The consolation prize of multiple wives in heaven
So how does this work?
There are also those who think that Romney’s disowning of past Mormon polygamy is too opportunistic, since the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints does still offer the consolation prize of multiple wives in heaven (just like the sick dream of Mohamed Atta).
Who are all those women? Where do they come from? Are there lots of extra women in heaven who never spent any time as mortals down here? If so mightn’t they be just a little creepy? Do men really want bizarro ‘wives’ who have no idea what life is like on an actual earthy planet? What would they be like to talk to? Of course the idea is that they’re a consolation prize because they provide sexual variety – but the word is ‘wives,’ not concubines or mistresses or sexual partners, so one has to assume they’ll be underfoot all the time. And then if there are all these extra women in heaven, one has to wonder if men would really regard it as a consolation prize to be vastly outnumbered. Especially by a lot of weird clueless from-another-planet women who don’t know from Seinfeld or Dr Strangelove or Jon Stewart or The Onion or The Office.
And that’s before we even get to the question of what the consolation prize for women is. Having lots of female roommates? But how does the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints know that all women want lots of female roommates? Or are women who don’t want that allowed to make their own arrangements, while the complement of multiple wives for each man is made up from the magical warehouse-full of heaven-born women? But if that’s the case why not just issue each man a set of really high-quality inflatable dolls, so as to avoid the creepiness problem and the outnumbered problem?
I wonder if the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints has really thought things through.
I’m sure they did all the thinking necessary in about 15 seconds…
Guy 1: I think a good way to keep fannies in the seats is to promised them bonus wives in the afterlife.
Guy 2: Human wives, or angelic man-servants?
Guy 1: Servants. The kind that do it all. No nagging.
Guy 2: Great. Let’s tell the boys…
(End Scene.)
I’d bet a suicide bomber would be real ticked to learn that Mormons don’t need to blow up anyone to get tons of chicks in the afterlife. Maybe the State Department should send Romney to Iraq.
Yeah but it’s just male fannies. It has to go
Guy 1: I think a good way to keep male fannies in the seats is to promise men bonus wives in the afterlife.
—
No doubt they just assume that all the female fannies go where the male ones go, and do what they’re told. Ho hum.
From what I know of the current mormon views, if you marry someone you are married for life AND death. However say wife 1 dies. You can re-marry. Then in heaven you have 2.
Of course, I’m not entirely sure if it works that way for women as well.
(2 wives I mean)
And no, I’m not defending them. I live in a place with one of the highest concentrations of Mormons outside of Utah in a town where they practically run the place. Educating myself was a defensive maneuver.
Interesting…One wonders what happens if (say) wife 1 is a widow when she re-marries. Then whose wife is she once they’re all dead?
Sad about living in Mormon-town. Good luck…
Silly woman; apply logic to something that is OBVIOUSLY a matter of faith ;-)
For all their weird beliefs and cultish behaviors, they make good neighbors. The children are well behaved, they are meticulously polite and keep their houses nice. Plus we never get Mormon missionaries because they figure that everyone who might convert around here already has *grin* (For that matter, we don’t get Jehovah’s Witness missionaries either; I guess they have ceded the town to the Mormons…)
That doesn’t mean we aren’t rescuing the ones that we can…..
(The scariest part of Mormonism to me is the cultish efforts they make to keep someone in once they are there. The psychological manipulation and emotional blackmail are terrifying.)
OK, now I’m really confused. I thought the Mormon view was that women can’t get to heaven without hitching a ride with a husband. That’s why Mormons believe in polygamy. See, it used to be there weren’t enough men to go around. So the men did the extra women a favor by marrying them…so they would get to go to heaven. Or maybe when they liberalized and got rid of polygamy they also liberalized the entry conditions for heaven? Do women get to go on their own these days? (Does anybody know?)
Oh, and by the way, I’m not sure about heaven for Mormons. I think the idea is that men get to be gods of their own universes when they die. So it’s not one place for all, it’s multiple worlds Or is that just for extra special men?
It scares me to think of a president believing all this stuff, but truth be told the dogmas of other religions are probably just more familiar, and no less, um, odd.
I’ve always found the Mormon concept of “Heaven” to be particularly perverse. Eternity WITH YOUR FAMILY?!?!
To quote someone-or-other (Lucifer in Goethe’s Faust, perhaps, upon being told to go back to Hell): “Why, this is Hell, nor am I out of it.”
Or, to paraphrase Sartre: Hell is other people – especially when you’re related to them…
;-)
G
No it’s Marlowe’s Faustus! One of my favorite lines of all time – I wrote it down in a little special quotationy book when I was a teenager. I think I still have it somewhere.
“but truth be told the dogmas of other religions are probably just more familiar, and no less, um, odd.”
Well exactly – it scares me that any of them believe any of it. Bush II’s beliefs scare the bejesus out of me; so did Reagan’s.
Interesting about the keeping in…I’m not sure I knew that. The ‘apostasy’ thing again.
My closest ex-mormon friend is over tonight, so here are some answers…
– A woman canNOT get into the highest level of celestial kingdom without a husband. He has to “call your secret name”. She can get into lower levels if she is unmarried. Then they will marry her off…
– Women don’t get more than 1 husband in heaven. If a woman marries, the 1st husband dies and she remarries, she is stuck with her 1st husband when she gets to heaven. The second husband will eventually get put with some other woman if he doesn’t remarry a women who hadn’t been married before.
– There are assumed to be more women than men in heaven because women are more virtuous. Therefore women are told that they will HAVE to share.
