Joseph Smith And Polygamy

[why me]

For one thing, if he had consummated all those marriages, he wouldn't have had time for anything else. Not to mention things like, NO one has THAT much stamina, and since birth control was not even a concept I think, where are all the children that would inevitably have come from a lot of these unions?

And if all he wanted was pookie, he could have had that without marrying them. It worked for John Bennett, the women fell for it, and he wasn't even the prophet.

Well, this is true enough. I have been saying for years that if Joseph wanted some action he didn't need to start polygamy. He could have gotten some a few counties over or on his travels to new york and washington. He didn't need to risk it all by instituting polygamy. Also, we cannot discount the answer to prayer that the women received before they agreed to be sealed to him.

[Darren10]

You can look it up to get the exact wording but they were stating the marriages were sexual without giving specific details.

No, you cannot.

[why me]

Ah yes. The Prophet's rationalization for trying to manipulate women into becoming his "wives." I appreciate what Joseph was doing more than you, I'm afraid.

Well, I don't know about this. Many of these women were stubborn and they refused him. However, by them praying about the principle, many received a powerful witness from the holy ghost that the principle was true. And then they said yes to his proposal. I think that you may need to blame the holy ghost for the manipulation.

[Darren10]

William,

Ah yes. The Prophet's rationalization for trying to manipulate women into becoming his "wives." I appreciate what Joseph was doing more than you, I'm afraid.

Abraham, Jacob, Moses, or Joseph Smith. I'm now getting the four confused.

[Rob Bowman]

Darren,

You wrote:

With Joseph Smith it was the principle of marriage, not actual conventional marriages. He was *really married*, just not in a conventional sense. If you can offer evidence ("CFR" anyone ) to the contrary, you yourself cannot claim they were conventional marriages.

So, were Brigham Young's marriages to his many wives "conventional marriages"? You have yet to show that there was any difference in the meaning of marriage or wives between what Joseph practiced and what Brigham practiced. Your argument is still double-minded.

[Rob Bowman]

I'll be away from my computer for a while.

You are out of the thread for invoking Nazis.

[Closet Doubter]

Do you mean to say one can not be married unless one has sexual relations? I don't think sexual relations are a requirement for a marriage to be valid.

You can get the citations for the following from Todd Comptons book "In Sacred Lonliness". Melissa Lott Willes testified that she had been Smith’s wife “in very deed.” Emily Partridge Young said she “roomed” with Joseph the night following her marriage to him, and said that she had “carnal intercourse” with him. Other early witnesses also affirmed this. Benjamin Johnson wrote “On the 15th of May … the Prophet again Came and at my house ocupied the Same Room & Bed with my Sister that the month previous he had ocupied with the Daughter of the Later Bishop Partridge as his wife.” According to Joseph Bates Noble, Smith told him he had spent a night with Louisa Beaman.

[thesometimesaint]

yootaw:

I'll put this as delicately as I can. I don't have a problem with Joseph having sex with any/all of his wives, but proving it gets problematic as there are no children except with Emma. We have many children fathered by Brigham Young so that becomes a non issue.

[William Schryver]

William,

You wrote:

Ah yes. The Prophet's rationalization for trying to manipulate women into becoming his "wives." I appreciate what Joseph was doing more than you, I'm afraid.

Yeah, I've heard the theory that the content of that letter is really just the most "piously fraudulent" pickup line of all time.

I think you'd need a little something better than that, however, if you insist on wearing sweater vests like the one you're sporting in your user photo.

[ERayR]

Agreed. I'm confused as to why the idea of Joseph's relationships being sexual is such a sticking point. What am I missing?

It is only the sealings to married women and young girls that are of any problem. In our 20th century outlook marriage to young women not yet out of their teens has become abhorrent. If these were in fact not marriages and instead were dynastic sealings to which no marriage consummations can be attached, the connotation of lecher can not be attached to Joseph.

[ERayR]

You can get the citations for the following from Todd Comptons book "In Sacred Lonliness". Melissa Lott Willes testified that she had been Smith’s wife “in very deed.” Emily Partridge Young said she “roomed” with Joseph the night following her marriage to him, and said that she had “carnal intercourse” with him. Other early witnesses also affirmed this. Benjamin Johnson wrote “On the 15th of May … the Prophet again Came and at my house ocupied the Same Room & Bed with my Sister that the month previous he had ocupied with the Daughter of the Later Bishop Partridge as his wife.” According to Joseph Bates Noble, Smith told him he had spent a night with Louisa Beaman.

