Joseph Smith's Plural Marriage Proposals Pt 1
Original Air Date: 2022-10-27
Based on the provided transcript of the Mormon Stories Podcast episode "Joseph Smith's Plural Marriage Proposals Pt. 1," here is a detailed summary of the video.
Introduction and Framework
Host John Dehlin introduces the episode as part of the "LDS Discussions" series, featuring Mike from LDS Discussions and Alicia from the TikTok channel "Faith Unraveled" 1, 2. The objective is to examine Joseph Smith's specific implementation of polygamy and the patterns found in his marriage proposals, contrasting historical accounts with the narratives currently presented by the LDS Church 3.
Alicia and Mike establish a framework for understanding these events through the "lens of indoctrination." Alicia argues that early Saints were taught to view this life as a temporary speck in eternity, where obedience to the prophet—even when it violated their moral compass—was the only lifeline to salvation 4. Mike adds that viewing Joseph Smith as the "middleman" to eternal promises allowed him to circumvent the members' agency, a dynamic that Mike and John suggest makes true consent impossible in these scenarios 5, 6.
Patterns in Joseph Smith’s Proposals
Mike outlines several recurring patterns in how Joseph Smith approached potential plural wives, arguing these patterns reveal coercive power dynamics rather than standard courtship:
Specific Case Studies
The video details the accounts of three specific sets of proposals to illustrate these patterns.
Lucy Walker was a teenager living in the Smith home after her mother died. Joseph sent her father on a mission and then proposed to her 15.
Zina was living in the Smith household when Joseph first proposed. She rejected him to marry her sweetheart, Henry Jacobs 22, 23.
Emily and Eliza were the daughters of the first LDS Bishop, Edward Partridge. After their father died, they moved into the Smith home 29.
Conclusion
The episode concludes with the hosts emphasizing the trauma and lack of agency these women faced. Alicia notes that the women viewed themselves as property or sacrifices rather than consenting partners 33. Mike argues that the apologetic defenses—such as the women having spiritual testimonies of polygamy—crumble when one considers the coercion, the power imbalance, and the manipulated environment in which these "testimonies" were formed 34, 35. The hosts plan to cover other wives, including Helen Mar Kimball, in a subsequent episode 36.
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hello everyone and welcome to another edition of Mormon stories podcast I'm your host John delin it's October 20th 2022 and today we are 25 or 26 episodes into a really important epic Mormon stories podcast series called LDS discussions where we examine Mormon church truth claims as neutrally and objectively and as thoughtfully and is dispassionately as we possibly can today we are covering we're in the middle of a series on Joseph Smith's polygamy and today we are covering Joseph Smith's plural marriage proposals we've done an introduction to Mormon polygamy we've covered DNC 132 which was Joseph Smith's polygamy Revelation and today we're covering Joseph Smith's plural marriage proposals I do want to just um remind everyone that this entire series is based on the amazing work of our friend Mike at LDS discussions.com he has written several essays on uh various Mormon church truth claims today's episode is based on the essay that can be found at ldsdiscussions.com polygamy Dash proposals and also I want to make sure that people know that that all of these episodes can be found in the Mormon stories podcast feeds both on the Apple podcast app on Spotify and on YouTube and the Mormon stories podcast Channel but uh these episodes can also be found on Spotify there's a dedicated Spotify uh podcast for the LDS discussions episode specifically where you can both listen to them and view them Spotify allows video Believe It or Not we've got about you know a thousand episodes a thousand views or listens per episode now so our Spotify presence with this podcast specifically is growing and I also want to let you all know that if you just want to watch these in succession you can go to our YouTube playlist on the Mormon stories podcast Channel and you can watch these episodes in succession uh today we are excited to have back with us again Mike from LDS discussions hey Mike hey how's it going everybody it's great to have you it's good to be back we got your new microphone I hope people like it yeah I hope I sound better I know when I listen to him sometimes I feel like I'm extra tinny so I'm hoping this is a little bit better yeah and we're going to get you even a better mic stand so anyway thanks for joining us we're so glad to have you thanks everyone and we're super excited to have back for a second time Alicia Lee hey Alicia how's it going great your your appearance on the DNC 132 episode was really valuable and we're just so thrilled to have you back because it wouldn't it be lame to have a discussion about polygamy and have only men talking about it yes she says politely uh really quickly Alicia let's give you a chance if you want to introduce yourself and also you may have some starting thoughts you want to share let's turn the mic over to you thanks John um yeah so I'm Alicia faith unraveled on Tick Tock I'm actually working on a polygamy series on Tick Tock it's kind of intermittent so um anyway whenever I feel inspired to talk about something one of the stories I really feel like it's valuable to give these women a voice so I love talking about it on my Tick Tock Channel um so if you want to check that out but in regard to today's episode I just a little framework that I wanted to share When I Was preparing for this episode I just kept thinking you know as a Seventh Generation Mormon myself coming from Pioneer stock having been an active believer for 40 years of my life I am fascinated with Mormon history and um as I started to deconstruct a few years ago I recognized that many of the themes that we see in these formative years of the church are still playing out today and the one that we're gonna see a lot of today during today's episode is this idea of sacrifice facing during this lifetime for the sake of the eternities doing things that the Saints did things that they wouldn't probably ordinarily do if it weren't for their indoctrination um so we see repeatedly in these teachings it's kind of sequential for me the way that I see it it's like first of all they have to see this lifetime as this very temporary time this small Speck on the Spectrum of Eternity okay so that's the first part of the indoctrination the second part is that the decisions that you make during this very temporary time are going to influence your whole eternity they're going to dictate what the whole rest of your eternity looks like and then the part three is you have a prophet and your profit is your lifeline who's going to tell you exactly what to do during this very short period of time on the earth um so that you don't have to suffer through the eternities so when I so when people start to see through this through this lens I think it becomes very easy to influence their decisions I want to use the word manipulate but I'm just going to say influence their decisions because when we see the prophet as our Lifeline then what we're told to do it doesn't have to make sense it doesn't have to feel right we just have to do it in the name of obedience and I would argue that this Dynamic that we see early in the church is still sort of playing out today for members of the church at least I feel that way as that's that was part of my lived experience as a member of the church so I think it'll be interesting to look at these events in church history and see how they are relevant today beautiful that's a great introduction Mike do you want to add anything to what Alicia said no I think that is for me one of those things you think about is like it we talked about it in the first few episodes and we'll talk about the next couple polygamy ones is that as as Alicia said when you have someone that you trust as a prophet of God it allows them to become the middleman between you and your Eternal promises and so that allows um in this case Joseph Smith who circumvent our own moral compass because our moral compass turns it stops being a moral compass and it starts being follow the prophet and I think that is why you see so many offshoots today who are doing things like this um because they learned it from Joseph Smith they learned from early history and so as Alicia said this stuff impacts today not just with polygamy but with obedience with not questioning leadership with you know we we've we've shown videos before on here and I've had them on on like Twitter and stuff that um there was a Women's Conference like two years ago where they say you never ever questioned them the priesthood holding men and it all comes down to this and so as we look at these um events in history they are fascinating but we need to learn from them and I think in a lot of ways we're often been told to kind of push them aside you know put them on the shelf and you can't do that because you can't understand the present if you don't understand the past I love it yeah it wasn't until I was in my 40s where I started learning about consent uh when I was getting my PhD in Psychology and we had to counsel assault victims and rape victims and you know there's a lot of drinking on campus and so there are uh always concerns about sexual health and sexual safety and you you learn that there are certain things uh that certain Dynamics to any type of sexual relationship that sort of invalidate the idea of two consenting adults and of course underage children cannot consent uh because they're not even adults yet so there's no such thing as an adult having consensual sex with with a minor yep you can't have drunk consent you can't be drunk in consent there's no such thing as drunk consent there's no such thing as consent when you're asleep uh and and so the the idea is is that you know if you're if you're trying to find out is Joseph Smith's polygamy righteous is it of God and we have Patrick Mason the church's top believing um scholar calling Joseph Smith polygamy he basically said it looks a lot like sin but but if you're gonna try and analyze whether Joseph Smith's polygamy is of God then you have to wonder was it consensual if he's in such a position of power he's viewed as God's one true servant if he's telling people their salvation depends on it if it's 14 year old girls if he's if he's mayor and you know commander of the Legion and he's telling people they've got 24 hours or they and their families will lose their salvation is that a problem so that's good that's kind of what we're going to be talking about today and so Mike let's jump into the first slide yeah and one thing I'll add to your comment is just when you hear the word consent all the time in the Mormon church when I was a member or I mean I'm still a member but when I was a believing member consent was always free agency so you know it wasn't so much you know you don't talk about consent but you always talk about you have free agency and so when you watch this episode and you listen to these accounts you have to ask yourself do these women really have free agency in the church um or is that being taken away and if that's the case that's another thing we have to address um because of the fact that we are always told we have free agency but in a lot of ways this short circuits that and so just it's just piggybacking off of not just consent but within Mormonism free agency is a big deal and I would argue you can't have free agency under these circumstances which will obviously get into all right so our first slide is a recap yeah so just for those who have watched the first two polygamy episodes um or those who haven't this is episode three out of five on our polygamy uh kind of mini series within the larger series and so in our previous two episodes we covered uh the timeline of Joseph Smith's polygamy and kind of how that impacted the production of DNC 132 because that does not come until 1843 and most of these I think all of these proposals come before that um and then we talk about how in the church they they have the heading for DNC 132 talks about how Joseph Smith received this Revelation as early as 1831 we talked about how that Revelation was actually about taking the the women uh in the Native American reservations as wise and concubines to make their children wider uh more white and delightsome is the actual wording um it has nothing to do with dnc-132 uh we talked about how Joseph Smith produced the entirety of dnc-132 in one sitting without even using the peep Shear Stone because Hiram Smith requested Joseph Smith to use it believing that's how he got his Revelations Joseph said no he ripped off uh with the 3200 word uh Revelation in one sitting without any help which I think says a lot about his ability to dictate text as we talked about with the composition of the Book of Mormon and then in our last episode we talked about the wording of DNC 132 and all of the implications that that Revelation has for believing members today uh mixed Faith marriages and how Joseph Smith broke pretty much all of the specific rules that he set forth within DNC 132 we'll talk a little bit about that as we go through these proposals as well kind of um going back to you know and this isn't you know another way where his own Revelation was just gonna be written after these proposals is already broken because of the practices he used in implementing polygamy excellent okay uh should we go to the next slide yeah and so what we want to talk about in this third episode is to look at how Joseph Smith actually implemented polygamy and to compare it both to DNC 132 and how the church portrays it today because both of those are very important because DNC 132 obviously is the Revelation that we have canonized and it is one that is still Doctrine and then we have to look at how the church portrays it today because that's important as to in my opinion um kind of the honesty of how polygamy is portrayed by the church not just with how Joseph Smith implemented it but what the what the um implications are for today and for this episode we want to point out the patterns in Joseph Smith's proposals that I think are important to evaluating Joseph Smith as a prophet of God and so what we're going to do is we're going to look at some of the proposals where we have accounts from those who are involved in them uh to see how those stack up against the church's narratives we are not trying to find the most salacious details we're not trying to give shock value here we're trying to find the accounts where we have solid um journal entries or accounts of of what happened during these proposals because a lot of these we just don't have them for so what we're trying to do is is focus on what we do have I'm not trying to find the most salacious details that I've been trying to do that this entire series we've been doing is to look at what's the most solid and go from there and so these are going to make a lot of believing members uncomfortable um but at the same time this is this is history and so we need to be able to talk about these weather whatever you do with it after the fact is is up to you but this is um something we we have to address and look at the implications of these accounts okay all right so marrying girls that live in Joseph Smith's home yes before we get to the accounts I want to cover a few of the patterns that I have found and others have found in Joseph Smith's proposals and one of them is that Joseph