Mormons; why don't you have crosses in your churches?

[Stephen168]

If you have relations w a 14 year old girl, Society at Large (SAL) considers you a pedophile.
-When you are convicted in a court of law for “money digging” a con fraud, SAL considers you a “con man”
-when you have relations and “marry” someone who is already married, SAL considers you an “adulterer”.

Calling Joseph Smith a pedophile, adulterer and con man are facts. Not the same as saying he’s ugly or something, a pointless slander. These are just facts. Sorry. I’m not saying no one else has ever done these things, but in the context of discussing Joseph Smith specifically, these are the facts.

I think you are right about the idea of Society at Large (SAL), but I think SAL and the Law go hand in hand. The Law reflects SAL and SAL reflects the Law. The Law considers a 14 yr old a child and SAL views having sex with a child as pedophilia. But technically pedophiles are attracted to prepubescent children and 14 is not prepubescent. For the same reasons the Catholic Church’s ‘pedophile priest’ scandal was mostly a ‘homosexual priest’ scandal. I would not call Smith a pedophile but, as we know from the priest scandal, SAL would.

I don’t think Smith was convicted of “money digging” but was convicted of ‘glass looking.’ A glass looker is one who, by peering through a glass stone, could see things not discernible by the naked eye. I would call him a conman as would SAL and Judge Neely.

Yes, having relations with another while already married is adultery. Not only would SAL call it adultery, it is contrary to the teaching of Christ, and Christianity for 2000 years. The cool thing about being a Mormon “Prophet” is when you get caught with you pants around your ankles you can declare a new revelation. It won’t be the last time a Mormon “Prophet” has declared a sin ‘OK.’

 

[Janet1983]

The point is about fallacious reasoning and debating styles. Here is a poster who, when I point out that it is a fallacy to figure that my factual statement about what pedophilia is (a sexual attraction to prepubescent children) and that Joseph Smith was not that—accuses me of saying that it’s OK to have sex with fourteen year olds.

…and then tells me that I am impossible to talk to!!!

So I turned the tables. The pregnancy rate of modern teenagers (especially their religious affiliation) has absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with Joseph Smith. Mentioning that most of the pregnant teenagers in my old school are Catholic is also irrelevent (of course most of them are Catholic; the neighborhood, and thus the school, is mostly Hispanic.)

The times are different. The mores are different. the attitudes are different, and my mentioning this does not mean anything—it is illogical and a lousy debate tactic. I submit that it’s closer to the point than what Sweetnay et. all, pull with their accusations of approving sex with fourteen year olds because I point out that they are insulting, off base, inaccurate and disrespectful to my faith in regard to Joseph Smith, but still…

I was wondering if anybody got the irony, is all—that it is permissible to call me immoral and an approver of adults having sex with fourteen year olds because I correct them on a matter of fact, and then get insulted and huffy because I use a different debate fallacy (and a far less disrespectful one) in return.

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The moral attitude of children may be different, but it is still absolutely wrong for a 29-year old man to marry a 14-year old.
It is a ridiculous assumption that moral attitudes of today’s children reflect on that in any way. It is simply wrong and the fact that today’s teenagers think differently about that is irrelevant. Wrong and right does not change with the season.
Somebody who has to talk a 14-year old girl into marrying him, because “God said so” and because then all of her family might be saved is just disastrous concerning the man’s reputation. Who could or would trust him? (Especially because He assumed that there was life on the moon… God’s revelation? How do you know he is right about heaven?)
Who would trust such a man, except for maybe a few …]?

 

[dianaiad]

The moral attitude of children may be different, but it is still absolutely wrong for a 29-year old man to marry a 14-year old.

Really?

Then you might want to talk to another Joseph and the 14 year old girl he married a little over 2000 years ago.

 

[zaffiroborant]

Except of course that he was not.

Polygamy is a cultural and religious issue; **adultery is what happens when a married person has sex with a person married to another. **Thus, even though David was a polygamist, he was not an adulterer until he dallied with Bathsheba.

Therefore, calling Joseph Smith an ‘adulterer’ is not a fact, but opinion and a pejorative.

“pedophilia,” is defined as the sexual preference for prepubescent children. No matter what you might think of Joseph smith, that does not apply to him. Nobody, no matter how nastily they attack him, has ever accused him of having sex with, or even desiring, sex with prepubescent children.

Therefore, calling Joseph Smith a ‘pedophile’ is not fact, but an opinion and a pejorative.

Since Joseph was never convicted of a crime, (even the Tanners admit that the 1826 ‘examination’ doesn’t qualify as a trial or a conviction) then the term ‘con-man’ is not fact, but opinion and pejorative.

You are entitled to your opinions, of course. But since I have just established that your opinions are not, in fact, ‘FACTS,’ then your opinions, stated as if they were fact, is extremely disrespectful to our faith.

It’s adultery when only one of the people involved is married.

