New Right Ascension

Friday, February 28, 2014

SAUCE FOR THE RUSSIAN GOOSE, SAUCE FOR THE AMERICAN GANDER: Comments on USA involvement in the Crimea Ukraine Crisis

As I listened to President Obama’s remarks about The Crimea Ukraine Crisis, and as I read the remarks on-line, it occurs to me that Our President is the biggest hypocrite on this particular subject.

The United States of America has for centuries “influenced”, interfered with, and meddled with small nations bordering it and surrounding it.    It has military bases all over the planet, including Guantanamo on the east shore of Cuba.   It has intervened in all sorts of small close-by countries for all kinds of dubious reasons. Those dubious reason rarely actually helped the natives in the long view.

The USA has recently invaded countries that were technically closer to the Russian sphere of influence than the American sphere – Iran, Afghanistan.   The results of that adventure on the local natives has not yet been completely positive.

If the USA can intervene in small close-at-hand nations, then Russia obviously has the right to intervene in small bordering nations.

THE CALL TO ACTION IN EUROPE

If the European Union wants Ukraine under its positive influence instead of the negative Putin Russia influence, the European Union will have to distribute more than just its weight in words.

Monday, February 24, 2014

To Light the Fire Within – a study of the Sochi Olympics Medal Winners statistics

The government of the Russian Federation spent 51 billion dollars, a considerable chunk of it on graft, bribery, corruption, and pay backs, to build and host a Winter Olympics in a semi-tropical Black Seaside resort.    Some day it would be nice if Russia hosted a Winter Olympic games in an actual wintertime mountain community in or near the Ural Mountains. Anyway, for its 51 billion dollar investment, the Russian athletes won the most medals of all the competitors.

This next list shows a comparison contrast of the top three nation winners of the last five Winter Olympic Games.   Certain countries keep turning up.

Medal totals past 5 Winter Olympics

1998     Nagano
Germany    29
   Norway    25
    Russia        18
Japan         10

2002    Salt Lake City
Germany    36
USA        34
Norway    25

2006    Turin
Germany    29
USA        25
Austria    23    1
Italy        11

2010    Vancouver
USA        37
Germany    30    4
Canada    26    1

2014    Sochi
Russia     33    2
USA        28    4
Norway     26    3

The good news from the Sochi Olympics is that the big countries with all the money and lots of athletes did not entirely over-dominate the games, they hardly dominated at all.   This has been the case at the Winter Olympics since 1998.

Note the totals in the following lists for comparison contrast.

Medal winners from Countries with populations over 80 million

1     Russian Federation         33
2     United States of America     28
6     Germany             19
11     People's Republic of China     9
15     Japan                 8
total 97

Medal winners from the small countries in population

3     Norway             26
4     Canada             25
5     Netherlands             24
7     Austria             17
8     France             15
9     Sweden             15
10     Switzerland             11
12     Republic of Korea         8
13     Czech Republic         8
14     Slovenia             8
16     Italy                 8    most medals won, none gold
17     Belarus             6
18     Poland             6
19     Finland             5
20     Great Britain             4
21     Latvia             4
22     Australia             3
23     Ukraine             2
24     Slovakia             1
25     Croatia             1
26     Kazakhstan             1
grand total 198

The European Union eclipsed the Chinese empire, the Russian Empire, and the American Empire with enough and to spare. E U athletes won 141 medals.

Medal winners by continent

Europe        214

Asia            59

North America    53

Australia        3

I keep hoping that someday athletes from India, Indonesia, Africa, South America, or Caribbean or Pacific Isles will win Winter Olympic medals.   That may happen someday, but it did not happen this year.

The Olympics remains a rich person’s sport and a rich country’s sport.   Medal winners from the 12 wealthiest countries defined by the United Nations list in Wikipedia

1     Russian Federation         33
2     United States of America     28
4     Canada             25
6     Germany             19
8     France             15
11     People's Republic of China     9
12     Republic of Korea         8
15     Japan                 8
16     Italy                 8
20     Great Britain             4
22     Australia             3
garnered a total of no fewer than 160 medals.

The money angle still remains the biggest road block to getting talented athletes from all corners of the world to an Olympic games. The Olympics has the best athletes money can buy, but that does not mean it has the best athletes there are.

Stronger.   Faster. Higher.   Richer.

Tuesday, February 11, 2014

IN MEMORIAM -- SHIRLEY TEMPLE: a study of 4 of her 1940s films

Shirley Temple, born in 1928 and died in February 2014, had a life story that frankly reads like fiction – except it really did happen.

