Posted on 08/06/2011 3:13:50 PM PDT by Colofornian
As a Texas jury considers a possible life sentence for polygamist leader Warren Jeffs, a coalition of polygamist groups is condemning the sexual abuse that led to Jeffs' conviction.
"We are alarmed that such depravity could have been perpetrated by anyone," says a written statement from the Principle Rights Coalition, a group representing five polygamist groups in Arizona and Utah, as well as "numerous other independent Fundamentalist Mormons."
The groups advocate and practice polygamy as it was taught by early leaders of the Mormon Church, which renounced plural marriage in 1890 and does not tolerate it now.
"It is especially devastating to discover that sexual assault of young children may have occurred behind the false pretense of a religious ideology," the statement says. "If any members of our communities are in fact guilty, we fully support their being brought to justice."
Jeffs heads the nation's largest polygamous faith, the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints or FLDS, and was convicted in Texas Thursday of two counts of child sexual assault. The victims in the case were 12 and 15 when Jeffs consummated his FLDS "marriages" to the girls. An audio recording played to the jury was characterized by the prosecution as a sexual assault of the 12-year-old.
Seven other FLDS men were convicted of sexual assault and bigamy charges in Texas. Jeffs and some of his followers faced similar charges in Utah and Arizona but prosecutors in Texas have been more successful in obtaining convictions. That's because the Texas cases are bolstered by detailed and incriminating diaries, photographs, recordings and other documents seized in a raid on an FLDS ranch in Texas in 2008.
Jeffs moved some of his members and leaders to Texas, and built the faith's first and only temple there, in response to crackdowns in Arizona and Utah, where the FLDS group is based.
Other polygamist groups fear that the revelations about the FLDS practice of plural marriages involving underage girls would trigger more widespread attempts to prosecute polygamy.
The Principle Rights Coalition suggests decriminalizing polygamy would help root out child sexual abuse among those practicing "the principle," the religious term the groups apply to the practice.
"In some cases, years of isolation and secrecy may have cultivated and concealed abuse, since those who might ordinarily have come forward feared the threat of prosecution should their plural family arrangement be disclosed," the Coalition writes. "These reports of abuse illustrate the necessity of decriminalizing plural, consenting-adult relationships, while convicting those specific individuals who have victimized children."
The Coalition includes the Centennial Park polygamous group in Arizona, which has a settlement just down the road from the main FLDS towns of Colorado City, Arizona, and Hildale, Utah. The Centennial Park group was formed by people who left the FLDS faith and is considered more open and progressive, and intolerant of child marriages.
The Davis County Cooperative Society also signed the Coalition's letter. Also known as the "Kingston clan," three top members of the group either pleaded "no contest" or guilty, or were convicted, in response to criminal charges in the last decade of child abuse, incest and unlawful sexual conduct involving girls as young as 15.
Another group, the Apostolic United Brethren, added its own separate statement.
"We repudiate and denounce Warren Jeffs' inappropriate actions in linking his despicable and unconscionable acts to the Gospel of Jesus Christ and to Joseph Smith Jr. and Mormonism," the group writes. "Such acts and so-called ordinances are not and never have been condoned by the Gospel as it was established and restored by Joseph Smith."
Joseph Smith is the founder of the Mormon Church, who Mormons say "restored" the Mormon Gospel. Smith promoted and practiced polygamy in the early days of the faith. One of his many wives, Helen Mar Kimball, was 14 when she married Smith. There is a vigorous debate about whether Kimball and Smith consummated that marriage with sex.
The Mormon Church abandoned polygamy in 1890 in what many historians consider a political accommodation. The existence of polygamy in Utah led to strong resistance in Congress when the territory sought statehood. There's strong evidence the practice continued secretly among a select group until the 1930s.
A firm and final rejection then of polygamy by Mormon leaders prompted the formation of the so-called "fundamentalist" groups that persist today. Many share common origins and beliefs with the FLDS group. None are considered part of the mainstream Mormon faith.
Individual, unaffiliated polygamists have also been targeted for prosecution. In 2002, Tom Green was convicted of child rape for his marriage to one of his five wives when she was 13.
Jeffs was convicted in Utah in 2007 of facilitating rape for his role in the marriage of a 14-year-old girl to her 19-year-old first cousin. That conviction was reversed last year by the Utah Supreme Court.
Also last year, similar charges in Arizona were dismissed after two key witnesses declined to testify against Jeffs.