Smith often proposes to girls and young women who he has living in his household first and so um this is a Common Thread and it puts women in a very awkward position because they are now being housed with the man they believe is a prophet of God and then they are being asked to marry him in secret polygamous marriages I'm hiding it from Emma in the process who's also in the house and you know we talked about this in our first episode this is how um he had the relationship with Fannie um Alger and I don't believe that was a marriage as we talked about in that episode but this is an area where Joseph Smith had her living in his household she believed he was a prophet and then they have this relationship and um this allows Joseph Smith to use the time while they're living in the household to feel out the situ situation to slowly condition them to be ready for this proposal and I realize that that sounds very devious to put it that way but that's exactly what you would do if you're seeking to take these young women as your polygamous Brides knowing that they believe you're a prophet of God and will recoil at the proposal initially and so I want to just State off right off the bat that an apologetic argument is that there were free to reject his proposal to find another place to live um but the point I want to make is that Joseph Smith is putting him in a position where he holds both their uh both his authority as a self-proclaimed prophet and his authority as a person housing these women when making these proposals over them and so as I mentioned a few minutes ago this puts a dent in this idea of free agency because you're seriously diminishing a person's ability to choose freely when you are in a position where someone you view as a prophet and the person who's housing you is asking you to do something that you already know is is just unbelievably immoral and you know dishonest you're shaking you're not in your head Alicia why yeah oh well it just seems so obvious but I don't know why it took me 40 years to see that um but I think that just viewing all of the components is super important and the really great thing is that we don't have to dig into anti-mormon literature to find this stuff Todd Compton's done great work the hails have done wonderful work they have a faithful perspective but the word that you used is salacious I mean that's those details are in those faithful sources you don't have to you have to you don't have to wonder no and and Mike I obviously Fanny Alger Joseph's first known Affair slash by the church's claim polygamous wife we've talked about that that was 1833-ish to 1835-ish are there other uh are we going to talk about the other women that were also uh living in the home yeah yeah so I'm trying to cover this so yeah I want to cover these now so that as we go through the accounts I can say as we're talking about yeah okay so the next the next uh pillar or pattern is making great promises in exchange for marriage yeah and this is one where um actually can you go back uh yeah you skipped two slides oh sorry no no that's okay so um this one so the next one is using older wives to recruit younger ones yeah and so this is one of the ones uh one of the Apologetics I often hear was that Joseph Smith could not have been marrying women just for sex because he did marry some older wives that we don't have any record of him having sexual relations with and and that's obviously a true statement uh but what I want to State up front is I I we've said this in the earlier episodes I don't believe every polygamous marriage was strictly for sex I think there were a lot of factors whether it was Authority and power there is you know some of these accounts where Joseph Smith uh almost brings these families into polygamy almost to make them complicit we talked about the quote um that he was talking on 1841 which is if you don't accuse me I won't accuse you there are a lot of reasons why you would bring families into this polygamous system and so this is a new system of marriage and it's going to lead to him marrying women for different reasons but with that being said there are um at least two of the older wives that we know were used to recruit the younger wives for him so they would talk to the women they would try to get a feel for what they already had heard in the rumor mill they would try to soften up their beliefs about it and so this gives Joseph Smith a middle like a middle woman I guess in this case to have plausible deniability if the proposal is not received well and also allows Joseph Smith to use somebody who's already in polygamy to sell those young women on how righteous the principle is once you accept it it's almost like an MLM with polygamy where you've got the people that are recruiting into the system and um we'll highlight how Joseph Smith was using these older plural wives to recruit younger women today and we'll also talk about this in our episode so the next episode on the happiness letter because that's going to be another time where Joseph Smith is going to use one of his polygamist wives to recruit others and so it just goes against that idea that well he married some older women so clearly it wasn't about sex it's like well sometimes those older women were actually helping him to find younger wives and that's important to know again as uncomfortable as it might be this is what happened yeah and and I'm the bell's already ringing for me this idea being able to say well polygamy's not about sex look I married a couple old women like that that could also very much be used as a cover right yeah and there are reasons like I believe he married his brothers um Widow and he may have had sex with her that that is that's gonna be the happiness letter a bit but when the happiness letter happens there's this rumor that he's having some sort of relationship with his brother's widow and he does ultimately marry her as a plural wife so then you would have to say well there's smoke there that they're having a relationship so maybe they did so just because I mean Joseph Smith remember he's in his upper 30s at this point so you know he's going to marry women who are in their 30s and their 40s there's no reason he wouldn't have sex with him I'm just saying that that apologetic I think he did marry like a one or two that were in their 50s well yeah but some of these older women were being used and when I say older I don't mean like they're ancient I mean older as opposed to not the teenagers he's also kind of Ages to think that a 50 year old or 60 year old wouldn't be having sex or even wouldn't yeah like my my wife and I are in our 50s and you know so so it's kind of age just to think that somehow he wouldn't be having sex with a 50 or 60 year old too right yeah and that's why I'm trying to be careful because that's not really what I'm trying to say I'm trying to say is that that's an apological say right well he wasn't just marrying the teenagers he was marrying these these women who are in their 30s 40s 50s like well yeah but we don't have accounts for every woman it's not like the women were like we didn't have sex some of them would say it was only for time or it was only for eternity but we also have women that are playing a role in the polygamous system and almost working for Joseph Smith and that is really something that I did not know until a couple years ago when you see that you're like this is this is something that if you saw any other religious leader doing you'd be like oh my goodness this is horrific but when it's Joseph Smith you go well his is from God it's like you know and that's why we have to look at all these together and try to get a bigger picture Alicia quick comment just I think it's really helpful to be able to view things through different lenses so to take off that lens of indoctrination and just view it through a practical lens and seeing all these details I think is helpful yeah okay all right and if you want to pull I'll just say if you want to pull that into a modern um analogy or or parallel look at what uh Nexium you know we have the the Nexium cult um where they had uh Alice and Mack recruiting women um to be basically like sex slaves for the guy I can't remember his name now um and obviously there's a whole mini series on HBO about that but you know this this is a PR this is something that is done in high demand religions in in some of these Cults like Nexium where they're using these women and the women are using this opportunity to recruit other women to elevate their own status because the more you can make yourself important uh the more important you become to Joseph Smith and all that so so there are a lot of you know kind of messy things that happened within this but you know even in the modern day I think it happened what three or four years ago we have a system where women are out there recruiting other women to bring into a system of that wasn't polygamy so much as just you know a sexual cult but yeah not to mention the flds church as well exactly I mean you're gonna have it there too so I mean it's just it's it's something you see in other places into what Alicia was saying if you see that there and you say that is horrific and you know that's wrong it's really hard then to go back to Joseph Smith like well his was righteous and I guess that's the point I'm trying to make through these episodes of like you have to view this through the lens of how would I evaluate this if I was not raised in the church and already conditioned to to accept it totally okay the next pattern that you're laying out or the next pillar of his pattern is proposing the girls that were in vulnerable situations yeah and this one is one that is really troubling um because what we see in a lot of these proposals especially to the young girls is that he's going to ask them to marry him after they believed he was a prophet and a lot of them after they've gone through a situation that makes them vulnerable so um in a few of these cases we have instances where excuse me Joseph Smith proposes to them after they lose a parent and they're living in the Smith household they have a parent that died and you know I one of the things I always thought of is is you hear um how missionaries are always taught that the most likely people to join the church are the people that have gone through loss because they're more open to religion and it just also reminds me the fact that if you're Joseph Smith and you're trying to find people who you think will be more likely to to jump into your um to you know accept your proposal that people have gone through a lot of tragedy or vulnerable um I think are going to be more open to to doing that and so we'll note this as we go with these proposals but Joseph Smith is the one selecting these women and so he's selecting them and we can't obviously say what the reasons are so who can't get into his head but when you look at the the kind of the patterns and the threads and these proposals it does seem that he's trying to pick people that have gone through great loss that maybe either don't have the willpower to reject him or are just you know going through so much that they're trying to find that spiritual connection that he's offering them in many of these cases and it this one as we go through these accounts this one's one where it's just to me this isn't like a red flag this is like a red banner on a stadium um that you know if you saw it with anyone else you just lose your mind so that's a tough one I know we're going to be hearing about uh orphans and I know we're going to be hearing about women whose husbands were in other countries who were living alone Alicia anything you wanted to add to this before I think that was a great summary I'm excited to jump in today yeah lots to look at okay uh the next pattern uh that we're going to be looking for is making great promises in exchange for marriage yeah and so we've talked about this in the DNC 132 episode but you know Joseph Smith uses polygamy to promise these great Eternal blessings for those who accept his proposals while making grave threats to those who refuse them and we covered that within the wording of DNC 132 we're going to cover that a lot in the happiness of our episode because he writes those same ideas there um it will highlight that in these episodes as well um but the the thing that Joseph Smith is doing is it's almost like you're um a salesperson trying to close a deal and so he's offering these women a direct path to exaltation if they accept his proposal and in some cases especially when there is that initial um you know refusal he'll offer like the entire family exaltation if they give their daughter to become his wife or if if a woman marries he'll promise that his whole family their her whole family will be taken through to the Celestial Kingdom and this is again we've talked about this I mean I've mentioned this a lot because it starts to me with treasure digging which is this is where Joseph Smith can make whatever promise he wants because he never has to deliver it he can get these women to keep digging and paying him to dig by marrying him and whatever because he can now prom he doesn't have to promise him a treasure he's going to find in the ground he's promising them Eternal promises that he knows he never has to deliver and you're going to see this in these accounts and I'm glad you mentioned threats as well because it wasn't just threats it wasn't just promises it was yeah it wasn't right yeah I mean their promises and then their sweats if you don't do it so you're putting these women in a horrific situation okay is the angel with the grand sword part of a pattern so the end of the drawn sword is an interesting one because we have multiple accounts where he used it and um some of the women we talked about today and this is one um where this is Joseph Smith where he's using pressure to coerce young women to accept his proposals um by telling them um that an angel with a drawn sword is going to kill him if they don't accept and so this is from the church's essay and it says when God commands a difficult task he sometimes sends additional Messengers to encourage his people to obey consistent with this pattern Joseph told Associates then Angel appeared to him three times between 1834 and 1842 in commanded him to proceed with plural marriage when he hesitated to move forward during the third and final appearance the angel came with the drawn sword threatening Joseph with destruction unless he went forward and obeyed the Commandment fully and so you know the first thing I want to point out again is that Joseph's using the very folk magic power of three in the story which we hear over and over what's always on the third time that you know things happen which we saw with treasure digging the gold plates the Lost 116 pages and it's a very magical practice um we see in your Christmas character Christmas Carol you have three visitations all that stuff and so let's go to the next slide real quick we can kind of finish this little it's almost yeah it's almost I'm just gonna say and we'll get into it but the trait of an abusive partner uh or someone who's borderline it it it's it's a it's a cousin of I'm gonna hurt myself if you don't do what I want you to do which is it's it's even a little bit more demented God's gonna hurt me if you don't do what I want you to do or what I'm telling you God wants you to do right yeah it it can be viewed as very coercive and and we'll talk about this but but like if God has the ability to send angels with flaming swords there are so many things he should be doing that for then and now including child rape murder uh you know uh genocide like if God has that power why why is he using it to make young teenage girls have sex