- Articulating my perspective relative to the doctrine of polygamy.
- I accept the doctrine of polygamy as a matter of historical fact.
- I have a testimony that Joseph Smith was a prophet who both taught the doctrine of polygamy and lived the practice of polygamy (although much uncertainty surrounds exactly how and how much he lived it).
- I have a testimony that Abraham was a prophet who lived polygamy and that his practice of polygamy was clearly acceptable to God.
- I also have a testimony that Jacob was a prophet who lived polygamy and that his practice of polygamy was acceptable to God.
- As a practical matter, ongoing and widespread polygamy in a mortal society is totally unsustainable.
- Historically the ratio between men who live to maturity and women who live to maturity is relatively close to 1:1 whereas in order to make widespread polygamy sustainable in a society it would have to be at least close to 1:2 or at least the ratio of those desiring marriage would need to be in that range (assuming we are talking about what the doctrine of polygamy allows ie. a man having multiple wives).
- Society has never (and likely will never) lack for evidence of the fact that all people have a tendency to eventually begin to abuse any authority that they suppose they have and in societies that practice widespread polygamy, men (especially married men) tend to have (or suppose they have) even more power within the society than is observed in societies that don’t practice polygamy.
- In groups that practice polygamy we can observe many men abusing their power both by practices such as marrying girls who are in no position to give true consent and in ostracizing or controlling young men to artificially maintain a scarcity of marriageable men within the group.
- In eternity we know that polygamy does and must exist.
- We have examples of righteous people who practiced sanctioned polygamy and if marriage is eternal then polygamy exists in eternity.
- We have no scarcity of reason to expect that more women than men will qualify for the celestial kingdom if for no other reason than the fact that we consistently observe in practically every society that men are more likely than women to make choices that are completely inconsistent with eternal law.
- We are repeatedly promised that nobody who is worthy of the celestial kingdom will be denied any blessing of that kingdom and success the greatest blessings of that kingdom are reserved for those who enter and keep the covenant of marriage there must be a way to accommodate an imbalance in the ratio of men to women there. Polygamy provides that accommodation.
- It seems common for people who accept the doctrinal concept of polygamy to conclude that all men in the celestial kingdom will live polygamy or will have the opportunity or even obligation to live polygamy even if they didn’t live it in mortality but there is no logical support for that conclusion. Here are a few conclusions we can logically arrive at:
- Those men who righteously lived polygamy in mortality will live polygamy in eternity.
- All people who qualify for the celestial kingdom will have the option of eternal marriage even if they were not married in mortality.
- All sanctioned plural marriages, whether started in mortality or eternity, must be based on the willing participation of all connected parties. (There will not be a case of some deserving single woman marrying a man over his objection or the objection of anyone he is already married to.)
- It is possible that some who did not live in polygamy during mortality will choose to live it in eternity based on how things shake out with people who were not married in life or who were married to people who didn’t keep their covenants.
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