The Smelly Elephant in the Room Part 2

        A random but typical polygamist family in the 1800's.

No Man Knows My History, by Fawn M. Brodie is an excellent book about Joseph Smith’s history. Chapter twenty four explains the immense mess with Joseph, his multiple wives, John C. Bennett, and the ugly, disgusting truth behind polygamy. This was the first book I read when I started to question the church, and what I had been taught concerning church history. It blew my mind wide open!

The fact that Emma Smith didn’t follow Brigham Young to Utah after Joseph’s death was a huge problem for me for several reasons. You would think if Joseph had actually established ‘God’s one and only true church’ Emma would have stayed loyal to its teachings, the new prophet, and would have gone westward as well. Clearly, she feared being destroyed by ‘God’ if she didn’t give in to accepting the practice of polygamy, (‘God’ being Joseph in my humble opinion). In that disturbing revelation of D&C 132, she was told to “abide in my Law.” If it was truly a 'God' in Heaven that Emma feared, she would have ‘abided in His law’ like He had commanded her to do; and, she would have stayed loyal to the church after Joseph’s death. However, Emma and Lucy Smith, Joseph’s mother, both joined other churches in the years following Joseph’s demise, and they didn’t go west with ‘God’s only true church’. For me, that is a big red flag, an indication that this religion was in fact formed by the Smith family, and not revealed from God. I think Emma and Lucy knew perfectly well the awful truth, which is the church was in fact manufactured by their family in order to make a living. Joseph loathed being a farmer! The Mormon Church was built on deep deception and fathomless fraud. It is not what it claims to be. That was why Emma and Lucy could easily walk away from this church once Joseph was dead, and join other churches later on in their lives, they knew it was a bamboozelment!

 I believe that polygamy is a shameful, dark, disturbing part of the Mormon Church’s past that the current leaders of the church would love to conceal for good, and never speak of again. But, the voices of the women who lived it deserve to be heard. Their stories must be remembered. There pain and heartache have got to come out of the darkness and into the light. In Sacred Loneliness: the Plural Wives of Joseph Smith, by Todd M. Compton is another excellent book that shares these women’s tear-jerking stories of living this principle of ‘eternal marriage’, or the new and everlasting covenant, in their own words. In my opinion, it is not a heavenly picture they portray. It is tragic how these women were white washed out of early church history, but not surprising from this patriarchal religion.

          I was taught that all of the Mormons who make it to the pinnacle point of the Celestial Kingdom would definitely practice polygamy in Heaven. Nowadays, the church has down played that belief too. Many Mormons suppose that there can be monogamy in Heaven as well, something my mother was counting on, which makes the fact that my father proposed several times to a very young woman, compared to him, after my moms death, very disturbing to me. (Mom would be throwing up in her grave at the very idea of living polygamy for eternity and sharing my dad with another woman!) Polygamy is a terrifying ghost that haunts every L.D.S marriage because the prophet Brigham Young made it pretty damn clear that monogamy would never be practiced in Heaven. My mother had to believe polygamy would be a choice for those who will make it to that supreme rank in the Celestial kingdom. Polygamy has always bothered me, my mother, and many other women that I know. Polygamy practiced in Heaven doesn’t sound like a ‘peaceful paradise’ to me. It sounds more like Hell! And, I would definitely choose Hell over that kind of Heaven; and in a way, I guess I have according to this quote from Orson Pratt from the Journal of Discourses 17:225; “Now I want to prophecy a little. It is not very often that I prophecy, though I was commanded to do so, when I was a boy. I want to prophecy that all men and women who oppose the revelation which God has given in relation to polygamy will find themselves in darkness; the Spirit of God will withdraw from them from the very moment of their opposition to that principle, until they will finally go down to hell and be damned, if they do not repent.” (October 7, 1874, Salt Lake City) I definitely, and absolutely, reject the idea that this practice of polygamy, or plural marriage, came from a loving God. I believe it was most certainly thought up by lustful, immoral, depraved, and narcissistic men in the church. It’s a good thing I am no longer afraid of going to Hell, cause according to Orson and Brigham that is my eternal future... to be damned. 

Honestly, I have nothing against polygamy in general. If people want to practice it, as long as they are consenting adults, I don’t care. What I do have a problem with are child brides in any religion, or in any tradition. Taking underage girls and forcing them to become wives, and mothers, is not okay. Joseph took several underage girls as wives, seven we know for sure. Seven of his wives were under the age of eighteen. Two were only fourteen years old. One of those fourteen year old girls he married was Helen Mar Kimball. Her story is particularly distressing.

