Christian Polygamy

This post is for those of you, should you exist, who wish to comment on the most recent addition to JoshuahsHouse.com, entitled Polygamy and the Bible.

http://joshuahshouse.com/polygamy-and-the-bible.html

An interesting look at “christian” opposition to polygyny.

Source: THE ORTHODOX JEWISH PRO POLYGAMY PAGE

CHRISTIAN OPPOSITION TO POLYGAMY

Christian commentators with a perverted perspective following in the Roman Catholic tradition have tremendous difficulty with Yaakov having four wives. This very point shows to what extent the Roman church is not a continuation of Jewish traditions, society and morality, but rather the continuation of Greek and Roman pagan traditions, society and morality.

Homosexuality was a major force in ancient Greece. The warrior class considered themselves to be super masculine, and therefore the highest object of their affections and attention was other males. The preferred relationship was a seasoned soldier with a young boy. They viewed women as “breeders”, an unfortunate necessity for continued population, but not ideal partners. In Sparta, each new recruit in the army (age twelve) was given to an older soldier to be his sex slave for two years. Plato and Socrates, the supposedly great Greek philosophers also were homosexuals, and lauded the practice. (See “The Pink Swastika” by Lively and Abrams pages 15-19)

Christianity somewhat discouraged homosexuality, but adopted entirely the Greek attitude towards women and normal relations between men and women. Christianity adopted the view that the normal relationship between a man and a woman is intrinsically sinful, can only be justified for the sake of having children, and that the whole institution of marriage is only a concession to the yetzer hara (evil inclination). Christianity holds that the ideal is for a man to castrate himself (Mathew 19:12), and barring that he should if at all possible be celibate. Even having one wife is a concession to the yetzer hara, and having more than one wife is out of the question.

This is in stark contrast to Jewish ideals. Homosexuality is a capital crime. Normal marital relations are not just a concession to the yetzer hara, they are an ideal. A posuk in Mishlei says “In your youth you should sow your seed, and also in old age you should not let your hand rest.” Chazal (our sages of blessed
memory) interpret this to mean that one should be married and have normal marital relations even when past child bearing years. In many communities, a man would not receive s’micha (rabbinical ordination) until he was married. A person cannot be a teacher of small children unless he is married. We consider the married state to be the ideal state.

The Christian opposition to polygamy is deep rooted and still virulent. Joseph Smith, the founder of the Mormon religion was murdered in an anti polygamy massacre about 160 years ago. Within this decade U.S. Government agents murdered a cult leader and 100 of his followers. One of the “charges” against him in demonizing him to the United States Public was that his group practiced polygamy. We do not support pseudo religions or cults, but we can see from these two incidents the background against which the Cherem Rabbeinu Gershom was made. Similarly, the Christians censored the siddur (Jewish prayer book) and as a result, several passages which were interpreted as being against the Christian religion
were taken out of the davenning. It is just in the last few years that the siddurim are being restored and Jews again feel free to go back to the proper prayers. So too, the takonah against polygamy which was done to avoid massacres by the Christians, will probably totally disappear when we realize that we no longer have to worry about what the Christians want from us. And perhaps this is another interpretation of what the Vilna Gaon meant when he said that eliminating the Cherem Rabbeinu Gershom would bring the g’ulah (redemption) closer. When we can worship Hashem and do his commandments without worrying what the gentiles think, we will be much closer to the redemption.

Mipnei chata’einu galinu mei’artzenu, because of our sins we were exile from our land. We went into exile among Edom, the descendants of Esav. Rome and the church were our framework for one thousand nine hundred years. During that period, we defended ourselves as best we could. Among the defenses was to ban polygamy, something considered by G-d and his Torah to be moral, fine and normal. Something considered fine and normal in the vast majority of human societies since the beginning of history (as if we need them for justification). But because of our exile in Europe, we picked up certain alien values. We
somehow took polygamy, something practiced by our Patriarchs, by King David, etc. throughout our history, and associated with gilui arayos, the depraved sexual practices which are practiced or condoned by the peoples surrounding us. We must divorce ourselves from this goyish attitude. Polygamy was part of the founding of our people, and was part of Hashem’s d-vine plan for us.

Full Article…

Source: New Scientist

Want to live a little longer? Get a second wife. New research suggests that men from polygamous cultures outlive those from monogamous ones.

After accounting for socioeconomic differences, men aged over 60 from 140 countries that practice polygamy to varying degrees lived on average 12% longer than men from 49 mostly monogamous nations, says Virpi Lummaa, an ecologist at the University of Sheffield, UK.

Lummaa presented her findings last week at the International Society for Behavioral Ecology’s annual meeting in Ithaca, New York.

Rather than a call to polygamy, the research might solve a long-standing puzzle in human biology: Why do men live so long?

This question only makes sense after asking the same for women, who - unlike nearly all other animals - live long past the menopause.
Enforced monogamy

One answer seems to be a phenomenon called the grandmother effect. For every 10 years a woman survives past the menopause, she gains two additional grandchildren, Lummaa says. It seems that doting on and spoiling grandchildren aids their survival, as well as furthering some of their grandmother’s genes.

Men, by contrast, can reproduce well into their 60s and even 70s and 80s, and most researchers assumed this explained their longevity. But Lummaa and colleague Andy Russell wondered whether other factors explained the long lifespan of men, such as a grandfather effect.

To test this possibility, the team analysed church-gathered records for 25,000 Finns from the 18th and 19th centuries. People tended to move little, no one practiced contraception and the Lutheran Church enforced monogamy.

