re: Mormon Prophet dies at 90

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and I think it is a highly misunderstood religion (e.g., polygamy has been rejected for decades now).

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I'm no theologian, but I'm reasonably well informed. I was raised Catholic and have plenty of questions about my own religion. (True story: I have some friends who are Jehovah's Witnesses. When one found out I was Catholic, she said, "Y'all believe in some crazy stuff." I don't think she was just trying to frick with me. Swear to God, Jehovah, whomever...)

I'm not knocking anybody's faith, because who am I to say definitively which is "right" and which are "wrong". I teased my parents all the time about being sent to the "wrong" Heaven or appearing at the Pearly Gates and finding someone other than St. Peter. Anyway, there are several things that make it easy to pick on the LDS beliefs.

It's a young religion. I believe Joseph Smith was visited by the angel Moroni and found/was given the golden tablets and the seer stones in the late 1820s. These tablets were the cornerstone of their new religion. Somewhere along the line the tablets were misplaced or returned to Moroni (I don't remember which). Nobody except Joseph Smith had actually seen them. Some of the faithful were wondering why Joseph Smith hadn't hung on to the tablets or shown them to others. It was a logical question. Next thing you know, in like the 1850s, 12 prominent church members all swear that they had seen the tablets. It assuaged the doubts of believers, but to non-believers it sounded like bullshite. Me? I'd have hung on to those golden tablets inscribed in "reformed Egyptian". But that's me.

Mormans were firm believers in plural marriage for about 50 or 60 years. After being chased across the country, Brigham Young (the then prophet) set up camp in SLC in 1847/48 or so. He had almost 50 wives, I believe, so it's fair to say he practiced polygamy. Mormans being Mormans, they turned a desert into paradise. They eventually realized that statehood would offer them some protections and advantages, but 1890ish Congress wasn't having a polygamous state. Coincidentally, shortly thereafter, the current prophet (not B. Young) had a revelation: No more plural marriages. Next thing you know, Utah is granted statehood. How about that for a coincidence!

A similar revelation made itself known in the 1970s. LDS was a strictly Caucasian religion until membership flattened out for a period of time. "Dark" countries could be fertile ground for religious conversion. Sure enough, the prophet had a vision and dark people were now allowed to become full fledged members and membership expanded greatly.

All of that being said, LDS members are completely unfazed by these oddities. At least in the company of non-members. Maybe they raise hell among themselves debating these issues. We non-believers will never know. And in the meantime, Mormans will go on being among the most productive members of our society.

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White Roach

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I learned a bunch about the Mormon faith when I moved away from Louisiana. I was shocked by a bunch of it to say the least. But, what religion doesn't have a checkered past.

As far as polygamy, maybe God told Joseph Smith it was ok. Jews practiced it until the 3rd centry. The only reason they stopped was because they were denied citizenship in the countries under the rule of the Holy Roman Church. (Sound familiar?) There is polygamy throughout the old testament, so maybe he thought that made it ok.

I know because of the Mormon War in Missouri and the Missouri Executive Order 44, there were a lot of widows in the early Mormon faith. A lot of men took on these widows as a 2nd wife.

From Wikipedia:

Missouri Executive Order 44, also known as the Extermination Order,[1][2] was an executive order issued on October 27, 1838, by the Governor of Missouri, Lilburn Boggs. The order was issued in the aftermath of the Battle of Crooked River, a clash between Latter-day Saints and a unit of the Missouri State Militia in northern Ray County, Missouri, during the 1838 Mormon War. Claiming that Latter-day Saints had committed open and avowed defiance of the law and had made war upon the people of Missouri, Governor Boggs directed that "the Mormons must be treated as enemies, and must be exterminated or driven from the State if necessary for the public peace—their outrages are beyond all description".[2] The militia and other state authorities—General John B. Clark, among them—would use the executive order to violently expel the Mormons from their lands in the state



The Missouri militia went for the extermination over the driving out part

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I know because of the Mormon War in Missouri and the Missouri Executive Order 44, there were a lot of widows in the early Mormon faith. A lot of men took on these widows as a 2nd wife.

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Yes. If you research the multiple wives of many of the early Mormons you find a lot of old ladies and widows.

Did you miss these two sentences in my post?

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I was raised Catholic and have plenty of questions about my own religion.

I'm not knocking anybody's faith, because who am I to say definitively which is "right" and which are "wrong".

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I apologize for misspelling Mormon. If that error invalidates the rest of my post, so be it.

My point is that whomever is the current prophet of the LDS church happens to be, he always seems to be very conveniently dialed in to the political winds of the times or societal changes. As a good prophet should be, I suppose.

The reason you still have spin off Fundamentalist LDS types, particularly Warren Jeff's old group in Colorado City, AZ and Hildale, UT, is because plural marriage was one of Joseph Smith's building blocks of the church (Not immediately upon founding, but well established 20 years later on the move to Utah. Yes, I know Smith had been murdered by then.) Forty years later, the church wants statehood and the prophet just happens to have a politically expedient revelation. Even the most faithful would have to find that unusual and highly coincidental. After ~60 years of plural marriage, now we're against it. But the good news is ... statehood!

Do you honestly not think there was a connection between these two events?

I know you aren't knocking Mormons. I totally agree with you that the early leaders dropped polygamy for statehood. Some Mormons don't think that. I'm a bit more level headed.

I was just trying to give a bit more insight on how polygamy in the LDS church got going

I know some pligs and they are off to say the least.

In the early 2000s, I had been working on a long project at a refinery in the SF Bay Area, so I had driven out there from New Orleans. On the way home, it was May or June and the weather was nice, so I took I-80 to see some country that I hadn't been to before. I got off the interstate in Salt Lake City for a quick look at Temple Square. I ended up there all afternoon.

As I'm sure you're aware, you have to have a guide to get inside the Mormon Tabernacle. But you get the whole tour, which was cool. I found out the meaning behind the Seagull monuments and some of the others. Our tour guide was this sweet young, 20ish year old Polly Purebred. Sweet and polite as could be. One group of about four within our tour group were passive aggressive assholes the entire time. The tour guide was either completely oblivious or, more likely, too polite to tell them to go frick themselves.

Anyway, they bring up the Jon Krakauer book, Under The Banner of Heaven, which was on the best sellers lists at the time and was critical of the LDS church and particularly the fundamentalist sects. It was all over the news at the time. The tour guide said she had never heard of it. The assholes scoffed at her, but I actually kind of believed that maybe she was so sheltered that it was possible she really hadn't heard of it. I had read it already, so I gave her a very abbreviated synopsis and just said that it had caused a lot of consternation among LDS leaders.

She asked what religion I was. I told her I was Catholic. She said, so this book youre talking about, it sounds a lot like The DaVinci Code. I asked, how so? She said, well it upset a lot of Catholics. I told her, "Kind of. But let me point out two things. DaVinci Code upset the Opus Dei crowd, which is a small segment of the Catholic Church. Secondly, The DaVinci Code is sold in the fiction section of Barnes & Noble. Under The Banner of Heaven is on the table at the front of the non-fiction section. You can see the difference, can't you?

She seemed sincere and certainly didn't look like she was lying. But it seemed odd to me that she knew The DaVinci Code, but had not heard of a book that was currently causing problems for her church. It made me think that she'd been coached to "not know" about that book. Can't discuss what you don't know anything about. (Unless, of course, you're on the OT!)

Anyhow, those columns in the tabernacle were badass and well worth the wait to see. Wood with a marble faux finish. They looked like the real deal.

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I have a third testicle as well

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Probably just a cyst.