Rich Man: Poor Women- Ann Romney & Work

                   “Do not judge according to appearance, but judge with righteous judgment.”  John 7:24

                 Romney, by his own use of the words, "work" and "dignity of work" has defined these words as something his own wife did not do.

                 Romney insisted in January,

"I wanted to increase the work requirement," said Romney. "I said, for instance, that even if you have a child 2 years of age, you need to go to work. And people said, 'Well that's heartless.' And I said, 'No, no, I'm willing to spend more giving day care to allow those parents to go back to work. It'll cost the state more providing that daycare, but I want the individuals to have the dignity of work."

                Just not if the individual is his wife.  

                Thus, Romney asserts that women who have children 2 years old MUST, by GOVERNMENT DICTATE, abandon their children to the day care of strangers because they are not “working” IN the home.   [Sounds like the BIG GOVERNMENT Socialism that Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity are warning about, right?]  Thus, President Romney's decree would "increase the work requirement" because he wants "the individuals to have the dignity of work," rather than lazing and loafing around home with the kids.  In fact, Romney’s family values are so strong that he would rather increase the government deficit by spending more government money to compel women back into the  workforce.

                Just not if that woman is his wife.

                Clearly, he did not want his wife to “have the dignity of work.”   Whatever she was doing at home, by Romney’s definition of “dignity” and “work,” it could not have been that.  And now that a Democrat has merely copied his definition of these words, Mitt Romney, housewife Romney, and virtually the entire Republican spin doctor machine are pretending a moral outrage at their own use of the word “work!”

                By any standard of justice, Romney’s own words have condemned him and highlighted his own Pharisaic attitudes.   It highlights the double standard he would apply to poor women.   Like his casual comment that $360,000 was “not very much money” to him,  It again shows how out-of-touch he is with the average woman, even though he understands privileged women quite well.

                Perhaps Mormon Bishop Romney should restudy St. John.  “Do not judge according to appearance, but judge with righteous judgment.” (John 7:24)  Or Matthew 7:1-2:  “Judge not, that you be not judged.  For with what judgment you judge, you will be judged; and with the measure you use, it will be measured back to you.”

Source of Polygamy Revelations: Male Libido or Mind of God?

The issue of the role of women in the Christian, Muslim, and Jewish religions, including the polygamy issue with the Jewish patriarchs and the Muslim and Mormon prophets goes back to the fact that all these religions are embedded in a primitive Bedouin-like tribal culture.  This culture viewed women as chattel male-owned property.   This was so deeply embedded in the culture of 2000 B.C.  that it appeared in the 10 commandments.

The commandment in question reads:  "Thou shalt not covet your neighbor's house, wife, male-slave, female-slave, ox, or ass; in sum, any of your neighbor's property." 

Thus, our slaveholding Confederate forefathers justified slaveholding as a divine command.  And just so, this passage of the Bible continues to be the Cornerstone of male-dominated religious philosophies for the sexual politics regarding women.  Of course, there are multiple other Old Testament passages that reinforce the foundation of patriarchy; not the least of which is the simple matter of exclusively male pronouns for the person of God.  Before the women's movement in the 1960s, women were to be seen and not heard from in the churches. 

I recall intense discussions in church Bible study groups over the biblical role of women.  Certain literalists, including some  Phyllis Schlafly-like women, argued passionately that all the male pronouns referring to God in the Bible absolutely proved that God was male.  This crude anthropomorphism was virtually incomprehensible to me.   Yet in a nut-shell it encapsulates the entire more sophisticated apologetics of male patriarchies like the Catholic Church:  Jesus was male, the Apostles were male, Elohim and all the Hebrew pronouns are male, therefore God must be male and there can only be male Catholic priests.  One day I was so exasperated with such literal anthropomorphism that I decided to push its proponents to their philosophy's logical extreme.  I challenged them with the question of how one determined the sex of a human being at birth.  Then I answered my own question:  You look at the child's genitalia and see if the newborn has a penis or a vagina!  Do you think God has either a vagina or a penis?  The suggestion that God might have a vagina was surely the most shocking thought, but I believe that even picturing God the Father with a penis was sufficiently shocking to make my parents sink through their pews in shame.  That's possibly why iconoclastic Christians and Muslims took quite literally the 10 commandment demand forbidding any making of "graven images."  In Christian pictoral art, we've pictured God with secondary sexual characteristics, like male facial hair and testosterone enhanced upper body strength.   This has reinforced our millenial tradition of literally "picturing" or conceiving of God as male.  But can God be male in any normal use of the English language without a penis, two testes, a scrotum, and a prostate?

Thus when I read about Mormon prophets who seem quite convinced that when they speak--Verily, verily--God is speaking, when I hear them extolling the blessings of the everlasting principle of polygamy, I ask myself:  Do they really believe God is speaking through them?  Or are they consciously aware that they are bamboozling "the elect" because they have are unable to control the excess testosterone coursing through their system?  It makes me have a fuller appreciation for the "fertility religions" with their phallic symbols.  I also wonder what the Mormon women were thinking.  Did they believe that God was a ventriloquist speaking through their husbands and commanding them to endorse their husbands' taking multiple younger wives?