with his prophet and not with all the real horrors of of the of the Earth yeah or more to that point um why didn't he go to Zina Huntington and say it haven't said an angel to her and say hey don't marry Henry because you are actually given to Joseph and Joseph's going to come and talk to you about it and then Joseph comes and talks about it she says you know what an angel just confirmed it let's go but instead it's always after they reject them and so it really helps us right yeah so it makes God seem like kind of a you know the Mormon version of God is kind of a a bad manager because the Mormon version of God goes through all these extra steps that are contradicted by evidence contradicted by everything when the Mormon version of God could just as easily go to these women and say hey um I'm gonna kill Joseph Smith if you don't marry him but I'm telling you this so that you know it's legitimate instead of having Joseph Smith go after they reject him and say I know you rejected me but here's the problem I'm going to die if you don't marry and have sex with me or at least marry me and so it it takes away free agency it takes away consent it it also makes the Mormon version of God look like a pretty terrible person and I realize how offensive that sounds but if if I'm a parent and I have a kid I'm not going to go to someone else and say I'm going to kill you unless you can convince my kid to do this I'm gonna go to the kid and be like hey this is what you need to do it's just it's yeah it's ridiculous yeah yeah it's a problem Alicia do you have a quick comment on Angel and drawn sword yeah I mean if we just remove that lens of indoctrination I think that's a really good point Mike and just view the fact that there are so many factors here and it's so easy when we look at church history through that faithful lens to just look at them as isolated events you know you've got the angel with the sword and these threats but you don't really get the full picture until you really conceptualize the fact that these girls many of which are orphaned or one parent dies the other one is sent off by profit orders they're living in the profits home everyone in their environment is also indoctrinated and now they're faced with this threat that if they don't make the right decision their Prophet who is literally their gatekeeper uh is going to be destroyed so to call it free agency like I just think is so unimaginable once you get the whole picture you really have to see you really have to see it all together you know to get the picture of what's really going on here so to call it free agency I just think is really a stretch yeah okay and and I guess Micah cousin to the angel with the drawn sword is this idea of Joseph Smith as The Reluctant polygamist yeah and so just to kind of cap off that apart from the gospel topics essay because what the church wants to do in the essay is to make Joseph Smith the victim so they paint him as this reluctant victim who is fighting God he was fighting God about polygamy By ignoring him thinking there's an account where Joseph was kind of saying he was trying to trick basically deceive God by making him think he was doing it I mean it's just it's nonsensical so um what they do is they the church says look Joseph was fighting this so hard because he knew how bad it was that God had to send an angel with a drawn sword to take his life if he didn't obey the Commandment fully I put commandment fully in quotes because that's part of the story which to me means sex um and so you gotta remember that the Commandments to raise up seed which means sexual relations so Joseph Smith certainly engaged in sexual relations with his polygamous wives but he never raised up any seed that we have confirmation for which is an interesting data point um but the problem is Joseph Smith is telling these young women who Revere him as a prophet of God that if they do not marry and have sex with them then an angel will kill him and so Joseph Smith could have gone and found another girl to marry he you know he could have fulfilled the Angel's commandment by just going to another girl who actually wanted to marry him but instead he continues continues to insist to these specific young women that if they don't do it Joseph will be the real victim of their refusal to accept this commandment of God that was given to Joseph Smith on their behalf and so um I just again pointing out that Joseph invokes the story when he's rejected by these women which is a way to circumvent their free agency and as Alicia said what would you say if you were given the story and it was for Warren Jeff or Deva koresh or the owner of a really powerful business that you have these men of authority telling these women that I guarantee you the overwhelming majority of not every person would say that person belongs in jail and yet when you say it's Joseph Smith they say Well if you really think about it through a different lens and I think that to me is why we need to look at these accounts and say let's look at through the lens of history and not through the lens of how we were raised to look at the history yeah when I when I hear Mormon polygamy apologetics they often mention Brigham Young and the quote that when I learned about polygamy I never desire to create more than than when than when I was first taught the doctrine of polygamy and then Brigham Young goes on to marry over 50 women yeah I don't use reluctant for very long uh no uh Alicia anything you want to say about reluctant polygamy yeah I mean this is just it this is when my lens cracked my my faithful lens cracked when I realized I don't think that God said that I don't think God commanded Joseph Smith to do it it was the first time for whatever reason that I just saw it differently and I realized I don't think God commanded him to do this in every case he's blaming God in every case and so once that switches then it just makes you kind of start to deconstruct the whole thing because you're then you start looking at pre the priesthood restoration and you start to look at the first vision and you start to look at everything it all starts to fall apart with really just the this section on polygamy it's so huge do you believe that God actually commanded Joseph Smith to do this yeah yeah it's a problem um so uh the next the next slide is going to be Lucy Walker's proposal so we're going to start getting into the women and and yeah before we do that I'm just going to make a couple plugs in our show notes we try and include good links I want to make a plug for Todd Compton's book in sacred loneliness where he spends a chapter on each of Joseph Smith's plural wives uh that is the work of scholarship on Joseph Smith's wives I also want to make a plug for my Mormon stories interview with Todd Compton which I did very very early on with Mormon stories and of course Lindsey Hanson Park has an amazing series called your polygamy where she does a podcast episode for each of Joseph Smith's plural wives and Todd Compton is coming to Salt Lake City this week at Benchmark books and this episode may be aired after uh this week so you won't be able to see it but Todd Compton and signature books I believe are releasing a book about the sore courses for Todd Compton's book in sacred loneliness so uh I just want to make sure listeners and viewers have all that that they can dive and dig into this if they want so is it time to talk about Lucy Lucy Walker yeah so now we get into the accounts and and so um Lucy Walker has won uh that for me uh the first this is one of the first accounts I heard of and it was from a podcast that bill real had done for uh Mormon discussions and he did it in a way uh kind of like Lindsey Hanson Park does Ray just kind of goes through the account and the implications without kind of being too over the top and I thought it was horrific to listen to and so Lucy Walker joined the church in 1835 she was living in Nauvoo by 1841. um on January 15 1842 Lucy uh Lucy's mother passed away um and she had nine siblings so her and her nine siblings no longer had a mom and this is from Lucy herself she says 10 motherless children and such a mother the youngest not yet two years old what were we to do my father's Health seemed to give way under this heavy Affliction the prophet came to our rescue he said if you remain here brother Walker you will soon follow your wife you must have a change of scene a change of climate you have such a you have just such a family as I could love my house shall be their house I will adopt them as my own for the present I would advise you to sell your effects Place the little ones with some kind friends and the four eldest shall come to my house and be received with and treated as my own children and if I find the others are not content or not treated right I will bring them home and keep them until you return so to be clear following the death of of Lucy's mother Joseph is going to send um the remaining parent the dad off on a mission take the four eldest children into the home to live with him and then the six younger ones to live elsewhere and so Lucy herself says 10 motherless children Joseph Smith immediately sends a father off and introduces Lucy to other people as an adoptive daughter um all right so so Alicia you get to know crying about how that how that doesn't feel right for you okay so it's interesting because as I was reading about this just in preparation for today I kept thinking about this quote from um therapist Aaron Rackham she has um she's uh got her PhD in Psychology she has a tick tock account and uh she makes a lot of great post-mormon content and when the AP article by Michael Resendez came out she posed this question to Believers she asked the question is there an ethical line for you like does a line exist and if so where is that and it's interesting because that kept coming up in my mind as I was reading through this story of Lucy Walker and these other young girls um you know the faithful perspective is that Joseph Smith you know he was human he made mistakes so I guess that's where I would pose this question from Dr Rackham where is the line at what point do we stop seeing Joseph Smith as a prophet of God and start seeing his behavior as consistent with that of a predator kind of a tough question to ask yourself but is there an ethical line I think it's a great question to ask and it's relevant when it comes to the history and it's relevant I would argue today yeah okay 100 all right next slide Mike yeah okay yeah so the first slide kind of sets up the the situation Lucy's in and so this is going to be in the same year after Joseph Smith sends her father away Lucy Walker is 16 years old and she says the following in the year 1842 remember this is before DNC 132 President Joseph Smith saw an interview with me and said I have a message for you I have been commanded of God to take another wife and you are the woman my astonishment knew no balance this announcement was indeed a thunderbolt to me he asked if I believed him to be a prophet of God most assuredly I do I replied he fully explained to me the principle of plural or Celestial marriage he said this principle was again to be restored for the benefit of the Human family that it would prove an everlasting blessing to my father's house and form a chain that could never be broken Worlds Without End what have you to say he asked nothing how could I speak or what could I say he said if you will pray sincerely for light and understanding in relation there too you will you shall receive a testimony of the correctness of this principle I thought I prayed sincerely but was so unwilling to consider the matter favorably that I fear I did not ask in faith for light gross Darkness instead of light took possession of my mind I was tempted and tortured Beyond endurance until life was not desirable oh that the grave would kindly receive me that I might rest on the bosom of my dear Mother what should I be chosen from among thy daughters father I am only a child in years and experience no mother to counsel she died no father near to tell me what to do in this trying hour he was sent by Joseph on a mission oh let this bitter cup pass and thus I prayed in the agony of my soul the prophet discerned my sorrow he saw how unhappy I was and sought an opportunity of again speaking to me on the subject and said although I cannot under existing circumstances acknowledge you as my wife the time is near when we will go beyond the Rocky Mountains and then you will be acknowledged and honored as my wife he also said this principle will yet be believed in and practiced by the righteous I have no flattering words to offer it is a commandment of God to you I will give you until tomorrow to decide this matter if you reject this message the gate will be closed forever against you [Music] Alicia uh I just think we are so lucky to have the journal entries of these young girls I was very emotional last night reading these stories and I just think that anyone who is invested in this religion whether you are a believing member really needs to take the time to read these journal entries and Lucy and Helen in particular it's very compelling what is it about this story and it's going to be obvious but I would just like to hear it explicitly what is it about this story that's disturbing to you well I think I have some personal connection to this because my grandfather um was flds um so it's very personal to me um I don't know I just I think about this young girl and she just really had no recourse uh she's just in this situation where she just really um I don't know as of the faithful perspective was that Joseph was doing the Lord's work and I guess now I just view it as coercion and you know she's a young girl a lot of people don't start viewing this stuff until they get into their 40s and I wonder if it's because most of us have teenage children when we're in our 40s and we really just start to view it differently because you start to look at your own children and think what if my child was in this situation what if this was my my sister or in my case I think about my mom you know when she was a young girl and um and I just yeah it just makes me very emotional to think about so the prophets in this the prophet is supposed to be God's one true Prophet on the earth he's in his 30s he's mayor of Nauvoo probably uh and and he's you know the the the dad of a 16 year old is away and he's propositioning a 16 year old and saying you got to do it immediately and if you don't it's going to be closed forever uh you know threatening gross Darkness uh sort of threats yeah he's 36 or 37 here and she's 16. and I think it's also important to note that this wasn't that long ago it's just interesting because I I think we don't give enough credit to the fact that 200 years is not a very long period of time and the common age for marriage back then is not that different than it is today so we think of it as like really old times and you know but but it wasn't it wasn't that different than it is today and it really wasn't that long ago these are Modern Times And um so I think that's also important to look at and yeah yeah and and one the church's main apologetic and we'll probably cover this is always going to be well a lot of these women in their later years said they loved polygamy and said that they they're glad they did it or that they still believed in it but that's true for all the women Warren Jeff's pretty much although all the women Warren Jeff's ever married pretty much all the women in polygamous marriages in the flds church like just because polygamous women later or during their lives bear testimony to the truthfulness of polygamy or even the divine nature of polygamy or even that they enjoyed it