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Hawkgrrrl – I think you provided a voice for a problem previously passed over in bloggernacle discussion. Polygamy went from being the first thing ‘on my shelf’ as a fourteen year old girl (it kept me up at night; I was the kind of youth who was almost in competition with myself to be the most obedient, to live with exactness, and the thought of my reward being part of a harem, while my husband/lord figure created worlds with Jesus was something I felt very guilty for hating) to what cracked it. I felt frustrated that the church acknowledged in one line that polygamy was most negative for women, and in another explained that God didn’t give specifics on how to institute polygamy but he did give the power on that one to men. Nothing underlines what I feel to be second-classhood more than this for me.
In this context, ‘tea’ is referring to ‘dinner’. I have no answer for your question other than we like biscuits, routine, and edible hospitality, and tea works nicely with all that. Reflexzero wrote:It makes me wonder if anyone has studied the desire for sex being a factor with the rapid rate of LDS courtship and marriage. My LDS friends probably never lasted much more than 6 months from the first date to the wedding, while my non member friends ranged from 3 to 10 years.
I worked in one of the BYU’s counseling departments, and I can provide anecdotal evidence that almost all the couples I saw had gone from first date to wedding within 9 months. People were shocked when they heard my own engagement was ‘6 months’ as if that were ‘long’! My non-LDS friends were terrified for me that I was committing to a life with one person when I had limited physical interaction with them, for one thing, but also for only having known them for a year. My only married non-LDS friends were together for over a decade (cohabiting for 7 years of that time) before they tied the knot.
It’s funny to me (sortof) how Spencer W. Kimball acknowledges that sex is one of the reasons people end up in divorce court, but then he’s also the one responsible for rooting around in married couples bedrooms restricting sexual practices (see: oral sex letter)
This is a generalization I am typically uncomfortable with making, but while I can’t say that men’s sex drive is innately higher (maybe it’s perceived as higher in our society because our society feeds that idea so significantly) I think, that from personal experience, boys are much more anxious to marry in the church – there’s no sexual outlet; masturbation is a sin and so is anything else. My non-LDS boyfriends were often more rational at looking at our relationship, less driven to taking huge steps over short periods of time, and frankly, less ‘wired’ all the time.
Reflexzero wrote:It is disturbing to me when we blame sexual urges on the devil, when it is likely hormones and neurology at work.
This bothers me too.
While I’m ranting fairly indiscriminately (sorry), I think the whole chastity discussion is done horribly anyway – the boys are told ‘keep it in your pants until marriage’ and the girls are essentially told to quash any pilot light of sexuality they may have so they don’t tempt the boys, but somehow after an adolescence of denying even being remotely sexual, they’re supposed to suddenly have a sexual identity so they can fulfil their divine roles as wife and mother, both of which involve sex. The irony is horrible.
I think chastity can be a good thing – I think it’s a bit of a hedge about the law though. The law, in my mind, is trying to minimize procreation in a situation that would be less stable (considering this chastity thing has roots waaaaay back before birth control or clear insight on menstruation etc) and the hedge about that law forms on the basis that marriage = more stable.