In the early 1930s she made educational movies for tikes.   In the early 1930s, William Fox signed her to a contract. Fox Studio and Twentieth Century Fox Studio turned her into a child superstar. Her movies were heavy on optimism amid hard times and sometimes had musical elements.   She made a huge fortune for Twentieth Century Fox.

In the 1950s, she became an early participant in television.   Her second marriage lasted a long time by any standards.

In the 1960s and 1970s she had a diplomatic career, serving in two countries as an ambassador and eventually as the chief of protocol.   Very few stars – John Gavin and Sidney Poitier come to mind – served as ambassadors, though at least three – Irene Dunne [who was also a Knight of Malta], Danny Kaye, and Audrey Hepburn – served either as ambassadors or delegates associated with the United Nations.

When she died, she was the senior living recipient of an Academy Award, an honorary award for the film work she did 80 years ago this year. She was 6 when AMPAS bestowed it.

Of the movies she made as a child, my personal favorite happens to be Walter Lang’s The Blue Bird (20th Century Fox 1940), one of her few three-strip Technicolor films, Fox’s answer to Victor Fleming’s The Wizard of Oz (MGM 1939).   It contains a vision of pre-mortal heaven that features boy spirits dressed in short blue togas and girl spirits dressed in shorter pink togas being sent to Earth in a spiritual galleon. No kidding.    The Blue Bird is delightfully berserk, an eye-popping film fantasy based on Maurice Maeterlinck’s play. It was Shirley’s biggest flop of a child star vehicle: unlike Oz, it has not make grundles of money in re-release.

Little credible evidence suggests Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer really did try to borrow her for the role of “Dorothy” in Oz.   Producer Mervyn LeRoy and studio head Louis B Mayer were, practically from the beginning, sold on casting Judy Garland as Dorothy.

Her father squandered the money she made at Fox, though her mother seems stable enough.

This bring me to Shirley’s career in the 1940s when she was a teenager / young adult.    She was not quite as big a superstar in this period, but she made four fascinating pictures.   They illustrate a number of points about film making in the 1940s and America in general.

When Shirley left 20th Century Fox, MGM signed her to a contract, but could not decide what to do with a larger more-mature Shirley Temple.   David O Selznick signed her to a personal contract as well, and also found her problematic to cast.   He loaned her to a number of films, made only one movie with her, and eventually told her she should move to Europe and change her name for professional purposes. Fortunately, she had the sense not to do that.

In 1943, David O Selznick cast Shirley in his production of Since You Went Away, directed by John Cromwell.   The movie proposes to show the year 1943 as lived by an average American family trying to make due somewhere in Ohio during World War II while the father of house is conscripted to the United States military.   This average family consisted of Claudette Colbert as the mother, Jennifer Jones and Shirley Temple as the teenage daughters, Monty Wooley as a boarder, Joseph Cotten as mother’s boyfriend, and Hattie McDaniel as the housekeeper. If there were many average families like that in Ohio or anywhere else in 1943 USA, I would be darned surprised.   The oldest daughter falls in love with a soldier portrayed by Robert Walker, which only compounds the idealization – and Selznick fell in love with Jones which complicated his home life.

In 1947, Dore Shary cast Shirley in The Bachelor and the Bobby-Soxer, one of the most berserk comedies made in that period.   Try to top this as a story.   Cary Grant, very fit and very charming, portrays a bachelor artist who visits a high school to lecture and winds up attracting the attention of high-school student Shirley who develops a yen for him. He somehow does something in relation to that student that winds him up before a municipal judge, who happens to be said girl student’s big sister. Myrna Loy portrayed Big Sister.

At this point the plot gets sort of farfetched. Loy was old enough to be Temple’s mother and was older than Grant. If big sister was indeed a female municipal judge [ very rare in 1947 ], how did someone supposedly that young credibly land such a position?   Well, never mind. Chalk it up to willing suspension of disbelief.   Maybe we can overlook that. Judge Big Sister sentences artist to community service involving little sister, which seems just too weird — even if Big Sister hopes that little sister will tire of him.   Who would tire of Cary Grant? Not me – and not Big Sister who develops a yen for him, too. The plot thickened like concrete.

