Wednesday, April 16, 2008

Harems


Well...the "poygamist sect" story is going to be in the news a lot...I dont know if it is an off shoot of the orignal Mormons...who were notorious for polygamy...or the current Mormons are an off shoot of the "sect"...insomuch as the Mormons have abandoned polygamy...I think I have that right!...brb...


well..I looked up Deseret News and read today's take and then the comments...which all look to be written by sock puppets!...CNN is on and they keeps throwing out hypothetheticals...or throwing at...each candidate....it's an endless debate!...has been from beginning...overrule the generals...Anderson's yakking...this was all gone over in thread in jfk...an endless debate....


But..I got to thinking about Harems...usually they are portrayed as....unconventional....but in many parts of the world...among the wealthy and aristocracy...in history anyway...they were common...brb..


quote


The curious thing about polygamy, Van Wagoner says, is that for all the anguish it caused, it was never practiced by more than 20 percent of the Mormon population. "It was not a very easy system to maintain. There were practical difficulties—financial problems, personality conflicts, wives and children not getting along. It was always a difficult system." Mormon leader Brigham Young had 56 wives, but the average number was three, and an "acceptable number" for men who wanted to get ahead in the church hierarchy was two, Van Wagoner says.


and


Most accounts of polygamy in the press of the rest of the nation were inaccurate, portrayed, according to Van Wagoner, as "Mormon harems dominated by lascivious males with hyperactive libidos."
But that sensational tableau so gripped the nation that Utahns were in almost continual conflict with the federal government.




unquote


Dont know but it's the Harem dancers in the Sinbad movies...brb...




and that's the odd thing about all this...the Church group women don't look at all like they're going about enticing lascivious males!...


brb...


here's Conon Doyl's run in with the Mormons...




I did that up before somewhere...


brb...


quote


The doubts raised by church members were nothing compared with the vitriol unleashed by non-Mormons when the doctrine of polygamy became publicly known. It was denounced, along with slavery, as a "twin relic of barbarism" by the Republican Party in 1856 -- not an accidental linkage because opponents considered plural marriage a form of white slavery that degraded women. Polygamy also drew the attention -- and criticism -- of numerous novelists, even figuring in the first Sherlock Holmes adventure.




unquote


That's a PBS page...


What impresses me from the testimony of these women is that together they appear to be raising the children in a communal fashion....and from watching the behavior of the Deer hereabouts...how the Does takes care of the Fawns...what they are doing seems a kinda "natural" fit.


Clearly the nefarious would take advantage of this...and it may be impossible not to!...multiple wives....or is it multiple partners...I dont know...nor want to!...just how they arrange things!


brb...


quote


Female privacy in Islam is emphasized to the extent that any unlawful breaking into that privacy is Ḥarām "forbidden". Contrary to the common belief, a Muslim harem does not necessarily consist solely of women with whom the head of the household has sexual relations (wives and concubines), but also their young offspring, other female relatives, etc.; and it may either be a palatial complex, as in Romantic tales, in which case it includes staff (women and eunuchs), or simply their quarters, in the Ottoman tradition separated from the men's selamlik.




unquote


And that's curious...as a Buck will maintain the "sacredness" of its Does...its Harem...by fighting off other Bucks...and here too the Harem includes children and a lot of others.


I dont know if the Mormons use this arrangement...insomuch the women are married to just one husband I suppose it is...


brb...from same page...


quote


Many Westerners imagined a harem as a brothel consisting of many sensual young women lying around pools with oiled bodies, with the sole purpose of pleasing the powerful man to whom they had given themselves. Much of this is recorded in art from that period, usually portraying groups of attractive women lounging nude by spas and pools.


unquote


ah...another myth!
Larry King is interviewing the Women....this is gonna be grist for the playwrights...it has the making of Greek tragedy....but will go through the melodrama for TV route first.
And they wear distinctive clothes that set them apart...something I notice when Amish and such visit the Park...I find myself wanting to applaud they're dignified effort to live their own way...and they are always courteous. Larry's asking them how old they were when they were married...
quote
According to The History Channel, when the Great Depression hit the U.S., marriage rates plunged, and it became economically difficult for young people to form new households. "The marriage rate dropped almost 13 percent between 1930 and 1932, and by the end of the decade the average age at marriage had risen from 24.3 to 26.7 for men and from 21.3 to 23.3 for women."
and I wonder if Larry King has seen this stat...
quote
According to records at the Texas Department of Health, Liset was one of nearly 60 girls in that state who married in 2002 at the tender age of 14--the minimum age in Texas with parental consent. (A handful of other states sanction extremely early marriages with parental consent: In Alabama, South Carolina and Utah, girls can marry at 14; in New Hampshire it's 13; in Massachusetts and Kansas, 12.)
unquote
But I dont know if this is pertinent to this story...
now Larry is talking to a Canadian fellow who is a polygamist..."lawyers advised us to distance ourselves from underage marriages"
I would hope.
it's all very strange!..
Pic is a Delacroix
DavidDavid




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