Posts
7:13 AM
Unknown
Showing posts with label LDS. Show all posts
Showing posts with label LDS. Show all posts
Friday, December 27, 2013
Posted in: Monday, December 23, 2013
Sunday, December 22, 2013
Mormon Paper: This Is Judicial Tyranny
From the Mormon Church-owned Deseret News:
The essence of judicial tyranny is when a single, unelected federal judge declares the laws and constitution of an entire state null and void with an opinion clothed in the barest of legal precedent. It is true that state efforts to restrict marriage on the basis of race have run afoul of the federal constitutional protections against racial discrimination. But as we scour the legal landscape, we find no 10th Circuit or Supreme Court precedent that prevents Utah from adhering to a traditional definition of marriage. Nonetheless, Judge Shelby’s blithe mix-and-match approach to legal argumentation has, for the time being, created a new class of same-gender applicants deemed “married” under the Utah Constitution.(Tipped by JMG reader Chris)
Friday, December 20, 2013
Mormon Church Reacts To Marriage Ruling
"This ruling by a district court will work its way through the judicial process. We continue to believe that voters in Utah did the right thing by providing clear direction in the state Constitution that marriage should be between a man and a woman and we are hopeful that this view will be validated by a higher court." - Eric Hawkins, spokesman for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
Monday, November 19, 2012
An Ally For the Polygamous Freedom to Marry
Margot Harrison at 7dvt.com interviews Professor Janet Bennion about her book Polygamy in Primetime.
courtesy of David Ballou
Like many examples in Bennion’s illuminating study, they defy the popular perception that the practice of men taking multiple wives is solely about the male libido.
But whatever we think of polygamy in America, Bennion argues, it’s not going away anytime soon. And she believes it should be legal.
Thank you! As you can see, she knows her stuff...
Bennion, 48, has been researching polygamy for two decades. As a master’s student in 1989, she moved in with a rural Montana colony of the Apostolic United Brethren, a fundamentalist Mormon sect that still practices plural marriage as instructed by founder Joseph Smith in 1843. (The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints [LDS] officially renounced polygamy in 1890.)Bennion would go on to publish book-length ethnographic studies of the AUB and the LeBaron fundamentalist colony in Mexico. Her fieldwork got her in trouble with LDS church leaders, who “disfellowshipped” her.
That's too bad. Some religious organizations support people questioning the imposition of the "heterosexual monogamy only" model.
But she made new friendships with a startling range of polygamous women. Most bore little resemblance to the underage brides in prairie dresses familiar from news reports about raids on Warren Jeffs’ Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (FLDS). Women in the large AUB group can and do work outside the home, dress as they choose and divorce when they wish.Child abuse should be prosecuted. Consensual relationships between adult should not.
SD: You mention having a “theory that plural marriage fosters clandestine lesbianism” — something the LDS church doesn’t condone.This is nothing new. If there was a Solomon with all those wives, as the Bible says, does anyone, after thinking about it for a second, doubt that there were some lesbians and lesbian relationships involved?
JB: That’s a new area of interest. I think women do what they need to do without a man around. Mormon women have done this for ages. There are women in the Utah pioneer days who formed a sisterhood network and allowed for lesbian connections. It doesn’t upset the patriarchal framework. I talked to at least three women who had formed sexual connections to their sister wives or to another woman in the community. When the husbands found out, they just called it a friendship.
SD: Why should we legalize plural marriage?Agreed!
JB: We need to just step back, get off our high horse, and look at this from a civil liberties perspective. If we’re going to pave the way for alternative sexuality, why not provide liberties for those who choose the polygamy form? We hear a lot about the abuse cases, but we rarely hear about the well-functioning families. As a feminist, I say, “Bring it on; let’s legalize it.” In that way, what you do is you bring the abuses into the light. You bring in governmental regulating policies that protect second wives.
[This position is] controversial, that’s for sure. There are abuses, but to state that polygamy is uniformly abusive is just an outright lie. It’s a form of bigotry.
Although the interview is mostly about polygyny, she makes it clear that she supports polyandry, too.
Thank you, Professor Bennion for supporting the polygamous freedom to marry.
Monday, August 27, 2012
Polygynists, Obama, and Romney
I've mentioned before the polygyny in the heritage of both President Obama and his Republican challenger, Mitt Romney. Thanks to Jesse Walker at reason.com for calling my attention to McKay Coppins' article at buzzfeed.com, "Polygamists See Themselves in Romney, Obama Family Trees."
The article eventually gets to the Dargers, and Joe Darger supporting the Libertarian candidate for President.
Anne Wilde still clearly remembers the moment she watched Mitt Romney throw his heritage under the bus.And look how he's treated gays and lesbians who want to monogamously marry.
A practicing polygamist and leading advocate for "plural marriage" rights, Wilde had watched Romney's political rise over the years with an unusual sense of personal investment. She knew his agenda wouldn’t include the polygamist equality that she’d spent years fighting for as co-founder of the advocacy group Principle Voices. She knew he was just a politician trying to win an election.
But she also knew this was a man who came from a long family line of proud polygamists — ancestors who embodied the best qualities of the lifestyle she loved. And, in 2007, as Romney ascended to the top tier of the Republican presidential primary, Wilde found herself eagerly cheering him on.Really? He couldn't think of anything more awful than polygamy? Well, I suppose it is awful in a time and place where women are property, only men can have more than one partner, lesbians are force to marry men or be shunned and alone, and all of that. But under a system with gender equality, the freedom to not marry, and the freedom to divorce, a woman should be free to marry a man who is already married, provided all involved agree, and provided she is free to marry a woman if she wants to, or more than one woman, or more than one man, or a man and a woman.
Then, in May, Romney gave an interview to Mike Wallace of 60 Minutes, where the subject of polygamy came up.
"There is part of the history of the church's past that as I understand is troubling to people," the candidate said. "Look, the polygamy, which was outlawed in our church in the 1800s, that's troubling to me. I have a great-great grandfather. They were trying to build a generation out there in the desert. And so he took additional wives as he was told to do. And I must admit, I can't imagine anything more awful than polygamy."
Wilde was crushed.
Obama, meanwhile, has kept mum on the subject of his ancestral polygamy since entering the White House, Wilde said, though she suspects he wouldn't be quite so harsh, since he doesn't feel the same compulsion to overcompensate that his Mormon challenger does.
Image by Chris Ritter/Buzzfeed
As biographer David Maraniss reports in his book, Barack Obama: The Story, the president's great-grandfather was a polygamist in western Kenya — where it was a common practice in the Luo tribe — and took five wives, including two who were sisters. Obama's grandfather had four wives; and his father already had a wife in Kenya when he went to the University of Hawaii, fell in love with Ann Dunham, and married her.As for Romney...
In Romney's case, the practice was put to an end several generations ago, but the list of known polygamist relatives is much more expansive, thanks in part to his church’s commitment to genealogy research. Both of Romney’s paternal great-grandfathers, early leaders in the Mormon Church, practiced polygamy, and both spent much of their lives in Mexico, after fleeing a U.S. government crackdown on Mormon plural marriage. One of them had five wives; the other had four — and that's where it stopped. Romney's grandfather and father were born in a Mormon colony in Mexico, but both were monogamists.
Image by Chris Ritter/Buzzfeed