We know that Emma Smith did not believe Joseph Smith Jr. was speaking for God when he, Smith, and HE, God dictated Doctrine and Covenants Section 132 commanding Emma to accept Smith's multiple wives under pain of divine destruction.  We know that Orson Pratt, Apostle (of polygamy), who extolled polygamy as "one of the greatest blessings of the last dispensation," had a first wife Sarah M. Pratt who damned polygamy as the "direst curse with which a people or a nation could be afflicted. . . .  It completely demoralizes good men, and makes bad men correspondingly worse.  As for the women--well, God help them!  First wives it renders desperate, or else heart-broken, mean-spirited creatures; and it almost unsexes some of the other women, but not all of them, for plural wives have their sorrows too."   Mary Ann Angell Young, Brigham Young's second wife described the once most favored wife of Young, Emmeline Free Young, finally experiencing "the torments of the damned" once she too was replaced by a younger, newly more favored wife.  Zina D. Jacobs Smith Young, another plural wife of Brigham Young, while espousing the patriarchy's line for public consumption, ("The principle of plural marriage is honorable.  It is a principle of the gods, it is heave born."), described her fellow plural wives "whose hearts are full of hell" and who would love to "tear his [Brigham Young's] eyes out."  Phebe Woodruff, first wife of Prophet-President Wilford Woodruff, who also praised polygamy for public consumption said in private:  "I loathe the unclean thing with all the strength of my nature."  Then she explained that she was forced to "say anything commanded of me" because otherwise she would be "turned out of my home in my old age which I should most assuredly be if I refused to obey counsel."[i]  Thus, we have the testimony of at least three wives of three of the Mormon’s original President-Prophets.   Not only do they use the words “curse,” “torments of the damned,” and “hearts full of hell,”  but they testify to the dictatorial, tyrannical character of these husband prophets who would throw aged, decrepit wives into the streets if they would not publically proclaim the fictitious blessings of “celestial marriages.”  And these are the men whose writings are accepted as the “Word of God,” and whose doctrines must be as slavishly submitted to today as their wives had to submit during the heyday of Mormon polygamy!?!

          When Christians hear of Muslim men who believe that if they become suicide bombers they will be rewarded in the afterlife with the favors of 40 virgins, it does not take them too long to come to the conclusion that the revelation that established this doctrine originated in an overheated, sexually frustrated, alpha male brain and not the mind of God.  So why should Christians, even Mormon Christians, find it difficult to believe that the revelations establishing polygamy in Mormonism have the same origins?

                Men, including myself, are not infrequently accused by the everyday wisdom of women of letting our penises do too much of our thinking for us.  I strongly suspect that the wives of the Mormon prophets I’ve quoted above would agree with that sentiment in regards to their husbands.   I think that they, if given a multiple choice question, rather than choosing the option that when the prophet spoke, God was speaking—they’d opt for the opinion that when the prophet spoke, it was his penis that was doing the talking.

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[i] Again see Van Wagoner’s Mormon Polygamy referenced in the previous blog; particularly chapter nine, “Women in Polygamy.”

Muslims & Mormons: Prophetic Polygamy

      

                One of the common divine revelations shared by both the Muslim and Mormon Prophets was the concept of polygamy.  Yet while to most Mormons today polygamy is like a leprous skeleton they'd rather keep in the closet, Muslims still practice polygamy while Mormons have temporarily suspended the practice.  Yet Mormon prophets repeatedly insisted that polygamy was an everlasting, divine commandment that was essential to Mormon males fulfilling their full divine potential.  So while Muslims are strict monotheists, Mormon males hoped to procreate innumerable divine-human hybrids to populate the stellar universe.  In effect, they were all little gods in the making who hoped to imitate the ascent of God via the pleasures of celestial marriages.  

         Yes, their prophet told them that God was once as they are now and that they could become as God is now--through the "recovery" of polygamous, celestial marriages that Prophet Joseph Smith had rediscovered.  Now this clashes with the orthodox Christian teaching that there are only 3 Gods, or, more conventionally put, a 3 in 1 Triune God.  Nevertheless, Mormons are extremely anxious to be classified as Christians-- as you will easily find on their websites.  Everything is tailored, one might better say camouflaged, to mimic orthodox, traditional Christian concepts. 

                Take for instance the concept of prophet.  They  emphasize certain Christian Bible passages to create the impression that their prophet is essentially the same as all the biblical prophets; they downplay the idea that these prophets can create new, un-orthodox theology at will; they forget to mention that these prophets did so with the concept of polygamy.  They cannot avoid mentioning the fact that the book of Mormon is considered to be equally the "WORD of God," thus making non-sense of the concept of Sola Scriptura, but they don't display the fact that their prophet re-wrote the Bible at will to create his own correct "translation" of the Bible. 

        They don't let you know the amazing fact that their prophet proclaimed:  "I am going to tell you how God came to be God."  Or that he went on to that just as God is a "self-existent being," "Man does exist upon the same principles."  "The first principles of man are self-existent with God."  Their prophet acknowledged that orthodox Christians would account such ideas as "blasphemy."  "But," he insisted, "I am learned, and know more than all the world put together."  Thus, his successor prophet could say with equal divine authority:

“Polygamy is a divine institution.  It has been handed down direct from God.  The United States cannot abolish it.”

President/Prophet/Seer, John Taylor

                One of Mormon's more notorious prophets, Pratt, even speculated that Jesus' relationship with Mary, Martha, and Mary Magdalene may have been polygamous.    He used the Muslim practice of polygamy as the basis for his over generous estimation  that four-fifths of the world believed in a plurality of wives.  Now with the equivalence that many make between Muslims and terrorism, compounded with the right-wing assertion that President Obama is somehow a Muslim secret agent, Mormons would like to minimize their similarities with the Muslim religion.   Many politically partisan,  right-wing, Christian evangelicals who hint that President Obama is not a "real" Christian or "real" American, especially of the Birther persuasion, could, with greater validity, emphasize the parallels between the Muslim theology regarding women and the Mormon theology regarding women. 

        The United States is engaged in a nation-building effort in Afghanistan which has as one of its components an effort to change the Muslim treatment of women.  A lot of male Muslims feel it is an essential part of their religion to keep their women veiled or completely shuttered behind burkas.  Terrorist Muslims that feel this way have bombed girl's schools because they feel more sexually secure if their women remain uneducated, remaining behind the closed doors of their kitchens and bedrooms.   In other words, both Muslim and Mormon polygamy goes back to deep-seated religious concepts about the proper role of women.  When the U.S. government confiscated Mormon property and withheld statehood until the Mormon prophets received revelations in 1890 and 1904 to suspend the practice of polygamy, this modified the retrograde Mormon practices regarding women.   However, it did not change their underlying religious psychology regarding women.  Mormons practiced polygamy because God said so.  Only men can be have priestly authority in the LDS Mormon church, (as opposed to different practices in the Reformed Mormons), because--God said so: 

           Gordon B. Hinckley, prior President  and Prophet of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, said:

“Women do not hold the priesthood because the Lord has put it that way."