many of Keith rainieri's wives still say they believe he was divine that's not that's not evidence that's not it was truthfulness no and that is always going to be that that thing where it's like okay well if you want to say well they had an experience you can't question it then you then have to say well what about the experiences of everyone else and the offshoots today because we have a video that's uh very common maybe we'll play it in the our last episode um and she's on an offshoot and she's giving her testimony she's in a testimony testimony meeting and she saw how she was a teenager a high schooler or something now she's a plural wife and she's struggling in that she knows it's from God I mean you can't discount that if you want to privilege Joseph Smith and I think that's where you get down the slippery slope of like Alicia said where is it ethical line because you cannot just apply one line to Joseph Smith in another line to the to what as Russell Nelson would call the world you know it doesn't work and one lasting point I'll make is um Alicia said I just looked it up because I had it from other stuff I've done um in 1890 this census the average age of marriage for men was 26 for women was 22. so you have a four-year Gap and women were getting married and this is 1890 so it's not too far from when Joseph Smith was doing this so this idea that it was normal for a 16 year old to marry someone in their their late 30s is is absolutely it's so dishonest and um I hate when people use it from an apologetic standpoint because they know better because these stats are available to anyone who wants to find them well and on that note a lot of people will reference their grandparent but the reality was usually when a 16 year old grandmother was married she was marrying like her 18 year old boyfriend or her yes like they were only a few years apart so that's the difference we're not talking about it wasn't common for an older man in his 30s to marry a 14 year old or a 15 year old no it just yeah yeah so um yeah and there's another one yeah another one from England another one from England has it from 1750 to 1799 average age of men 25.7 women 24 so that's an even tighter Gap so just to throw that out there and blow that up right off the bat because that apologetic drives me nuts because it's so dishonest so me too anyways that's all I need to say on that church will want to say that it was legal for a 16 year old yeah but if God's in charge then the question is is it ethical and moral I think that needs to be out and they want to say it's legal they'll say well it was legal for a 14 year old to marry Joseph Smith but it really wasn't legal because even then it's a polygamous marriage that was illegal so you can't you just can't go that that route because every I've said this in so many episodes every time you try to fix one thing with apologetics you're creating four other problems that you're trying to make sure people aren't looking at because and and that's why we try to do it we're looking at all this at once because yeah you can't answer it that way it just doesn't work okay all right are we going are we on to the next slide yeah and so this is just kind of you know implications of of the Lucy Walker proposal yeah and so we covered at the beginning of this episode some of the patterns I found so this one in particular the first one is that Lucy's living in the Smith household which gives Joseph time to evaluate if she might be open to it to kind of you know as I would I would call it you know condition her to be more accepting of him being a prophet um second he's proposing to her when there's no parents around she's in a vulnerable situation following the death of her mother um this was obviously not lost on Lucy she says in her journal no father near to tell me what to do in this trying hour so she's all on her own with a person she revers as a prophet of God he actually says do you believe I'm a prophet of God she says yes then he drops a hammer on her and basically says oh you believe that okay boom I need you to marry me and then third Joseph Smith is going to apply pressure on Lucy by putting a time constraint by saying um I will give you until tomorrow to decide this matter if you reject this message the gate will be closed forever against you and so I've heard Jim Bennett talk about this role say well that was a second meeting so it's not like he said that the first time but I would still say if you even if you give someone time and their initial reaction is like no I am there's no way in the world I'm marrying you and then you go back and you put a time constraint you're still putting a time constraint on and so you know imagine that have you have someone that you believe be a prophet of God they tell you that you've been commanded to marry them that your exaltation depends on it that your father's exaltation because he says in there that you're it'll be a blessing to your father's house um and that if you can't tell them yes by tomorrow the gate will forever be closed against you and just read that quote as you would read it from anyone else and if you find that to be repulsive you can not then privilege Joseph Smith here because he is doing the very same tactics that we all know um would be you know probably illegal for for in many instances this is just it's it's hard yeah okay all right uh Lucy Walker is just the beginning did you want to say something Alicia yeah real quick there was just there was just this tiny detail that I wanted to add and it may seem really small but you know how Joseph Smith would always start by saying you believe that I'm a prophet of God so this was exactly what Warren Jeffs did when he before he presented to his saints that they were gonna go ahead and make that Trek to the yearning for Zion Camp I guess it wasn't a truck but they were going to travel to the yearning of Zion and for anyone that's not familiar with that situation he was actually taking some of the children from their parents so the parents in not all cases did the parents go with their children and you think how unimaginable this is that a parent would send their child with Warren Jeffs to go to this place where they're basically going to be groomed to become his wives and you think like how would he get people on board for this and I think it's just an interesting note that it happened exactly the same way that Joseph Smith started by asking do you believe that I'm a prophet of God in the case of Warren Jeffs he has them show by a raises of the hand that they believe he's a prophet then he continues with this with this uh you know this plan and so I just think it's notable you know there just seems to be this sequence of um coercion and it's consistent and we see the patterns that are very comparable from the formative years of the church to today's flds which I would argue is most consistent with the um with the early days of the church yeah and and that is what when little kids sing follow the prophet 54 times in the one song in primary this is what this is because the moment that he asked them do you believe him a prophet and they say yes he has now rewired their entire uh sense of morality because now if they reject them they can say well you clearly don't believe him a prophet because I'm telling you this is from God and this is his way of basically putting them in a box they can't escape from and it's a very manipulative tactic and it's a very um kind of a scary tactic because from the other side once you tell them you believe is a prophet you know you're boxed in and so that's that's the intent that is why you see it from Warren Jeffs that's why you see from all these leaders of all sorts of of unhealthy places today because it's effective because once you get someone into that box it's hard for them to get out of it yep got it okay so the next slide is Lucy Walker's spiritual confirmation obligamy yeah and so I wanted to cover this because obviously this is from the church's essay they'll always say well they had spiritual experiences so you know you need to not worry about it and so um we'll cover this more in future episodes but Lucy Walker is a good experience of how witnesses can be manufactured and manipulated and created and so from her own account she says this aroused every drop of scotch in my veins for a few moments I stood Fearless before him and looked him in the eye I felt at this moment that I was called to place myself upon the altar of a Living Sacrifice perhaps to Brook the world in disgrace and incur the displeasure and contempt of my youthful companions all my dreams of Happiness blown to Four Winds oh how earnestly I prayed for these words to be fulfilled it was near dawn after another sleepless night when my room was lighted up by Heavenly influence to me it was in comparison like the brilliant sun bursting through the darkest cloud the words of the Prophet were indeed fulfilled my soul was filled with a calm sweet peace that I never knew Supreme happiness took possession of me and I received a powerful and irresistible testimony of the truth of plural marriage which has been like an anchor to the soul through all the trials of life I felt that I must go out into the morning Air and give vent to the joy and gratitude that filled my soul as I ascended the stairs as I descended the stairs president Smith opened the door below took me by the hand and said thank God you have the testimony I too have prayed he led me to a chair placed his hands upon my head and blessed me with every blessing my heart could also could possibly desire the first day of May 1843 I consented to become the prophet's wife and was sealed to him for time in all eternity at his house at his own house by Elder William McClellan and um yeah so basically this is showing that when you have someone who feels like they're going to lose everything they have not slept they have not eaten they're going to have responses we've talked about this in previous episodes like in the Kirtland Temple where everyone's having these crazy experiences because they fasted and they drink a bunch of wine and in this case she has the pressure of thinking she's going to lose her exaltation she's not eating she's not sleeping and then we'll you know she gets this experience and I would just I'll end with saying why does she have to go through all that torment uh to see potentially a light in the room when God could have just sent you know an angel to her and said hey this is right so it just shows how you can um create your own experience and we've all had that I've had that in my life where I'm just so upset about something and I'm I'm up late and I'm thinking about it all sudden you feel that feeling of calm because you know you can do this um I I don't know it just shows how manipulation Works Alicia do you have any reactions to this experience yeah I wish I had more context for like indoctrination there's so many great experts that could talk to this point of like uh caught is it cognitive bias I mean when the brain creates what it you've already come to a conclusion and now your brain is going to create what it needs to come to that conclusion to solidify that so not only does Joseph Smith say Do you believe I'm a prophet of God he also says to her before they part if you will pray sincerely for light and understanding in relation thereto you shall receive a testimony of the correctness of this principle you shall receive okay so she is going into this um with that notion and she believes that he's a prophet so anyway and I just think it's important to point out because this is the most you know this is the apologetic point this is the strongest apologetic Point looking at the girl's actual spiritual experiences their own testimony so I think it's helpful to add a little more context to that yeah it's like the um Book of Mormon Witnesses where Martin Harris is with them and you can't see the plate so he leaves the other two claim they see it they go back to Martin they pray again then Martin claims he saw it probably because at that point you've been led to see it you have other people who are claiming to have these things and all of a sudden yeah you're gonna claim to see it because it's either that or you're ever you know I mean you lose everything I just I feel like to Alicia's point this is this is how you lead somebody through a vision this is how you lead someone to make a decision they don't want to make for me it's an epistemological problem epistemology is the study of how we know things and uh in in Mormonism we're taught that if we get really strong overwhelming feelings or emotions that that is the Holy Ghost it's either the holy ghost telling us that something's true or it's Satan counterfeiting God's holy ghost and and deceiving us uh with good feelings that something's true and it's really false or the adversary Satan can give us really bad feelings and if it's true that feelings equal Divine approval or satanic tempting uh then then how do we distinguish between our own genuine just feelings of fear or happiness or kindness or wanting to please others how do we distinguish between that and what is divine or of Satan and and again all you have to do is watch that video that we released on our Mormon stories where you have people Muslims and Jews and Mormon fundamentalists all bearing almost identical testimonies where they say that the Spirit came into their heart and filled them with the spirit and told them that what you know the prophet that they haven't happened to believe in is true whether it's David koresh or Warren Jeffs or Jim Jones or Keith Ranieri there's an episcopological problem once people are led to believe that their feelings equal God's approval and we don't have to look any farther than under the banner of Heaven and the Lafferty Brothers uh and and many other really horrific examples of really horrible things done by people who claimed that they had those warm fuzzies in their heart and you can't really talk a a person who's a committed believer out of their spiritual witness and we're actually not trying to do that for people that are open to considering evidence we're just saying hey it's worth contemplating and learning more about epistemology and this this idea of um emotional flow or emotion uplift what's the other word emotion um elevation emotion it's worth learning more about these principles so that you can really ask yourself does the fact that a 16 year old girl whose Dad's away who's being pressured by the prophet who's got all this family and social pressure around her to accept along with the prophet's power a proposal and then she gets a feeling is that is that God and the Holy Ghost or is that coercion and a desire to conform socially and we're going to let our viewers and listeners decide what what they think is right we just want to at least raise some some hopefully reasonable questions about that yeah and that and I just want I just wanted to mention because I I think that the video that you mentioned is so compelling and the search query for it on YouTube is testimonies and spiritual experiences across religions it's posted on your podcast Mormon stories podcast and I think that that is again really compelling I think I think it's a great one to listen to it just gives you a sense of how we believe that our spiritual experiences are unique and sometimes we don't realize that they are pretty consistent among all other religions yeah and and most of the religious Creeds are mutually exclusive because Joseph can't be God's one prophet and Muhammad and and Warren Jeffs those are all mutually exclusive and so you know so anyway I think we've made that point okay so the next slide is Lucy Walker's testimony in the temple lot case yeah yeah