It's unclear how the Jeffs conviction in Texas will affect the FLDS faithful. Even while in prison awaiting trial, Jeffs emerged as the victor in an internal challenge to his continued leadership. He has also continued to purge from the faith members he has considered unfaithful, including some of the group's top leaders
Damage control.
Too little, too late.
I don't believe that these other polygamous splinter LDS groups didn't know what was going on behind the scenes there.
Hell has plenty of room ...
I watched a TV show about the “former” FLDS polygamist “compound” in Bountiful, BC just north of where I live.
A private investigator was interviewed who stated that his research found that joseph smith was not promoting polygamy until his first wife caught him fooling around with another woman. Then he had a “revelation” from “God” and since he was “the prophet” his dumb wife believed him.
I don’t think that explanation would work very well with most Christian women...
I'd hate to judge just WHAT the Prophet's 'feelings' about this were.
All I can do is post what MORMON, Inc. has published.
Here is the COMPLETE Declaration as it is on the MORMON.ORG website.
The colors and fonts are my markups to draw attention to specific thinbgs in it.
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.
President Lorenzo Snow offered the following:
“I move that, recognizing Wilford Woodruff as the President of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, and the only man on the earth at the present time who holds the keys of the sealing ordinances, we consider him fully authorized by virtue of his position to issue the Manifesto which has been read in our hearing, and which is dated September 24th, 1890, and that as a Church in General Conference assembled, we accept his declaration concerning plural marriages as authoritative and binding.”
The vote to sustain the foregoing motion was unanimous.
Salt Lake City, Utah, October 6, 1890.
|
Hebrews 11:35-40
35. Others were tortured and refused to be released, so that they might gain a better resurrection. 36. Some faced jeers and flogging, while still others were chained and put in prison. 37. They were stoned ; they were sawed in two; they were put to death by the sword. They went about in sheepskins and goatskins, destitute, persecuted and mistreated-- 38. the world was not worthy of them. They wandered in deserts and mountains, and in caves and holes in the ground. |
~ Wilford Woodruff, 4th LDS President
THE BOOK OF JACOB
THE BROTHER OF NEPHICHAPTER 224 Behold, David and Solomon truly had many wives and concubines, which thing was abominable before me, saith the Lord.
25 Wherefore, thus saith the Lord, I have led this people forth out of the land of Jerusalem, by the power of mine arm, that I might raise up unto me a righteous branch from the fruit of the loins of Joseph.
26 Wherefore, I the Lord God will not suffer that this people shall do like unto them of old.
27 Wherefore, my brethren, hear me, and hearken to the word of the Lord: For there shall not any man among you have save it be one wife; and concubines he shall have none;
28 For I, the Lord God, delight in the chastity of women. And whoredoms are an abomination before me; thus saith the Lord of Hosts.
29 Wherefore, this people shall keep my commandments, saith the Lord of Hosts, or cursed be the land for their sakes.
30 For if I will, saith the Lord of Hosts, raise up seed unto me, I will command my people; otherwise they shall hearken unto these things.
31 For behold, I, the Lord, have seen the sorrow, and heard the mourning of the daughters of my people in the land of Jerusalem, yea, and in all the lands of my people, because of the wickedness and abominations of their husbands.
32 And I will not suffer, saith the Lord of Hosts, that the cries of the fair daughters of this people, which I have led out of the land of Jerusalem, shall come up unto me against the men of my people, saith the Lord of Hosts.
Or even HERE:
1 Timothy 3:2-3
2. Now the overseer must be above reproach, the husband of but one wife, temperate, self-controlled, respectable, hospitable, able to teach,
3. not given to drunkenness, not violent but gentle, not quarrelsome, not a lover of money.1 Timothy 3:12
A deacon must be the husband of but one wife and must manage his children and his household well.Titus 1:6
An elder must be blameless, the husband of but one wife, a man whose children believe and are not open to the charge of being wild and disobedient.
THE
DOCTRINE AND COVENANTS
OF THE CHURCH OF JESUS CHRIST OF LATTER-DAY SAINTSSECTION 13251–57, Emma Smith is counseled (commanded) to be faithful and true; 58–66, Laws governing the plurality of wives are set forth.51 Verily, I say unto you: A commandment I give unto mine handmaid, Emma Smith, your wife, whom I have given unto you, that she stay herself and partake not of that which I commanded you to offer unto her; for I did it, saith the Lord, to aprove you all, as I did Abraham, and that I might require an offering at your hand, by covenant and sacrifice.52 And let mine handmaid, Emma Smith, areceive all those that have been given unto my servant Joseph, and who are virtuous and pure before me; and those who are not pure, and have said they were pure, shall be destroyed, saith the Lord God.53 For I am the Lord thy God, and ye shall obey my voice; and I give unto my servant Joseph that he shall be made ruler over many things; for he hath been afaithful over a few things, and from henceforth I will strengthen him.55 But if she will not abide this commandment, then shall my servant Joseph do all things for her, even as he hath said; and I will bless him and multiply him and give unto him an ahundredfold in this world, of fathers and mothers, brothers and sisters, houses and lands, wives and children, and crowns of beternal lives in the eternal worlds.