Sidney Sheldon, of all people, helped write this elaborate piffle. He was in his Hollywood days before he created and wrote I Dream of Jeannie for NBC-TV in 1965 and before he started churning out huge sexy romance novels that became megahits in book stores.   AMPAS even awarded him an Oscar for best writing that year.

Also In 1947, Shirley starred in That Hagen Girl, which was her first film role as a young women – not a kid.   Ronald Reagan portrayed her first adult boyfriend. It is a fascinating combination given their later histories.   During World War II, Reagan did his military service in Hollywood making war education films and propaganda films. No actors came out of The War with as complete an understanding of Hollywood’s political power structure as he did. Only Robert Montgomery came close, and he eventually became the media consultant to President Eisenhower. In this period, Reagan became the president of the Screen Actors Guild. Reagan eventually became a governor and President of the United States. Temple eventually had a diplomatic career. Reagan was a natural choice to be Our Shirley’s first adult beau:   as one critic said of him at the time, “He has a cheery way of looking at dames.”

In 1948, John Ford and Merian C. Cooper cast Shirley in Ford’s big Monument Valley western Fort Apache. Ford directed Shirley as a tike in the 1930s; but in the 1940s, given his eccentric personality, he seems an iffy choice to direct her. Actually she did well by him; she turns out one of the memorable performances in that memorable film.   She never worked with Ford again – though and she could have if either he or Shirley had wanted.

John Wayne co-stars in this film with Henry Fonda, who portrays just about the most disreputable, unlikable villain of a United States army officer Ford ever created in a movie.   He comes Out West to a fort with injun troubles and starts running it into the ground. Shirley portrays his almost-grown daughter who accompanies him. He is a widower, or something. One way or another, he has no wife.   He named this daughter “Philadelphia” which congers up all sorts of images of what type of person this man is.   Meanwhile, daughter gets herself in trouble with an enlisted soldier whose enlisted father and civilian-mother happen to live and work in this fort.   The Colonel is incensed that she would start a relationship with an enlisted man instead of a commissioned officer or someone associated with a commissioned officer. The boy’s father is unhappy with the situation too; being a good Army sergeant, he knows his place.

Philadelphia soon disappears from the film. Her father leads troops on a mission that turns into something along the lines of Custer’s Last Stand. It is his fault, and he dies with everyone else. The movie ends with John Wayne spinning a yarn about him for the benefit of an Eastern newspaper reporter.   Ford’s view is factual evidence is not history; the story, not the facts, counts in recounting America’s greatness. It is one of the most unsettling ends to a Ford movie, but it says a lot about the sort of history we get in school.    It remains one of the most Fordian of Ford’s films.

Shirley had an incredible career as a kid, but she found a way to improve with age.   Not every kid star can say that.   Will Lindsay Lohan or Paris Hilton ever become ambassadors? Shirley Temple's 1940s films illustrate many points still useful to know even today.

Saturday, February 1, 2014

Jose Angel Garcia-Jauregui: what we should learn from a known felon disaster waiting to happen.

Reading this morning in the news:

Suspect in Utah County officer shooting has died

Thursday attacks » Police say they may never know the motive.

By Nate Carlisle, BROOKE Adams and Jessica Miller    | The Salt Lake Tribune
First Published Jan 31 2014 11:12 am

Spanish Fork • The suspect in the shooting death of one Utah County Sheriff’s officer and the wounding of another died Friday as law enforcement provided more detail on four shootings that stretched through two counties.

Jose Angel Garcia-Jauregui, 27, succumbed to his injuries at 2:20 p.m. Friday at Utah Valley Regional Medical Center. He was shot in Juab County on Thursday after police say he shot and killed Sgt. Cory Wride, 44, and wounded Deputy Greg Sherwood, 38.

Jose Angel Garcia-Jauregui.

What to say?    He illustrates four things that we do not want to talk about in culture, but we need to discuss.

1.   He had a long criminal record.   He had bolted from his parole officer and was a wanted felon.   Why do Utah parole officers have so many cases?   More parole officers needed.

2. Garcia-Jauregui had killed a person by stabbing said person multiple times with a screw driver and then running the person over with a car.   In jail he earned contraband citations and got into a violent confrontation.    The parole board released him in less than 5 years. Five years.   The legislature needs to hold hearings and do some rules adjusting.    The legislature needs to understand that funding prison programs will not come cheap.

3.   His is yet another story of the Second Amendment in action.    Someone was perfectly willing to either give or sell this man a weapon.   Or he stole a weapon from somebody whom did not keep a weapon secure.   I am tired of hearing Second Amendment Supporters talk about these sorts of incidents as if they cannot be helped and that the victims are unfortunate but collateral damage.

