webbles

My comments started because Analytics said we would still be able to prosecute such cases. And I just don't see how. Before society changed to allowing trans women into locker rooms, a woman in a locker room who was stalked by someone didn't need that much proof if the person was a man. Because it was assumed that he shouldn't be in there and so must be nefarious. I agree this was bad for trans women. But with the change in society, now if a woman is stalked by an actual man (not transwoman) who is in the locker room, she has to have even more proof or just accept being the victim. I don't know how to make it work but it is what bugs me the most about this. I don't see how these cases can be prosecuted anymore. Locker rooms and other sex-segregated places are no longer safe places for woman.

Maybe Elder Shumway isn't getting a modest stipend or anything because he is currently employed.

How is this prosecutable? You said that we would still be able to prosecute exhibitionism, voyerism, etc. That's my issue. How do we protect victims? If we could trust everyone to be reasonable, we wouldn't need criminal laws. But we can't trust everyone to be reasonable.

The first one I linked to - https://www.deseret.com/utah/2026/08/17/1-dead-2-critically-injured-in-kearns-funeral-shooting/

It doesn't seem like the people who were involved in the shooting were there for the funeral. Or at least, that's how the news articles read to me. One of the articles mentioned how the police don't believe there is any relation. So just bad coincidence.

I don't think "what's the person doing" or if it is "creepy behavior" would work. That isn't prosecutable. Because a locker room allows behaviors that would normally be considered creepy. How do you define "she is hanging out in the locker room more than she needs"? How do you prosecute that? That's why I feel like this change is going to limit prosecution to only assault and I guess things that involve external things (like a phone). But exhibition, voyeurism don't require those. So they cease to be prosecutable. Also, maybe I'm misreading you, but telling someone who was a victim of exhibitionism to "get over it" feels a little callous.

Another article https://www.deseret.com/utah/2026/08/18/father-of-teen-shot-at-kearns-funeral-arrested-for-investigation-of-murder/ This one describes what the police think happened. What kind of dad hands a gun to his kid to shoot another person?

https://www.deseret.com/utah/2026/08/17/1-dead-2-critically-injured-in-kearns-funeral-shooting/ https://www.fox13now.com/news/crime/police-investigate-possible-gang-connection-in-deadly-shooting-outside-church-funeral-in-kearns Interesting that the police were contacted before the shooting and they were there and heard the shots.

I think it would be pretty easy to determine sexual assault, but the others you mentioned (voyeurism, spying, exhibitionism). How would we prosecute them? I've been in locker rooms where if the same behavior was done outside of a locker room, it would be considered exhibitionism. Or how do we say that someone is spying. Say a person in a locker says that another is spying, then what? We don't have cameras in locker rooms. And if the person being accused is a trans person, wouldn't they see it as an attack on them and rightfully defend themselves? That's where I come from. Sex segregated places made it a bit easier to determine if someone was being nefarious. A person could accuse another person and if the accused happened to be the wrong gender, then it was a simple case. But that's no longer the situation. Now, it seems like we have to have actual assault before any prosecution can happen.

By the way, https://fullerconsideration.com/DeseretDemographer/ is a pretty interesting site that tries to graph out the changes in membership over time. It includes both disaffected members, less active (but still believing), moderate active, and full active, children under 8, and "lost deceased" (people who are still on the church records but have died and will stay there till they are 110 or discovered earlier). The methodology seems pretty impressive and it does incorporate Pew Research as well as others.

I'm guessing that the ChatGPT is talking about is actually https://www.pewresearch.org/religion/2025/12/15/why-do-some-americans-leave-their-religion-while-others-stay/ or something like that. Because the report you linked to only has a single line about LDS and it is the percentage change over each year (1% on 2025, 2024, 2023, then 2% on 2022, and back to 1% on 2021). I'm not seeing anything in the pdf you linked to that has anything like what chatgpt is talking about. It is a 4 page report that is mostly talking about how frequently people go to church.

Are you sure that is the correct link? Because I don't see the numbers that chatgpt is talking about. I'm wondering if there is a different link?

Isn't this the same for the other side? Those who are pushing for transgender people to be in sports but don't know anything about sports are probably being manipulated by somebody for political purposes?