Eliza was a devout Mormon.
At age 38, she became Joseph Smith's 14th plural wife (in addition to Smith's lawful wife, Emma).
In 1842, after learning Eliza was pregnant, Emma Smith beat Eliza with a broomstick and
knocked her down a flight of stairs, causing Eliza to miscarry Smith's baby.
Miss Eliza R. Snow was one of the first (willing) victims of Joseph in Nauvoo. She used to be much at the prophet’s house he made her one of his celestial brides... . Feeling outraged as a wife and betrayed as a friend, Emma is currently reported as having had recourse to a vulgar broomstick as an instrument of revenge: and the harsh treatment received at Emma’s hands is said to have destroyed Eliza’s hopes of becoming the mother of a prophet’s son (Dr. W. Wyl, Mormon Portraits, 1886, pp.57-58).
The Mormon writer Claire Noall acknowledged: “Willard realized that Emma had refused to believe that any of the young women boarding at the Mansion when it was first used as a hotel had been married to Joseph. She had struck Eliza Snow at the head of the stairs, and Eliza, it was whispered, had lost her unborn child” (Intimate Disciple, a Portrait of Willard Richards, 1957, p.407).
Sometime during February of 1843 Emma evidently became aware that Joseph had taken her best friend, Eliza R. Snow, as a plural wife. Eliza was currently living in the Smith home, which housed a number of boarders. LDS historians Linda Newell and Valeen Avery wrote:
When the full realization of the relationship between her friend Eliza and her husband Joseph came to her, Emma was stunned. . . . Although no contemporary account of the incident between Emma and Eliza remains extant, evidence leads to the conclusion that some sort of physical confrontation occurred between the two women. In 1886 Wilhelm Wyl published the first known version of the incident in his book, Joseph Smith the Prophet: His Family and His Friends:
They say . . . there is scarcely a Mormon unacquainted with the fact that Sister Emma . . . soon found out the little compromise arranged between Joseph and Eliza. Feeling outraged as a wife and betrayed as a friend, Emma is currently reported as having had recourse to a vulgar broomstick as an instrument of revenge; and the harsh treatment received at Emma’s hands is said to have destroyed Eliza’s hopes of becoming the mother of a prophet’s son...
Another story, attributed to LeRoi C. Snow, Eliza’s nephew, is an oral family tradition that tells of Emma knocking Eliza down the stairs with a broom, the fall resulting in a miscarriage for Eliza. . . .
Whether Eliza fell down the stairs or whether Emma pushed her or pulled her down by the hair, or whether Emma only turned her out of the house, the result seems to be documented in Eliza’s terse journal entry for February 11, 1843:
‘Took board and had my lodging removed to the residence of br. [Jonathan] Holmes.’
Eliza did not make another entry in her journal for five weeks and wrote no explanation for either the gap in her diary or her abrupt departure from Emma’s home. . . .
Several acquaintances of Eliza spoke of Emma discovering Eliza’s relationship with Joseph, leading to her departure.
The incident between Emma and Eliza forced the issue of plural marriage into the open. Emma could no longer believe that Joseph was not involved, and he could no longer deny it. Emma had not acted with violence before; now her determined opposition might show up again with unexpected force. Joseph resolutely tried to bring Emma around (Mormon Enigma: Emma Hale Smith, by Linda King Newell and Valeen Tippetts Avery, 1994, pp. 134-137).
http://www.utlm.org/newsletters/no106.htm
Come on; I'd bet you'd love to judge. Go on and take a guess; you're welcome to here - here's your opportunity. No one I've come across that uses so much caps-lock, colored fonts, and large and voluminous texts to answer simple questions has ever tended to turn down an opportunity. What do you really think about Mormons?
Does a prophet obey god or man made laws when the supposed “revelation” purportedly came from god?
From the “most correct book on earth”.
Translated with the direct help and approval of god himself.