What tss said. I was going to add more but he said it well and succinctly.

[yootaw]

Agreed, with Brigham and others the evidence is clear. It seems like many people here find value in claiming that Joseph didn't consummate these relationships. I'm interested in understanding why that makes a difference for some.

[treehugger]

What, I believe can be reasonably concluded, is the following:

1. The webpage linked in the OP is just a few years old or less;

2. The webpage linked in the OP, from the LDS Church, confirms that Joseph Smith did enter into plural marriages;

3. No one has provided, from Official LDS Church publications, that directly state that Joseph Smith entered into plural marriages;

4. Any mention/discussion of Joseph Smith's plural marriages in LDS Sunday School/Seminary/Institute, was a discussion initiated by using non-LDS Church publications;

5. The discussion of Joseph Smiths plural marriages from non-LDS Church publications, does not address the issue presented from the OP to wit:

"I see no hiding of the principle from the church website and all members are free to search for it. So what is the problem?"

Edit: See Calmorahs post here for a 2003 History of the Church in the Fulness of Times Student Manual, which addresses Joseph Smiths polygamy.

Edited July 6, 2012 by treehugger

[yootaw]

It is only the sealings to married women and young girls that are of any problem. In our 20th century outlook marriage to young women not yet out of their teens has become abhorrent. If these were in fact not marriages and instead were dynastic sealings to which no marriage consummations can be attached, the connotation of lecher can not be attached to Joseph.

Got it this makes more sense to me.

[Darren10]

Darren,

You wrote:

So, were Brigham Young's marriages to his many wives "conventional marriages"?

In the sense of him having legal obligations to his wives, and bearing children, yes, they were. Not cnoventional in terms of "traditional" but conventional nonetheless.

You have yet to show that there was any difference in the meaning of marriage or wives between what Joseph practiced and what Brigham practiced. Your argument is still double-minded.

No I wonder if you read my posts. Joseph Smith had no children with anyone except Emma. Brigham Young did. That's a big difference.

[Darren10]

Agreed, with Brigham and others the evidence is clear. It seems like many people here find value in claiming that Joseph didn't consummate these relationships. I'm interested in understanding why that makes a difference for some.

It most definitely alleviates a lot of the troubling aspects of his marriages, especially the polyandrous ones. I thin kthsis is very significant as it points to what Joseph Smith was teaching by plural marriages. He was fulfilling a restoration of all things, and that's the bottom line.

[Calm]

Agreed. I'm confused as to why the idea of Joseph's relationships being sexual is such a sticking point. What am I missing?

It is not for some.

Having read the evidences, I highly doubt the polyandrous marriages were sexual (I think that is one reason why Joseph chose that route after the first marriage with Fanny Alger didn't go so well) and the two youngest ones (at least Helen's from her own description and I assume the same for the other one her age for the same reason). The rest I think there is evidence for, such as the affidavits and some other comments.

However, I doubt that if they were sexual in nature, that it happened all that much due to the lack of children after having 11? with Emma. I do think the lack of children demonstrates the purpose of the marriages/sealings was something other than libido.

Edited July 6, 2012 by calmoriah

[Calm]

The law of celestial marriage, as outlined in this revelation, also included the principle of the plurality of wives. In 1831 as Joseph Smith labored on the inspired translation of the holy scriptures, he asked the Lord how he justified the practice of plural marriage among the Old Testament patriarchs. This question resulted in the revelation on celestial marriage, which included an answer to his question about the plural marriages of the patriarchs.¹¹

First the Lord explained that for any covenant, including marriage, to be valid in eternity it must meet three requirements (see D&C 132:7): (1) It must be “made and entered into and sealed by the Holy Spirit of promise.” (2) It must be performed by the proper priesthood authority. (3) It must be by “revelation and commandment” through the Lord’s anointed prophet (see also vv. 18–19). Using Abraham as an example, the Lord said he “received all things, whatsoever he received, by revelation and commandment, by my word” (v. 29). Consequently, the Lord asked, “Was Abraham, therefore, under condemnation? Verily I say unto you, Nay; for I, the Lord, commanded it” (v. 35).