Only widowed men could remarry, and if they had children with their new wife, they fathered more kids, on average, than men who married once.

But ultimately remarried men “don’t end up with any more grandchildren,” Lummaa says. “If anything the presence of a grandfather was associated with decreased survival of grandchildren.”

Perhaps, Lummaa adds, the children of the first mother lose out on food and resources that go to the second mother’s kids. “It’s kind of the Cinderella effect.”

Even fathers with only one wife provided no benefit to their grandchildren, a finding supported by previous research.

…

Source: ktar.com

A member of a polygamist sect has lost his appeal of convictions stemming from his claimed marriage to a 16-year-old girl and fathering her child.

The Arizona Court of Appeals on Tuesday rejected the appeals of Kelly Fischer. He was convicted in 2006 of one count each of sexual conduct with a minor and conspiracy to commit sexual conduct with a minor. Fischer was sentenced to 45 days in the Mohave County Jail and three years probation.

Fischer was among eight members of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints who were indicted in May 2005, on charges of marrying under-aged girls. The defendants lived in Colorado City on the Arizona-Utah border, where the headquarters for the FLDS are located.

According to the indictment, Fischer had two wives and married the 16-year-old daughter of his second wife in 2000. At age 17, she gave birth to a baby girl on Aug. 31, 2001. The birth certificate listed Fischer as the father and said he was 33 at the time.

Fischer claimed his convictions violated his rights to freedom of religion under the First and 14th Amendments to the U.S. Constitution and his right to due process under the 14th Amendment. He also claimed that he was not permitted to present a defense that sex with the woman was allowed because she was his spouse. In addition, he claimed the Superior Court unfairly allowed hearsay testimony and that there was not sufficient evidence to support the convictions.
…

Via: International Herald Tribune

There are many indications that David Ebershoff conducted prodigious research to write his novel about polygamy, “The 19th Wife.” The main evidence: Ebershoff has fractured his narrative into texts, memoirs, depositions, letters, newspaper articles, an ersatz Wikipedia entry and even a supposed approximate transcript of conversation between wives of Brigham Young, the 19th-century Mormon patriarch. (From this transcript: “He’s after another.” “It was only a matter of time.” “Guess who the new one is.” “He never knows when his eyes are popping out of his head.”)

If this is intended as Ebershoff’s way of comprehensively addressing his multifaceted subject, it winds up having the opposite effect. What he has replicated just as powerfully as the turbulent history of polygamy in America is the exhaustive, arid scholarly process of looking things up. Far from bringing him closer to his characters, it muffles his novel’s drama.

If falling back on the language of scholarship is one way “The 19th Wife” stifles interest, using a divided time frame is another.

This device, the blight of so much contemporary fiction, allows an author to crosscut between a present-day story and a wildly coincidental parallel one that some scholar, detective, witch or psychic has dug up. So in the case of “The 19th Wife” there are two 19th wives. One is the real historical figure Ann Eliza Young, who was decades younger than her husband, Brigham, and earned the nickname “Brigham’s headache” when she became a public crusader against polygamy’s woes.

“The 19th Wife” intertwines Ann Eliza’s story with that of Jordan Scott, a young man whose mother, BeckyLyn, was the 19th wife of a present-day polygamist leader in Utah. The past tense is suitable because that husband is now dead and BeckyLyn is in jail, accused of having shot him.

The damning evidence against her comes in the form of an e-mail message sent by Jordan’s father as “Manofthehouse2004,” just before his murder, a message in which he apparently named his killer. In keeping with the strong gay component that is also part of “The 19th Wife” (Jordan is gay and finds a Mr. Right during the already overburdened story), Jordan’s father had no idea that in corresponding with someone called DesertMissy, he was flirting with a man.

All these elements connect as jigsaw-puzzle pieces, adding up to a history and critique of how polygamy works. But try as he might, Ebershoff does not achieve the level of ventriloquism necessary for this process.

He has no trouble with characters like Roland, a guy Jordan leaves behind in Los Angeles when he returns to his mother’s fundamentalist sect in Utah. “Oh honey,” Roland says, “you told me it was bad out there, but you didn’t mention that awful braid.” And at the other extreme of this book’s spectrum, Ebershoff also brings Ann Eliza to life. Much of “The 19th Wife” is supposed to come verbatim from her real memoir of that name, and it indeed sounds plausible.

Through Ann Eliza, this book describes the dynamics of an early Mormon household. Through BeckyLyn’s story and Jordan’s caustic reminiscences, it captures life among the latter-day separatists whose practices have lately aroused so much curiosity and controversy.

“The 19th Wife” succeeds in illustrating how the same issues have spanned great temporal changes in polygamist culture. And although its period-piece chapters about Ann Eliza prompt apprehension, they sustain interest and come alive.

The trouble comes when Ebershoff begins diluting these strong effects with windy, overlong documents, like a 1939 letter from one of Ann Eliza’s sons and a women’s studies thesis written by another of Ann Eliza’s descendants, includes a footnote about infant mortality rates in the 19th century.

Scattered through the verbiage is a detailed portrait of all matters surrounding polygamy: the arguments supporting it, the original Mormon customs that sustained it, the less exalted problems it created and the legal issues that eventually drove it underground.

There is a man who explains how he managed to have three wedding nights in three weeks. There are women casting light on what justified and reinforced their faith in all-powerful male prophets. But this creates an exhausting cacophony. Ebershoff clearly had the doggedness to invent many voices. What he didn’t have - or want - was a whole greater than the sum of its parts. — Reviewed by Janet Maslin