The Church is smart

[Indy Coug]

Originally Posted by SteelBlue

I wonder if our polygamist ancestors considered it bigotry when the nation sought to protect traditional marriage and deny them the right to plural marriage?

They were probably worried more about prison time and seizure of assets than the abstract concept of what is and isn't bigotry.

[FMCoug]

Originally Posted by Indy Coug

They were probably worried more about prison time and seizure of assets than the abstract concept of what is and isn't bigotry.

And didn't give a rat's ass whether anybody else considered the marriages valid or not.

[SteelBlue]

Originally Posted by FMCoug

And didn't give a rat's ass whether anybody else considered the marriages valid or not.

Uh, yeah. That's why we continue to practice polygamy today.

[FMCoug]

Originally Posted by SteelBlue

Uh, yeah. That's why we continue to practice polygamy today.

reactive vs. pro-active. Had Congress passed Edmunds-Tucker but left the Saint in Utah the hell alone, would it have been an issue to them that their marriages were not "legal"? Don't think so.

[RockyBalboa]

Originally Posted by SteelBlue

I wonder if our polygamist ancestors considered it bigotry when the nation sought to protect traditional marriage and deny them the right to plural marriage?

Irrelevant to the issue at hand.

[UtahDan]

Originally Posted by RockyBalboa

Irrelevant to the issue at hand.

I think its pretty relevant, though I don't know if it leads anywhere. The obvious similarity is here is a group who was prevented from having a particular kind of non-traditional, or at least not socially acceptable, marriage (plural marriage) trying to keep another group from having a particular kind of marriage (gay marriage).

The problem logically is that it doesn't follow that because one or the other was motivated by bigotry (if it was) that the other is also. What I suppose is salient is that both 19th century LDS and modern gays view their opposition as being bigoted. But that is such a subjective term that, again, you can't analogize and say that if one is they both must be.

It would be bigoted to not let someone eat at a lunch counter because they are black. But is it also bigoted to keep someone from eating at a lunch counter because they are a nudist? This is the real problem with the analogy between the civil right movement and the gay marriage movement, and the reason that blacks don't seem to be on board with it. Whatever drives you to be a nudist, maybe it is genetic, I still don't want you at my lunch counter naked. We can disagree about whether that makes me a bigot or not, but we are talking about what is acceptable behavior. Being black is not a behavior, having a gay marriage is. That is why I see the bigotry argument both as to polygamy and gay marriage as a red herring.

Assume that I hate nudists. Does that invalidate my desire to have laws that say people must not indecently expose themselves in public? If polygamy is a societal bad, or even arguably so, does it matter that those who want to outlaw it hate Mormons? I don't think you can call people who were anti-polygamy then or people who are anti-gay marriage now bigots when you are talking about a behavior (regardless of its source) that one can colorably argue is undesirable. I'm not saying anyone has to buy the argument, but name calling as a proxy for debate, or as an expression of frustration that you can't persuade someone else, is what I am seeing here mostly.