4.   His sort of anger and violence management problems also illustrate that mental health always needs more funding for research and treatment.

THE CALL TO ACTION

Incidents like Jose Angel Garcia-Jauregui do not happen by accident.   The particular indicate the legislature needs to hold hearings and adjust certain regulations with weapons and prisoners.

The U S Constitution needs an amendment guaranteeing self defense. The Second Amendment is not it.

Monday, January 27, 2014

THE RELIC OF BARBARISM -- legislatures must preserve one man one spouse

MISPLACED OBSESSIVENESS

Many Utahns obsess and fume over a federal judge’s recent ruling about same gender marriage in Utah, as if the judge wanted to redefine marriage so everyone had to marry someone after their own gender.    In fact, heterosexuals have through the ages corrupted marriage so thoroughly that amending the genders of matrimony hardly seems that major a deal.

However, a few weeks before the Marriage Equality ruling, another federal judge made a ruling about Utah’s anti-polygamy laws that really does threaten cultural stability and the institution of marriage.

Sinister and unAmerican forces currently work toward a goal of invalidating Utah’s anti-polygamy statutes to reintroduce plural marriage into the American scene. This must not happen.   Sound reasons required the end of Mormon polygamy in 1890, 1896, and 1904.

DEMOGRAPHIC FACTUALNESS

Recently, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints on-line posted a study guide about polygamy.   It is, in some basic ways, inadequate but one of the notes features some usual information about polygamy in culture.

This is the reference:

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints on-line
http://www.lds.org/topics/plural-marriage-and-families-in-early-utah?lang=eng&query=plural
16 December 2013
And the note:

“Recent calculations using a 3 percent growth rate and an average five-year age interval between husbands and wives at first marriage (reasonable estimates for the 19th-century Mormon population) indicate that the upper limit of sustainable polygamy in a stable society is 16 percent of husbands and 28 percent of wives. Davis Bitton and others, “Probing the High Prevalence of Polygyny in St. George, 1861–1880,” BYU Studies Quarterly 51, no. 4 (2012): 11–15.”

I admit I am frankly suspicious about the numbers.   However the concept, it seems to me, is strong.

1 Polygamy works only with the right percentage of women to men.

2 Polygamy works only in certain economic conditions.

Depending on the ratio of men married and unmarried to women married and unmarried, Same gender marriage probably will make polygamy more difficult, not less.

Encyclopedias of Culture report that most cultures are polyandrist or polygamist.   None the less, the United States Constitution’s Amendment 14 would suggest that all men should have equal access to a monogamous marriage.

THE CALL TO ACTION
Utah’s delegation in the U S Congress to work for A federal constitutional amendment defining marriage as monogamous and protected by the 14th Amendment.

Utah’s anti - plural marriage laws need to be reworked to guarantee the rights of all men to one spouse.

Monday, January 20, 2014

THE OTHER END OF THE STICK: the History of Secular Marriage and what it means for Marriage Equality

Some Utahns criticize and condemn the federal judge’s laying aside Utah’s definition of marriage approved by 65% of 59% of Utah voters.

I, however, decry that Utahns would just ignore the Fourteenth Amendment of the United States Constitution and Article IV, Section 1 of the Constitution, "Full Faith and Credit Clause", which addresses the duties that states within the United States have to respect the "public acts, records, and judicial proceedings of every other state."

I chastise, in the strongest terms, those in Utah who will just ignore the needs of 5 to 10 percent of Utah’s population because there are few of them and because they do not fit into their exalted definitions of acknowledged humans with rights.

SAUCE FOR THE GOOSE

Utah governor Gary Herbert is on the record as saying that marriage is between a man and a woman. In a sense the governor is like a father figure to Utah culture.    Therefore, what father among us having two sons will say to his heterosexual son, “be thou clothed in robes with your beloved and sit over here”

and then say to his homosexual son, “Be thou clothed in rags all alone and sit over there”

and then say to himself, “I am just.”

How can that father say to one son, “You get what you want by way a domestic arrangement because it is with a woman” and then to the other son say, “You cannot get what you want by a domestic arrangement because it is a with a man”   Can that man actually delude himself into thinking that he is objective or fair-minded?     Many fathers find themselves dealing with this situation in reality --- not in the symbolic abstract.

