What da heck is a "Mormon" anyway?

[Amianthus]

Is full disclosure required?

In the cases that I know of, since they all live in the same house, they all know about each other.

It's not hard to postulate a situation where disclosure does not occur, but it seems not to be the norm.

[Xavier_Onassis]

There haven't been any spinsters mentioned in reports from this case. Is there a duty for these men to provide a husband for each woman ?
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Originally, this is what Bigamy Young claimed, when people mentioned that he had 56 wives (or however many that was): he said that (a) all women by LDS scripture should be bound or sealed to a man in order to attain a decent place in Heaven (b) and a lot of husbands died before their wives, so (c) he married them out of Christian charity so as to comply with (a).

I have heard nothing about what spinsters in the FLDS Church. Perhaps they see a duty to widows, perhaps they don't. Maybe all the young women are married off, perhaps the undesireable ones are driven off like the excess boys. There is always the possibility that some sweet young thing gets knocked up and the potential sister wives can't stand her. I have no idea what might happen in such a case.

Eventually, it is always possible that some smart woman will escape from this compound and sell an entertaining book and get on Oprah and do the whole Nine Yards Tour. "I was a Sex Slave in the FDLS" or something like that. Soon to be a Major Motion Picture.

There is already a TV series on a polygamous marriage, called "Big Love".

As a Missourian and a history buff, I know that the main reason that the non-Mormons were so utterly disliked in Missouri was that most of the locals were illliterate squatters who held no title to the lands they occupied. The Mormons were literate, and they had two really annoying features about them: (1) they tended to get revelations about how a piece of land some local hick was farminy was granted to them by the Lord, and they would go file a deed on it, and quite often enlist the aide of the Danites (Mormon militia) to scare said illegally squatting hick off, and (2) they would romance some local gal and marry her as their second, third or fourth wife. This also tended to piss off the  local hicks. Again, the Danites were better organized than the posses composed of local hicks.

Eventually a governor was elected by a large number of annoyed hicks, who said that his main platform was to drive the Mormons out of Missouri, and I believe he added that anyone killing a Mormon man would not be prosecuted. Nearly all the Mormons except those in Independence who gave up polygamy fled to Nauvoo, Illinois at that point.

And yes, I know that his real name was Brigham Young. But Bigamy Young is a more fun thing to call him. Mark Twain agreed with me on this.

[Xavier_Onassis]

Actually, secrecy is not required. I know plenty of polygamous arrangements. As long as there is no more than one "legal" wedding per person, there is nothing wrong with it.
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I have this feeling that legally married wifey No 1 would tend to take great umbrage to her hubby marrying in some extracurricular way, non-legal wifey No. 2.

From one standpoint, I personally could care less if some clown wants to marry a dozen women or so, so long as I do not have to support his numerous excess progeny with my taxes. Still, it is disruptive to a society where monogamy (or to be more specific, serial polygamy) is the norm.

If some FDLS patriarch has 50 children, of whom 25 girls are married at the age of 14 or so to geezers and 23 of his sons are driven out of the compound at the age of 13 to fend for themselves on roots and berries with no useful education, I tend to view this as creating a lot of needless problems for my society, especially since there are not all that many roots and berries left.

My guess is that the excess males are far more likely to end up being thieves, con men, mentally disturbed people and parasites than the average person. That is not a good thing.

[Amianthus]

I have this feeling that legally married wifey No 1 would tend to take great umbrage to her hubby marrying in some extracurricular way, non-legal wifey No. 2.

Perhaps you should meet a few to find out that you're wrong. Most pagans live in group homes with multiple partners. Sometimes it's one male with multiple females, other times it's one female with multiple males, and other times it's multiple males with multiple females.

And all are perfectly legal as long as none of them try to get legal sanction for more than one relationship.

[Plane]

My guess is that the excess males are far more likely to end up being thieves, con men, mentally disturbed people and parasites than the average person. That is not a good thing.

For this reason we should forbid raising children in the inner city.

[Xavier_Onassis]

I was not into forbidding anything, just suggesting that some options are unwise.

I recommend that you not run red lights, for example, yet I am not about to give anyone a ticket for doing this.

There is a difference between some FLDS geezer who has 56 children with five wives and an assortment of pagans who have a more civilized number of progeny.

Saying that this is not a good thing does not mean that some woman in the inner city having seven kids with seven men is a good thing.

[Plane]

Saying that this is not a good thing does not mean that some woman in the inner city having seven kids with seven men is a good thing.

If she is a devotee of Darwin , and considers the promulgation of her gene important , this would be the best course she could choose.

[Rich]

>>And all are perfectly legal as long as none of them try to get legal sanction for more than one relationship.<<

And who are we to prevent them from doing so?