Oh, it absolutely was a forced marriage solution. She didn't really make the choice, it was done by her parents. But it isn't polygamy related. Parent arranged marriages where the child (either daughter or son) didn't agree was definitely a thing in those days. I'd love to see these other stories. Do you know where I can find them? I don't think the website does a good job with arguing those three points. I actually agree with the first point and I think the website isn't really strong in their argument. The way it is written, it is all over the place and doesn't really use the data it has. It references some data that is not very strong or incorrect. So, even though I agree with it, I wouldn't use that website as a source to learn. I disagree about the other 2 points. Now this could be because I do believe that God actually did command polygamy (and yes, I've prayed about it and studied it extensively). So I don't find the website's arguments very convincing.

The first quote is from a 12 May 1844 discourse. It is what Thomas Bullock recorded. There is another account from George Laub that is similar but different at the same time - https://www.josephsmithpapers.org/paper-summary/discourse-12-may-1844-as-reported-by-george-laub/4 Kind of explicit that blood is the corruptible part, not flesh. The second quote is from a 20 March 1842 discourse. It was what Wilford Woodruff recorded - https://www.josephsmithpapers.org/paper-summary/discourse-20-march-1842-as-reported-by-wilford-woodruff/4

I think I actually found out who the people are: Mercy Fielding Thompson, her husband James Lawson, and her daughter Mary Ann Thompson. Mercy is an Englishwoman. She was married to Robert Thompson who died in 1841. Her daughter, Mary Ann Thompson, was born in 1838 and is her only daughter. Mercy was then sealed to Hyrum, which would make her a widow of a close relative to Joseph (and Robert was a close friend of Joseph). She marries James Lawson in 1847 and he goes on a mission to the Sandwich Islands from 1852 to 1855. When he returns, he marries a third wife in 1855. The new wife is Elizabeth Ann Noon, the daughter of Sarah Noon, the wife of Heber C. Kimball. That matches everything that Remy said: Englishwoman, widow of Joseph relative, only child is a daughter named Mary, remarries, husband goes on a mission to the savages, new wife is from Heber's harem and married in 1855. I can't find any thing from Mercy, Mary Ann, James, or Elizabeth that mention this episode so no additional corroboration.

I think part of is pure desperation. I really do want to see the letters to see the whole picture, but from the recordings, it sounds like she really, really loves Brigham but desperately wants a husband with only her as the wife (which makes the list of men she asks to marry strange). I've attached the transcript I made of the Sunstone meeting. It is a bit messy but has timestamps so you can go to the specific points and hear it yourself. It's a zip file so you'll have to unzip it but it just contains a text file. augusta_cobb.zip

Interesting. So, did he write both of them or did the newspaper take what he wrote and shrink it to fit the newspaper column? The book is printed later so he could have just given a much shorter version of it originally as well. The longer version in the book is interesting because it gives details that might be enough to track down who the people are. The mother is an Englishwoman who is a widow of a close relative of Joseph. She has a ~16 year old daughter in 1855 which means the girl was born in 1840s and that's Nauvoo. The mother also remarries a man in Utah. I'm seeing if I can find a person that fits that. I have my doubts because an Englishwoman widow of a close relative of Joseph doesn't seem like a possibility. When I first read that, I thought Mary Fielding Smith as she is an Englishwoman and a widow, but the rest of the story doesn't match her. I kind of doubt the story is real.