God created man to evolve. Man’s institutions have evolved --- particularly marriage.   This essay looks at that evolution and what government must do to promote that evolution.

DEFINITIONS

Someone wrote recently this in the Deseret News to illustrate the evolution of marriage:

“The purpose of marriage isn’t to unite children with the man and woman who made them for several reasons. First, marriage should and most frequently does occur before children become involved, if at all. Second, the purpose of marriage isn’t procreation nor is the sexual act debased to the bearing of children. It serves a much higher and noble purpose. The expression of love and an intimate bond between two people who have joined together. An expression that is only a small part of that bond. It isn’t the substance nor end of that relationship. It’s the human need to have someone. One doesn’t sit at home singly thinking "I want children to spend my life with" instead they long for that someone to spend life with. Third, legal marriage recognizes the legal commitment of two people by a contract. Children/dogs/houses are a result of that intimate relationship and not party to it.”

I have heard this sentiments and variations on it for years as a standard assumption in definitions of marriage for as long as I can remember.

Personally, I reject that view of marriage pretty much out of hand.   Companionship is not marriage.

For years, I put myself on the written official record as defining marriage as a covenant between four entities –

1 a man

2 a woman

3a God

3b the society in which they live

4 and children, who have a right to parents of both gender in a legal protective framework.

This is what marriage should be.   However, modern marriage is yet another example of something in culture we practice that does not deliver the promise.
Recently, those against same gender marriage have tried to claim that procreation is the point of marriage.   That strategy is too little too late. Lawyers for the State of Utah can argue that Utah believes same-sex couples — married or not — should not be allowed to raise children.    The problem here is too many quotable studies — for and against same gender marriage and / or opposite gender marriage — do not stand up as scholarly factual evidence.

However, human rights and civil rights suggest that a person should be able to marry the one person that person loves.   How does Utah balance this right with a child’s right to parents of both genders?

AN ASIDE -- Personally, I believe that people in general do not have an inherent right to reproduce.   Only people with monetary means to raise children have that right. Only people with healthy genetics should reproduce.   People with healthy genetics and monetary means, whether homosexual or heterosexual, have the right to reproduce.

CIVIL RIGHTS -- HUMAN RIGHTS

The proponents of various styles of marriage can take their stands as they want. That is their right. However, individuals do not have a government’s obligation to balance the competing interests in a society.

A famous observation from an early interracial marriage couple comes to mind:

“I have lived long enough to see big changes now.    But some people. . . . Well. Alabama did not get around to repealing its “Racial Integrity Act” until 2000.    2000.    All we ever wanted was to get married because we loved each other.   And if we hurt some people’s feelings, well — that was just too bad. It is their problem, not mine.   I married the only man I ever love and am glad I married the man I loved. It meant a lot to me to marry the person I found most precious, despite the fact that some thought he was the wrong kind of person for me to marry.   I am proud of our name on a court case about love and commitment and family in the face of such prejudice.   Government has no business forcing some people’s religious beliefs over others. I support the right to marry for all – white or black, gay or straight. That is what loving is all about."

Mildred and Richard Loving
Interracial couple of white man and black woman
Supreme Court decision Loving vs Virginia 1967   decriminalized interracial marriage

EVOLUTION OF TRADITIONAL MARRIAGE

Recently I read a local editorial that noted that No one, whether gay or heterosexual, has a "fundamental right" to a legal status that is entirely discretionary with the state Legislature. (Quoted by Elise Amendola, Associated Press)

Marriage is a human institution and thus it has its advantages, disadvantages, and flaws.   For ages the heterosexuals tacked all sorts of baggage and corruption onto the marriage institution:

History also indicates that marriage laws clearly follow what the public wants in marriage. Look at all the features of marriage that started as ideas among the general public and became law:

    ●    Treating married women as husband's property
        then granting married women rights in the marriage

    ●    Institutionalizing violence in marriage
    ●    then some places rescinding the husband's right to violence

    ●    Accepting or disallowing young marriage ages.

    ●    Polyandry

    ●    Polygamy

    ●    Rich powerful men collecting trophy wives by the dozen leaving other men with none

    ●    Older men marrying young teenagers.

    ●    Regarding a relationship that really is a civil union as a legitimate marriage

    ●    Married men routinely having mistresses in certain cultures, including the American one, with mistresses receiving certain rights and benefits.

    ●    La casa grande   – la casa bonita   as they say down south.