        Interestingly, that could change with a new revelation.   The God who revealed the TRUTH about a segregated white priesthood only was a racist God up until 1978 when he became a non-discriminatory, equal-opportunity God who gave a "Thus saith the Lord" to the 1978 Mormon Prophet-President permitting blacks into the priesthood--if one literally believes that God operates like that.  Therefore, perhaps the current or future Mormon Prophet-President will get a revelation permitting Women to hold the priesthood in the LDS Mormon Church.  Stranger things have happened.

Romney's Testosterone Theocracy and Women



               A Washington Post/ABC News poll of April 2012 showed that women preferred Mr. Obama to Mr. Romney by 19 percentage points.  In my last blog I showed how this gender gap is result of latent suspicion of Mormon polygamy/patriarchy.  Women were religiously coerced into "giving" a pro forma consent.   Women had to pretend to like polygamy as religious penance, duty.  Like European kings enjoyed the divine right of kings, Mormon males enjoyed the priestly divine right of polygamy.  Vestiges of this mentality are still deeply "imbedded" in Mormon patriarchs such as Mitt Romney.  It is as inconceivable to the indoctrinated male Mormon that he must predominate as priest as it would be inconceivable to the Pope to have Catholic priestesses.

                Today the LDS church admits that Joseph Smith practiced polygamy.  In fact, they suggest that he only did so because God commanded him to do it, and he did so with a measure of reticence—somewhat like Abraham reluctantly being willing to kill his son, Isaac.  (They imply that although both murder and polygamy seemed contrary to God’s express will, both Abraham and Joseph Smith obeyed in faith because of God’s direct, personal revelation to them).  But if Mormons practiced polygamy because God commanded it as an “everlasting covenant” that was essential to salvation, why do only a minority of Mormons champion polygamy today?  Because, as I will detail later,  God commanded the opposite via the prophetic successor to Joseph Smith—supposedly.  God commanded polygamy in a 1842 revelation  via prophet Smith; God commanded the opposite in 1890 via prophet Woodruff.

                But there is evidence demonstrating that Smith was secretly practicing polygamy well before his 1842 revelation while publically denying practicing it.  It was not until 1852 that the LDS Church publicly admitted to the practice of plural marriage. This was 8 years after Joseph Smith was murdered. This is why many LDS are surprised to learn that Joseph Smith was ever a participant in plural marriage.

                "The same God that has thus far dictated me and directed me and strengthened me in this work, gave me this revelation and commandment on celestial and plural marriage, and the same God commanded me to obey it. He said to me that unless I accepted it, and introduced it, and practiced it, I, together with my people would be damned and cut off from this time henceforth. We have got to observe it. It is an eternal principle and was given by way of commandment and not by way of instruction." - Prophet Joseph Smith, Contributor, Vol. 5, p. 259

How does a eternal principle only last from 1842 to 1890?  Actually, when one reads the 1890 revelation, one realizes that it is sufficiently ambiguous to allow multiple interpretations.  The historical context proves that the intent was to temporarily put polygamy underground.  The prophets, apostles, and quorum leaders had two goals:  1)  To get back property that the U.S. government had confiscated in an attempt to force Mormons to abandon polygamy; 2) To obtain statehood and then to employ states’ rights and state sovereignty power to be able to continue to practice polygamy without the interference of the national government.

                Below is a direct, extensive quote from the Mormon Scriptures of the 1890 Manifesto from the official Mormon website.  It is given so that readers can absorb the flavor of the actual text for themselves.

“Official Declaration—1

To Whom It May Concern:

 Press dispatches having been sent for political purposes, from Salt Lake City, which have been widely published, to the effect that the Utah Commission, in their recent report to the Secretary of the Interior, allege that plural marriages are still being solemnized and that forty or more such marriages have been contracted in Utah since last June or during the past year, also that in public discourses the leaders of the Church have taught, encouraged and urged the continuance of the practice of polygamy—

                 I, therefore, as President of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, do hereby, in the most solemn manner, declare that these charges are false. 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.

                 One case has been reported, in which the parties allege that the marriage was performed in the Endowment House, in Salt Lake City, in the Spring of 1889, but I have not been able to learn who performed the ceremony; whatever was done in this matter was without my knowledge. In consequence of this alleged occurrence the Endowment House was, by my instructions, taken down without delay.

                Inasmuch as laws have been enacted by Congress forbidding plural marriages, which laws have been pronounced constitutional by the court of last resort, I hereby declare my intention to submit to those laws, and to use my influence with the members of the Church over which I preside to have them do likewise.

                 There is nothing in my teachings to the Church or in those of my associates, during the time specified, which can be reasonably construed to inculcate or encourage polygamy; and when any Elder of the Church has used language which appeared to convey any such teaching, he has been promptly reproved. And I now publicly declare that my advice to the Latter-day Saints is to refrain from contracting any marriage forbidden by the law of the land.

Wilford Woodruff

President of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.”

