Pt 20-J: Ma, Pa, Me, and Polygamy on Parade

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People see what they want to see,
believe what they want to believe; 
It’s impossible to reason
with an irrational person. 
 Stephany Spencer

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I left off in “Pt 20-I: Ma, Pa, Me, and Polygamy on Parade” saying in the cult I came from, a Mormon fundamentalist man usually did not turn down a needy “woman in distress” — if she asked him to marry her. Most men usually don’t. Especially would-be Mormon White Knights in shining armor — especially if polygamy is “the law;” i.e., part of their religious tenets!

This is only one example of how the foot-washing, stoic, three-ring circus of “The Law of Celestial Marriage” works — The “BED-lam” Joe Smith and Brig Young spawned in this helluva world. I’ve coined their so-called “Celestial Law” The Lawless Law of Telestial Marriage: The orthodox Mormon law that undoes what it took civilization 2000 years to build!

It’s barbaric, deplorable, and inexcusable that any religion could teach doctrines that break up marriages, families, and civilized life — and create laws that leave the wife broken-hearted, betrayed, her home downtrodden, and her life and that of her kids smashed to smithereens.

Often, as said previously, thanks to the numerous problems involved in trying to live polygamy, children are all too often left to grow up fatherless. And the wife is forced to be both mother and father to her huge family of small kids – a sure way to instigate misery, poverty, deprivation — and the perfect recipe for under-class living.

As mentioned before, this is what happened in my father’s case. His oldest children still at home and even his Jr-High-age children had to quit school and go to work to help support Daddy’s abandoned family. His betrayed wife Eva had to leave the home and become a minimum-wage-earner.

He had 11 children with Eva. They ranged from 23 years of age to an infant not quite two months old When Eva divorced Daddy six months after he married my mother as his plural wife.

Who was left to tend the house and babies? The older children, of course. They had to play mama to the younger ones — had to grow up too fast in order to take on the responsibilities of premature homemakers. That’s what happened! Unfortunately, all of the above is a typical scenario most broken families endure, thanks to Mormon plural-marriage doctrines.

I’m not proud of what my sister and others like her do/did. I’m sad and chagrined that my brainwashed young Mother unknowingly and unwittingly had a part in the dire loss, suffering, and hell Daddy’s first wife and children went through, quadrupled by the fact they grew up without a father — if only because Daddy’s first wife couldn’t endure the pain of abuse, betrayal, and polygamy.

Unfortunately, it was part of Mother’s fundamentalist Mormon upbringing to break up marriages and leave behind a trail of tears and destruction. Of course, these stoic masochists never consider it “breaking up marriages.” They consider it “following God’s Commandments and putting ‘doing what’s right’ above all else”– because “the more you suffer the greater your rewards in heaven.”

Bear in mind most of those brainwashed to believe in polygamy wouldn’t possibly live this lifestyle if their “profit” J. Smith hadn’t Commanded it. And if they didn’t believe their salvation depended on it, come hell or high water. (See Mormon Scriptures: Revelation, 12 July 1843 [D&C 132], Page 1 – The Joseph Smith Papers

Nevertheless, Mother, though she wouldn’t admit it to herself, could never stand to have done to her what she did to others: Caught between a rock and a hard spot, she never practiced polygamy with Father — except in the first six months of marriage as Father’s plural wife before Eva divorced him.

In their following 22 years of marriage after Eva left, Mother probably always intended to practice plural marriage once more but she procrastinated so never had to further endure living this dire law with Pa.

He married Mama in around 1943 as his second wife, his attempt to have a harem in order to follow his Prophet Joseph Smith’s commandment to live polygamy or be damned. But Mama soon ended up Papa’s only wife, just as he soon ended up monogamous again.

So it bears repeating: Mama never practiced what she preached and believed. She couldn’t — especially when it came to “practicing polygamy:” She never lived Plural Marriage with Papa the twenty-two years she had him — her handsome hard-working hunk — all to herself. She just talked about it.

(Continued August 2, 2018, in “Pt 20, A-J: Polygamy on Parade”)

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