Conning the Multitudes
In 2021, I did a 10-day series of posts leading up to Thanksgiving to share resources, quotes, and stories about how I deconstructed the doctrine of LDS Mormon Polygamy, or as the early Latter-day Saints called it “the Practice.” I used the hashtags #givethanks for each of these posts because then-Prophet Russell M. Nelson had just hyped up members to receive a modern day prophecy which consisted of him suggesting that all members of the Church do some humble-bragging missionary work with that hashtag in the days leading up to Thanksgiving. As far as I know, Church Members are still circulating this hashtag around Thanksgiving as a way to signal their loyalty to the Church when posting about the holiday.
These posts were a bit more passive aggressive than normal for me, since I generally try/tried to be very gentle with Church Members. I know how it feels to be in that tender balance of earnestness + cognitive dissonance while being overloaded with Church chores and family duties. My goal even as I deconstructed, was to be hard on the system but soft with people. However, getting a full face of gushing gratitude about Temples and the General Authorities and Joseph Smith every day when I went to Social Media was pretty grating and ultimately, these 10 posts were an attempt to communicate with the community I come from by using the “in-speak” of the Church while inviting critical thinking, rather than herd-compliance.
The #Givethanks Anti-Polygamy Posts:
Day 9
There are many, many more stories about Polygamy and about D&C 132 than I could cover in a handful of FB posts (even super long posts, like these). But, I want to sketch out just a few of the ripples that “the Revelation” (D&C 132)continued to have, before we conclude. 🌊
✏️NOTE: if you haven’t read the previous posts, they provide important context. I’m moving through this in more-or-less chronological order.
✏️NOTE 2: I’ve had lots of requests for sources in both comments and messages, so I’m going to stuff this post with references and websites.
Before we get back to the main chronology, I want to share this interesting tangent, because it makes me wonder–if Joseph had lived longer than Carthage, would he have discontinued polygamy and burned the other copies of the “Revelation” himself? Who knows?
🖋 William Marks (the Stake President of Nauvoo, arguably the most theologically appropriate option for Succession of leadership in the Church after Joseph and Hyrum) wrote this in 1853:
“When the doctrine of polygamy was introduced into the church as a principle of exaltation, I took a decided stand against its which stand rendered me quite unpopular with many of the leading ones of the church…Joseph however, became convinced before his death that he had done wrong; for about three weeks before his death, I met him one morning in the street and he said to me, “Brother Marks, …we are a ruined people.” I asked, how so?
He said: “this doctrine of polygamy or Spiritual wife system that has been taught and practiced among us, will prove our destruction and overthrow. I have been deceived,” said he, “in reference to its practice; it is wrong; it is a cure to mankind, and we shall have to leave the United States soon, unless it can be put down and its practice stopped in the church. Now,” said he, “brother Marks, you have not received this doctrine and how glad I am. I want you to go into the high council and I will have charges preferred against all who practice this doctrine and I want you to try them by the laws of the church and cut them off, if they will not repent and cease the practice of this doctrine.”
I am inclined to believe this story from Marks, because the tone and ideas reflect many of Joseph’s hallmark traits:
➡️1) he does not take responsibility for problems he has made. (notice the passive voice of “this doctrine has been taught” rather than “I have taught false doctrine.“)
➡️2) he flatters the person he wants to appeal to for help.
➡️ 3) he takes a very benevolent patriarchal view of the “Church” as something he could change at a whim through authoritarian edict
➡️4) he has a flair for the dramatic (“this will prove our destruction and overthrow!”)
🤷♀️LDS polygamy apologist Brian Hales disagrees with me ( https://josephsmithspolygamy.org/history/polygamy-causes-martyrdom/ ) mainly on the basis that a Stake President in today’s Church would not be considered “high” enough in ecclesiastical authority to bring charges against other Church leaders, like Apostles.
🤨This is a sloppy argument from a historian because it disregards the fact that the authority structure of the Church was weighted very differently before the Succession Crisis that followed Joseph’s death.
💁♀️It’s beyond my pay grade (which is nothing, btw, unlike our six-figure-stipend “unpaid clergy”🤣) to deconstruct the slippery verbiage of Brian Hales on this, though. If it’s important to you to know more, there are many resources (most of them free) to aid in synthesizing and processing this specific period.