                There are two striking observations that stand out from this text.  First, the salutation, “to whom it may concern,” sounds more like an impersonal press release.  Second, the first three paragraphs are merely a denial of various polygamy charges.  (And these denials have all been demonstrated to be falsehoods, an oddity to be included in divine revelations).  Third, Prophet Woodruff merely announces his reluctant intention to submit to anti-polygamy laws (whereas there is later documentation that the Prophet and many of his Apostles did their best to evade); there is no revelatory announcement that polygamy was immoral or that the previous revelations stating that polygamy was a divine command and essential for priests’ salvation and godly ascension were erroneous.   In sum, prophet Woodruff had previously stated that “the doctrine of plural marriage has come to stay for all time,” and his 1890 Manifesto was manifestly interpreted, within and without the Mormon Church, to be “a little bit of harmless dodging to deceive the people of the East [federal authorities].”  Or as Apostle mariner W. Merrill said in his diary:  “I do not believe the Manifesto was a revelation from God but was formulated by Prest. Woodruff and endorsed by His counselors and the Twelve Apostles for expediency.”[i]  The fact that the prophets and apostles of the church sanctified hundreds of celestial marriages after 1890 and another 1904 revelatory Manifesto was needed to discourage continued practice of polygamy amply demonstrate that the 1890 Manifesto could not annul an “eternal and unchangeable law.”  Thus, polygamy is a dormant eternal principle which could be reactivated at any moment by the current Prophet, Seer, and Revelator of the Mormon Church getting a divine revelation to that effect.

                In the larger context of this entire blog, this series on Mormon claims is simply one illustration of the question of how does one methodically evaluate the evidence for a Truth claim.  Why would one believe that Joseph Smith, Jr. got a revelation in 1842 that his wife, Emma Smith, and all Mormon women should concur to their husbands taking multiple sexual partners?  Why should one believe that Prophet Brigham Young got confirmatory revelations?   Namely:  “"The only men who become Gods, even the Sons of God, are those who enter into polygamy.”  Why would one believe that Woodruff got a revelation to the opposite effect?

                The authoritative Mormon answer is simply that if you exercise sufficient faith, simply reading Joseph Smith’s, Brigham Young’s and President Woodruff’s with faith will make their divine authenticity self-evident because they are inherently revelatory of their divine origin.

                The official Mormon websites teach that Joseph Smith’s pronouncements on polygamy are the word of God even if the Bible as translated and understood for hundreds of years supported monogamy.  Because anything in the Bible that contradicts Mormon teaching was simply mistranslated.  And even if not, since any of the Mormon prophets from Joseph Smith to Thomas S. Monson, “God’s chosen prophet today,” can divinely reverse, re-translate, or re-interpret any Christian doctrine. Because, proclaims an official Mormon website:  God “continues to send living prophets. Joseph Smith (1805–44) was the first prophet of our time.  Thomas S. Monson is God’s chosen prophet today.”  Their 8^th article of fundamental belief is:  “We believe the Bible to be the word of God as far as it is translated correctly; we also believe the Book of Mormon to be the word of God.”

                Thus, today’s Mormon “maleotheocracy” with its full complement of testosterone are very literally and practically the voice of God to their people.  Their Fifth Male Prophet/President Lorenzo Snow divinely announced:  “As man is, God once was.  As God is, man may become.”  But actually, they don’t have to wait to become as God is.  When they speak, it’s God speaking—Here and Now!

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[i] For the quotes found in the previous blog and today’s blog see Richard S. Van Wagoner, (son of polygamous ancestors), Mormon Polygamy A History, Second Edition (Salt Lake City: Signature Books, 1989) and Richard N. Ostling and Joan K. Ostling’s Mormon America (New York: HarperCollins, 1999).

Mitt's Mormon Male Divinity Doctrine: Origin of Romney's Gender Gap

"The only men who become Gods, even the Sons of God, are those who enter into polygamy.” (Brigham Young, second president of the LDS Church, in Journal of Discourses, Vol. 11, p. 269, August 19, 1866).

“Polygamy is a divine institution.  It has been handed down direct from God.  The United States cannot abolish it.”

President/Prophet/Seer, John Taylor

                Mitt Romney’s gender gap with women ultimately originates with his Mormon heritage as illustrated in the above quotation.  Brigham Young was not only the second Mormon president, he was its Seer, Prophet, and Revelator.  Just like the founder of the Mormon religion, Joseph Smith, was a Seer, Prophet and Revelator.   Both men claimed to have revelations giving them the privilege of having multiple sexual partners.  Joseph Smith, Jr. claimed that having multiple wives was “the most holy and important doctrine ever revealed to man on earth,”  because it was absolutely essential to fulfilling a man’s destiny of being a God.  President/Prophet/Seer John Taylor was adamant that polygamy must be everlasting when pressured by the federal government to abandon an “essential” of his faith.  He claimed God spoke to him saying:  “All commandments that I give must be obeyed unless they are revoked by me or by my authority and how can I revoke an everlasting covenant for I the Lord am everlasting and my everlasting covenants cannot be abrogated not done away with but they stand forever.”  “I have not revoked this law nor will I for it is everlasting and those who will enter into my glory must obey the conditions thereof, even so amen.”  Thus, God’s spokesmen marshaled all the religious, social, and psychological resources imaginable to coerce Mormon women to accept polygamous marriages.

                Even contemporary, official Mormon church sources explain that Mormons practice polygamy only because God commanded them to.  Thus, the multiple wives of the first seven Mormon presidents, prophets, and revelators were indoctrinated that they must cooperate with their husbands quest for godhood and multiple wives--because God commanded it.  Refusing obedience to God’s commands would destine them to hell.   According to the Mormon church website, the revelations of these polygamous revelators supersede and augment the Bible.   When asked why these men practiced polygamy, they respond:  “At various times, the Lord has commanded His people to practice plural marriage. For example, He gave this command to Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Moses, David, and Solomon (Doctrine and Covenants 132:1).”  Doctrine and Covenants is part of the Mormon “Bible.”  Thus, this is cited as the source of God’s commands, a “Thus saith the Lord.”

                If you read D&C 132 (Doctrine and Covenants), you will discover the odd revelation that Joseph Smith, Jr. wrote out to convince his wife that she would go to hell if she did not “consent” to let him have multiple wives.  Smith starts out by arguing that there is Old Testament precedent, (paraphrased and revised in D&C), for God commanding polygamy:  “God commanded Abraham, and Sarah gave Hagar to Abraham to wife. And why did she do it? Because this was the law; and from Hagar sprang many people.”  In other words, in Smith’s prophetic exegesis, polygamy was God’s idea, he commanded it, his command was “the law,” and Sarah obeyed.  Smith also taught that “God himself was once as we are now, and is an exalted Man,” that the “mind or the intelligence which man possesses is coequal with God himself (Smith’s King Follett Discourse).”   Men are gods and God was once man.  But to realize men’s divinity fully they had to be polygamous, create “many people” via celestial, eternal marriages who would populate planets, solar systems, and mini-universes over which the polygamous man would reign eternally as a local god, like the “God once man” now rules over our known universe.  This is the point of Smith’s emphasis that “from Hagar sprang many people.”

