This is another example of the grossness people end up descending into to justify this nonsense. It's ridiculous it has to be said, but apparently it does. When a person first gives birth has no bearing on determining whether it is appropriate for a 42 year old man to take a FOURTH wife and engage in sexual relations with a 15 year old child.
Apparently, mg is once again alluding to the idea that BY didn't have sex with her. I say alluding, because mg is playing quite the silly game, now moving on to BY:
I don't think mental gymnast quite realizes his efforts just make his religion look really, really distasteful and perverse.
Doc said that I said Joseph did not have sex with any of his plural wives. I then said, “I never said that”. Not sure how my response is “moving on to Brigham Young”?
In other words, to put it rather mildly, he misspoke.
Looks like we’re moving back into presentism again. Oh, and it remains to be seen whether Brigham or Joseph had sex with fourteen year olds.
Also:
Charges of statutory rape are inapplicable, since no such law or convention applied to any of Joseph's wives. Joseph's percentage of wives in their teen years was less than the series percentage of teen wives in Kirtland, Nauvoo, or the 1850 U.S. census, even among men his own age. If anything, Joseph married a greater percentage of older women, which suggests that motives other than sexual attraction drove these matches.
This is another example of the grossness people end up descending into to justify this nonsense. It's ridiculous it has to be said, but apparently it does. When a person first gives birth has no bearing on determining whether it is appropriate for a 42 year old man to take a FOURTH wife and engage in sexual relations with a 15 year old child.
Apparently, mg is once again alluding to the idea that BY didn't have sex with her. I say alluding, because mg is playing quite the silly game, now moving on to BY:
I don't think mental gymnast quite realizes his efforts just make his religion look really, really distasteful and perverse.
Doc said that I said Joseph did not have sex with any of his plural wives. I then said, “I never said that”. Not sure how my response is “moving on to Brigham Young”?
In other words, to put it rather mildly, he misspoke.
Looks like we’re moving back into presentism again. Oh, and it remains to be seen whether Brigham or Joseph had sex with fourteen year olds.
Also:
Charges of statutory rape are inapplicable, since no such law or convention applied to any of Joseph's wives. Joseph's percentage of wives in their teen years was less than the series percentage of teen wives in Kirtland, Nauvoo, or the 1850 U.S. census, even among men his own age. If anything, Joseph married a greater percentage of older women, which suggests that motives other than sexual attraction drove these matches.
Which is what I was saying and documenting earlier in the thread.
There seems to be a common refrain/accusation of rape. Is this charge accurate?
Regards,
MG
keep going, mental gymnast. Keep going.
Physics Guy wrote:
The defences don't help. They even dig the hole deeper, by confirming that Mormons are still actually willing to defend Smith's sexual predation.
The presentism argument is trickier to use than one might think. You still have to acknowledge that people in the past were badly wrong and did truly horrible things. You don't get to say that they were fine, upstanding people just because they lived in the past.
All you can do, by rejecting presentism, is to argue that even though nobody who did those things today could deserve any respect at all, back then people might have done those things from ignorance and still been worthy of respect for other things. Isaac Newton can have been a genius even if was also a misogynist, for example, because in his day it was sadly possible to be a misogynist without necessarily being a complete idiot. Only today is it necessary to conclude that a misogynist cannot really be very smart. Wrong things now were also wrong in the past, but they might have been more compartmentalised then than they can be now.
But this won't work to defend respect for Joseph Smith as a prophet of God, because if there are any prophets then they are all about telling the real truth about moral issues. You couldn't defend Isaac Newton as a mathematical genius while also admitting that he never understood multiplication.
So Mormons are stuck trying to say that what Smith did really was somehow righteous. They don't have to make him out to be utterly perfect, but marrying all these underage girls is too big to shrug off as "a flaw", and it was too important in Smith's life. If Mormons admit that Smith was this bad about something this important, the Restoration collapses.
…the reliability of the Bible as a periscope into the nature of the divine is highly relevant. As is the question of how reliable were his other claims regarding his authority and access to the divine.
Alright. As long as I find reason to do so. Most of this thread has been interesting as we’ve shared our very different perspectives.
Thank you for your personal encouragement and invitation.
Regards,
MG
By the way, I’ve noticed that this is the type of response given when there is something posted that you would just as not ACTUALLY respond to or engage directly with your own thoughts and impressions.
Alright. As long as I find reason to do so. Most of this thread has been interesting as we’ve shared our very different perspectives.
Thank you for your personal encouragement and invitation.
Regards,
MG
By the way, I’ve noticed that this is the type of response given when there is something posted that you would just as not ACTUALLY respond to or engage directly with your own thoughts and impressions.
There seems to be a common refrain/accusation of rape. Is this charge accurate?
Do you think any 14 year old girls would have willingly and freely chosen to marry and have sex with 40 year old men like Joseph and Brigham if they weren't threatened and coerced?
Do you think any of the mai-maids and laurels in your ward are dreaming about having sex with the elders quorum president? Even if they were, would the elders quorum president not be guilty of statutory rape if he did have sex with them?
Do you really want to go down the road of trying to claim that these 14 year old children wanted it?
MG is literally a rape apologist because the rapists were Mormon. Think about his moral center for a hot moment - he actually asked that question unironically.
Hugh Nibley claimed he bumped into Adolf Hitler, Albert Einstein, Winston Churchill, Gertrude Stein, and the Grand Duke Vladimir Romanoff. Dishonesty is baked into Mormonism.
Did you know the average age of the onset of puberty in girls was 16.6 years in 1860?
Get back to me when you find out how old she was when she had her first child.
Regards,
MG
Clarissa Caroline Decker had a miscarriage at age 17. Just because she got pregnant at age 17 doesn't mean Brigham Young didn't have sex with her at age 15. Remember in the 19th century the average age of the onset of puberty was 16.6 years, so it means Clarissa Decker probably couldn't get pregnant at age 15.
Last edited by doubtingthomas on Tue Oct 12, 2021 9:53 pm, edited 2 times in total.
"I have the type of (REAL) job where I can choose how to spend my time," says Marcus.
keep going, mental gymnast. Keep going. 