Radio Free Mormon’s phenomenal synthesis:
https://mormondiscussionpodcast.org/2017/07/radio-free-mormon-014-apostolic-coup-d-etat
Or the transcript of the above episode:
https://radiofreemormon.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/3/2017/10/CoupDetatTranscript.pdf
Academic description of the Succession Crisis by D. Michael Quinn:
https://www.jstor.org/stable/43040613
Or an assessment for LDS apologists here:
Okay, moving on to the Post-Carthage period where polygamy persists…
🚩Surrounding citizens of Illinois made it clear to the Mormons that they had over-stayed their welcome in the state and Governor Ford informed Brigham Young that he couldn’t guarantee the Saints’ safety for more than a handful of months. Understandably, the citizens didn’t enjoy being “othered” all the time by being called “Gentiles,” and it made them pretty nervous to see the Saints voting like a block of lemmings, according to the whims of a capricious leader, like Joseph.
Further, the rumors of plotting a violent overthrow of Illinois and the US government through use of the Nauvoo Legion were spreading, as were the escalating rumors about debauchery and wife-stealing.
Thus ensued a chaotic year of preparation with the first wagon trains rolling out of Nauvoo Feb. 4, 1846. Brigham followed 11 days later on the 15th.
🐂🚚🐂🚚❄️🐂🚚🐂🚚☀️🐂🚚🐂🚚💨
Out in Utah, Brigham got to make his own rules.
After he had destroyed the ecological balance of the mountain-West by wiping out as many predators as he could from ferrets on up 🦨❌🦡❌🦫❌🦝❌🦊❌🐻❌ (thus, causing the cricket-plague the following year), he set about planning his home base city of Salt Lake City, double-crossing the Tribal peoples of the region, ❌and (here it comes) taking on more wives. 🙄
Free from the pressures of social decency and the US Government, Brigham began insisting that other men enter “the Practice,” too. He started preaching fiery sermons (did BY preach any other kind of sermon?🔥) about how salvation was reserved ONLY for those who lived polygamy in THIS life and inf men resisted out of love and respect for their first wife, he beat them over the heads with Conference after Conference after Conference, threatening them with losing the wife and children that they loved if they did not live polygamy NOW.
(Source for above info: “Brigham Young” by John G. Turner)
examples:
- from Brigham:
“The only men who become Gods, even the Sons of God, are those who enter into polygamy.”
brigham young, Journal of discourses, vol 11, 269
- Also, from Brigham:
“Monogamy, or restrictions by law to one wife, is no part of the economy of heaven among men. Such a system was commenced by the founders of the Roman Empire… Rome became the mistress of the world, and introduced this order of monogamy wherever her sway was acknowledged. Thus this monogamic order of marriage, so esteemed by modern Christians as a hold sacrament and divine institution, is nothing but a system established by a set of robbers.”
Brigham Young, deseret news august 6, 1862
- from 1st counselor Heber C. Kimball (one of the most infamous men for completely neglecting his wives, even to the point of starvation):
“You might as well deny “Mormonism,” and turn away from it, as to oppose the plurality of wives.”
Heber C. Kimball, journal of discourses vol. 5, 204-205
- from 2nd Counselor, George A. Smith:
“We breathe the free air, we have the best looking men and handsomest women, and if [non-Mormons] envy us our position, well they may, for they are a poor, narrow-minded, pinch-backed race of men, who chain themselves down to the law of monogamy, and live all their days under the dominion of one wife. They ought to be ashamed of such conduct, and the still fouler channel which flows from their practices; and it is not to be wondered at that they should envy those who so much better understand the social relations.”
George A. Smith, Journal of Discourses, vol 3. 291
- from John Taylor (subsequent President-Prophet after Brigham’s death ):
“The one-wife system not only degenerates the human family, both physically and intellectually, but is entirely incompatible with philosophical notions of immortality; it is a lure to temptation, and has always proved a curse to a people.”
John Taylor, the millenial star vol. 15, 227
- Most of theses quotes and more can be found here: https://zelphontheshelf.com/polygamy-part-2/
As you can guess, this situation got pretty sticky, because publicly,Brigham and the missionaries who left the territory were still telling converts and the people in Nauvoo that everything was fine and normal and totally in line with their scruples. So, most people emigrated to Utah without knowing what they were getting into.