Revelation supposedly received from god claiming that no man would ever attain celestial glory (residing with god and jesus) and attaining godhood unless they entered into the new and everlasting covenant of polygamy.
I guess the mormon prophet decided to follow man made laws instead of his god.
“Does a prophet obey god or man made laws when the supposed “revelation” purportedly came from god?”
That’s a good question, but it poses a quandary for the one they call prophet. I’d want to say that a prophet obeys God, outside of rendering to Caesar what is Caesar’s, and I’m glad I never got myself into the position they did. My understanding is that Mormons today teach that their current prophet’s directives supersede their former prophets’ directives, when in conflict. Jeffs’ church was also faced with the same quandary, and look how things worked out for them. Is it God’s plan, or is it flawed man’s interference with God’s plan? Either way, I think Jeffs has proven himself criminal. I hope playing ‘look at the freak’ won’t dissuade those still inside FLDS, some of whom might even be reading this, and who are wavering, to hunker down from fear of the outside world, ie. us, rather than respond to this crisis by seeking a deeper understanding of God and Christianity.
Other than they've been deceived by a large Satanic con?
Well; where shall I start.
While I'm gathering my thoughts, perhaps you could tell us what you think of MORMONism's publicized writings about Christianity...
You appear to understand correctly; according to yet more statments from High Ranking MORMON leadership.
In conclusion let us summarize this grand key, these “Fourteen Fundamentals in Following the Prophet”, for our salvation depends on them.
1. The prophet is the only man who speaks for the Lord in everything.
2. The living prophet is more vital to us than the standard works.
3. The living prophet is more important to us than a dead prophet.
4. The prophet will never lead the church astray.
5. The prophet is not required to have any particular earthly training or credentials to speak on any subject or act on any matter at any time.
6. The prophet does not have to say “Thus Saith the Lord,” to give us scripture.
7. The prophet tells us what we need to know, not always what we want to know.
8. The prophet is not limited by men’s reasoning.
9. The prophet can receive revelation on any matter, temporal or spiritual.
10. The prophet may advise on civic matters.
11. The two groups who have the greatest difficulty in following the prophet are the proud who are learned and the proud who are rich.
12. The prophet will not necessarily be popular with the world or the worldly.
13. The prophet and his counselors make up the First Presidency—the highest quorum in the Church.
14. The prophet and the presidency—the living prophet and the First Presidency—follow them and be blessed—reject them and suffer.
I testify that these fourteen fundamentals in following the living prophet are true. If we want to know how well we stand with the Lord then let us ask ourselves how well we stand with His mortal captain—how close do our lives harmonize with the Lord’s anointed—the living Prophet—President of the Church, and with the Quorum of the First Presidency.
Ezra Taft Benson
(Address given Tuesday, February 26, 1980 at Brigham Young University)
I hope that posting 'MORMONism is a HERESY' won’t dissuade those still inside all of MORMONism's children, some of whom might even be reading this, and who are wavering, to hunker down from fear of the outside world, ie. us, rather than respond to this crisis by seeking a deeper true of God and Christianity.
Kinda like rappers condemning violence
“perhaps you could tell us what you think of MORMONism’s publicized writings about Christianity...”
I think it’s in my posts here already.
My post to someone else:
“I hope playing ‘look at the freak’ won’t dissuade those still inside FLDS, some of whom might even be reading this, and who are wavering, to hunker down from fear of the outside world, ie. us, rather than respond to this crisis by seeking a deeper understanding of God and Christianity.”
Your post to me:
“I hope that posting ‘MORMONism is a HERESY’ won’t dissuade those still inside all of MORMONism’s children, some of whom might even be reading this, and who are wavering, to hunker down from fear of the outside world, ie. us, rather than respond to this crisis by seeking a deeper true of God and Christianity.”
So you don’t think Mormons are literally damned heretics then, after all the other things you’ve written? I can’t make sense of your modification of the paragraph. But it’s alright, you don’t have to re-write it; we can move on to something else.
“You appear to understand correctly; according to yet more statments from High Ranking MORMON leadership.”
This needs more cowbell.
From the article: "The groups advocate and practice polygamy as it was taught by early leaders of the Mormon Church"
I note that these polygamist cults emphasize the connection to the early mormon church.
The present day leaders have spent millions on trying to hide and whitewash most of the teachings of the early mormon church....I don't think their success rate will go up with the Jeffs trial...and I suspect there were soon be trials of the accomplices to the rapes.
They would also have to condemn Joseph, Brigham, and most of the men in early Mormonism.
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