Connell O'Donovan (the person in the presentation) also gave this interview https://yearofpolygamy.com/year-of-polygamy/episode-158-augusta-adams-cobb-and-other-boston-mormon-women/ and wrote these two papers/posts https://juvenileinstructor.org/women-the-priesthood-and-augusta-adams-cobb-connell-odonovans-response-to-jonathan-stapley/ and https://www.jstor.org/stable/23292749 about Augusta. I've transcribed the 2 soundbites and read the 2 papers/posts. Connell also said he was writing a book about her letters but that was back in 2012/2013 and I don't see any book yet. Augusta is a very interesting woman. I don't know why Brigham wouldn't give her a divorce. Connell hypothesized that it was because she might go and create a "tell-all" book, but I don't agree with that. She could have done it without a divorce. A divorce wouldn't have prevented her from leaving Utah and she wouldn't have had an issue finding someone to publish her "tell-all". See Ann Eliza's story for how well a "tell-all" would do. Per those sound files and pages, the list of men that she wants to be married to includes (the majority of this is from the soundfile you linked to at around 22:40): Jesus Christ, Joseph Smith, Paul the Apostle, Heber C. Kimball, Willard Richards, Daniel H. Wells, Bishop Whitney, John Bernheisel, Father Rhodes, William Appleby, Orson Spencer, and Ezra Benson. She also asks to put out an ad that says something along the lines, "If you are a bishop and don't have a wife, I'm available" and also asks to give a notice to the legislature that she is available to be married. I'm not entirely sure if those are real desires to be married to those men. For instance, she talks about how she wants to marry Heber C. Kimball and be his only wife. But he has a bunch of wives at the time. So how is she going to be his only wife? I'd love to get access to the actual letters and read them and see them in context. She is an interesting woman and her letters are fascinating of what I have read about.

A compilation of the Nauvoo temple records can be found at https://archive.org/details/nauvoo-sealings-adoptions-and-anointings/. It is a really fascinating document. It lists all of the people who received their endowments, all of the sealings, and who they were sealed to (including both proxy and non-proxy). So, if we are going with contemporary documents, there is no evidence that Augusta was married/sealed to Brigham before 1846 either. If we go by the earliest contemporary evidence (the Nauvoo Temple sealings), she is quite late, being sealed in Feb 2 and over a dozen being sealed earlier in January. By the way, Augusta was actually sealed to Joseph Smith. Brigham stood in proxy for Joseph. So Augusta and Brigham were sealed for time only (that is how the sealings worked back then for proxy sealings). You can see that in the "Nauvoo Sealings, Adoptions, and Anointings". Augusta is listed under Joseph and Brigham as a wife. When Augusta went to Nauvoo the first time (1843), there is no contemporaneous evidence that she did it to marry Brigham. She arrived in Nauvoo in October 1843. She traveled back to Boston in August 1844 and then back to Nauvoo in November 1845. http://www.connellodonovan.com/essex_mormons.pdf The first evidence is 1846 in the Nauvoo Temple sealings. Then we get letters from her talking about her sister wives. Then we have a divorce case between Augusta and Henry Cobb where he alleges that she committed adultery with Brigham in August 1844. Then we get a "tell-all" book written by Catherine Lewis (1848 https://archive.org/details/CatherineLewisNarrative/page/n1/mode/2up) that says that Augusta told Catherine about polygamy when Augusta returned to Boston (so 1844-1845). Our evidence that she was married in 1843 is her affidavit from 1869. That is also where we get Lucy Ann Decker's marriage date. So if we don't accept one, then I don't see why we should accept the other. Without that affidavit, she is maybe married by August 1844 (per her divorce case) which would put her further down the line. I don't see why Lucy Ann Decker being married to her husband would have a factor in this since Augusta was also still married to her husband. They both have that. We can't say that Lucy got married later but not say the same thing about Augusta. They both were definitely sealed by 1846 to Brigham and apparently Lucy's earlier marriage date was actually written in the Nauvoo temple records. https://www.dialoguejournal.com/articles/determining-and-defining-wife-the-brigham-young-households/ says that but it is really hard to get access to the Nauvoo temple records so no way to prove it.