They start teaching this dreck to girls at age 12.
I have never realy understood this mutiple wives thing,I have one that spends me into the poor house so what on earth would lots of them do?
When I was 15 and briefly shopping for a religion, my close friendship with a pakistani muslim classmate encouraged me to check out Islam. The pamphlets and brief quranic extracts from the muslim converts association looked quite reasonable and extended discussions with my friend’s dad were friendly- centering on the theme of how much the religion respected women- until I asked about what women got as the 72-houri equivalent in heaven.
‘Er….nothing really, virtue is its own reward’ he spluttered. Islam lost me at that precise moment.
Wow…thanks, Rebecca. Fascinating.
So let’s see…I can’t say that the idea of 72 callow young men is all that appealing as a reward, so what would be a good substitute? Infinite chocolate, I guess. (Not currants or raisins, thank you; it’s chocolate or nothing.)
Infinite chocolate?
Now watch it, you are just contributing to the world view of the sexist, anti-feminist, prejudiced, chauvinist pigs, OB.
Arnaud,
Hey, easy with the gender-based chocolate-desiring assumptions! :-)
If OB has found a religion that promises infinite chocolate as an afterlife then I reckon I’m about ready to abandon my general skepticism and say “I IS A BELEEEEEEVER!!!”
But only if it’s the good stuff, 70% cocoa solids or more…
:-))
I would be happy with 72 well frosted cans of carling and a 42 inch plasma t.v.
Gosh! I reckon Hell is other people’s Heaven…
Arnaud may be on to something with the suggestion that Hell is other people’s heaven, if one adds the proviso ‘and vice-versa’.
I commend to your attention Margaret Atwood’s short story, “Our Cat Goes to Heaven”. It ends with the cat asking God that if this is heaven, why are the souls of the unrighteous present. God replies:
“Our heaven is their Hell. I like a balanced universe.”
Well of course only the good stuff, I’m talking Fran’s, Dilettante, Godiva, Suchard, Green River, not Hershey’s.
I’ve actually had garlic mushrooms in a chocolate sauce…and oooohhhhhh, yessss!!!
:-)
OB – gotta make sure it’s FairTrade, too!
Green & Black’s…mmmm…
Fair trade is that liberal white guilt speaking Andy?
Of course the scriptural justifications are silly but, changing the subject very slightly, I don’t understand the objections to multiple partners in marriage (so long as rights are equal between the sexes, that it is always voluntary and that it is possible for both or either to get out, naturally). Why on earth should the state decide how many husbands or wives we should have? Steven Landsburg is quite interesting on this. He suggests that legally enforced monogomy was, historically, a conspiracy of men to reduce the bargaining power of women. I think he may be right. Why else have the law? It wasn’t introduced by the laydeez for obvious reasons and the patriarchy hasn’t been well known for actuting social conditions just to benefit the women.
Interesting…One wonders what happens if (say) wife 1 is a widow when she re-marries. Then whose wife is she once they’re all dead?
Great that you should ask. Jesus spoke on this exact point and said: “Get a life, it isn’t like that in heaven.”
(paraphrased Australian translation Mark 12, 19 to 27).
John M, but the question isn’t an abstract or general one, it’s one of reality, and the reality is not multiple partners for each spouse, it’s just polygamy, pure and simple. Mormonism doesn’t (and didn’t) provide for multiple partners but for polygamy.
Yes, that’s true OB, although you can make a case for the idea that polygamy is less oppressive of women than mongamy, even if polyandry is forbidden, and to an extent, therefore, traditional momonism is (in this area at least) less sexist than our current arrangements. In polygamous societies, the argument goes, women have far more bargaining power in marriage contracts because there is, effectively, a shortage of women. As things stand, David Beckham can only take one bride and so a whole bunch of candidates who might otherwise consider shacking up with theb great man are forced to negotiate with less attractive prospects on who would otherwise have to work much, much harder to attract them away from the lure of being Posh 1.1, 1.2, or 1.3.
I know one can make a case, but then one can make a case for a lot of things. And the bargaining power idea is probably wrong – a shortage of women seems to produce more coercion of women rather than less. I used to think perhaps the selective abortion of females problem would self-correct in a generation when people realized they’d created a shortage of women – but apparently all that’s happening is increased coercion, abduction, and rape.
But besides that it’s just silly on the face of it – obviously it’s a complete power imbalance and it’s the men who have the power, not women. (And women who live under polygamy do not like it. That goofy tv show about Mormon polygamy gives a deceptive picture.)
“obviously it’s a complete power imbalance and it’s the men who have the power,”
“Beginning in the 1830s, at least thirty-three women married Joseph Smith.
…[O]ne-third of Smith’s wives were young women between fourteen and twenty years of age. Another third were married to other men, some of whom served as witnesses at their own wives’ polyandrous weddings. …[F]or all of Smith’s wives, the experience of being secretly married to the prophet was socially isolating and emotionally draining. …[D]espite some benefits, they found their faith tested. After Smith’s death in 1844,
“(And women who live under polygamy do not like it.” Yes, it took its toll on one of his widows’ that she joined a convent
wivesofjosephsmith.org/02-FannyAlger.htm
Fanny Alger was the second wife – and Fanny Young was the last. He was, I am sure, by the innumerable wives kept dreadfully busy. That is for sure!
I bet he had big deep holes in his too few worn-out trouser pockets!
“One for you – one for me! Mmmm, nice!
Confiserie Tschirren