by Polly Hammon
Guest Editorial, 3rd March 2005, St. George Spectrum
Before you ask me to give up my lifestyle, show me that yours works. Show me that a monogamist marriage is sacred, that it works for at least a lifetime. Currently, more than 60 percent don’t. Show me children who don’t fret and worry about “if” and “when” their family will be torn apart.
Show me the strength and support of families. Show me homes filled with the wisdom of the aged, not institutions littered with the lonely and the heartbroken, or show me hallways of hospitals lined with family and friends to celebrate glad tidings or to walk with sorrows. Show me places of safety where I can educate my children, not schoolyards of the alienated and the abandoned. Show me children raised in the stability of family, not the sterility of daycare.
Show me heroes made of sterner stuff than what it takes to dunk a basketball or throw a touchdown. Show me the nightly news without a rundown on the latest from a society obsessed with who is cheating on whom or a marriage commitment that is measured in hours.
Show me women who are not yearning after an illusion created by Hollywood – who are not anxious about the natural progression of life, who don’t fear that each change or wrinkle is a marker of possible abandonment. Show me a society so happy with its choices and fulfilled from living those choices that it hasn’t medicated itself for depression and struggles with addiction.
Show me minds honed by principle and hearts enlarged by love. Show me that your society is willing to love more that its own – that children are not referred to as “stepchildren” or “accidents.” Show me children who are loved and nurtured from the moment of conception, instead of 40 million choices of murder.
Show me a society where motherhood is honored and a woman does not have do what it takes to be “picked” by a male more concerned with the façade of her face than the content of her character. Show me a society that does not abandon its daughters to a singles’ ward with the futile admonition of “Be patient and fill your lives with other things.”
Show me a society where religion provides an unalterable standard and Truth is not for sale or bartered for political expediency – where the words and life of the Savior and other wise men are not just glib recitations but the work of a life eager for the changes and growth wrought by their words upon the soul. Show me a religion that appeals to my intellect and provides the answers to the haunting questions of humanity:
Why am I here? Where did I come from? Where am I going?
Show me a society that is willing to allow people the liberties and inalienable rights endowed by our Creator to worship Him at the dictates of our conscience – my conscience sees the works of Fathers Abraham, Jacob, and Moses -rather than a society that commands in the place of our freedoms the Romans’ mandate of monogamy. Contrary to the efforts of some individuals today, neither man nor woman converts a belief at the sword point of compulsion.
Show me these things so that I may worry less about you and that I may know you have some of the joy I’ve known. As for the principles I strive to live by, I love how the living of them invites me to live on a higher plane. If I were to abandon them, how would I greet Mother Sarah or Father Abraham, the Prophet Joseph Smith and countless others? How can I betray my God?
This article come from principlevoices.org you can read more great articles just like it HERE
November 10, 2007 at 11:11 pm
The world is not a perfect place, and yes, every family and every individual, community, country has problems, but to use them to justify the abusive lifestyle you have been taught from birth to believe in, why, it’s just pitiful. Polygamy doesn’t work because male to female birthrates are 50/50 worldwide and there just aren’t enough females to support the lifestyle. Do the math, Baby, numbers don’t lie, if God wanted a man to have multiple wives, don’t you think God would have the intelligence to create 3 or 5 or ten females for every male? God isn’t stupid, honey, so apply some common sense and get on with your life.
November 11, 2007 at 7:04 pm
[...] Article was written in response to blissiseasy123’s comment on my last post Before You Condemn Polygamy, Realize This. It was originally intended as a comment but became to long winded and so I decided to make it into [...]
January 1, 2008 at 7:22 am
More power to you, if this is what God has placed on your heart, and more power to you if the others in your marriage have had that same conviction. I would love to have some people to share responsibilities and my life with…I think I would have major issues sharing my husband, though. I guess God must help with this…those who feel it is his choice for them. What is the best thing about polygamy? and the hardest part?
Thanks…Love your site…It is very well done.
