By Lisa Miller
Newsweek
URL: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/20439107/site/newsweek/
No group is more emphatically and publicly opposed to the practice of
polygamy than the Latter-day Saints. The topic is, however,
irresistible and perennial. While the Mormon Church banned plural
marriage more than 100 years ago and promises excommunication to those
who practice it, its spokespeople find themselves having to explain
polygamy's legacy over and over to reporters who watch "Big Love" or
are curious about Mitt Romney's ancestry. "I wish to state
categorically that this church has nothing whatever to do with those
practicing polygamy," said LDS president Gordon B. Hinckley more than
a decade ago.
Much less clear is the church's position on polygamy in the eternal
hereafter. When a Mormon man and woman are married in the Temple, they
are "sealed," which means they and their children will be bound
together forever in heaven—what Mormons call the celestial kingdom. If
a Mormon man becomes a widower, or if he is divorced, he can remarry
in the Temple—and thus be sealed to more than one woman. (Mormon
women, on the other hand, need to have their previous sealings
canceled before they can be sealed again.) Doesn't this mean, in
effect, that men can have multiple wives in heaven? LDS Church
officials decline to answer specifically, saying only that "the Lord
has not given answers to all the details of life after death. There
are some things we simply don't know."
All this may seem an obscure theological question, but in an age of
divorce and mixed families, it's a matter of great concern, especially
to Mormon women. On the Web site feministmormonhousewives.org, women
worry over celestial polygamy in all its permutations, and the topic
was also on the agenda at a symposium of Mormons last month in Salt
Lake City. Here are the kinds of questions that come up: Would a
woman, in the event of her untimely death, be big-hearted enough to
share a cherished husband with a "sister wife" in heaven? Would a
divorced LDS mom have to live forever with an ex-husband she despised?
"Most Mormon women are worried about the polygamy issue," says
Margaret Toscano, a professor at the University of Utah who was
excommunicated by the LDS Church for her feminist writings. "They're
worried they're going to be forced into polygamy in the next life." As
with all questions about heaven, these are unanswerable; the most
devout members put their trust in God. "We have great faith that it
will all work out," says LDS spokeswoman Kim Farah.
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