I just find this interesting because this is Lucy Walker giving testimony in the temple law case and so they ask her can you state the circumstances under which he first taught you that principle of polygamy or plural marriage and she says well the circumstances were these it was a command from God for to me to receive it and I would rather have laid down my life than disobeyed it but it was a grand and glorious principle that was to be established and when I was called upon um when I and when I was called upon I stepped forward and gave myself up as a sacrifice to establish that principle and I did that in the face of prejudice of course in this day and age this is in 1892 we are considered Fanatics of course more or less I gave myself up as a sacrifice for it was not a love matter so to speak in our Affairs at least on my part it was not but simply the giving up of myself as a sacrifice to establish that gland Grand and glorious principle that God had revealed to the world and they asked her did you live with Joseph Smith as his wife and she said he was my husband sir and so Lucy uh Walker here is basically saying that she didn't love Joseph Smith she viewed herself as a sacrifice clearly she did not want to do it um and it's a chilling comment on what these women had to go through um after being convinced by Joseph Smith that God was commanding them to marry and have sex with them and I can't imagine um you know how Lucy Walker was able to do some of the things she would have had to have done with them knowing that she didn't love him I just it's it's weird and it's one of those things that it's uncomfortable to think about but we often think about it she was 17 years old when she married and had sex with a 37 year old man who claimed he was doing it in the name of God it's just it's chilling when you really think about all of the implications and all the events that go into these proposals and marriages of these young teenage girls anything else Alicia I think that about wraps it up for Lucy I'm excited to get to Zina okay iron is next I know Huntington Jacob Smith young what a what a mouthful yeah so I I've made sure to put all the last names because a lot of times um you would see on the church's website designer Huntington Jacob's young because they never wanted to mention that Joseph married her as well um so she lived in the Smith household for a few months in the winter of 1839 to 1840 um she was recovering from an illness and at that time um Zina received numerous courtship visits from Henry Bailey Jacobs a friend of her brothers who accompanied Oliver to the house simultaneously Joseph Smith in private conversations taught her the principle of plural marriage suggesting that she become a spiritual wife and um so basically you've got Zina who has someone that's recording her that she actually likes and you've got Joseph while she's living in his house recovering from an illness um trying to condition her to accept his proposal for for marriage and so um obviously this tormented Zina because she was falling in love with Henry but she knew that the person she viewed as a prophet proclaimed that God had given her to him to become one of his polygamous wives and so Zina wrote in her autobiography oh dear Heaven grant me wisdom help me to know the way O Lord my God let thy will be done and With Thine arm around about to guide shield and direct and so what's interesting is Zina is going to rebuff Joseph's proposal and she's going to marry the person she actually loves in Henry Jacobs on March 7th 1841 at this at this point Zina was 21 years old and was convinced that by doing this she would circumvent any further overtures from Joseph Smith anything you want to say about Zina so far yeah I have some more I have some insights but I think we could probably go to the next okay okay so the next slide Joseph Smith's overtures did not end when Zina got married okay that's awkward yeah so Santa thought that would put an end to it and it does not and so um Joseph even throws off their wedding day plans and so from Emma Jacobs um she says this is Henry's sister a family tradition relates that Henry and Zina had asked Joseph to perform their marriage he consented but did not appear and John Bennett officiated in his place when Zina later asked Smith about his absence he reportedly said that he couldn't give the one uh he couldn't give to one man a woman who had been given to him by the Lord the Lord had made it known to him that Zina was to be his Celestial wife so you know basically Joseph's like I'm not performing that marriage because you're mine and I just said so oh my God anyways so Joseph Smith was so convinced that zaina was given to him that he wouldn't perform the marriage he promised he would do that was actually based in love to Henry and so this is where it gets kind of crazy to me so Joseph doesn't even let it go here so just a few months after she becomes a married woman uh he sends xina a message through her brother uh dimmick it says he sent word to my brother saying tell Zina I put it off and put it off till an angel with a drawn sword stood by me and told me if I did not establish that principle upon the earth I would lose my position in my life at this point Zina was seven months pregnant with Henry's child she's being placed in a situation where she now has to stay true to the to the man she loves who is the father of a child or to marry the man she believes is the prophet of God because he will be killed if she does not marry him I this this is one of those ones where you're just like what is going on here Alicia you ready to comment or you want to wait well I'd like to wait until after the bit about the missions okay what happens to so my insights are on Henry so okay this is a really sad story it is so Joseph like won't let it go the woman said no like when we talk about consent no means no right yep and and she said no he keeps pursuing even when she's pregnant he won't marry her like that's that's this is predatory yeah kind of Creeper abusive kind of territory yeah I'm just if this is true I mean it's from her own words it's from her own words I mean there's no this is not from some antagonistic Source this is from her own words and what's crazy about it is he says that the Angel's going to kill him if he doesn't establish that principle behind the Earth he can establish it with other women that's what is so ridiculous about the statement and it's so trans it's so transparently predatorial it just is yeah yeah and he and this is where he's pulling out the angel with the sword after she's already married and gotten pregnant by the other guy okay all right that's a problem all right let's go to the next slide Zionist submits after Joseph's angel with the drawn sword story yeah so then yeah so it works of course it works because you're like you wanna you're gonna allow the prophet of God to be killed because you're so selfish they won't marry me it's so anyways so zyna would then be sealed to Joseph Smith with her loving husband Henry standing as the witness I again this I can't imagine poor Henry standing as a witness as Joseph Smith takes his wife to be as polyandrous wife knowing full well that upon death that she will be Joseph along with the child that she's pregnant with that is is his so um it's clear that Zion is tormented by this decision and she famously said the following and made a greater sacrifice than to give my life for I never anticipated again to be looked upon as an honorable Woman by those I clearly loved or dearly loved um and then for Henry's part he actually rationalizes this by stating the following whatever the prophet did was right without making the wisdom of God's authorities been to the reasoning of any man and that statement right there is used today um in of course phrased differently whether it's a Dallin Oaks or Russell Nelson it's always whatever the prophet does you have to listen to and this leads really good people to make really bad decisions because if the person who claims to speak for God abuses their Authority or makes it up they are going to get really good people to do some really really bad things against their own judgment because of the fact that they believe this person speaks for God and this slide makes me want to I had to explode I I I did I have not read in sacred loneliness I'm just gonna admit it and I I did not realize that that Henry was standing next to his wife while Joseph was sealed to her I just oh my yeah are you ready yet Alicia no I just wanted to point out this is a really important point that Henry is faithful he actually remains faithful throughout his letters home from his missions which we're going to talk about next right yeah yeah okay so he's faithful they're all viewing this yeah the prophet speaks for God so we are literally doing God's will right now even though it is the the hardest thing we would rather die than do this we're doing it for the Lord and we know that because this man right here speaks for the Lord and I'm just gonna say that's not that's for me that's not a credible defense that the husband was okay with it because it's still coercive he's still being either threatened with punishment or promised Eternal salvation and uh and you just have to go to the accomplices with with Warren Jeffs or Keith Ranieri or or Jim Jones or whatever all of those people have people who who literally died for their Devotion to their leader and so just because Henry was okay with it number one doesn't mean it was right number two doesn't mean it wasn't coercive and number three doesn't mean it was true um yeah all right so uh Joseph would send zina's legal husband on missions yeah so following uh Joseph's uh polyandrous marriage designer Henry get sent away on missions um sometimes personally sent by Joseph um we don't have any record of of Zina and Joseph having sex neither of them obviously talk about that um but you know it would be one thing for a polygamous wife to admit to sexual relations but a polyandrous wife would be a whole different level and so I'm guessing that's why the church didn't want to push her out on the temple law case um but remember they're married uh and he's sending Henry away for long stretches so the idea they didn't have sex seems unlikely to me um and honestly it makes no sense given the very premise that Joseph is supposed to establish a principle to raise seed and we know that Zina doesn't get pregnant from Joseph at least I don't believe there's any indication that that's the case so it's out there but um we know Brigham did have sex with her uh after sending Henry away so anyways uh while Henry is away on his missions he was still deeply in love with Sina uh telling John D Lee during one of the missions what a true virtuous lovely woman she was he almost worshiped her and um you know one small note here is that zyna would actually stand proxy for Jane Manning James when Jane was sealed to Joseph as a servant because the church would now allow a black woman into the temple even to be sealed as an eternal servant to Joseph so that's a small obviously side note there but it kind of ties into our priesthood episodes as well another side note that I think is important is the fact that I know I read somewhere so Mike hopefully you'll have hopefully one of you will have a source for this he was he was commanded to um give up his belongings to the church before he left on his mission I think yeah I think that was standard too for a lot of people they basically say if you're leaving for a mission put all your stuff with the church and then you know before he leaves so how so how are you now going to support your wife and children when you get home from your mission which is going to become relevant because he just keeps going on mission after mission after mission yeah yeah yeah and that's you know number one you mentioned I think a previous slide that William C Bennett or John C Bennett was involved that's deeply problematic because we now know that John C Bennett was later excommunicated for what Joseph called spiritual wifery so you know there have been accusations that he performed abortions in Nauvoo which I don't know if we have enough evidence to really confirm but just the fact that John C Bennett was involved in anything makes it deeply problematic um to me not not to pile on but then also there's this conflict of interest where Joseph is basically oh I'm just the prophet sending people on missions and I'm just gonna I could I could call men on missions or not uh you know it's up to me and I could call lots of other men on missions that I'm not going to call in missions but yeah Henry I think you really need to go um you know that feels like a really problematic conflict of interest yeah he's sending off the husband of a woman that he likely wants to have sex with and for the John C Bennett thing John C Bennett almost was Joseph Smith's right-hand man until he gets out he's like in the first presidency in the church so it would make some sense that when Joseph Smith tried to throw the monkey wrench into their wedding day that John C Bennett might have been pulled to to stand in so I don't know that that's nefarious because I think it's nefarious I'm saying it's problematic knowing that very soon after John C Bennett's going to be excommunicated and accused of misdeeds around Abraham sexual misconduct yeah and we'll our next episode is going to cover a lot about how what John C Bennett was doing mirrors a lot of what Joseph's doing here um and and I would just say we talked about four as far as I've never found any credible evidence on on abortion so I for the most part I'm sorry we don't have enough evidence there's just yeah and yeah and and just the fact that um to your point Joseph Smith he's he's the one choosing the women he's the one choosing the men he's sending away and so this idea that um you know we talked about this early in this episode I made a point of saying when when he goes to these women he's the one choosing them they're not choosing him and so it just shows the power imbalance and how that can be abused so badly yeah and again I I you said this really quickly and I just want to drive the point home Mormon what what Mormon apologists like Brian Hales and others like to do is say well there's no evidence of so so first of all we've talked about we introduced the term polyandry in a previous episode that's a woman being married to multiple men uh what the church wants to do is say there's no evidence that any of Joseph Smith's polyandrous wives had sex with him and first of all what do they want a you know video camera what you know but also do they expect people to like publish it in the newspaper hey Joseph and I had sex last weekend like whatever this are they looking for but more importantly as you mentioned very quickly The Book of Mormon when it says uh when the Book of Mormon makes the exception allowing for polygamy in Jacob it says except I want to raise up a righteous seed and you said that really quickly but it means the whole point of polygamy is sex and every other polygamist Prophet after Joseph Smith and polygamist Mormon was having sex with all of his wives we presume so why would we want to just bracket off what what reason would we have other than we're embarrassed by lying about it and or by by our sacred first prophet um you know being associated with it for what other reason do we want to bracket off the polyandrous marriages and say that they weren't sexual it literally makes no sense that it's one of those isolated uh you know non-contextual apologetics that if you look at the full picture is is disingenuous maybe not intentionally but it's just completely dishonest in my view yeah and if I can add in real