                Smith continues in D&C 132 to emphasize that far from being sinful, sexual intercourse with multiple wives is righteous!  “Abraham received concubines, and they bore him children; and it was accounted unto him for righteousness.” “David also received many wives and concubines, and also Solomon and Moses my servants, as also many others of my servants, from the beginning of creation until this time; and in nothing did they sin (emphasis added).”  “David’s wives and concubines were given unto him of me, by the hand of Nathan, my servant, and others of the prophets who had the keys of this power.” 

                The “keys of this power” is critical.  Joseph Smith conveniently had already received in previously revelations, and in this revelation, the authority to control the keys of power: the ability to decide which men should get which multiple wives.  His believers and especially his wife had already acknowledged that God had given him divine authority; she could hardly back down on this.  Therefore, if Joseph Smith, Jr. announced to her that God had given him a revelation that he should have multiple sexual partners, for a holy, celestial purpose, of course, she would have to accept it.  Indeed, the historical context was that Seer Smith had already secretly been taking extra conjugal partners and was trying to convince his wife to consent.   He and his brother hit upon the concept of a revelation directly specifically at Mrs. Smith commanding her to comply with Mr. Smith’s desires.  God said, via prophet Smith, “let mine handmaid, Emma Smith, receive all those [additional nubile virgins] that have been given unto my servant Joseph.”  “But if she will not abide this commandment she shall be destroyed, saith the Lord; [not saith Joseph Smith],for I am the Lord thy God, and will destroy her if she abide not in my law.”

                Eventually, most of the alpha males of the early Mormon used their god status to convince their first wives of their religious obligation to help their husbands develop their godhood into a more exalted godhood by taking additional wives who, when the patriarchs were between thirty-six and forty-five, were 19 years old on average.  After all, "The only men who become Gods, even the Sons of God, are those who enter into polygamy.”  Note that only men are becoming gods; the women are merely helpmates assisting them in their ascent.

                Thus, an authoritarian patriarchy became firmly established in Mormonism that outlasted the “everlasting” divine command of polygamy.  Mormon leaders preached:  “If any of you will deny the plurality of wives and continue to do so, I promise that you will be damned (Brigham Young 1855).”  “Celestial marriage,” a euphemism for multiple eternal wives, “is for the fullness of the glory of god, it is the crowning glory, a man has no right to one wife unless he is worthy of two.”  Men who disregard the divine command to take multiple wives “are in the same situation as if they broke any other law, they are transgressors (Francis M. Lyman, president of the Quorum of the Twelve).”  “Instead of a plurality of wives being a cause of sorrow to females, it is one of the greatest blessings of the last dispensation, it gives them the great privilege of being united to a righteous man (Apostle Orson Pratt).”  “Unless that principle [of multiple wives] is observed and acted upon, you can proceed no further with the full fellowship of God (Prophet Joseph Smith to Apostle John Taylor).”   Women blocking their husbands further ascent into godhood were seen as contemptible.  Men allowing their first wives to prevent them from acquiring more wives, and the higher godhood concomitant with them, were viewed as wimps.  Said Prophet and Seer Wilford Woodruff: “Any man who permits a woman to lead him and bind him down is but little account in the church and Kingdom of God.”  Thus women were systematically brow-beaten with prophetic “Thus saith the Lords” and subjugated into a reflexive submission.  Sarah D. Rich, wife of Apostle Charles C. Rich explained that she would never have participated in polygamy except that the Lord’s Prophets convinced her that it was “one principal of his [God’s] gospel once again restored to earth, that those holding the preasthood [sic] of heaven might by obeying this order attain to a higher glory in the eternal world.”  And, of course, like in the Catholic Church, only males could hold the priesthood and the keys to loose and bind the divine order on earth as it is in heaven.  Thus, male dominance was institutionalized; men were indoctrinated that they alone had certain priestly prerogatives.  Women were inculcated that their men were literally the voice of God to them.  In our continuing series on Mormon doctrines we will see how years after these revelations were given, male prophetic authority was used in the 1970s to quash independent Mormon women’s organizations and female leaders who lobbied for the Equal Rights Amendment; how their financial and organizational resources were subjugated to male authority.

                The divine right of kings was the ideology underlying the European monarchies.  Mormon males are inculcated that they are literally gods now in the process of becoming even more exalted gods; they have a certain priesthood that has been endowed with the keys of power equivalent, if not greater, then the “keys of the kingdom” which the Vatican teaches that Christ confided to St. Peter and his successors, the infallible popes.

                The women of 2012 can sense this male superiority that pervades, unquestioned and unquestionable, Mormon teaching and tradition.  It is pervasive, both explicitly and implicitly, in a whole range of attitudes, actions, and positions of the Romney candidacy. 

                Romney's great grandfather, Miles Park Romney, was among the most fanatical polygamists who went so far as to exile themselves to Mexico specifically in order to continue to practice polygamy and an authoritarian priesthood aiming at attaining ever greater degrees of divinity via celestial marriages.  It’s in his spiritual blood.

Romney's Prophets Claim Mormons "only true Chruch" others apostates

               According to the Mormon church, their prophet, Joseph Smith, had the most marvelous theophany in the world’s history since Christ’s Resurrection.  Their current prophet, the President of the Mormon church, holds the divine keys directly from Joseph Smith; and Smith received his authority from his First Vision.   Said Prophet Gordon B. Hinckley in 2005: “This grand theophany is, in my judgment, the greatest such event since the birth, life, death, and Resurrection of our Lord in the meridian of time. We have no record of any other event to equal it."  This miraculous revelation was especially supernatural because the biblical prophets were only visited by one person of the Trinity; however, in Joseph Smith’s First Vision, both God the Father and God the Son appeared to him personally. 

