“It's Not About The Sex” My Ass
  • Home
  • Preview book
  • Order book
  • Interviews
  • What is a cult?
  • About Joanne
  • Contact Joanne

Mormon history in the remaking

12/17/2013

0 Comments

 

The LDS (Mormon) Church officially
ended polygamy in 1890.

Which just officially changed.


After years of claiming to have ended official polygamy with its 1890 “Manifesto,” the Mormon Church has admitted that, well, okay, no it didn’t. In a new, carefully worded statement issued last week, the new claim is that the Manifesto didn’t end but “led to” official polygamy’s end:
“In 1890, the Lord inspired Church President Wilford Woodruff to issue a statement that led to the end of the practice of plural marriage in the Church. In this statement, known as the Manifesto, President Woodruff declared his intention to abide by U.S. law forbidding plural marriage and to use his influence to convince members of the Church to do likewise.”
—Official LDS web page, Plural Marriage and Families in Early Utah
Actually, Woodruff’s 1890 statement opened with a strongly-worded denial that polygamy had of late continued or would continue at all:
“We are not teaching polygamy or plural marriage, nor permitting any person to enter into its practice, and I deny that either forty or any other number of plural marriages have during that period been solemnized in our Temples or in any other place in the Territory.”
—LDS Church Official Declaration 1
Continuing with the church’s new 2013 statement:
“After the Manifesto, monogamy was advocated in the Church both over the pulpit and through the press. On an exceptional basis, some new plural marriages were performed between 1890 and 1904, especially in Mexico and Canada, outside the jurisdiction of U.S. law; a small number of plural marriages were performed within the United States during those years.”
—Official LDS web page, Plural Marriage and Families in Early Utah
Because everyone agrees that in “the only true and living church upon the face of the whole earth, with which I, the Lord, am well pleased,” you can wink at polygamy when only a few people are doing it. Especially if it’s on an exceptional basis.

Told you told you told you
that the church didn’t quit polygamy in 1820. As a matter of fact, we told you in Chapter 2 of “It’s Not About the Sex” My Ass, as highlighted in red in this excerpt:
The United States outlawed polygamy in 1862. Three years later, a few Mormon families would flee to Juarez, Mexico, where they could practice polygamy prosecution-free and remain in full fellowship with the mainstream Mormon Church. The polygamous emigrants’ leaders included Helaman Pratt, who surely never dreamed that half a century later his descendants would return to the United States, where eventually grandson George W. Romney and great-grandson Mitt Romney would become prominent politicians and Republican presidential candidates.

But the vast majority of Mormons remained in Utah Territory, where the Mormon Church ceased practicing polygamy in 1890—officially, anyway. In reality, the church looked the other way while phasing out polygamy over the next several decades. Ever since, rogue groups have been breaking away and reinstating it.

In 1993, my husband and I joined one of them ...
—“It’s Not About the Sex” My Ass: Confessions of an Ex-Mormon, Ex-Polygamist, Ex-Wife, Chapter 2.
•     •     •
0 Comments

Your comment will be posted after it is approved.


Leave a Reply.

    Picture
    Please share this site with friends by clicking on your favorites here:

    Reader reviews:
    Amazon reader reviews
    Audible listener reviews
    iBooks reader reviews
    B&N/Nook reader reviews​
    Free Inquiry's review of It's Not About the Sex My Ass
    Richard Packham's review of It's Not About the Sex My Ass
    Picture

    What's the difference between a cult and a religious cult? Click here.

    RSS Feed

    Archives

    December 2017
    October 2017
    September 2017
    July 2017
    June 2017
    May 2017
    April 2017
    March 2017
    January 2017
    December 2016
    November 2016
    October 2016
    September 2016
    August 2016
    July 2016
    June 2016
    April 2016
    March 2016
    February 2016
    January 2016
    December 2015
    November 2015
    October 2015
    September 2015
    August 2015
    July 2015
    June 2015
    May 2015
    April 2015
    March 2015
    February 2015
    January 2015
    December 2014
    November 2014
    October 2014
    September 2014
    July 2014
    June 2014
    May 2014
    April 2014
    March 2014
    February 2014
    January 2014
    December 2013
    November 2013
    October 2013
    September 2013
    August 2013
    July 2013
    June 2013
    May 2013
    April 2013
    March 2013
    February 2013
    January 2013
    December 2012
    November 2012
    October 2012
    September 2012
    August 2012
    July 2012
    June 2012