 

[dianaiad]

It’s adultery when only one of the people involved is married.

Only for the married one.

 

[zaffiroborant]

Only for the married one.

Yes (though legally in the past both the married and unmarried parties would be charged) but your post said both parties had to be married for it to be adultery. So JS was an adulterer.

 

[dianaiad]

Yes (though legally in the past both the married and unmarried parties would be charged) but your post said both parties had to be married for it to be adultery. So JS was an adulterer.

No, since he was married to them.

There is a huge difference between adultery and polygamy. Whether you like that idea or not.

 

[cthulhubryan]

Yes (though legally in the past both the married and unmarried parties would be charged) but your post said both parties had to be married for it to be adultery. So JS was an adulterer.

Yes, and No.

If you define marriage as strictly between one man and one woman then there is adultery as any extra “marriages” would not be real.

If instead you allow for polygamous marriages then it would be polygamy and not adultery.

Fornication: Sex between non-married people
Adultery: Sex by married people with someone other than their spouse.

 

[cthulhubryan]

Really?

Then you might want to talk to another Joseph and the 14 year old girl he married a little over 2000 years ago.

Very nice comeback.

Anthropologically speaking, the age of ‘adulthood’ especially for women has changed both cross culturally and over time. 2000 years ago when the average life expectancy was around 35 then one tends to see the change from ‘girl’ to ‘women’ having less to do with specific age and more to do with what was so pleasantly called their ‘flowering’ which was the first menstrual cycle. This had to do with the societal needs to keep the race alive. If you, on average, are dead at 35 then waiting until you are 20-25 to have kids means that they will still be kids when you die. In order to see your grandchildren you would need to have children early on AND expect your children to do the same.

 

[zaffiroborant]

Yes, and No.

If you define marriage as strictly between one man and one woman then there is adultery as any extra “marriages” would not be real.
**
If instead you allow for polygamous marriages then it would be polygamy and not adultery.**

Fornication: Sex between non-married people
Adultery: Sex by married people with someone other than their spouse.

There was nothing then or now that allowed for polygamy, so they were not married to JS and it was adultery.

 

[Stephen168]

Very nice comeback.

Anthropologically speaking, the age of ‘adulthood’ especially for women has changed both cross culturally and over time. 2000 years ago when the average life expectancy was around 35 then one tends to see the change from ‘girl’ to ‘women’ having less to do with specific age and more to do with what was so pleasantly called their ‘flowering’ which was the first menstrual cycle. This had to do with the societal needs to keep the race alive. If you, on average, are dead at 35 then waiting until you are 20-25 to have kids means that they will still be kids when you die. In order to see your grandchildren you would need to have children early on AND expect your children to do the same.

And there is also the false assumption that all marriage is a sexual union, so I thought it was a very ignorant comeback.

 

[dianaiad]

Very nice comeback.

I thought so, since it pointed out the problem with using the more’s of one culture/time to judge another.

Anthropologically speaking, the age of ‘adulthood’ especially for women has changed both cross culturally and over time. 2000 years ago when the average life expectancy was around 35 then one tends to see the change from ‘girl’ to ‘women’ having less to do with specific age and more to do with what was so pleasantly called their ‘flowering’ which was the first menstrual cycle. This had to do with the societal needs to keep the race alive. If you, on average, are dead at 35 then waiting until you are 20-25 to have kids means that they will still be kids when you die. In order to see your grandchildren you would need to have children early on AND expect your children to do the same.

That’s one way people looked at it…as well, it was quite often the practice of cultures to have women marry very young, because quite frankly simply being female was a very dangerous medical condition. “Then” as well as now, women actually live longer than men–once the childbearing years are over. However, getting pregnant and having babies was a very risky proposition. At times the maternal mortality rate was as high as the infant mortality rate–1 in 4. Sometimes it was higher. Young men, too, tended to die off faster; so it was often true that men would wait to marry until they had passed the really dangerous age, and were able to support a family, where women were married off as early as they could physically have children.

Even today, with all the hype about feminism and all, the physical facts are hard to argue with; a woman’s biological clock runs a whole lot faster than a man’s does. The longer a woman waits to have children, the more likely it is that she will have problems–or that her baby will. A woman who waits to have children after she is forty is many times more likely to have fertility problems, and try comparing this: a nineteen year old mother has a 1 in 1250 chance of having a child with Down’s Syndrome. A 45 year old has a 1 in 4 chance of having a baby with Down’s Syndrome.

A forty year old man may be slightly less fertile than he was when he was 20, but not enough to cause problems—and men have been siring children in their 70’s and 80’s. T’aint fair, but there it is. Men can afford to wait. Women can’t. So, historically, they haven’t been.

It has only been REALLY recently that this has changed; prenatal and maternal care in the early 1800’s wasn’t a whole bunch different than it was 2000 years ago. Worse, in some ways; 2000 years ago midwives believed in washing their hands, at least.