PROSTITUTION VS. POLYGAMY

            Let’s straight away establish a couple of parameters.  The male of our species is programmed to want sex.  If he gets sex the species is perpetuated.  The Y-chromosome is the source of that desire for sex.  The mission of the Y-chromosome is to replicate itself and it doesn’t care how that’s done. 

            Ladies, that’s what we men are saddled with.  If it wasn’t for the brain and the invention of mores, the Egyptians would probably still be trying to build pyramids.  In other words, to a large degree, it has been you women and your ability to regulate the competition for women, that has civilized us men. 

            The point I want to make is that men are hard wired to want sex and in spite of all the mores, laws and attempts to tame that sex drive, men’s brains are going to find ways to satisfy that Y-chromosome.  The problem is, the Y-chromosome can’t tell the difference between the orifice of a man and woman. 

            The second parameter is, a man is not apt to solicit the services of a prostitute, find a mistress or become a polygamist if he and his wife enjoy mutual respect, genuine love and an uninhibited sexual relationship.  This is largely due to the brain.  But if the brain and Y-chromosome are out of sync, the brain will compensate by fantasizing.  Fantasy plays a large role in the function of the brain, but if the sex urge is starved, fantasy can result in disastrous behavior- at least as far as society is concerned.  Pedophilia, rape, voyeurism, homosexuality and exhibitionism are  the traits of a dysfunctional brain.  No, I’m not a psychologist, I’m a former sex crime investigator whose success was due to utilizing what psychologists learned about human behavior.  I also like to think I’m a good observer and discerner of what makes us humans tick. 

            With that foundation, or introduction in mind, fidelity in a monogamous marriage with healthy, intelligent, ambitious children is the natural order of things.  Unified, productive families are the building blocks of civilization.   But because the Y-chromosome has no rules and knows no bounds, the world is an exciting, adventurous and scary place. 

             In as much as prostitution is a business it is subject to the law of supply and demand.  Demand can be increased by advertisements in the form of such things as erotic literature and pornography.  Prostitution flourishes where there is a surplus of men like mining towns and military bases.  Single men and frustrated married men are likely customers.  Fantasy plays an influential role.  In interviewing a sex worker in Wells, Nevada, she said she tried to fulfill the fantasies of her customers.  Some of these cute, enterprising girls take their profession as seriously as psychologists and walk away after a few years wealthy women. 

            It is the hooker hanging around bus stops and truck stops, and the poor tart enslaved by powerful pimps that give prostitution a bad name.  Where prostitution is outlawed but flourishes anyway, other crimes and drugs are usually evident.

            Like it or not there is always going to be bootleg sex.  Young girls in this country and other countries are coerced into the trade.  Men with no conscious or morals get rich.  In contrast to the street hooker and the neighboring crime, there are no drugs and no organized criminals in the Nevada brothels. 

              Now about Mormon polygamy.  There are a couple of good scholastic books about Joseph Smith and his plural wives.  One of the best is In Sacred Loneliness, The Plural Wives of Joseph Smith, by Todd Compton.  In it Compton attempts to discover how Joseph went about convincing his plural wives that they should yield to his advances.  In a nut shell, it had to do with obeying God, marriage in heaven and salvation.  For example, Joseph told some of his prospective wives, “marry me and I can insure the salvation of your parents.” 

            Joseph allegedly received his plural marriage revelation (Section 132) July 12, 1843.  However, according to Compton he started seducing young women as early as 1833.  Joseph only confided in the revelation to a select few like Benjamin Johnson.  After he converted Ben he sought Ben’s help in convincing Ben’s sister to become his plural wife.  Of course Brigham Young was one of the few, so was Heber C. Kimball, who gave Joseph his 14 year-old daughter to Joseph as a plural wife. 

            Brigham sat on the revelation until August 29,1852, when he had Orson Pratt, the Mormon intellectual,  make a public announcement that plural marriage was indeed a Mormon doctrine.  (See Journal of Discourses, 1:58)

            In the nine years that lapsed it obviously gave Brigham and Orson time to embellish upon Joseph’s revelation as we see from Orson’s discourse and the following excerpt:

            “… they will continue and multiply to all ages of eternity, to raise up beings after their own order, and in their own likeness and image, gems of intelligences, that are celestial in their times and seasons, to become not only sons of God, but Gods themselves.”