                Despite the earth-shattering importance of this First Vision, Smith only mentioned it years later in several inconsistent and evolving accounts.  However, the central teaching of the First Vision was that all other Christian churches had apostatized and that God anointed Smith to found “the one true church.”

                For example, According to President Henry B. Eyring, First Counselor in the First Presidency:

 “This is the true Church, the only true Church, because in it are the keys of the priesthood. Only in this Church has the Lord lodged the power to seal on earth and to seal in heaven as He did in the time of the Apostle Peter. Those keys were restored to Joseph Smith, who then was authorized to confer them upon the members of the Quorum of the Twelve.”

                In other words, the current president/prophet of the Mormon church derives his divine authority directly from the keys “restored to Joseph Smith” directly from God the Father and Christ the Son during this First Vision, certifying the truth that all other Christian churches became heretical and that Mormonism is the one and only true church.  This is the origin of Mormon’s “special” doctrines such as celestial marriages, polygamous marriages, that men could evolve into gods, and that the current Mormon President gets revelations, (like the 1970s revelation abandoning divine support for racial segregation in the highest Mormon caste of priests).

                Since the founding of the Mormon church, historical Christian churches considered the Mormon church to be a sect and its reputed founder and prophet a charlatan.  In fact, the Mormons would like Americans to forget that in 1856 the Republican Party’s platform condemned both slavery and polygamy; and that only after the U.S. Army fought a war with the Mormons did the current Mormon prophet get a revelation recommending that Mormons abandon polygamy.   Thus, for decades, the Mormon church has struggled to present itself as part of "regular" Christianity, part of the mainstream.    In America, nothing succeeds like success, and by all statistical measures, the Mormon church and Mormons have been a success.  Presidential candidate Mitt Romney has certainly been a financial success and winning the presidency will win the ultimate prize in respectability--on a par with the first mulatto president.

                                Thus, one tends to forget that while Christendom held its nose at the birth of Mormonism, Mormonism came into existence predicated on the belief that all of Christendom was polluted with the stench of apostasy and that Joseph Smith founded the "only true Church."

                Indeed, the highest authorities in the Latter-day Saints (LDS) Church currently claim that all the other evangelical and Catholic churches have lapsed into apostasy and that their church is the "only true church."

                                The Mormon church is a fantastic case study in how and why millions of people today could come to believe that what the vast majority of Americans in the 1830s considered to be a ludicrous and dangerous masquerade  was actually the true church sealed by the keys of a special priesthood as restored to Joseph Smith.

Man, Attacked by Lion-Saved by Bear

              Mr. Biggs, the man who claimed he was saved by a mother bear from an attacking mountain lion, provided his backpack to the California Department of Fish and Game (DFG) for testing (See previous blog: Extraordinary Claims Demand Extraordinary Evidence).  Kirsten Macintyre, DFG spokesperson released the results of the testing which showed no evidence of any bear or mountain lion, not even a single hair.  Furthermore, the backpack had only one small tear of approximately a half inch.  According to Macintyre,  had Biggs been attacked by a lion, the backpack would have more damage to it. There also would have been hair and saliva on the pack Biggs provided DFG.  "All of the evidence -- the lab results, a study of the scratches on Mr. Biggs' arm and a thorough investigation at the scene -- is inconsistent with a mountain lion attack.”

                Thus, there is no empirical evidence that Mr. Biggs was attacked by a mountain lion or saved by a bear.  Does this mean that this proves 100% that the attack did not happen?  No.  All things are possible through God.  No.  It's impossible to prove a negative.  No.  It simply means that there is no particular reason why anyone should believe that it happened unless one has extraordinary faith in Mr. Biggs.  In this respect, Mr. Biggs’s claim is parallel to Joseph Smith’s claim about the golden tablets and Muslim’s claims about their prophet’s horseback ride to heaven, hell, and the Jerusalem mosque.  There exists no empirical evidence; nevertheless millions of Mormons and Muslims have extraordinary “faith” in these extraordinary claims.  And after decades or centuries of snowballing faith, it’s doubtful that faithful believers, full of faith, could be persuaded to doubt their religious traditions.  They’ve been told that the devil is tempting them to doubt, that they will be eternally lost if they doubt, and typically they would become ostracized from their families and local communities should they express doubt.

                Maybe Mr. Biggs really was attacked by a mountain lion and saved by a bear; he just has not accumulated a body of believers to perpetuate this semi-miraculous story and make it a respectable tall-tale.

Liars' Lovefest: Romney-Santorum Ticket?

     Newt Gingrich has called Mitt Romney a liar.  Rick Santorum has called Mitt Romney a liar.  Mitt Romney's campaign has called both Newt Gingrich and Rick Santorum liars, sometimes desperate liars.  Nevertheless both Newt Ginrich and Rick Santorum have indicated that they would embrace the man they called a liar as his vice-presidential running mate. 

     If there's been one continuous theme in the Republican primary race, it is the observation that Romney just cannot excite the evangelical base which is Santorum's natural constituency.  Thus, any Machiavellian Republican operative, (like Karl Rove), could see that pairing Romney with Santorum could be a marriage made in get-out-the-vote heaven.  Strange bedfellows are the norm in politics, but can these reciprocally labeled liars really get into bed with each other?

     Let's consider Newt Gingrich first.    Newt Gingrich called Mitt Romney a bald-faced liar in January 2012.  The Washington Examiner recorded this interview (click for the video & more transcript) with Gingrich:

O'Donnell: You scolded Mitt Romney, his friends who are running this Super PAC that has funded that, and you said of Mitt Romney, 'Someone who will lie to you to get to be president will lie to you when they are president. I have to ask you, are you calling Mitt Romney a liar?