That kind of strengthens my issue with the site. If WomenStats has the data, why not show it vs show a completely unrelated chart from World Bank. I'm not looking for a country-by-country chart. A chart 2 with two lines would be enough. 1 line for non-polygamous countries and 1 line for polygamous countries. And then I'd love an actual list of what are the polygamous countries. Because if they aren't looking at legality but are looking at prevelance, than that could mean the US could be included as we have a decent amount of polyamorous relationships. Since I can't tell exactly what the website is arguing and because I can easily find data that refutes how I read the arguments, it makes me not trust it. Because it feels like it is cherry-picking its data or the author isn't actually drilling into the data. I found a maps page in WomenStats that shows all the countries on the 1-5 scale One thing that is interesting is that US is yellow so is it polygamous or not? Depends on if we are only looking at the ones orange/red or if we also are including the yellow. I can see that Angola is marked with a 4 (I'm giving 1 to the dark green and 5 to the dark red). But so is Bahrain. So, if "polygamous countries" are all 4 and 5s, then the statement is false. But if polygamous countries are only 5s, then why did the website mention Haiti since that is a 4 (you have to zoom in but it is an orange color)? I also went through several of the red countries (the ones that are definitely "polygamous countries" by WomenStats) and Burkina Faso has been declining its extreme poverty. I also went through some of the green ones (definitely not polygamous) and found Kosovo which has increased its extreme poverty and been bouncing around at a higher level since 2016. https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SI.POV.DDAY?end=2022&locations=XK-BF-HT&most_recent_value_desc=true&start=1994&view=chart has Haiti, Kosovo, and Burkina Faso If the author of the website had instead said something like "Most polygamous countries are not declining in extreme poverty", than it would be fine. But the author is using an absolute ("every"). The data they are using doesn't use those absolutes.

I really wish the author of those 2 websites cited sources better and used them better. We had a discussion about the evidence site a while ago (https://www.mormondialogue.org/topic/75679-historical-monogamy-doctrine-website/) and back then I had gone through several of the points and found some minor issues with how it was cited. Just made it hard to track down things. An example on this new page is section "53 ~ Extreme poverty has decreased in every country of the world, except for polygamous ones ~". The source for that claim is a World Bank chart that doesn't actually show what the author wants. It isn't separating out the countries by polygamy, but by location. If I look at actual countries that have legal polygamy vs those that don't, I see contradictory evidence. Angola, which is Sub-Saharan but doesn't have legal polygamy, is increasing its extreme poverty. Bahrain, which is not Sub-Saharan but does have legal polygamy, is apparently without any extreme poverty. Because the claim is absolute (every country except for polygamous ones), it is really easy to refute. The claim needs to be softened and it should be using a graph that actually shows what the claim is. Another example is the author writes "Brigham Young's first plural wife, Augusta Adams Cobb, was denied a divorce from him after continued written requests and despite her having another man she wished to remarry" with absolutely no sourcing. First, Augusta is not his first plural wife, that would be Lucy Ann Decker. And I tried to find the evidence behind that statement and the best I could find was that Augusta regretted having married Brigham instead of Joseph Smith because it caused problems for her Boston kids (from her first husband). She didn't care for Brigham after a point and he didn't allow her a divorce (though he allowed quite a few others) but she didn't have another man she wished to remarry. She asked to be sealed to Jesus and Joseph (this is after Joseph's death) so it seems more like a dig against Brigham (he isn't good enough for her) - https://yearofpolygamy.com/year-of-polygamy/episode-158-augusta-adams-cobb-and-other-boston-mormon-women/ Another example is the section "74 ~ Male guardians marrying female wards ~". The author first quotes from Ann Eliza Young which is a big red flag because we know that she did make up things so you can't just accept her word by itself. And then the section has this really long quote without a source. I thought that quote would be easy to find (it is 2 paragraphs long with some really unique phrases) so I searched for it. And I couldn't find it. I tried several times. I asked to AI searchers to find it. I finally found what I think is the source of it because the story is very similar, but it is not the same English. It is from an 1861 book by Jules Remy detailing a trip he made to Utah in 1855 (https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/fc/A_Journey_to_Great-Salt-Lake_City%3B_with_a_sketch_of_the_History%2C_Religion_and_Customs_of_the_Mormons_and_an_introduction_on_the_Religious_Movement_in_the_United_States%2C_in_Two_Volumes%2C_Vol._II_(IA_dli.granth.73851).pdf). In there, around page 174, he tells a story about a mother/daughter that he meets and it is very similar. Except it has some interesting parts. First, when the husband asks to marry the step-daughter, she says no, the mother says no, and even Brigham Young doesn't help him. The husband then marries another woman to be spiteful and this new wife discovers what happened and is angry. She is the one that tosses out the first wife and daughter, not the husband (though he probably didn't care at this point). And section "86 ~ Reports of overt polygamy coercion" has 2 issues. First, it quotes Emma Lynette Richardson. I know that story really well as she is a sister of my ancestor. The story is a lot more complicated than what the website is implying. At the same time that she is married off, her mother (Mary Ann) and father (Edmund) do one of the oddest things. Edmund had been sterilized back east and so when they arrived in Utah and were baptized (yes, they came to Utah before being baptized), they felt like they needed more kids. But Edmund was incapable of doing that. So, they asked Brigham Young for an idea and he proposed that he divorces them, marries Mary Ann to an upstanding man in the community, and have children come through that marriage. Then Brigham would divorce Mary Ann from that other man and remarry (and seal) Mary Ann to Edmund. This is what they did (I'm a descendant of one of the sons from this odd relationship). No one in the community knew about it. Mary Ann lived in her own house and there is debate on whether Edmund lived with her, left and never visited during the time, or left and did visit (I lean to the later). Emma Lynette was 14 at this time and would absolutely have noticed a man coming to stay the night (or Mary Ann might have gone to his house, we don't really know). So, she was married off to get her out of the house (and the Mormon Reformation was happening so that influenced who she was married off to). It is a weird situation and very sad for Emma Lynette (her first 2 kids die from a pandemic and she later leaves her husband and finds a much better husband). But I would not say it is a polygamy coercion situation. It also talks about the story of Levi Savage and his 2 young wives (they are his stepdaughters). When I looked for the source of that story, it turns out that what the author wrote is backwards. They went to Salt Lake, got married (without any issues or running away) and then on the way back, that is when the woman disappears. So, she is already married and not being coerced into the marriage. She is just being coerced to going back to her husband. The source of this was her history sketch in familysearch.org Sorry for the long windiness but I really wish the author of that site did much better with the sources. It is frustrating to read through it and keep feeling like something is missing or incorrect and then to actually look into a few and have my fears validated. It makes me distrust the entire site.