Moreover, Joseph Smith and the Church were to accept the principle of plural marriage as part of the restoration of all things (see v. 45). Accustomed to conventional marriage patterns, the Prophet was at first understandably reluctant to engage in this new practice. Due to a lack of historical documentation, we do not know what his early attempts were to comply with the commandment in Ohio. His first recorded plural marriage in Nauvoo was to Louisa Beaman; it was performed by Bishop Joseph B. Noble on 5 April 1841.¹²During the next three years Joseph took additional plural wives in accordance with the Lord’s commands.

As members of the Council of the Twelve Apostles returned from their missions to the British Isles in 1841, Joseph Smith taught them one by one the doctrine of plurality of wives, and each experienced some difficulty in understanding and accepting this doctrine.¹³Brigham Young, for example, recounted his struggle: “I was not desirous of shrinking from any duty, nor of failing in the least to do as I was commanded, but it was the first time in my life that I had desired the grave, and I could hardly get over it for a long time. And when I saw a funeral, I felt to envy the corpse its situation, and to regret that I was not in the coffin.”¹⁴

After their initial hesitancy and frustration, Brigham Young and others of the Twelve received individual confirmations from the Holy Spirit and accepted the new doctrine of plural marriage. They knew that Joseph Smith was a prophet of God in all things. At first the practice was kept secret and was very limited. Rumors began to circulate about authorities of the Church having additional wives, which greatly distorted the truth and contributed to increased persecution from apostates and outsiders. Part of the difficulty, of course, was the natural aversion Americans held against “polygamy.” This new system appeared to threaten the strongly entrenched tradition of monogamy and the solidarity of the family structure. Later, in Utah, the Saints openly practiced “the principle,” but never without persecution.

http://www.lds.org/manual/church-history-in-the-fulness-of-times-student-manual/chapter-twenty-doctrinal-developments-in-nauvoo?lang=eng

I hope you take my word that it is in the previous church history manual as well because I am not going to go dig that out yet again and type it up.

[Calm]

Also:

D&C 132:51–56. What Was Emma Commanded Not to Partake of?

No indication is given here or elsewhere of what the Lord had commanded the Prophet Joseph to offer to his wife, but the context seems to suggest that it was a special test of faith similar to the test of Abraham’s faith when the Lord commanded him to sacrifice Isaac. Beyond that, it is useless to speculate. However, Emma was given additional counsel from the Lord, including commandments to “receive all those that have been given to her husband” ( D&C 132:52) to obey the voice of the Lord (see v. 53), to “abide and cleave unto” the Prophet ( v. 54), and to forgive him of his trespasses (see v. 56). The Lord also gave her warnings against rejecting these commandments and promises for keeping them.

President Wilford Woodruff, who was closely associated with the Prophet Joseph Smith, said: “Emma Smith, the widow of the Prophet, is said to have maintained to her dying moments that her husband had nothing to do with the patriarchal order of marriage, but that it was Brigham Young that got that up. I bear record before God, angels and men that Joseph Smith received that revelation, and I bear record that Emma Smith gave her husband in marriage to several women while he was living, some of whom are to-day living in this city, and some may be present in this congregation, and who, if called upon, would confirm my words. But lo and behold, we hear of publication after publication now-a-days, declaring that Joseph Smith had nothing to do with these things. Joseph Smith himself organized every endowment in our Church and revealed the same to the Church, and he lived to receive every key of the Aaronic and Melchizedek priesthoods from the hands of the men who held them while in the flesh, and who hold them in eternity.” (In Journal of Discourses, 23:131.)

http://institute.lds...-in-131-132.asp

So now treehugger, you can remove condition three (IIRC) as I have demonstrated that plural marriage is discussed in institute manuals as I've stated several times already on this thread (and others recently maybe...).

add-on: actually 3 and 4 can be removed and this leads to 5 being in doubt. These manuals, which talk about Joseph's plural marriages, have been in use for at least 30 years, I believe.

3. No one has provided, from Official LDS Church publications, that directly state that Joseph Smith entered into plural marriages;

4. Any mention/discussion of Joseph Smith's plural marriages in LDS Sunday School/Seminary/Institute, was a discussion initiated by using non-LDS Church publications;

Edited July 6, 2012 by calmoriah

[Nevo]

Joseph Smith had no children with anyone except Emma.

