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Links mentioned in this podcast:
- Read the text of the post here.
- Buy the reading guide here.
- In Sacred Loneliness: The Plural Wives of Joseph Smith by Todd Compton (Salt Lake City: Signature Books)
- Brian Hales on Zina Smith Young
This series is amazing. I have everyone in the office subscribing. Thank you so much for all your hard work.
Poor henry. These podcasts are so fascinating.learning much more thani ever did in Sunday School!
Excellent, what a web site it is! This web site provides valuable facts to us, keep it up.
Oh boy, Lindsay. This one maybe sent me over the edge. I’ve always been able to “manage” with polygamy- and even JS with his many many wives, but I think I was detached enough, this personalized it in a way that I don’t know what to do with. So now I’m “there.” Yikes! Thanks for sharing!
Stay with us! We have an entire year to go!!! I promise you that working your way through it will help.
‘Time’ magazine, January 17th 2014
‘It Makes Economic Sense for a Woman to Have More Than One Husband’
by Judith Warner
Barbara Ehrenreich: “When you say to women, to get out of poverty you should get married, my question to them is how many men (do) you have to marry. Marrying a $10 an hour man gets you nowhere, so you’d really have to marry three or four.”
The above statement makes no sense. What Barbara Ehrenreich is describing is a matriarchal society. There is no “marry three or four”, or indeed “marriage” or “husband” or “wife” or “polyandry” or “polygamy” in a matriarchal society. All matriarchal society is concerned about is who is the mother of a child. The father of the child is almost always the brother of the mother, unless the brother is too young, in which case the father will be some other close blood relative. The inseminator or inseminators of the mother will always be from another clan. In a matriarchal society, the father of a child can never be the inseminator or one of the inseminators of the mother.
Matriarchal societies have been limited to savage societies.
All civilizations are polygamy civilizations, except for only one. Western Civilization, Minoan Civilization, Mycenaean Civilization, Hellenic Civilization, Christian Civilization, Protestant Civilization, Enlightened Civilization, and North America Civilization, forbids polygamy under any circumstances whatsoever, and limits every man to only one living wife.
In a patriarchal society not only must the mother of the child be known, but the inseminator of the mother must be known too. Western Civilization was established by marriage which combined the role of the inseminator and the father into one man.
As we can see from ‘The Iliad’ and ‘The Odyssey’ of several thousand years ago, and other classical writings, it is true that Western Civilization was not only unique among civilizations in strictly forbidding any man from having more than one living wife, but also unique in allowing a woman to have up to two living husbands.
But the marrying of two husbands was largely limited to women from the highest income classes, not women from the lowest income classes, as Barbara Ehrenreich proposes. And Barbara Ehrenreich becomes completely lost when she proposes that a woman, high income or not, be allowed “to marry three or four” so-called “husbands”. Western Civilization has never allowed that, and indeed it is physically impossible for a woman “to marry three or four” so-called “husbands”.
The purpose of Western Civilization marriage is for the husband or co-husband to share his “bed” and share his “board” with his one and only living wife, and to clothe and feed any children that are his, and for the wife to deliver to her husband a healthy son, and to deliver to her co-husband a healthy son.
It therefore follows that if a wife delivers to her husband a healthy son, she has completely fulfilled her marriage contract, and therefore has the right to take a co-husband in marriage. The woman’s marriage with her co-husband cuts off her husband from having another son, although the husband has all the daughters from both his marriage and the co-husband’s marriage. But after the woman marries her co-husband, any further sons belong solely to the co-husband. Indeed the co-husband can only have sons, as all daughters belong to the husband.
Remember, the sole purpose of a woman marrying a husband is to deliver to the husband a healthy son, and if she does so, she can decide to marry a co-husband with the same sole purpose of delivering to the co-husband a healthy son.
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sam http://www.net-ict.be/
I am just starting the Year of Polygamy and it is truly fascinating and heart breaking. I come from a pioneer polygamy background, and it’s bothered me my entire life.
Thank you for doing this podcast. I am listening to this one, Mormon expressions and Mormon expression voices. They help me feel less alone in my concerns.
This story is more personal than the others before it. It almost broke my heart, is sad
I’ve started from the beginning as you instruct. I feel the Spirit when I listen to these accounts. Thank you.
You feel what spirit?
Lovely website! I am loving it!! Will be back later to read some more. I am bookmarking your feeds also.
Definitely imagine that that you said. Your favorite reason appeared to be on the internet the simplest thing to understand of. I say to you, I certainly get irked at the same time as folks think about concerns that they just do not recognize about. You managed to hit the nail upon the top and also outlined out the whole thing with no need side effect , people can take a signal. Will probably be back to get more. Thanks
This one was hard. We hear about Joseph’s polyandry, never heard of Brigham’s. There was no need for him to marry this widow.