I've met a few members that believe this. The most common answer is that the earth was formed from material that had been used in previous planets and so the bones from those planets ended up in earth. If you go outside of the church to those who are young-earthers, they have quite a lot of ways to explain it away. A common way is to say that the flood triggered the fossils by burying them and that the process to fossilize is actually much faster than what mainstream scientists say. There's even a paleontologist who is a young-earther - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marcus_R._Ross.

Interesting. I hope the author of the blog post does more investigation. I think the locket picture has much better provenance since it is in the family but this one is interesting as well.

I listened to the video and Don made a few really interesting points about Emma and polygamy. One was that a few years before her birth, a pastor in her family's community was kicked out of the congregation for preaching an immoral practice from the Bible. Don has another historian friend who hypothesizes that could have been polygamy (any other immoral practice in the Bible?). If it was, that would mean she grew up in a community that had a bad experience with polygamy and would have colored her own view of it. The other point is that Jacob (in Jacob 2) mentions a revelation from Lehi telling the Lehites to not practice polygamy. That revelation is not recorded anywhere in the Book of Mormon. But it could have been in the lost Book of Lehi. And Emma would have likely been the transcriber for it (as she was the first transcriber for Joseph). That would have also had an impact on her view of polygamy. A paraphrase of that quote was in the video. Around the 1:10:00 mark. Also a few other quotes from her against polygamy were also mentioned. Don makes an interesting point around this. He points out how Joseph told William Clayton to burn or bury the records of the Council of Fifty. He says that is an indication that Joseph tried to hide/destroy things that could be damaging to him. And many of the stories about the burning of the Section 132 have Joseph burning the section, not Emma. So, Don proposes that Joseph did burn the paper to ensure that it wouldn't fall in the wrong hands and get him killed. And Emma saw that and misunderstood that to mean that Joseph was giving up polygamy (similar to how William Marks also believed that). And so Emma was trying to follow his wishes and example by denying polygamy after his death because he was giving up. She also had seen what it did to her husband (polygamy was a main reason he was killed) and she didn't want the same thing to happen to her sons. So she would deny it to her sons to ensure they didn't follow their father's lead.