The discussion of plural marriage and the practice of polygamy among the early history of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is dominated by a lot of ignorance, error, and anti-Mormon lies. While it is no surprise that non-members would believe these things the degree to which members of the church view polygamy as oppressive, anti-woman, and abusive is shocking and depressing. In an effort to correct these lies I have appealed directly to the words of the women who lived polygamy themselves and what they had to say about their lives. For that I turned to the printed account of The Great Indignation Meeting, a mass protest meeting held by the women of Utah in 1870 wherein they declared the ways that polygamy elevated them in society and protected their rights, denounced federal efforts to violate their human rights by making polygamy unconstitutional, and announced that they would rather die than submit to the oppressive laws of the government that would deny them their rights to plural marriage. The words of these powerful and intelligent women absolutely demolish the lies of anti-Mormons and promote the truths of the Restored Gospel.
Tag: The Great Indignation Meeting
What Mormon Women Had To Say About Polygamy- Part 1
We all know how we are supposed to think and feel about the practice of polygamy by early Latter-day Saints. We have been told that it was sexist, oppressive, abusive, and harmful to women, something we should be ashamed of, so much that even many Latter-day Saints assume the assertions are axiomatic. But, are they? Are these statements in fact true or are they, like so many other things today, merely modern anti-Mormon drivel projected onto the past?
In order to figure this out I have decided to go back to listen the voices of the women who had firsthand experience with plural marriage, the polygamous women of Utah, to see what they had to say about the practice. Needless to say what I found is quite the opposite of the malignancies spread about plural marriage today. These powerful, intelligent, educated women saw plural marriage as an essential right of theirs that brought numerous blessings and protections to their lives which they would rather die fighting to protect than give up at the demand of the law. In this series I want to make their voices heard to counter the lies falsely spread in their name in by anti-Mormons. When it comes to plural marriage, thee truth about, like everything else, will set us free of the falsehoods we believe and reaffirm the truth of the Restored Gospel.