Did the woman willfully enter into this "special" relationship? The kids will grow up thinking it is normally and the little girls will end up marrying some old man ie. mormons or mohamad (hmm m's, I wonder if that has something to do with it? off to start a conspiracy theory and to make a 2 hour video to sell)
I know the current standings of the official mormon church on polygamy, no news there. It is widely known that many of those who practice the older version of mormonism still also practice polygamy.
One might consider those "older versions" of Mormonism not to be Mormonism, since they obviously do not follow the Book of Mormon.
Polygamy only benefits women, children and a few men with the most resources. The only real losers are poor men without resources. They are left with few options to marry, have children, companionship etc etc. Anyone that thinks polygamy is a bad deal for women should imagine what a crappy deal it is for poor men.
Polygamy was started by Joseph Smith to be an everlasting doctrine (and is found in the D&C). It wasn't until Utah threatened to seceed from the nation that they decided maybe it wasn't such a good idea. It could be argued that the LDS are not the true Mormons because they turned their back on a key doctrine of God. Did you know that the LDS leaders at the time expected their members to die for the doctrine of Polygamy? They also passed their wives around like currency. The FLDS also followed Joseph Smith's brother rather than Brigham Young who caused much grief for the LDS church with his numerous rediculous doctrines that the church rejects today. I'd say they picked a better leader though I could be wrong as I havn't really studied their prophets. The only problem is society doesn't accept polygamy. Everything else is just like the LDS chuch.
What??? Since when was it supposed to be everlasting? http://scriptures.lds.org/od/1 God said so, so it's doctrine of God. How is that turning our backs on it? What??? Where do you get crazy ideas like this? More of those anti-mormon sites? Heck no, they didn't. The wives were cherished, and only special interviews and approvals allowed plural marriages to husbands that would cherish all of their wives, equally. Which church? FLDS or LDS? We don't reject true doctrine... You obviously haven't studied us as a whole, either. Go back to the SOURCE (www.mormon.org and www.lds.org) instead of those dumb anti-Mormon sites. You find what you look for. If you want lies to just spread crud about us, go to anti-Mormon sites. If you want what we REALLY are, go to the source. What do you mean by this? Take a read at this while you're at it.
I'm not disagreeing with either of you I'm not informed about the situation as a whole. However when somebody is saying your religion is wrong (or biased or whatever) you cant point them to official websites.. Obviously that would be altered. Thats like a Chinese guy saying that theres no censorship in china, then when I say I dont believe him, he says i should go to the official chinese goverment homepage.
So you would trust a website trying to tear down a religion rather than talking to a member of the church itself or referencing one of their websites?? Oh my gosh, what is this world coming to....
I got it all from the LDS Infobases which you can purchase at your local LDS bookstore. It's all electronic. So just do a search for "polygamy"
This is turning into another scriptural debate, which I refuse to participate in... I'm sick of them. Believe what you want. I can't change your minds.
The official line from the LDS church is that polygamy was no big thing that a few practiced. What they don't tell you is that they few were the prophets who shared wives. Those aren't scriptures.
Anything truly inspired from God and written down is considered scripture. LDS Church magazines, (Ensign, New Era, and Friend), conference talks, and even the D&C are considered scripture.
Its not my job to force my opinions of right and wrong on other people, and I dont want other people to force their opinions on me. If chosen to be polygamist, that's fine by me.
The question is on human rights for women and children. Why is this debate on scripture going on? Is it bad for women and children? Or as I stated is it primarily a violation of mens human rights? (poor men)
Wow. I suppose other religions would have to allow this as well, but you hardly ever hear people referring to 'present-day' writings as scripture ... Interesting point ...