Hopelessly contradictory and confused on polygamy/ plural marriage.

I was glad to see the crackdown happen. I think that if we allow these compounds to exist, sooner or later one of these things will mix "wacko right wing... Western anti-government... machine gun stockpile" in, and another Branch Davidian thing will happen. It is only a matter of time if we let enough of these groups set themselves up and barricade themselves in.

When a 16 year old girl calls and says that her 50 year old husband- the father of her baby and the other on the way, and she has had broken ribs before because he's beaten her so bad, and she is whispering on a cell phone, and has been prevented from leaving, and she has been locked up and denied food when she refused sex... then yeah, the Texas Rangers can go ahead and nuke the joint in my book.

But, a near consensus seems to be emerging that educated adults can choose what they want, brainwashed kids can't. A live and let live, libertarian notion. Actually, a view that Joseph and co would probably agre with, namely, that marriage and such matters are a ceremonial and religious function that government ought not to be getting entangled with, trying to encourage some arrangements with tax incentives, barring others, etc. Easy to imagine that backfiring on us.

And, as Mormons, we are of course caught in a gigantic quandary. What to do with polygamy altogether? Does it remain on the books in heaven, in D&C 132, in the temple set-up, in the doctrine? If so, how on Earth can we support 1 man/ 1 woman as a law? Act as though 1 man 1 woman is some mathematical bedrock of the universe that requires us to delve into religious right politics, and we so don't want to but the gays are making us.

Was Joseph justified in telling the 14 year old (Nancy Rigdon) that she had to submit to a plural marriage to him or be damned? Were Sidney and Oliver Cowdery justified in saying that it was all a filthy adulterous thing to cover the Fanny Alger affair?

Are Seminary teachers lying when they explain it as being an economic system to care for old widows? Are they lying when they say it happened a long time ago, ended "by revelation" or "in 1890" even though Joseph F Smith told the US Congress that it continued through 1904/06 amongst the 12 and other higher ups? Is it really a rationalization that mainly only the most powerful did it? Are we really supposed to be so happy that Emma Smith: My Story mentioned it for 20 seconds, as if that is progress? Do we say ok to the "an angel with a sword made me do it" exlanation?

And what of Joseph getting sealed to women who were already married to other men?

We are contradicted all over the place. For the first 5 Prophets, it was not same random idiocyncracy, it was a central tenet, an unavoidable necessity, the higher law.

And so I think the whole "There is no such thing as a fundamentalist Mormon" defense, the "They have nothing to do with us" line, is all rubbish. They grow from the same exact tree. They tie back to what this whole thing was about as much, if not more, than the mainstream Church does. They are obviously a part of the Mormon movement. They quote from the first 5 Prophets and we ignore the first 5 Prophets. When they take wives and children away from a man who is out of line and give them to another higher up... they are living out of the Brigham books that we completely ignore.