    ●    Using marriage to validate one’s worth and position as first consideration

    ●    Using marriage to gain wealth as first consideration

    ●    Using marriage to make political alliances as first consideration

    ●    Legalizing quick divorce

    ●    Legalizing no-fault divorce

In light of all this — The particular issue of gender in marriage hardly seems much of a change one way or another in the inevitable evolution of marriage.   Utah cannot just wink at and accept the heterosexual changes / corruptions to marriage and ignore changes that would benefit the homosexual population.

THE CALL TO ACTION

When governmental law picked up one end of the stick – legalizing young marriage ages, marriage as human validation, marriage as companionship first, recognizing civil unions as real marriages, giving benefits to mistresses, granting no fault divorce, quickie divorce — then it has to pick up the other end of the stick.    Same gender marriage.

This development is not an opening for bestiality marriage.   All these development have precedent among humans only.

Utah should not stand in the way of the inevitable evolution of marriage.

Same gender marriage will be of interest to somewhere between 5 and 10 percent of the population.    This means that in the United States, we are talking of marriage for 16 to 32 million Americans.   In contrast, Utah has 2.9 million residents.     It is incredibly unlikely that it will be of interest to heterosexually oriented men.

Marriage, like everything else in The World, is a definition that government has the right to define for the sake of good order.   Utah should not charge for licenses a fee above bare minimum and with that in mind, Utah should study the license fee to determine how much it should cut.

I for one do not want Utah remembered as the Mississippi of Marriage Equality, alluding to Mississippi’s history in the civil rights movement back in the 1950s and 1960s.   Nor do I want the Utah governor, my friend, remembered as the Ross Barnett of the Marriage Equality movement.

Tuesday, January 7, 2014

IN MEMORIAM: ELDER RICHARD R LYMAN . Last early ph.D apostle, last polygamist apostle? last excommunicated apostle

Richard R. Lyman, Joseph F Merrill, James E Talmadge, and John A Widstoe served as 20th century apostles of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. They were not officially titled “Elders” as other apostles were but were officially titled as “Doctors” because they all held ph.Ds in various sciences.   They illustrated for the church’s public image that its leaders were respectable educated intellectuals -- not Rocky Mountain Yahoos. They stood out in contrast to certain apostles, notably Elder Joseph Fielding Smith, who was the most fundamental creationist apostle of that period.

Fifty years ago last week, the last of these ph.D “Doctor apostles” died.   Richard R Lyman died on 31 December 1963.   LDS Church president Joseph F. Smith had ordained him an apostle in 1918, a year after his apostle father — President of the Quorum of the Twelve Francis Lyman – died.    His grandfather, Elder Amasa Lyman, had also served as an apostle in the 19th century.

BACKGROUND.

Both of these apostle ancestors practiced plural marriage – multiple wives at one time.    Joseph Smith, the founder of the LDS Church, received revelations about polygamy in the 1830s and probably married his first plural wife in that decade. He certainly taught the principle in the 1840s and married multiple women in the period of 1841 - 1844 before his assassination. The First Presidency continued to preach The Principle and allowed many men to marry multiple wives from 1844 to 1890.   In 1890, as a result of intense cultural problems and federal government threats, President Wilford Woodruff advised Church members to avoid marriages unlawful in the United States. The First Presidency stopped authorizing plural marriages in April 1904.

NOW THE STORY.

With this background in mind, we noted that when Richard R. Lyman died, he was the last apostle of two other situations.    One – he was the last LDS apostle who cohabited with two women in different households.   Two – he is currently the last LDS apostle excommunicated from the Church.

Lyman’s legal wife was Amy Brown Lyman, a professional social worker who served in the Church’s women’s organization, the Relief Society.   She served in various leadership positions and callings from 1909 to 1945. In 1940, President Heber J Grant called her to serve as the society’s president. She probably would have served longer if it had not been for the conjunction of the next woman.

Anna S. Jacobsen Hegsted was Lyman’s second woman companion – a woman who had been involved in post-manifesto plural marriage, divorced, excommunicasted from the LDS Church, then restored to membership. Lyman received the assignment to oversee her restoration.

Four issues came into conjunction in Lyman’s life.    Researchers Gary Bergera and Dennis Michael Quinn studied these in detail in various books and articles.   It is hard to tell if any of these claims really are true, but here they are for this article and discussion.

CLAIM 1.    Amy Brown Lyman stopped having sexual relations with Richard R Lyman after the birth of their last child and concentrated on her career.    Witnesses of the Lyman household report separate bedrooms, not just separate beds.