Gingrich: Yes.

O'Donnell: You're calling Mitt Romney a liar?

Gingrich: Well, you seem shocked by it! Yes. I mean, why -

O'Donnell: Why are you saying he is a liar?

Gingrich: Because this is a man whose staff created the PAC, his millionaire friends fund the PAC, he pretends he has nothing to do with the PAC - it's baloney. He's not telling the American people the truth.

    Still, Gingrich publically continues to angle for the vice-presidential spot and private  tête-à-têtes between Romney and Gingrich to consider such a possibility are reported.   However, with Gingrich's single digit poll numbers and paltry primary victories compared to Santorum's multiple primary victories, higher poll numbers, and great popularity among the Republican Party's evangelical base, Santorum is the likelier of Romney's choice among strange bedfellows.  So let's review what Santorum and Romney have said about each other.

   This is what Santorum had to say about Romney:  SANTORUM: "For someone to go out and deliberately misrepresent his record, what he did at a very critical time when people were making decisions on the issue of health care, for him to go out and to recommend that to President Obama and then tell the voters in debate after debate that he never did any such thing, not only is his policy bad, not only did he recommend the wrong policy for the country, then he didn’t tell the truth about what he did."  When the interviewer, Morgan, nudged Santorum several times into calling Romney a flat out "liar," he demurred but insisted:  “He clearly did not tell the truth,”  stopping short of calling Romney a liar.

   Now Santorum has come out with an attack ad on Romney, verbally and pictorially claiming that Romney and Obama are equivalent when it comes to abortions, taxes, and deficits.  The Washington Post has the following transcript available documenting the ad  (Check out the video on this link to fully appreciate the brutality of Santorum's attack) :  

 "A tough new ad from former Pennsylvania senator Rick Santorum suggests former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney is as bad as President Obama. The spot is airing in Wisconsin, in advance of Tuesday’s primary. “This Man” starts with a woman standing in front of a shot of the current White House occupant.

“What if I told you that this man’s big government-mandating health-care included $50 abortions and killed thousands of jobs. Would you ever vote for him?” she asks. “What if I told you he supported radical environmental job-killing cap-and-trade and the Wall Street bailout? And what if I told you he dramatically raised taxes and stuck taxpayers with a $1 billion shortfall?”

The woman gestures at Obama, “One more thing. What if I told you the man I’m talking about wasn’t him?” The shot of Obama morphs into Romney. “It’s him.”

“It is sad to see him completely lose his bearings and revert to patently false claims,” said Romney spokeswoman Andrea Saul in a statement. “Senator Santorum is at a point of desperation that he will say or do anything.”

     In two previous blogs on Santorum's blatant lies I have documented Santorum's inclination to attack his left-wing opponents with untruths that even minimal fact checking can disprove.  I've also noted that such lies actually seem to increase his appeal to evangelical commentators and news outlets who repeat such falsehoods with enthusiasm.  However, Santorum has not been accused of making "patently false claims" by fellow Republican bedfellows until now.  Telling lies about Democratic opponents was winked at, but can Romney and Santorum flutter their eye-lids at each other, kiss and make up, and then get into bed together as strange bedfellows with the blessing of the evangelicals at their nuptials?

 

 

Extraordinary Claims Demand Extraordinary Evidence

Man claims attack by lion, saved by a bear

The story below, was published by a Paradise, California newspaper and sent to me by a friend of 40 years.  The title alone certainly is eye-catching and hair-raising.  It’s an extraordinary story.   I wonder if your reactions to the narrative will be similar to mine.   My first thought was:  “Could this really have happened?”  My second thought was:  “Well, evidently a newspaper is taking it seriously enough to publish and it’s not completely impossible so may it’s true; I’ll read further.”   Thus, I invite you to continue reading and ask you to reflect on your own impressions as you read.  I’ll record my initial impressions within parentheses interspersed within the narrative.

A Paradise man says he is lucky to be alive after an attack by a mountain lion Monday morning.

Robert Biggs, 69, often hikes in the Bean Soup Flat area, which is about a mile and a half above Whisky Flats. He came across a mother bear, a yearling and a newborn, which were about 40 feet from where he was standing.  (Me: Wow, I though mother bears were not so tolerant of humans getting so close to their cubs).

After watching the bear family for a few minutes he decided to leave them be and turned to walk back up the trail. As he turned, a mountain lion pounced on him grabbing hold of his backpack with all four paws.

"They usually grab hold of your head with all four paws, but my backpack was up above my head and (the mountain lion) grabbed it instead," Biggs said. "It must have been stalking the little bear, but it was on me in seconds."  (Me:  Mr. Biggs does seem to be knowledgeable about how mountain lions attack.  So he gains a little in credibility with me).

He wrestled with the cat, striking it in the head with a rock pick. The cat screamed when it was hit with the pick, but didn't let go, Biggs said. Before he knew it, the mother bear came from behind and pounced on the cat, tearing its grip from the backpack.

The bear and the cat battled for about 15 seconds, Biggs said, until the cat finally ran away. The bear went on its way as well. Biggs ended up with bite marks, scratches and bruises to his arm, but was otherwise uninjured.  (Me:  Great, we have some physical evidence amenable to testing and confirmation; for Biggs to have scratched, bitten, and bruised himself in an orgy of self-inflicted violence just to support a concocted story seems a bit over the top.  I’m assuming (dangerous) that the reporter actually witnessed the injuries and is not just taking Mr. Biggs’ telephone report of the alleged incident).

Biggs, a naturist, has hiked that same trail several times and has seen the mother bear and its cub last spring and fall. He said the encounters with the bears were friendly.

"(The cub) stood up on its hind legs and put its paws up and I got to play patty-cake with it," he said.   The patty-cake game was simply touching the bottom of its paw with his open palm, more like a high-five. He said the mother watched the two play and her only reaction was to call the cub back. Biggs said he is certain that the mother that saved him during the mountain lion attack is the same bear he has seen in that area before.  (Me:  Now I’ve suddenly become considerable more skeptical of the story.  I’m no naturalist or bear specialist but from my meager knowledge this seems extremely unlikely).