            Orson began his discourse by calling attention to the whoredom and wickedness that runs rampant in the world and assures the world that lasciviousness is not the motivation behind plural marriage.  He uses all the lofty and highfalutin verbs and adjectives at his disposal to aggrandize “the coercion of women into a subservient, polygamist lifestyle.” 

            According to Orson, Mormon plural marriage is consistent with 4/5s of the world that practices polygamy.  Plural marriage is the means by “which a numerous and faithful posterity can be raised up. “The righteous are gathered out.” They are “more noble and intelligent than others.”  “Noble spirits are waiting to come to earth” and Mormon plural marriage is the way.  Mormon plural marriage elevates Mormons to that of kings to whom the honorable men of the earth will become servants.  Then of course he expounds upon the celestial blessings, seed without end, worlds without end, etc. etc., while pontificating in the manner of Isaiah, “Woe unto them that commit whoredomes.”

            The modern Mormon polygamist Clarion Call purports that plural marriage was instituted to “raise up a righteous seed” that will become kings, priests and prophets of their own worlds.  At the same time condemns wickedness and whoredomes as if drawing a contrast between sexual righteousness and sexual wickedness – attempting to drive a wedge between the two.  It’s an old trick akin to “negative psychology” often used in politics and between competing forms of government such as socialism and capitalism.  An intellect skilled in the art of rhetoric can make most anything sound good, even communism, but it is the fruits that are the real test.

            Joseph Smith, Brigham Young, Heber C Kimball and John Taylor were the most ardent proponents of “celestial marriage,” the word “celestial” being a “hundred dollar” euphemism for polygyny – one man with two or more wives.  But in spite of their high-minded rhetoric and ecclesiastic offices (apostles and prophets) when it came to seducing plural wives they were noted to have behaved like shameless, common men in rut. Check out Martha Brotherton and Nancy Rigdon on the Internet.  Also, Joseph’s attempt to seduce Orson Pratt’s pretty wife, Sarah Pratt, while Orson was away on a mission.  Then there is the fist fight between Brigham and John Taylor over a sweet young thing, Ann Ballantyne.  (The Last Pioneer, page 115, by Samuel W. Taylor)

            I will be the first to admit that there have been some really decent, intelligent children born in Mormon polygamy – most have apostatized.  But take a look at men like Ervil LeBaron, Tom Green, Brian David Mitchell, David Ortel Kingston, the Swapp brothers and the Lafferty brothers – and of course Warren Jeffs.  Can you imagine being a servant to those men in the celestial kingdom? 

            Mormon polygamy is an optical illusion, like the “two-face” picture – depending upon how your eyes focus on the face, you see a beautiful woman or an ugly witch.

            Let’s face it, there have been mistresses as noble, intelligent and righteous as plural wives.  There have been men who have consorted with mistresses and prostitutes who have been more noble, productive and righteous than Joseph Smith, Brigham Young, John Taylor, Warren Jeffs and Joe Blow who abandoned his first wife so he could have sex with plural wives.  Mormon polygamy is just another way the brain and Y-chromosome have cooperated in replicating …. not just genes but sending Section 132 from brain to brain – where Section 132 and the Y-chromosome reinforce each other. 

            There is absolutely nothing to corroborate Joseph’s revelation, not the Bible, not the Book of Mormon, not history.   In fact, history tends to repudiate Joseph’s claim that polygamy was originally a principle of the gospel of Jesus Christ, taught by Him when he roamed the Earth.  The truth is the early Christians were opposed to polygamy and incest because that is what Herod practiced.  (See The Rise of Christianity, by Rodney Stark and James, The Brother of Jesus by Robert Eisenman.) Just think about it, thousands of women are submitting to a coercive lifestyle based on the word of one man – who claimed he talked to supernatural beings.  Joseph did what Mohammad did, and probably got the idea from Mohammad - he extrapolated from the Old Testament a new religion, usurping the Hebrews by claiming he and his followers were now the “chosen.” (It is a matter of record that Joseph studied Mohammad for he threatened to become another Mohammad and flood the earth with blood.  Joseph and Sidney Rigdon hired a Jewish scholar to tutor them on Judaism.) 

            Sometime the best defense is an offense.  Orson Pratt had a lot of guts referring to the gentile world as a “whoredom.”  Excuse a well worn old cliché, “People who live in glass houses shouldn’t throw rocks.”