We don't know this.

Fanny Alger was reportedly pregnant after her relationship with the Prophet was discovered (see, e.g., Don Bradley, "Mormon Polygamy before Nauvoo: The Relationship of Joseph Smith and Fanny Alger," in The Persistence of Polygamy: Joseph Smith and the Origins of Mormon Polygamy, ed. Newell G. Bringhurst and Craig L. Foster [independence, MO: John Whitmer Books, 2010], 14-58). And genetic testing for Josephine Lyon Fisher's paternity has so far been inconclusive (Ugo Perego reports that "it is possible that this paternity case may never be fully resolved by means of genetic testing." See Ugo H. Perego, "Joseph Smith, the Question of Polygamous Offspring, and DNA Analysis," in The Persistence of Polygamy, 255).

In any case, there is good reason to believe that at least some of Joseph Smith's polygamous marriages were consummated. As BYU professor J. Spencer Fluhman has observed, "after the Civil War, when the Reorganized Church critics charged that Joseph Smith's relationships with other women were purely spiritual unions, Latter-day Saints marshaled convincing evidence that at least some of the plural marriages had been consummated" (J. Spencer Fluhman, "'A Subject That Can Bear Investigation': Anguish, Faith, and Joseph Smith's Youngest Plural Wife," in No Weapon Shall Prosper: New Light on Sensitive Issues, ed. Robert L. Millet [Provo, UT: BYU Religious Studies Center; Salt Lake City: Deseret Book, 2011], 107-108; see also Gregory L. Smith's statement that "there is good evidence of a conjugal relationship with Almira Johnson, Melissa Lott, Emily Partridge, and Eliza R. Snow. It is also reasonable to include Eliza Partridge, Maria Lawrence, and Sarah Lawrence. The evidence for their inclusion is persuasive, though they are not named specifically. There is late, hostile evidence of intimacy with Fanny Alger, and most intriguingly there is some evidence of both a physical relationship and a child with Sylvia Sessions Lyon," in The FARMS Review 20, no. 2 [2008]: 108).

[thesometimesaint]

Nevo:

To date there is no genetic tests that have proven Joseph was the father of any but those with Emma.

[Nevo]

Nevo:

To date there is no genetic tests that have proven Joseph was the father of any but those with Emma.

Of the fourteen alleged descendants that were tested, only one had a good claim to being a child of Joseph Smith—and the results of that test remain inconclusive. So this doesn't really say much.

[Calm]

Since the only child of Fanny Alger has been demonstrated not to belong to Joseph (IIRC) (so if she was pregnant she either lost it or it was adopted and any connection would be impossible to make with no record), it would seem that the only possibility for testing left is the one where the daughter was told by her mother she was Joseph's child (Josephine Lyons?)...I am supposed to be taking a nap before the grandkids arrive so I am not looking it up. My understanding that the limitations of the current testing technology do not cover her, so we will have to wait awhile before she can be ruled in or out.

But after her, I don't think any other options are left if I remember correctly Ugo's information. Anyone heard differently?

[Calm]

Of the fourteen alleged descendants that were tested, only one had a good claim to being a child of Joseph Smith—and the results of that test remain inconclusive. So this doesn't really say much.

Except that there was only one good claim to being his child out of all of his wives....which considering Emma had 11ish children, including being pregnant at the time of his death, seems to say quite a bit to me about the relationships even if they were completely physical.

Are there other alleged descendants available for testing when the technology expands (assuming it can)?

Edited July 6, 2012 by calmoriah

[why me]

Also:

http://institute.lds...-in-131-132.asp

So now treehugger, you can remove condition three (IIRC) as I have demonstrated that plural marriage is discussed in institute manuals as I've stated several times already on this thread (and others recently maybe...).

add-on: actually 3 and 4 can be removed and this leads to 5 being in doubt. These manuals, which talk about Joseph's plural marriages, have been in use for at least 30 years, I believe.

I am afraid that it is difficult for some to accept because they have more or less based much on their undoing of their testimony on critic interpretations that may not be true and just may be misleading. It is all rather sad. But I cannot blame them. However, once they learn the truth, hopefully, their minds will be open to the church once more.