Joseph threatened her with eternal damnation and her family too, if she denied his request of marriage. However, if she did choose to marry him, he promised eternal salvation for her and all of her family. What kind of a choice is that for a teenage girl?! Helen’s own words are very effective at proving how manipulating this concept of ‘eternal marriage’ really was, and still is. Helen wrote, “Joseph said to me, ‘if you take this step, it will ensure your eternal salvation and exaltation and that of your father’s household and all of your kindred.’ This promise was so great that I willingly gave myself to purchase so glorious a reward. I had, in hours of temptation when seeing the trials of my mother, felt to rebel. I hated polygamy in my heart. For three months I lay a portion of the time like one dead…I tasted of the punishment which is prepared for those who reject any of the principles of this Gospel. I fasted for one week, and every day I gained until I had won the victory…I learned that plural marriage is a celestial principle, and saw… the necessity of obedience to those who hold the priesthood, and the danger of rebelling against or speaking lightly of the Lord’s anointed.” If that is not blatant manipulation, I don’t know what is. She was fourteen! My oldest daughter was fourteen when I wrote my book, Sacred Light. If any older man from the church ever came to me asking to take my underage daughter for a bride I would tell them to go to straight to Hell, no hesitation about it! A few of the women in Nauvoo who were approached by Joseph to practice this new type of marriage, did tell Joseph to go to Hell, this includes his first wife Emma! In her later years, Helen had this to say about her so called ‘marriage’ to Joseph, “I would never have been sealed to Joseph if I had known it was anything more than ceremony. I was young, and they deceived me, by saying the salvation of my family depended on it.” Helen Mar Kimball, Mormon Polygamy: A History, pg. 53 Manipulation, deception, and lies are the legacy that polygamy has provided to the Mormon Church. Polygamy is and was just a bunch of nasty, horrible, disgusting affairs!

Warren Jeffs is now in jail for doing exactly what Joseph Smith did back in the 1800’s, and jail is where he belongs. I view Joseph Smith the exact same way as I view Warren Jeffs, as a criminal. To me, there is no difference between them. They are con men. They taught, lived, and practiced the exact same things. Conning underage girls into marriage is a wrong behavior. No justification could make it a right behavior, not even ‘angels with flaming swords’ can make that conduct acceptable!

In fact, polygamy is ultimately what got Joseph thrown into Carthage jail that sealed his fate of dying young. He asked for the wrong man’s wife, Jane Law wife of William Law. “Though once a counselor in the First Presidency, William Law fell out of the church’s favor when he opposed several nefarious actions of Joseph Smith, including Joseph’s repeated polyandrous proposals to his wife, Jane. After his excommunication, William published the Nauvoo Expositor which exposed Joseph’s polygamous activities. The destruction of the Nauvoo Expositor printing press led to the incarceration, and death, of Joseph Smith.” (zelphontheshelf.com) That repeated request for William’s wife lead to a series of events which are what lead to Joseph's death.

Joseph was not martyred, in my opinion, like I was taught in church. The truth is he went out of this world during a blazing gun battle, using a gun that was smuggled into him along with some wine the night before his demise. Joseph also wounded two others who later died from those wounds as well, and he gave the famous Masonic distress call as he fell to his death from the two story window of that jail, hoping a fellow mason in the angry mob might have mercy and help save him. It was not to be. Joseph’s ultimate death is a captivating part of church history involving him being crowned King of the world in order to usher in the millennium, and him taking the law into his own hands by ordering the destruction of the printing press owned by William Law. It was very shocking for me to learn of the disastrous and disturbing truth behind Joseph’s downfall. I didn’t know anything about the reality of his incarceration or his death just like most church members don't have a clue about it either. It is not a faith promoting story, that’s why it is never told honestly in church.

The Celestial kingdom is the indisputable goal of every Mormon couple. That is why there is such extreme grief and sorrow when a family member leaves the church. The phrase, ‘families are forever’, only applies to Mormon families who have been through the temple, and who keep their covenants made in the temple. All other families will not be ‘together forever’ according to Mormonism. They will all be separated and dispersed at death. Therefore, if you leave the church you are creating an empty seat at your family’s eternal dinner table.

There was so much fear put into me while growing up Mormon about following all the rules, enduring to the end, going to the temple regularly, and being obedient to all the church leaders in order to go to Heaven, anything short of the highest level in the Celestial Kingdom equaled failure. I grew up believing that once the leaders of the church have spoken the thinking is done. The church has definitive authority over me. If I didn’t obey, and do all the things I was asked to do from my local leaders of the church, then I risked losing my family forever, and being in Satan’s total power and control. That is a serious threat not to be taken frivolously. Fear is absolutely why I never questioned these ideas about polygamy that were so disturbing to me for so long. Fear is what will bind us to our false beliefs.  Next week I will share my experience with the Mormon temple rituals. I feel it is important to understand the temple, and the temple covenants, before I share my exit story.

Namaste!

www.iamsacredlight.com
www.sacredlights.net
www.secretsoftheuniverse.blogspot.com