✋Wait, let me emphasize that:
➡️Most Saints–that would be about 36,000 people (that estimate is probably low)–deeded their property to the Church and made the arduous journey to the harsh Great Basin, under the sworn and published promised from their supreme leader, Brigham Young (he wouldn’t call himself “Prophet” for another few years) AND all the Apostles of the Lamb, that the Mormon, LDS people were monogamous and honest in their relationships.
😐
36, 000 people
thirty-six thousand
🫢
Where did I get that number? It was hard to find year-by-year stats, so when I couldn’t find a concrete number, I am estimating based on the averages.
Emigration for the Church lasted from 1846-1868. During that time 60,000-70,000 people came across.
In 1846 alone, 12,000 people emigrated from Nauvoo.
In 1847, another 2200-2500 came
?guess? If the rate continued to be around 3000 per year between 1848-1851=12,000 more,
Then 1852= 10,000 more
Total = approximately 36,500
Emigration slows down after this, though continue for another 15 years at a variable rate due to the Mexican-American war and the use of handcarts. I used this site for some of the solid numbers:
This isn’t specifically about polygamy but if you like learning about the Mormon emigration, the handcart pioneers, and if you can handle another heartbreak today, this podcast will do it for you:
🇬🇧🏴🏴🇮🇪🏴🇫🇷🇧🇪🇸🇪🇳🇴🇳🇱🇩🇰🇨🇭🇩🇪
For the Converts in Europe, especially the U.K. and France, they also faced increased pressure to immigrate to prove their faithfulness.
Thus, they were told that
➡️1) God wanted them to immigrate and if they didn’t, they would be burned up in the 2nd Coming of Jesus
➡️2) that the rumors about polygamy were definitely made up by vicious, godless “anti-Mormons”
😵💫 One description of the denials happening abroad is this from LDS scholar, David Whitaker:
“What is mainly remembered about this publication is Taylor’s strong denial that the Saints were practicing plural marriage, at least the kind that John C. Bennett had suggested in his 1842 exposé, the History of the Saints; or an Exposé of Joe Smith and Mormonism, and was finding its way into anti-Mormon activities and publications in Europe. Such broad denials of polygamy were common until August 29, 1852, when Brigham Young approved the public announcement as part of a special missionary conference in Salt Lake City.”
💔 Ann Eliza describes the following in “Wife No. 19”:
Mr. Spencer, who went on a mission, taught only the pleasanter side of the Gospel, denied the existence of polygamy, and married a wealth cultured daughter of a well-to-do English convert.
recounting by Ann Eliza Young, “Wife no. 19”
He managed to convince her sister and their friend to come back with him to Zion and, as they got closer, began to privately teach the other two girls of “celestial Marriage.”
When his legal wife questioned him as to his intentions it, “brought out an explanation of the doctrines of plurality and an avowal of his intention to marry the girls as soon as they reached Salt Lake.
He said that they had both embraced the great truths of their religion fully, and were willing and anxious to be sealed to him as their savior for time and eternity. The poor wife, with all her faith in her husband, her sister and her religion, shattered at one blow,…never recovered from the shock she received when her doom was thus pronounced by the lips of the one dearest to her.
Day after day, as they continued their toilsome journey, her strength declined, and it was evident, even to the eyes of strangers that she was dying. Her husband, however, saw nothing, was troubled with no anxieties. he was too much absorbed in the love for the [other] two girls, whose souls he proposed to save, to have any time or thought to spare for his dying wife.
The days lengthened to week and still the lamp of life burned lower…the wife lived only long enough to enter [Salt Lake] city…just two weeks from her death, there was a double bridal in Salt Lake City as the bereaved and sorrowing husband was united in marriage to the equally afflicted sister and her friend, the young lady who accompanied them from England.”
🤯😱🤯 This means that anyone who had ancestors (like I do) who sacrificed to make the journey to the Utah or Deseret territory before 1852 or 1853, was actively lied to, in order to motivate their immigration. And, due to the extreme poverty of most Saints after such an expensive journey, they had no choice but to stay. (There were some groups, though, that turned right around and left or pushed farther to get to California, after they saw the kind of madness that was happening in Utah. Good for them.)
👍 If you’re really faithful maybe you can call this manipulative, unethical, and egregiously dishonest.
👎 But in the real world, it’s called human-trafficking.
