Chap wrote: I actually disagree with the underlined clause.
If a woman tells me that she is going to become the wife of Mr X, then that is prima facie evidence that she will be commencing a sexual relationship with him. Helen Mar Kimball was of an age such that marriage was quite possible in the society in which she lived. There is therefore no reason not to make the normal presumption that by becoming his wife, which she did, she did commence a sexual relationship.
To overturn that presumption we need positive evidence to the contrary.
Which is what my whole posts says. They were married and sex is presumed even though we have no evidence of sex, but we do have his other wives to look at. We all do this with other people we know are married but don't have any kids. I doubt they go around talking about it.
Chap wrote: I actually disagree with the underlined clause.
If a woman tells me that she is going to become the wife of Mr X, then that is prima facie evidence that she will be commencing a sexual relationship with him. Helen Mar Kimball was of an age such that marriage was quite possible in the society in which she lived. There is therefore no reason not to make the normal presumption that by becoming his wife, which she did, she did commence a sexual relationship.
To overturn that presumption we need positive evidence to the contrary.
Which is what my whole posts says. They were married and sex is presumed even though we have no evidence of sex, but we do have his other wives to look at. We all do this with other people we know are married but don't have any kids. I doubt they go around talking about it.
Glad to see that we agree! Where you say "we have no evidence of sex" between Joseph and Helen Mar Kimball, I'd prefer to say that we have no direct and positive testimony that sexual relations took place, but we do have evidence pointing to sexual relations, in that she tells us that she agreed to become his wife, and actually did become his wife.
But that is just a difference of phrasing, and we agree on the facts.
Zadok: I did not have a faith crisis. I discovered that the Church was having a truth crisis. Maksutov: That's the problem with this supernatural stuff, it doesn't really solve anything. It's a placeholder for ignorance.
Given the apologetic standard set for proof of sex with his wives, how do we know he had sex with Emma? Is there any "evidence" to say she just wasn't messing around with Hyrum a lot?
The whole 'sex' thing is a straw man for both sides. What makes Joseph Smith's polygamy so problematic is how he induced women to marry him, the age and marital status of the women involved, and how he hid it from Emma and the rest of the world.
"Any over-ritualized religion since the dawn of time can make its priests say yes, we know, it is rotten, and hard luck, but just do as we say, keep at the ritual, stick it out, give us your money and you'll end up with the angels in heaven for evermore."
I looked up Kimball on the FAIR Wiki, and it's mentioned that Todd Compton wrote in response to the Tanners' use of his work, "The Tanners made great mileage out of Joseph Smith's marriage to his youngest wife, Helen Mar Kimball. However, they failed to mention that I wrote that there is absolutely no evidence that there was any sexuality in the marriage, and I suggest that, following later practice in Utah, there may have been no sexuality. (p. 638) All the evidence points to this marriage as a primarily dynastic marriage."
I don't own Compton's book, but if any of you do, would you mind summarizing "all the evidence pointing to this marriage as primarily dynastic"? I can't help but think there would be some overlap there with the evidence Pahoran has in mind (though no one can be sure until and unless he chooses to comment).
Fence Sitter wrote:Given the apologetic standard set for proof of sex with his wives, how do we know he had sex with Emma? Is there any "evidence" to say she just wasn't messing around with Hyrum a lot?
The whole 'sex' thing is a straw man for both sides. What makes Joseph Smith's polygamy so problematic is how he induced women to marry him, the age and marital status of the women involved, and how he hid it from Emma and the rest of the world.
+1 Those trying to defend Joseph will always try and distract from this.
TrashcanMan79 wrote:I looked up Kimball on the FAIR Wiki, and it's mentioned that Todd Compton wrote in response to the Tanners' use of his work, "The Tanners made great mileage out of Joseph Smith's marriage to his youngest wife, Helen Mar Kimball. However, they failed to mention that I wrote that there is absolutely no evidence that there was any sexuality in the marriage, and I suggest that, following later practice in Utah, there may have been no sexuality. (p. 638) All the evidence points to this marriage as a primarily dynastic marriage."
I don't own Compton's book, but if any of you do, would you mind summarizing "all the evidence pointing to this marriage as primarily dynastic"? I can't help but think there would be some overlap there with the evidence Pahoran has in mind (though no one can be sure until and unless he chooses to comment).
