Peterson is in effect saying that of course people are attracted to the people they want to cheat on their spouse with, and that that is not only normal, but good.Doctor Scratch wrote: ↑Tue Apr 16, 2024 12:19 amThat is correct, Marcus, and in fact he reiterated his position in a recent comment:Marcus wrote: ↑Mon Apr 15, 2024 11:32 pmis he actually referring to sexual desire beyond that for his legal wife?
Let me be more specific. Peterson is discussing, and defining as normal and expected, Smith's sexual desire for his (multiple!!) other illegal and immoral conquests, beyond that of his wife to whom he was legally wed, correct?
So he evidently thinks that a lack of sexual relations between Joseph Smith and 14-year-old Helen Mar Kimball would have been “desolate and sad.”DCP wrote:I did not say, of course, that plural marriage was wholly or principally or even largely motivated by sexual desire. I did say, though, that there was probably sexual attraction in at least some of his plural marriages. I would hope that most marriages involve sexual attraction. They would, otherwise, tend to be rather desolate and sad.
Were there exceptions in Joseph's case? Almost certainly yes, and I should have noted that fact. If I recall correctly -- I don't have Bushman's Rough Stone Rolling ready to hand in order to check it right now -- the sexual flame at the plural marriage of Joseph Smith and Martha Bates Noble was burning at pretty much room temperature, if indeed even that.. And his marriage to Helen Mar Kimball seems to have been entered into for what a cynic -- not I -- would be inclined to call "dynastic" reasons. It may never have been consummated.
This must be what happens when your religion requires such pretzel logic to justify past choices.