(Think that’s too harsh? Here’s a definition: “Human trafficking is the act of recruiting, transporting, transferring, harboring, or receiving individuals through force, fraud, or coercion for the purpose of exploiting them for profit.” 👈 )
💩Heber C. Kimball:
Brethren, I want you to understand that it is not to be as it has been heretofore. The brother Missionaries have been in the habit of picking out the prettiest women for themselves before they get her, and bringing the ugly ones for us; hereafter you have to bring them all here before taking any of them, and let us all have a fair shake.”
Heber C. Kimball
💀Yikes.💀
🙈And so, from 1852 until 1890 or actually, 1904 or possibly 1925? Polygamy was endorsed and practiced in the LDS Church. Not as policy, but as doctrine.
If we take the leaders at their word (which, admittedly, is worth very little considering what practiced liars they all were🙄), they thought polygamy was the essential reason for “the Restoration” and the core of what it meant to be a disciple of Christ.
Note: “Jesus Christ,” to LDS leaders throughout the 19th and much of the 20th century, was a polygamist husband to Martha and Mary Magdalene (among others), and son of Heavenly Father, who was polygamist husband to Eve, Mary (Jesus’s mother), and countless other unnamed Celestial handmaids. 😬
Jesus, to these leaders cared mostly about obedience and reminding women that he and his MALE leaders are in charge and that all the atrocious things described by male leaders in the Old Testament are totally fine and didn’t disqualify those men as prophets, but FOR SURE that one Prophetess, Deborah who “led her people with great wisdom” was an unrighteous aberration 🤔 and NOT the norm because God’s house is a house of order 🤡 and that means he only works with men–actually, just white or maybe sometimes light-colored Jewish men. 🤡🤡🤡
Phew! Is anyone still here to finish out this story? The Finish Line is in sight!
Let’s Fast-forward no to the end of the century…
🏃♀️🏃🏃♂️
⏩…through the years of bloody enforcement of the Gospel of Brigham in the “Blood Atonement,” 🩸
⏩…through the years of Brigham Young justifying “taking” First Nations women 🦅 as indentured-servant-concubines after massacring their husbands and destroying their homes, 😬
⏩…through the establishment of horrific racism and institutionalized slavery in the territory ⛓ (despite the strong objections of Apostle, Orson Pratt and the growing wave of Abolitionist sentiment, nationwide),
⏩… through Brigham’s enshrining of the Adam-God doctrine at the veil of 🙇the Temple🙇and preaching it repeatedly from the pulpit,
⏩… through the “marriages” of thousands of 12, 👧🏽13, 👧🏻14 👧🏼year old children to 30, 👨🏼40, 🧔🏻♂️, 70-year-old 🧓🏼men
(they had run out of grown women by this time. As it turns out, whether or not your practice polygamy, the birth rate is still roughly 50/50, when it comes to gender distribution (you’d think Mormon-god would have adjusted that).
This meant that girls as young as 😱 nine (as in children less than ten years old) 🙈were already betrothed to older Church leaders and that S💩💩t like this happened:
“Bishop Warren Snow of Manti, San Pete County, although the husband of several wives, desired to add to his list a good-looking young woman in that town. When he proposed to her, she declined the honor, informing him that she was engaged to a younger man. The Bishop argued with her not he ground of her duty, offering to have her lover sent on a mission, but in vain.
When even the girl’s parents failed to gain her consent, Snow directed the local Church authorities to command the young man to give her up. Finding him equally obstinate, he was one evening summoned to attend a meeting where only trusted members were present. Suddenly, the lights were put out, he was beaten ad tied to a bench and Bishop Snow himself castrated him with a Bowie knife. In this condition, he was left to crawl to some haystacks outside, where he lay until discovered…he regained his health but has been an idiot or quite lunatic ever since.”😭🤮🤬
Note: The details of this story are hotly contested but the fact that it happened more certain than Fanny Alger having been “sealed” to Joseph in 1834, so keep that in mind. More sources on this story are listed here: https://bit.ly/3nbmOyA
And here’s an embarrassing article on FAIR where LDS apologists try to convince readers to pity that poor perpetrator, Bishop Snow for maiming Thomas Lewis: https://www.fairlatterdaysaints.org/…/Castration_in_the…
⏩…fast forward through the countless tears and hours of despair as women weighed whether suicide or life would be more tolerable🍂
…one Mormon woman I know, cried, “O, if only I could believe that death was an eternal sleep, I think I should be better able to endure; but to think that we have got to live on eternally under this curse of polygamy, almost drives me mad.