quick from our last episode on c132 Joseph Smith is condemning Zina to a life in outer Darkness or Hell or whatever because dnc132 says if you marry someone by the new and Everlasting Covenant and you're still with someone who's not married to you in the new and Everlasting Covenant you're damned you're going to be destroyed so Zina living with Henry after marrying Joseph is condemning her to being destroyed so that just shows how absurd um the rationales and the the dictations that Joseph Smith is giving on on polygamy are because you either have to believe that Joseph is so Sinister that he's knowingly condemning xina to be destroyed just for his own his own personal desire or DNC 132 is completely nonsensical which it is anyways but I'm just saying like you can't take the stuff all together it's it's such a mess and you cannot untangle it with apologetics because every apologetic you use this you just said opens up more problems it does not solve anything to jump in here on Alicia before we go to the next slide well it seems like we have these conflicting apologetics too because on one hand we're saying well um like in Hebrew C Kimball's view it was that they would be linked in the eternities that was the whole reason that he pushed Helen into polygamy which we're going to talk about in a little bit but on the other hand we have like multiple sources that say that Joseph Smith clearly indicated that it was to raise up a pure I want to say he used the word race somewhere in um Todd Compton's work and it was like a secondary source but someone said that that's what you know that Joseph Smith it was it was the the purpose of polygamy was to raise up a righteous race of people a righteous generation so you know which one is it yeah yeah that's right okay all right well let's talk about zina's life after Joseph Smith's death yeah and so this is I think what Alicia was kind of anxious to talk about and it's to me one of those things that just it gets worse so um after Joseph Smith died and was killed uh many of his wives were taken by the other leaders of the church with many of them going to Brigham Young um in Hebrew Kimball uh Brigham Young took Zina and was sealed to her for time which meant that even though she was already sealed to Henry for time and Joseph for eternity Brigham wanted sign as well because she had a husband so this idea that Brigham Young needed to take her is problematic and it goes against enc-132 as I just mentioned it goes against our basic sense of morality and the biblical scriptures as well and again the children that Brigham is going to have with with Henry's wife Zina are going to be sealed to Joseph Smith just to show how screwed up this kind of structure is and so um Brigham Young also sent Henry away on missions um and even during a time when Henry was very ill Brigham still sent him away on a mission which seems insane um while on the mission uh Henry continued to send his wife love letters writing the following I dream of you often and desire to see you very much he wrote in one letter another says Zina have not forgotten you my love is it as ever is as ever the same and much more abundantly and hope that it will will continue to grow stronger and stronger to all eternity Worlds Without End I remain as ever your affectionate husband and Truth and it's just it shows that Henry still loved her and the church is going oh actually I'll let Alicia do this because she I know she's covered some of this before yeah well just like the um young wives journal entries I think that it's really good to read the letters home from Henry Jacobs some of them have been transcribed and uploaded to family search and I know that's not probably the best source um but I'm imagining that they probably are somewhere in the Joseph Smith papers these letters home from Henry indicate that he loved his family so much he loved his boys he loved the prophet at one point he refers to Joseph as either Our God Joseph or our Lord Joseph I mean they really revered he really revered him as a prophet and felt like he was doing what he needed to do what the Lord wanted him to do and I think that that's relevant because in this one letter he's he's saying to his wife he's so disheartened that he hasn't heard back from them he's writing home to his wife and children over and over again and he's not hearing back for them from them and I was so sad to learn that the children really didn't have any knowledge of their father caring for them so at one point Zina chooses to go with Brigham we don't have a lot of context for that we can only really make assumptions about about her choice to do that you know he's Henry has sold off his property he really has no way of supporting his family when he gets home I imagine um so the most interesting point of this entire story and I think that just really where it all culminates is where we see in the church's Source even today the church asserts that zina's husband Henry abandoned her and the children now just think about this he's going on missions commanded by the prophet in one case that Mike just mentioned after his second baby is born he's sick and and he is sent to England and he in the church's Source even today it says that Zina was abandoned by her husband Henry so if you think about it the only thing left you have after you die is your legacy that's the only thing that you have and the church is willing to just completely destroy his legacy destroy his reputation when he has devoted his life to the quote gospel to the prophet and this is what's left of him and I have a link to the church's Source where it references him as having deserted his family so this is uh this is the point for my husband that he just kind of lost it it was like where is the Integrity here for the church's reputation this is all for the you know it's just yeah yeah like you said earlier where do you draw the line because at some point you have to establish where that line is before you can evaluate this stuff and and and and at some point like I yeah I have a problem with apologists who try to to defend this it's like Patrick Mason is the only approach you can take which is to say yeah I'm not defending this because yeah it looks like sin now of course I I also think that when you the moment you admit Joseph Smith is willing to use deception um that we've shown that with treasure digging we've shown with the gold plays we show all uh through the book of mormonal so I think at some point it's like well how many times do you have to deceive to to have a pattern where you know it's not from God but that's a different issue but there's no reason to defend this it's just it just it doesn't pass any smell test or decency test and you don't need to defend it because you were raised to think he was a prophet if there's if there's two things the church could do today to make things right well there's a lot they could do but one is to reverse the ceiling of Jane Manning as a servant why not why don't they undo that make a really Public Announcement about that number two why don't they correct the statement that Henry Jacobs abandoned his family yeah yeah yeah so I I also want to register uh a couple problems with uh with with this account you know I'm going to go back to this slide you show Zina Huntington Jacob Smith young you do I think you you do that kind of tongue-in-cheek yeah it's actually not funny it's kind of tragic it's this idea that it's always the men in power you know when somebody when somebody is claiming to talk to God it's always the men in power who get the spoils and so in this case I remember a quote once that said you know whenever a group of people received the Revelation from God that a group of people is God's chosen it's always the people receiving the Revelation that that they're the ones chosen they never received the Revelation that that other group over there is chosen right and and accordingly whenever a prophet gets the Revelation about polygamy he's always the one that gets the most he's always the one that gets first choice he's always the one that gets the spoils and then if he allows other you know you could say Joseph Smith was generous because at least in his case he and this is gross offensive language at least he let other men also have plural wives for that whole conversation it introduces this problem in DNC 132 and just with the structural problem of polygamy which is that women are property women are possessions women are chattel or cattle or whatever word you want to use like that's problematic in and of itself the way that women are treated as objects as as one friend says dimes dimes to a dollar pennies to a dime um a fraction of the worth of a man that's a problem but then the problem that it's not like Joseph's getting the Revelation it's like hey I'm going to just have Emma because you know because I want to be above reproach it's going to be other men in the community that get the plural wives it's always Joseph and Brigham and Heber and Hiram the men who are highest on the pecking order that number one get First Choice number two get the largest numbers Brigham Young's case over 50 but then three when when a prophet dies and you know where do the wives go they just get assigned to the to the highest ranking profits in charge and by the way this is exactly what happened with Warren Jeffs when when Warren Jeff's dad died rulon well guess who got rulon's wives it was Warren I I mean I I think that's true but I hope my point carries which is it's always the guys in charge that get the most spoils and get the first pick and that's a sign that there's something wrong Alicia tell me if I'm if I'm getting that wrong no I was just thinking a little Common Sense goes a long way here great Point yeah and to see Zina just passed from Joseph I mean from Henry to Joseph to Brigham to Heber that's there's no world where that is gonna be okay that this woman just gets passed from old man to old man to Old Man in power there's no world where that's that's okay no and it just shows like you said when when you set up yourself as the only person who could speak for God do you become the gatekeeper and so you decide who gets what women and who doesn't get what women and their stories of Brigham Young where someone will go to Brigham they're like I want to marry this girl and he's like nah she's not right for you and then all of a sudden he marries her I I have to look it up because I know that happened and this is there's also the quote of like and we got it Mike you you write this down we got to include this quote before we end these series if we haven't already but it's this idea of like general authorities Mormon General Authorities in the mid 19th century getting mad because some general authorities get first pick on the in on the Immigrant on the young teenage immigrant women coming over from Europe and it's like brother so and so yeah yeah they're sick on these women and I I won I won in on the spoils do you know the quote that I'm talking about yeah it's uh I'll find it I'm just saying let's let's make sure we include that at some point but it but it it really drives home this idea idea that it's it's more like an auction of cattle where they're eating where they're bidding with their power on who gets the cutest girls and the youngest girls yeah it is and it's about uh it's about power and it's also about like you said getting first picks and in isn't it funny that the people that claim to be profit are the ones that decide who gets who and I it's always going to be a it's bad yeah and it's not like the poor farmer or the humble school teacher is getting the 50 wives it's like the rich the rich farmer the rich businessman the person who knows where the bodies are buried the fixer that's helping Joseph clean up all his messes it's the men closest to the prophet who are wealthy or in power or who are doing the prophets bidding they're the ones who get the spoils of the women Alicia you get maybe less word on this topic I I think it was William Clayton that you might have been referring to Mike where she he married wives or sisters and then wanted to take their younger sister and just yes I have received a revelation you cannot speak the younger sister we can't have three sisters and one family I just received Revelation but I'm gonna take her instead yeah I just think about how I mean like I don't again when we do these episodes we're trying to be as level-headed as we can but like think of how nonsensical that is like this idea that someone's like I want to marry these three sisters which by itself is insane and just like I got a revelation you can't marry three you can have two though but we're gonna I'm gonna leave that one I'm actually I'll I'll help you out I'm gonna take that youngest one it's just it's and just married not only sister pairs but mother daughter pairs as well yeah and we'll get into that with the Apologetics because that's another thing we're like well they're creating an eternal chain it's like no they're not because he's marrying mothers and daughters you don't need to marry both if you're trying to create a chain and you certainly don't need to have sex with you know I mean it's just it yeah it's just it's so stupid uh when you look at when you look at all of the things that have to happen for this work and John I'm gonna read you that quote it's from Hebrew Kimball and it says uh the brother missionaries have been in the habit of picking out the prettiest women for themselves before they get here and bringing on 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 who is that so it's Hebert Kimball um and I I believe there are apologists who say that they don't trust the quote I think it's from an article um in the New York Times that's not very nice to the church so I'm just throwing that out there that there is controversy over the quote but it's from um an 1860 New York Times article and It quotes Brigham Young as saying that so I will say that there is some controversy over whether or not that quote is 100 legitimate but um that you know that is what was written in 1800s the church has a long history of any calling anyone critical of the church anti-mormon right missing any Source that's critical of the church as invalid because it's critical and that's it you know it's important to consider The credibility of historical sources but when the church has that long history of smearing and defaming any person or any evidence that criticizes then then it's the church's fault when we're we're sort of leaning towards privileging uh critical comments because we we can't trust the church as a as a neutral objective a broker or determiner of the validity of quotes anyway yeah all right well for today's episode we're going to end with one more we're gonna we're gonna split this episode into two parts because we're already an hour and a half in yeah and we're about halfway done with the slides and I don't want to rush so we're gonna end today with uh I think a really important uh example of a sister pair yeah and it's going to be Emma Emily and Eliza Partridge yeah so Emily and Eliza Partridge were the daughters of Edward Partridge who was the first Bishop of the church we've actually talked about him a lot because of the uh back and forth that Joseph Smith had with him um when we talked about the priesthood restoration and how his uh Authority was being challenged so that if that name sounds familiar he obviously is very integral in early history so um Edward is hard and feathered and was a Target in Missouri um and the Partridge sisters unfortunately had to live through the trauma of seeing their father um you know treated like that and tart feathered so obviously um they grew up with that and so upon moving