I'd like to see this too. But frankly, the idea that we need direct evidence of sex in order to believe that a man probably had sex with a woman who described herself as his 'wife', especially when other 'wives' of that man swore that he had sex with them is not a promising start.
I mean, why shouldn't a man have sex with his wife?
Zadok: I did not have a faith crisis. I discovered that the Church was having a truth crisis. Maksutov: That's the problem with this supernatural stuff, it doesn't really solve anything. It's a placeholder for ignorance.
Fence Sitter wrote:Given the apologetic standard set for proof of sex with his wives, how do we know he had sex with Emma? Is there any "evidence" to say she just wasn't messing around with Hyrum a lot?
The whole 'sex' thing is a straw man for both sides. What makes Joseph Smith's polygamy so problematic is how he induced women to marry him, the age and marital status of the women involved, and how he hid it from Emma and the rest of the world.
+1 Those trying to defend Joseph will always try and distract from this.
I agree completely. Also, if you are a believer in the Mormon version of the afterlife, then what Joseph did was break up potential eternal marriages (in the case of polyandry) or make it more difficult for younger unmarried men to have an eternal marriage (in the case of marriages of to younger women like Helen), in each case potentially depriving men of the opportunity to obtain the highest degree of celestial glory in order to bolster his own eternal glory. I think the issue of sexual relations should be quite insignificant to a believer compared to the issue of what "dynastic marriages" actually portend for the afterlife (biggest harem wins!!).
I don't think Joseph had sex with Helen mostly because of Helen's statement that she was angry her father wouldn't let her go to a dance after being married to Joseph for a while. If Helen was having sex with Joseph, then I don't think she would have even asked to go to the dance.
However, this same piece of evidence shows that Helen was fully Joseph's wife and he could have had sex with her at any time. If it was only a nonsexual, dynastic sealing, then she should have been allowed to go to the dance. The fact that she wasn't shows that it was a "full" marriage. Joseph probably entered the marriage for dynastic reasons, but once married, he was fully justified to have sex with her.
I think things would have been different, if Helen was living in the Mansion House. Those were the women Joseph seemed to have the greatest sexual access to and those were the ones who provided the most explicit testimony of sexual relations (e.g., all the orphan girls Joseph agreed to take care of ... and take care of them he did). If Helen was living there, then I suspect Joseph would have consumated the marriage. But since she was living somewhere else and wasn't really too enamored with him anyway (he had to promise eternal life for her whole family to finally get her to marry him for crying out loud), I believe Joseph planned to let wait for sex until she got a little older and/or showed some interest.
dblagent007 wrote:I don't think Joseph had sex with Helen mostly because of Helen's statement that she was angry her father wouldn't let her go to a dance after being married to Joseph for a while. If Helen was having sex with Joseph, then I don't think she would have even asked to go to the dance.
However, this same piece of evidence shows that Helen was fully Joseph's wife and he could have had sex with her at any time. If it was only a nonsexual, dynastic sealing, then she should have been allowed to go to the dance. The fact that she wasn't shows that it was a "full" marriage. Joseph probably entered the marriage for dynastic reasons, but once married, he was fully justified to have sex with her.
I think things would have been different, if Helen was living in the Mansion House. Those were the women Joseph seemed to have the greatest sexual access to and those were the ones who provided the most explicit testimony of sexual relations (e.g., all the orphan girls Joseph agreed to take care of ... and take care of them he did). If Helen was living there, then I suspect Joseph would have consumated the marriage. But since she was living somewhere else and wasn't really too enamored with him anyway (he had to promise eternal life for her whole family to finally get her to marry him for crying out loud), I believe Joseph planned to let wait for sex until she got a little older and/or showed some interest.
I think you say nothing unreasonable here, at least in your second and third paragraphs.
I think your first paragraph deduces rather more than is justified from the statement you cite. The relationship certainly had weird if not positively creepy aspects, but (as you point out) there are no signs that Joseph Smith was reluctant to have sex whenever he thought it was safe for him to do so.
Zadok: I did not have a faith crisis. I discovered that the Church was having a truth crisis. Maksutov: That's the problem with this supernatural stuff, it doesn't really solve anything. It's a placeholder for ignorance.