REcountings of other women’s lamentations in “Wife no. 19” by ann Eliza
Or, another: I would kill myself if I thought death would end my misery; but as long as I must suffer, it might as well be here as anywhere. Or for the anticipation of one hour of peace and rest!”
REcountings of other women’s lamentations in “Wife no. 19” by ann Eliza
⏩…fast forward past all that. ✅
➡️Let’s skip to
The supposed end of the Polygamy Story…the Manifestos (yes, plural)
🇺🇸𝘉𝘢𝘤𝘬𝘥𝘳𝘰𝘱: Abraham Lincoln said earlier in the century (1856) that,
“It is the duty of Congress to prohibit in the territories those twin relics of barbarism, polygamy and slavery.”
He was talking about the American slave-holding South and the slave-holding AND polygamous Mormons.
It took a while to abolish slavery via the Civil War and then, the country was reeling after Lincoln’s assassination, but eventually the US Gov’t got back to that second relic of barbarism and began pressuring the Mormon Leaders to give it up.
🎭Here’s a brief RP of how that played out:🎭
🙅President Brigham Young, 1870s: We will never give up polygamy!! It’s REVELATION!! Everything stands or falls on polygamy!! This is the most essential thing Joseph EVER TAUGHT!!
🙅President John Taylor, 1880s: We will never, ever ever give up polygamy because God will never, ever, EVER changes his mind!!!
*1886 revelation: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1886_Revelation
😵💫President Wilford Woodruff 1877: Check it, Joseph, my enteral harem score is 267–your’s was only 40!!
( https://tokensandsigns.org/the-267-hidden-brides-of-wilford-woodruff/ )
🙅President Wilford Woodruff 188: Forget it, US gov’t! We’d rather go to jail than submit to you!! We will never EVER give up polygamy!!!
(At this point, my male ancestors went into hiding and to jail for cohabiting with 2 wives, as they were indoctrinated to believe they had to live, in order for anyone in their family to go to heaven.)
💁🙅President Wilford Woodruff, 1890: Okay, Saints, Manifesto time. I ~have to~ tell you to stop living polygamy (but psst–don’t stop! It’s seriously so inspired. BRB, I gotta go marry someone on a boat in the Pacific Ocean so that I’m technically not in the U.S. Also, don’t expect me to back you up in court, if you get caught, y’all are on your own!)
💁President Joseph F. Smith, 1904: Second Manifesto time! Good game everybody, we’re gonna have to transfer all this polygamy to the Spirit World, though, because it makes me look like a doofus in front of Congress. (Psst– oppressing women is still A-OK with God, though, so keep it up! Also, polygamy is totally still doctrine, so carry on if you’re already going! We’ll just excommunicate you now, if we find out about it.)
🤦Apostle Richard Lyman, 1943: Oh no! You found out about my 15-year-long relationship with my secretly-sealed second wife!! (Church excommunicates him)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_R._Lyman
➡️Then, the Church structure dismantled all remaining autonomy in the Relief Society,
➡️skewered women with the anti-ERA movement in 1960s-1980s,
➡️ excommunicated the prominent feminists who dared to publish in the 80-90s and,
➡️sealed the coffin (their coffin, that is) in 1995 with the Family Proclamation, which somehow manages to be arrogant, ignorant, unhistorical, sexist, homophobic, AND super boring all at the same time. 🤪
It might sound like I’m trying to dramatize this.
I actually don’t have to do anything. Mormon History is really just this weird.
🗣I’m trying to reconnect our actual language with the actual betrayal of us and our actual ancestors (or LDS predecessors, if you come from a later convert). We have been playing 1984-style-mind-games with this history for too long.
This is the legacy of the leaders who founded this Church and it is still going. The dehumanizing doctrines and oppressive practices presented in our still-canonized scripture have only been talked about (in my lifetime) with a sickening veneer of “faith-promoting” stories that have infected the wound and made it difficult for many members of the Church to even think about them, much less talk about, process, or recover from them.
Tomorrow, I’ll wrap this up with some thoughts about our modern day and how we might be able to salvage something of this Church that so many of us have loved and labored for, despite the 😪significant😪 drawbacks.
But, for now, I just #givethanks that I don’t have to deal with the Godzilla-sized egos of any of the aforementioned GAs.
🙏May Outer Darkness or non-Mormon Jesus or the Mother Goddess or literally anyone, save me from ever having a roommate that unbearably full of themselves. Amama🙏
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