CLAIM 2.   Lyman sealed Anna to himself in 1925, an unusual sort of plural marriage act that had precedent in 19th century LDS Church history.

or CLAIM 3.   Lyman and Anna vowed that when one of them died, the other would perform a proxy sealing for themselves for eternity in a temple.

CLAIM 4.   Lyman admitted to becoming intimate with Anna as early as 1938.   Whether he really involved himself with her earlier is, of course, subject of some speculation and discussion.

FURTHER BACKGROUND.

In 1933, some of the LDS Church’s members with authorized plural wives and members who had unauthorized plural wives started organizing a polygamist Mormon-type Church in opposition to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints Church.   First Presidency Counselor J. Reuben Clark founded a surveillance spy network to gather information on them and to excommunicate them from the main church.

BACK TO THE STORY.

In early November 1943, one of Clark’s spies discovered a veritable bombshell of a secret information – apostle Lyman was keeping company with a woman not his wife. Clark, by then defacto acting Church president for Heber J Grant in fragile declining health, took two apostles – Joseph Fielding Smith and Harold B Lee – into his confidence about this situation and assigned them to track Lyman at night. Shortly thereafter, Clark advised Quorum of the Twelve President George Albert Smith of the alleged details; Smith prepared for a disciplinary council. Joseph Fielding Smith and Lee discovered conclusive facts about Lyman and Jacobsen Hegsted: Clark convinced the Salt Lake police to raid the two of them in Jacobsen Hegsted’s house at night.    The police caught them inflagrato delecti.   President Smith convened a disciplinary council of apostles who excommunicated both Lyman and (eventually) Jacobsen from the LDS Church. They were both in their 70s in age.   This ended Richard Lyman’s ministry as an apostle, where apostles ended their ministries at death.

When President George Albert Smith wrote an excommunication announcement, printed in the Salt Lake City Deseret News newspaper, he described the reason for Lyman’s excommunication this way: for a violation of the Christian Law of Chastity. This was technically true. The Church never regarded officially Lyman’s act as technically plural marriage cohabitation after 1904.

SPECULATING

What about Amy Lyman?

Then as now, those in the know about the situation must have viewed her in one of two ways –

Either

She knew about the relationship from 1925 to 1943 and therefore enabled her husband’s sin

or

She did not know about the relationship from 1925 to 1943 and thus was so utterly unobservant that it put her intellectual capacity and leadership ability into question.   Even if Lyman started the illicit part of the relationship in 1938, the questions about Amy remain the same.

Church leadership did not excommunicate Amy Lyman. Apparently it preferred to regard her as clueless, not an enabler. However, within a year and a half, the First Presidency released her as Relief Society general president.    The previous president had served for years; the next president served nearly 30 years.   Her husband’s situation, though, ruined Amy’s reputation sufficiently that it made it impossible for her to go on as Relief Society general president.

What about Richard Lyman?

Eventually the Church authorized his rebaptism and his return to church membership in 1954. But one aspect about his marriage adventure remains mystifying.

Salt Lake City, then as now, is a small city.   Church headquarters culture is a village almost as tight and gossipy as The Vatican.   How did Lyman do this relationship from 1925 to 1943 without someone noticing before November 1943?

These are interesting questions, but useless to ask.   Many questions of history simply go unanswered, sometimes unacknowledged.

Two things to consider from all this –

LDS Culture might have been influenced positively if Richard Lyman had insisted on a right as an apostle to divorce a wife that no longer fit his life needs. LDS leadership culture might have been influenced positively if The First Presidency had implemented another of his ideas. Two years before his excommunication when the Church leadership contemplated added extra apostles or assistants to the apostles to the official leadership, he advocated retirement for older apostles.

The Lord may have tolerated polygamy; the Old Testament certainly leaves that impression.    The Lord may have tolerated modern Mormon polygamy for a while, and then he ordered it stopped when it could not work anymore.   LDS polygamy may have been a mistake all the way around.   If the 2013 scripture edition’s ambiguous preface to “Official Document 1" indicates anything, it indicates the current First Presidency wants to ignore or deny that history and get on with life. "History," Henry Makow once wrote," is propaganda IE a cover up." The human mind may abhor ambiguity, but ambiguity there is in all history in general and LDS history in particular. The ambiguity of Plural marriage left a long shadow over LDS Culture, over the LDS Church, and the official LDS leadership