to Nauvoo um Edward Partridge died and the Partridge sisters then moved in with the Smith home um in 1842 when Emily was about 18 years old uh Joseph Smith attempted to introduce the practice of polygamy tour he requested that she read a letter and burn it afterwards but Emily was having none of it Emily wrote The Following I shut Joseph up so quick that he didn't bring up the subject again for several months um this is where I mentioned earlier about having the mothers in Zion the older uh wives so he then sends one of his older polygamous wives Elizabeth Durfee to recruit Emily into polygamy and as I mentioned earlier this is a pattern and what's interesting is during this visit um Elizabeth actually kind of Wonders aloud mode next to Emily uh if there was any truth to the rumors of spiritual wives so Elizabeth is married to Joseph already and now she's talking to Emily as if um she's trying to feel out what Emily knows about polygamy before she kind of you know tries to sell her on it and I think that's a very deceptive tactic and you obviously are not going to have Elizabeth doing that without Joseph Smith telling her hey I need you to to try to you know get her to come around on this okay um Alicia anything you want to comment on for this slide I have so many thoughts on sister Durfee or Mrs Durfee as they called her um I think it's a really sad but fascinating um Power Dynamic to look at in patriarchy where you will often see this even today when there's scarcity involved that there are women in the system that will work to uphold the patriarchy by oppressing other women it's really sad you see it today even like in Corporate America and um it's a result of the patriarchy and these women um like they're in some cases they're only and I don't mean to say that sister Durfee was doing this for power but I think that it's important to point this out that you do see women in the system that are oppressing other women it's just part of the nature of that oppressive system of patriarchy so I would think that that maybe had something to do with these older wives who were willing to go be mentors you know and they were viewed as just um women who already had a testimony of this principle and so that they were going to Mentor them and help teach them but looking at it without that biased lens of indoctrination I think that we can see it as maybe potentially a dynamic of patriarchy yeah for sure and and I'm just going to highlight that that you know we introduced the pillars of Joseph's polygamy at the beginning of this episode this has you know teenage girls they're vulnerable the dad's dead they're living with Joseph um and and he's he's doing his coercion thing both by being profit and by getting other women so like this and it's a sister pair like this this has a lot of the elements of of Joseph's patterns just in this one example yeah yeah yeah I love it okay thanks thanks for that Alicia let's go to the next slide Joseph gives Emily Partridge a birthday gift of polygamy so Emily of course uh knew that Joseph had already attempted to engage her in this but did not say anything and learned uh and later learned that Elizabeth was a friend of plurality and knew all about it and so basically she she learns later on oh yeah she was in on it you know the whole time and you know as we just said this is an example of Joseph sending another polygamous wife to test Emily to see if she'd be willing and this gives Joseph Smith plausible deniability if if Emily gives off The Vibes like you know yeah I heard about this like if she starts blabbing about Joseph then Joseph knows I mean it's it's a really deceptive test that Joseph is putting her through and so on Emily's 19th birthday Joseph Smith gave her what must what he must have thought was the greatest gift of all the Commandment to Mary and have sex with him is a polygamous bride um from Emily he taught me this principle of plural marriage that is called polygamy now but we call it a Celestial marriage and he told me that this principle had been revealed to him but it was not generally known and he went on and said that the Lord given him given me to him and he wanted to know if I would consent to a marriage and I consented and so this just shows that Joseph Smith used another woman to kind of soften up her her um you know defenses and then goes back to her after he knows from um Mrs Durfee that she's more receptive after being you know conditioned groomed whatever you want to call it uh and goes back and and proposes to her um and and obviously at that point she she uh submits Alicia thoughts on the slide yeah it definitely looks like grooming to me and I was also as I was reading about Mrs Durfee it reminded me of going to the temple for the first time and sitting in that endowment session I apologize if this is offensive because I know the endowment session is sacred to a lot of people but just thinking back on it now there's so many things that happen in that room that would be startling and troubling but you're looking around and you're seeing all these people that you trust you're seeing your young woman's president and your parents and all these people that you know and love and they're all going along with it and so I just thought it was an interesting like to me that was the immediate comparison that I made um that Mrs Durfee is this mentor and she's this woman that already has a testimony of plural marriage and I'm going to Mentor you and I'm going to help you learn I'm going to help you gain a testimony of this because it seems difficult but really it's the Lord's will so I'm just uh I'm just smiling I have a first cousin uh named Joan uh Joan Beatty who married a man named Doug Durfee and her name is Joan Durfee and I'm just I am 100 sure that that my my first cousin's husband is a descendant of of this woman so yeah very very likely probably a proud probably a proud descendant of of this woman yeah um all right so and what a birthday gift by the way right yeah I just find it I mean I know it's tongue-in-cheek yeah happy birthday why don't you marry me it's just it's so weird yeah this idea of coercion again it's it's repeating no means no no means no and so you don't keep trying and and again if God's Gonna if God can appear to people he needs to appear to Emily not yes yeah and you know I mean you can ask somebody a second time like uh my my wife the first time I asked her out she told me no and and never told me the reason and never never told me that because I wasn't Mormon I didn't know she couldn't go with me because she wasn't 16 yet so ironically enough I didn't know that at the time but she did say no and then the next year I asked her again and she said yes and she was actually just about to turn 16 but anyways the point is you can ask again it's just you can't I now if I had sent someone to her that she trusted as an authority figure to soften her up to accept my then I'd say no you can't do that because that's you're then circumcis circumventing consent by sending out people to deceptively try to soften you up to what Joseph Smith's trying to do by telling them it's okay and I think that's where that's my consent in this case is being kind of chipped away at free agency free agency is being chipped away at because you're using deceptive tactics in the name of God by the way to get people to accept these proposals that they obviously didn't want to do in the first place okay all right well let's get to Emily partridge's account of Joseph Smith's proposal yeah so this is what Emily wrote and she said um Mrs Durfee came to me one day and said that Joseph would like an opportunity to talk to me I asked her if she knew what he wanted she said that she thought he wanted me for a wife I was thoroughly prepared for almost anything I was to meet him in the evening at Mr Kimball's brother Heber told his children that they better go into one of the neighbors as there would be a council that evening at their house then he said to me I don't know if it's valet I think it's late is not at home and you had better call another time so I started out with William and Helen and bid them goodbye I started for home as fast as I could go so as to get Beyond being called back for I still dreaded the interview however soon I heard brother Kimball call Emily Emily rather low but loud enough for me to hear I thought at first that I would not go back and took no notice of his calling but he kept calling it was about to overtake me so I stepped stopped and went back with him I cannot tell you all Joseph said but he said the Lord Lord had commanded to enter into plural marriage and given me to him and although I had gotten badly frightened he knew I would yet have him so he waited till the Lord told him my mind was now prepared and would receive the principles I do not think if I had not gone through the ordeal I did I would have ever gone off that night to meet him but that was the only way it could be done then well I was married then and there Joseph went home his way and I went my way alone a strange way a strange of way of getting married wasn't it brother Kimball married us on the 4th of March 1843. and it's probably safe to say that Emma didn't know about many of these marriages we're talking about so Joseph is doing this before from for many of these marriages we've already covered this he's doing it before DNC 132 is actually revealed um you know before he's even gotten the polygamy Revelation and he's doing it um without Emma's knowledge lying to Emma lying to the public and in many cases when he married he's violating the the rules of what would become DNC 132 you know by doing things like marrying other people's wives uh really quickly Alicia what what we should have had you read from now on my class that's true yeah we should let's have Alicia read the women's accounts but Alicia and what do you want to say as you contemplate uh Emily partridge's account well I feel for Emily and Eliza but in this case I I just I think about Emma so much I think about them in the house together in the mansion house there's four girls living there at the time you've got the Lawrence girls and the Partridge girls and there's this period of time that Emma doesn't know that this is going on this is behind her back um and what we're going to talk about next is her eventually suggesting that those become his plural wives once she's convinced of it I think after DNC 132 is the Revelation once the Revelation is read to her by him um I just think about what that Dynamic must have been like for her can you imagine being the the spouse in the house with these young girls I mean you've got to know that something is going on um and yeah it just makes me really emotional to read and to think about Emma and just this is It's horrific it's absolutely horrific I think Emily was 16 when she was first proposed to um so she was a little older when it actually happened happened but I just can't imagine what this must have been like for Emma that's another that's another good point like why wasn't Joseph If he if he had to practice polygamy and didn't want to why wasn't he just marrying all the widows who were like 40 and 50 and 60 why was he picking 16 year olds 17 year olds like that's a that's a tell I mean there were some but the majority were were young and hot I think is right from his perspective yeah I mean they're younger and and um yeah and the the one that sticks you know stands out to me is that her in her own account she's saying that she's trying to get away until uh he over almost overtakes her and then she stops and you're just like that is it feels so bad like he basically drags her back in the house because she doesn't want to do it and so of course it's like he's lunging for her yeah he probably is jogging he's probably jogging out of the house trying to get her attention knowing that she's trying to ignore him and you know almost overtakes her and then she goes back in and it's just one of those things where it's like this is over and over again we see these accounts for women like I didn't want to do it but then I did it because I believed I had to because God wants me to and it's be it you know and they believe God wants him to because Joseph Smith they Revere him as a prophet and it just shows how um our faith in in leaders uh can lead us to do bad things and you see that today you see it where people believe Russell Nelson is a prophet of God and they will do anything that Russell Nelson says and um you know and what's with this quote I cannot tell you all Joseph said like what else did he say like you know yeah like yeah a lot of things but why what's worse what's worse than he's gonna marry a 16 or 17 year old who lives in his house whose dad died yeah but what would be worse that she couldn't say yeah that's a good question yeah if she was like telling us the stuff she can say yeah it's horrific then what's the stuff she can't say no it's a good point it is okay all right so let's talk about Eliza the sister right sister now so um I'll just kind of start off by saying um you know I I kept their their proposal separate because you know Joseph kept their proposal separate as well and so um Eliza was married to Joseph Smith around the same time um she didn't write as much unfortunately so we don't have as much so here's Eliza's account and Alicia if you want to read that that would actually be pretty good oh sure here let me just expand it so I can see it after a time that paragraph after a time my sister Emily and myself went to live in the family of the Prophet Joseph Smith we lived there for about three years while there he taught us the plan of celestial marriage and asked us to enter into that order with him this was truly a great trial for me but I had the most implicit confidence in him as a prophet of the Lord and not but believe his word and as a matter of course except of privilege of being sealed to him as a wife for time and all eternity we were sealed in 1843 by Heber C Kimball in the presence of witnesses I continue to live in the family for a length of time after this okay thank you Alicia Mike yeah and so it's just to point out that you know her entire testimony of polygamy was based on her believing Joseph Smith was a prophet of God and I'm trying to highlight that a lot because it shows that Joseph Smith knew how much his followers revered him and he was able to use that to circumvent these women's moral compass so that they would marry him um in both polyandrous and polygamous marriages um in a situation that went completely against what they wanted to do um in their own lives yeah at this point like we're halfway done with this presentation and I almost want to say oh we're not done with we're not done with Emily and Eliza yeah just a couple more slides for them no I just want to say already I'm like I think we've already shown that this is yeah right like yeah we don't even need to continue cases shown and we're not even done with Emily and Eliza and we still have another hour and a half of a podcast to go but yeah but let's let's keep going so let's go to um Emily and Eliza's secret marriage to Joseph Smith yeah and so this is one of those things that you know is just so crazy to me that they were both married to Joseph but they didn't know that they were both married to him at first so Emily Partridge later remarked that neither of us knew about the other at the time everything was so secret and so this is just crazy they're living in the Smith household and they are living there together you know in going through such a horrific time and they have no idea that they're both married to Joseph Smith and they both think that they are um this this is gonna sound horrible but Joseph Smith kind of tells all these