem that God created evil things. Obviously that doesn't seem quite right, so Augustine argued that evil was a deficit of a good, so really God did not create something evil but rather he created only so much good in that thing. I guess what I'm getting at we we have a lot of presumptions in our two Faiths that we would have to get through before we can really come up with satisfactory resolution on our differences on abortion and contraception.

I actually don't quite agree with the intent argument, but before I continue I'd like to make a quick disclaimer. I don't necessarily have any objection to the LDS position (at least when held by LDS people). From what I can tell you guys judge the morality of an action based on intent (whether or not it is in line with God's will) and have had prophets and apostles tell you that in very specific situations, after much prayers and discernment, abortion might be acceptable. That is a reasonable position to take, and any questions I have asked up to this point were not meant to be an attack vice trying to understand your position. I'm sorry if I have hitherto not made that distinction clear. Now, onto ectopic pregnancies. For those out there who may not know, ectopic pregnancies occur when an egg is fertilized and implants somewhere other than the uterus, most commonly in the fallopian tube. Now, as I mentioned before, the most common method employed by the Church in matters like this to determine if an action is okay is the principle of double effect. Again, it is generally used when there are two outcomes to a given action, one good and one evil. The four criteria the action must pass to be okay are: 1. The intent of the person performing the action must be directed towards the good end, with the evil end accepted only as an unavoidable consequence. 2. The action itself must not be intrinsically evil. 3. The good accomplished must be great enough to justify the evil endured. I would say that, not only in ectopic pregnancies, but also in all the cases where the LDS Church tolerates abortions, the criteria are met. The issue arises with the second criteria. As we've discussed before, Catholics can regard a much wider array of things as "evil" than LDS do based on our understanding of what it means to be evil. An intrinsically evil action is one that has an intrinsic "defect" or "fault". Abortion would be one such action because it obviously implies that one kill an innocent person, the unborn child. What this ends up meaning is that the ectopic pregnancy can only licitly be treated using a means that results in the death of the child as a side effect. In other words, it must be done by a means that does not involve directly targeting the child. There are three common methods for treating an ectopic pregnancy: drugs that terminate the pregnancy, surgically removing the fetus, and surgically removing the tube. The Catholic Church only allows the third method, since the first two constitute direct attacks on the fetus, while the third does not. Anyway, I don't necessarily expect everybody to necessarily agree with that rationale, but I figured I'd at least make sure you all know exactly what you're disagreeing with