In the 1800s, the LDS Church defended plural marriage by arguing that it gave men an outlet for their sexual desire; so that men would not be tempted to commit adultery or visit prostituties. Implicit in this was a nonjudgemental attitude of male virility and sexual desire in and of itself. D&C 132, the Book of Abraham 2:11, and the temple endowment on power in the loims and joy in one's posterity, all interpreted male sexual desire and seed-fertilizing power as holy, as man's "power in the presethood." Givens quotes Joseph Smith in his book Feeding the Flock, page 51, saying "the priesthood [...is] the power to generate 'endless lives' (a post-resurrection posterity), [WJS, 247]." In other words, Godhood, becoming one of the Gods in Abraham chapter 4 entailed procreative power with a body of celestialized flesh that bears the souls of men through wives and concubines (see D&C 76 and 130, 131, 132).
All this changed in the 1900s, when the US government forced the Mormon Church to abandon plural marriage and what followed was a slow procress of endimg the theology behind the doctrine of procteatimg Gods as well. As Puritanicl Protestantism entered Mormon Thought and culture and the origional pro-body doctrine was replaced with a more Protestantsoumdimg dogma. Overtime Mormon men were then expected to control their sexual desire with Augustinian lines of thought. This was a complete reversal in mindset. The former Nauvoo era theology accepted male biology and desire as natural and embraced a spiritual outlet for man's sex drive, but the latter post-1900 view despised the body and attempted to muzzle the man's "power in the preiesthood"; and move him away from the former Nauvoo Enlightenment and back to the mindset of the Dark Middle Ages: of monkish asseticism, and celibacy before marriage, and only monogamous marriage.