"They're pretty territorial," he said, adding that he recognized some of the bear's markings. Though his arm was pretty cut up, he chose not to go to the doctor, a move that concerned his wife Suzanne.  (Me:  My incredulity is being reinforced.  I have no professional/expert who could witness the true nature of the alleged wounds or even that the witness had wounds.  On the other hand, at least his wife purportedly witnessed the injuries and seems to be reacting like a typical wife.  On the other hand, perhaps she is in on  manufacturing the tall tale; but again why would the two of them go to the trouble to make up such a story?)

"There were puncture wounds and skin was hanging off, and you don't know what's in their paws," she said.   

Biggs said he wasn't worried because he had a tetanus shot a couple of years ago. Biggs simply put peroxide on his wounds and expects that will be enough.

As for lessons learned, Suzanne quipped, "He doesn't learn."   (Me:  A nice sardonic, humorous touch)

Biggs just chuckled at the comment. The incident isn't going to stop him from enjoying the Ridge's wildlife.

End of story!    So overall, what do you think?   Amazing?   Incredible?   Impossible?   Strange but True?

                Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.  This is the principle of truth seeking that this story is meant to illustrate.   Thus, my conclusion was:  “I don’t think this is completely impossible, but besides the inherent unlikelihood of the events recorded, there are a couple of suspicious additional elements.   Namely, the story-teller avoided going to a doctor, a third party, hopefully unbiased witness, who could potentially confirm certain technical aspects of the injuries.  Why?  I don’t think his wife’s depiction of him as an eccentric who never learns is sufficient to convince me.

                Now, of course, this story is a mere curiosity—good for a chuckle.  Something like  seeing freaks in an old time circus.   Nothing of existential importance.  Other amazing stories have more riding on them.   Therefore, it would clearly be more important to have corroborating evidence before betting the farm on them—much less one’s eternal destiny.  One amazing story concerns a certain Joseph Smith.   According to Smith, beginning in the early 1820s he had visions, in one of which an angel directed him to a buried book of golden plates, inscribed with a Christian history of ancient American civilizations. In 1830, he published an English translation of these plates as the Book of Mormon, and organized the Church of Christ, as the restoration of the early Christian church. Church members were later called Latter Day Saints, Saints, or Mormons.

                So the first extraordinary claim Smith makes is that he had some sort of divine revelation through the intermediary of an angel, Moroni.  The second extraordinary claim he makes is that the angel directed him to some fantastical golden plates.  What kind of evidence should one reasonably request before crediting such a claim?  How could one corroborate such a claim?  Or should one just “have faith” because Smith is a prophet?  (Isn’t that assuming the conclusion which the extraordinary claim is trying to convince us of?   Getting the cart before the horse?)

                To continue the story:  Smith eventually obtained testimonies from eleven men, known as the Book of Mormon witnesses, who said they had seen the plates.   (Is there any parallel between these eleven men, the twelve disciples minus Judas, upon whose testimony modern-day Christians ask the world to accept some rather extraordinary stories of virgin births, miraculous healings, and bodily resurrections?)  After the translation was complete, Smith said he returned the plates to their angelic guardian. Therefore, if the plates existed, they cannot now be examined.  Isn’t this rather too convenient, or inconvenient, depending on one’s point of view?   Latter Day Saints are asked to  believe the account of the golden plates as a matter of faith.

                Now other than the confirmed Latter Day Saints reading this, I imagine that most other readers would find it easy to quickly dismiss Joseph Smith’s extraordinary claims as tall tales with insufficient corroborating evidence.  But I also imagine that most orthodox Christians reading this have an immediate sense of unease merely reading the sentence above suggesting that there might be a parallel between Joseph Smith’s extraordinary claims and their supporting evidence and orthodox Christians’ extraordinary claims and their supporting evidence.   And what about the 900,000,000 Muslims who believe the extraordinary experiences of their prophet?  What’s the evidence for the angel Gabriel declaiming the Koran to him?   What about the following stories:   Islamic tradition relates that in 620, Muhammad experienced the Isra and Mi'raj, a miraculous journey said to have occurred with the angel Gabriel in one night. In the first part of the journey, the Isra, he is said to have travelled from Mecca on a winged steed (Buraq) to "the farthest mosque" (in Arabic: masjid al-aqsa), which Muslims usually identify with the Al-Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem. In the second part, the Mi'raj, Muhammad is said to have toured heaven and hell, and spoken with earlier prophets, such as Abraham, Moses, and Jesus.   Should these stories be accepted on faith?

                 The principled question is:  shouldn’t the same standards of evidence be applied to the stories of the man attacked by the mountain lion and saved by the bear, Joseph Smith’s visions and golden plates, Muhammad’s horse ride to heaven, hell, and the Jerusalem mosque,  and Mother Mary’s virgin birth?   If not, why not.   Or should Mormons faithfully and uncritically believe the story of the golden plates, Muslims faithfully and uncritically believe the story of the horse ride to hell, Christians faithfully and uncritically believe the story of the virgin birth, and you and I believe the story of the man attacked by the mountain lion and save by the bear?

                Actually, a high-school classmate of my wife, Mary Ann, sent the mountain lion story to her and my wife forwarded it to me.  She wrote her friend back saying, and I quote:  “Wow, what a story.  Don is his skeptical self.  Do you believe it's 100% true?   Thanks for sharing.  Mary Ann” 

                Her friend’s latest reply:  “Nah........fish and game doesn't believe it either - blood has been sent for testing...........”

                So stay tuned, perhaps my skepticism is misplaced and the blood tests will prove me wrong.  (Even though my medical mind is unaware of any tests that the story-teller’s blood could reveal about the cause of any wounds.   Anti-bodies to mountain lions?   Or are they just testing for some sort of disease that cats could transmit to humans?)