January 3, 2008 at 9:54 pm
gretchen, yes, God does help with the issues that arise in a women’s mind when she shares a husband. He has revealed to me that jealousy is actually insecurity, and is not a reflection of love for my husband. Sharing the load, and having a friend right inthe same home (once we get past the struggles), children having more than one Mom to care for them and watch out for their welfare, these are all pluses in this lifestyle.
April 4, 2008 at 7:40 pm
If you would like to see a home, family with love, peace, hope, fulfillment, a home set aside from the cares of worldly sins, come to my home. I am a happy mother of 4. I have taught my children of our Savior, his great sacrifice, and Love for all. I teach my children so that they can be a shining light to this world of sin, and when the Savior returns one day, they will rejoice in a world of peace. I have accomplished this living in the world. Why then does your religion force you to hide yourselves, deny your basic human rights of knowledge, the ability to see evil, and know it is wrong, and then to stand up against it, instead of hiding from the example you could be. Your people run from ‘outsiders’ because you have been taught to fear them for evil. Your leaders have taught you to fear because they have more knowledge than you do. They know that if you found out that there is truth in the world, light and hope, they know that they could not control your assets, lives, and happiness. I can understand the pressure of obedience as it is one of the great commandments of God. I have no doubt that through your work, humility, subservient nature, you will be given a place in God’s kingdom, but it is because of your innocence in not knowing. Heavenly Father’s plan gives his children the right to choose, it was satan’s plan from the beginning to assert his authority and control over the children of God, asserting his power to rule over them, also ensuring their salvation. With such authority who could not make it back to Father in Heaven? My husband is a righteous man, we met dated, fell in love, and could not be happier. He does not have evil designs, as your ‘prophets’ tell you that young men do who do not please him as members of your church. He cares for me, loves me and only me, and we share in building up our family in righteousness. In the beginning, god called the prophet Joseph Smith to instate polygamy as a way to raise up a righteous generation, as he has done in times past. However, this practice was only a calling to a select few who greatly struggled with it, and who’s broken hearts ensured that they were not ‘excted about it.’ In your church then men earn thier wives by pleasing a prophet who is in jail for rape, this is evil, those men who continued this practice, were the one’s who WANTED to. Not those called by God. God ended the pratice because he heard the cries of the women, the broken hearted, and the weary. I have many women in my life who help me, help care for my children, and who are righteous examples; however, they do not sleep with my husband. He is mine, my treasure, my love, something, I know many broken hearted women you know secretly yearn for. I hope you will find truth someday.
April 12, 2008 at 1:40 pm
I doubt you will publish my response to your question whether marriage works but I shall try with the guidance of Our Lord Jesus Christ and His Blessed Mother…
Marriage which is a holy sacrament does work. Perhaps it’s because I come from a family of Catholics but I have known of many healthy and happy marriages that have lasted 50, 55, 60 and 65 years. That’s, for the most part, a lifetime. None of these couples and consequently their families ever needed the evil strategies of coercion and abuse to create and maintain happy lives and families.
All I can do is pray for you, your family and your communities. Jesus, if you can try to hear him will lead you to the light, if you would open your heart and listen to him and not a man, who is born a sinner and only a mortal.
Let go and let God.
October 18, 2008 at 5:28 pm
Actually blissiseasy123, get your facts straight. Male/Female births is 51/49. Being that females are genetically superior to males, thus more males are born because we need to be in order to survive.
So by that logic you would think that Polygamy is actually bad for the world, until you look at the facts that more men die each year than women. So not only do have more men in the world being born, we also have more men in the world dying. Woman also live a lot longer than males, because us males have a little hormone called testosterone (anybody who has every taken steroids, have basically taken a bunch of testosterone, which leads to hardening of the arteries, strokes, aneurysms, heart failure, etc later on down the line . That is why men, who use roids, testes shrink, cause they have no need for them to produce testosterone)
I digress, you logic is flawed blissiseasy123 and therefore you statement is irrelevant.
Oh and the next time you write please don’t patronize the writer of this blog and the readers on the comments with your little words like “Honey and baby” it makes you look immature.