women like you were given to me by God so it gives you that sense of being in a special club and an elite status and then all of a sudden you don't realize that you're both having sex with the same man in the same household when his wife is unaware of what's going on and um this is going to lead to one of the more insane stories of polygamy which is that Emma Smith is going to for this very brief time tell Joseph you can and turn to polygamy but I get to choose the women and she chooses the Partridge sisters and the Lauren sisters who are married I'm sorry who are living with the Smith household but she has no idea that that he's already married to them and so um it just shows like Emma's Choice makes sense because they live in the household she could keep an eye on them she doesn't know that he's already married and having sex with him which is just it's just like this is the kind of stuff you couldn't like write in a script if you were trying to be creative because it's so insane wow Alicia I'm gonna let you respond and then I'm I may want to respond yeah one thing that just really stood out to me here is that Emily really viewed herself as having already been given to Joseph Smith by God um and I think that's a really important Point here to make that these girls are just so indoctrinated they don't even view their lives as their own and John when you were talking about consent I don't think that consent was even within their realm of entitlement like I don't think that they had any degree of entitlement to to consent to anything you know they really believe that this is God's prophet and um I wish I had the exact phrasing but Emily believed that she had already been given to Joseph Smith uh by God and I just think of I don't know just the way these girls are just like viewed as property and they view themselves as property yeah yeah it's it's um you know you mentioned earlier how sometimes you go through the temple and you kind of see some of the same similarities here about how you go along with things you know are just crazy and you know it reminded me of when I went through the temple and I don't want to get into specifics we've been trying not to do that but there's a part in the temple where you basically promise yourself everything you have to the church you don't promise it's a god you promise the whole consecration right yeah so you you promise to give your life and everything to not to God to the church and so this is an instance where this is being utilized by Joseph Smith because he's saying you belong to God through me because I speak for him and it just shows how like you said when you have people that are that devout you can get them to do things that they would never do otherwise because they don't even understand how they like they don't have Google they can't hop online and see what Joseph Smith is doing they can't see that Joseph Smith has gotten the Book of Mormon wrong that he made up the priesthood restoration they can't see all that stuff so they're going along with it because they truly are so engrossed in this idea is a prophet and it just shows how a horribly abused it can be yeah yeah and and you you hear in Mormonism the saying and it's probably in Christianity and in biblical Christianity you know God's saying my house is a house of order right I am not the god of confusion like this scenario where Joseph is married to Emma but is practicing polygamy but lying about it to Emma but then marrying two sisters who are foster children who are living in his home who are teenage girls then neither of them know about each other and Emma doesn't know about them but then Emma finally is okay with polygamy and and so when she chooses one or both of the sisters to be married to Joseph Joseph doesn't admit to Emma that he's already married to them but then but then he as we're going to see in the next slide performs a sham marriage to fool Emma um and to make the the sisters Liars like compelling them to be deceptive all in the name of God that's yeah I'll make a boomer reference that's more Keystone Cops that's Ridiculousness that's not a house of order and what God what God would would sanction that sort of behavior and let's just go ahead and go to that slide to kind of drive it home yeah and so this is just this is one of those when I heard this when I first started doing the Deep dive and stuff I just I like you can't believe this it seems so insane that you can't believe but it's in rough Stone Rolling it's not this is this is very historical so um because Joseph couldn't tell his beloved Emma that he was already married to and having sex with these teenage sisters um he staged a second mock wedding to keep the secret from his beloved Emma and I'm putting beloved in there because that's how the the gospel topics essay refers to her to try to again soften what was happening that Joseph was doing to her um on May 11th 1843 this is before DNC 132 was written Joseph has been be sealed to them for a second time however their previously great relationship with Emma turned sour almost immediately after the mock wedding Emma forced Joseph to kick the girls out of the house with Joseph Smith telling the girls my hands are tied the Partridge sisters left to live with another polygamous wife and Emma's brief time and accepting polygamy came to an end that's actually what's going to lead to Joseph needing to write DNC 132 because now he's like I need to basically threaten him before you know I mean and I'm putting a little bit of words into into there but um the marriages to the Partridge sisters um really hits on all the issues we've talked about is as you mentioned John um and this is a great write-up uh on polygamy it's from a letter from a doubter and I should give you the links it's a really good read and um in their polygamy section it says besides the heavy-handed pressure applied to Emily and Eliza there's a disturbing amount of Deceit going on Joseph asking her to burn a letter and not talk to her family Elizabeth Durfee testing the waters with Emily under the pretext that she's heard rumors Joseph concealing the marriage of the sisters from the their families and from each other keeping it a secret from Emma then putting on a mock wedding rather than telling her the truth in fact secrecy and deceit is a recurring problem with polygamy as we're about to see and then their letter goes into more of these accounts as well okay that reference letter I'm seeing I'm trying to Google it I'm seeing letter to a daughter letter from a daughter I'll I'll get it for you okay about the Sham marriage I just want to say about all of this this was until roughly what 2008 considered anti-mormon literature like anyone who talked about this stuff if it came from Fawn Brody anti-mormon literature you know it wasn't really until the Joseph Smith papers I mean I could be wrong on this you guys please chime in here but until about 2008 people just dismissed this stuff they just viewed it as anti you know and so I think it's really great here to just point out that this can be found in faithful sources this story that we just talked about like mind-blowing story this is um you know it's a historical event and it can be found even in church sources so I don't know if we want to mention any of those like I think for sure we've already mentioned Todd Compton we've already mentioned um what else uh I mean it'll be in Rust unrolling but that's right rust and rolling and then what about the Saints I haven't read the Saints volume one volume two but I but I think that it references some of this stuff for any faithful listeners um that want to just look at only face faithful sources I think it's just a good point to make that this isn't a lot of the faithful members that we know who are um who who are really kind of more nuanced in these ideas will say like this isn't anti-mormon literature it's really important for active members to understand that this isn't anti it's not they're not lies you know it's it's in there so I think this is uncontested and acknowledged by the church its historical department and its most faithful credible historians Undisputed the Sham marriage of the Partridge sisters is fact is is any part of Mormon church history and you can and you can put on what you can view this from a faithful perspective there are members of the church that view this with a faithful perspective you know and we're just all here having this conversation with we've all got our own our own interpretation of these events you know I have deconstructed because of reading this stuff but not everyone does some people continue faithful even after reading it so yeah absolutely yep yeah I would just I would just add to that last slide which I find I mean we've we're beating a dead horse to a point on this but Emma Smith is living in a household with the Partridge sisters doesn't know their marriage of Joseph then she agrees to this marriage she kicks him out because of course Joseph's having sex with these women and then Joseph has to write DNC 132 all during all this time God doesn't send an angel to her to be like this is what I need you to do it's just interesting it's very convenient that Emma has to go through all this without any spiritual confirmation the church doesn't really point you that way because of course they want you to focus on uh these women who are like yeah I really didn't want to do it I really didn't want to do it but he was a prophet of God so I had a confirmation it's just it's it's just very convenient all of this stuff is very convenient to Joseph and um God seems to only do whatever is in Joseph's interest and and I find that to be very interesting as a theme throughout all the episodes not just polygamy yeah all right well and we're all we're about two hours in and we're only halfway done with just the polygamy proposals so I want to reference again ldsdiscussions.com polygamy Dash proposals that's Mike's amazing website at LDS discussions where you can read about this and hopefully find a lot of the sources if you want to view or listen or refer someone to these episodes in their sequence um you can you can go to Spotify and find the LDS discussions uh podcast you can listen to or view them there for free you can also go to the YouTube uh playlist under Mormon stories podcast and have uh videos of this in succession um and uh yeah that's part one and I guess next week we're going to come back with part two where we're going to talk about uh other examples of I mean I think we've made the point so a part of me wants to say part two isn't necessary yeah you should give us the case for why we need a second part I'll let you go first Alicia if you want I gotta look at my notes so and well in the next part we're gonna go into you know the Lawrence sisters there's some interesting points there about the estate that Joseph Smith comes into and ultimately takes control over oh we're going to talk about Helen American but we can't have a series on on the proposals without talking about Helen Mark Kimball it's the most recognizable name in um Mormon history polygamy because she was only 14 years old so there's so many more things that are important to cover I think to really make our make our Point yeah and with helamar Kimball um Alicia I don't mean to be rude but I have to correct you she wasn't four she wasn't 14 she was several months before her 15th birthday no it's several months shy of her 15th birthday I I think the word they used this before but I could be wrong either way um and and the reason I think Helen Mars story is actually amazing too is because of the way the church portrays Hebrews um introduction to polygamy and so when we go over that that is one of the most crazy stories that the church essay promotes is Faith promoting that when you actually know what the context is it is like it'll blow your mind so I'll give you that as a tease because I I when I heard that um the first time of why um he cried tears of joy um yeah it you I remember I was working in a I have my headphones on and I was working on some stuff and I just was like I think like an audible guest like oh you gotta be kidding me like this is insane so yeah as Alicia said hello Mark Kimble you have to talk about um and I think Hebrew C Kimball we have to talk about and then um when we finish looking at the implications of what this means um for how we view this how we try to reconcile this with DNC 132 so I think there's a lot to cover um so the next episode will be good because we won't have to pile it all into like a three and a half hour episode so thanks to everyone who's who's uh being patient with us and letting us get through all this stuff in in the detail we have well thank you Mike you've done really really important work and Alicia this is so much better with having you here I hope yes it is yeah we'll make it we're going to make it come back so you have no choice guys I love this topic and Mike thank you so much for all the work that you've done on these slides I just he sends them to me and I just write my notes but this is you've done so much work and I really feel like this is so impactful for so many people I get messages every day about how deconstructing has really benefited people and is really changing people's lives for the better so I know there's a lot of um critique on this space on making forcing people to deconstruct and how that can be harmful but you know what I think that it's I think it's an overall good I think it's a net positive I think people are really really benefiting from this work that you're doing and John of course you were a Lifeline for me when I had my deconstruction so I just appreciate you both so much well and and I will say before we go um Alicia was like the first person I thought of when I was trying to think of someone to come on because her approach to all of this um in her videos and stuff that she's done on Tick Tock are so just kind and comforting and they're not mocking anyone they're not making fun of it and so I just love your approach and so you're the perfect person to have so I'm so glad you're we're willing to take the time and hopefully we can at least get one more with you and and um just thank you so much thank you Alicia's Tick Tock is um faith and Faith unraveled right yep faith unraveled and I'm going to be talking a lot more about polygamy I just love this topic it's very personal to me so yeah yeah all right well thanks Mike thanks Alicia and most important thanks to everyone for joining us today on Mormon stories podcast we couldn't do this without your support So for everyone who makes this possible including donors including our board of directors Clint Martin and Carrie went back including Gerardo and uh maven's been helping out a little bit and and Brooklyn and and uh Julia who's helping out with Tick Tock just to everyone who's making and Margie who's been my co-host and then Samantha and Karen John Larson just for all the people that make the open stories foundation and Mormon story as possible I want to thank them I want to thank donors that make this possible also want to say that if any of you you know we just bought Mike we just upgraded a bunch of his equipment spent a couple Grand uh like we hope to tweak his audio so that it just gets better and better um you know all the stuff uh costs money so if you are able to become a monthly donor we lose donors every month so if you're able to become a monthly donor you can go to mormonstories.org click on the Donate button uh become a monthly donor are your donations are tax deductible in the U.S we're transparent in our finances and every dollar we spend hopefully goes towards the mission We Believe goes towards the mission of uh informed consent for Mormons and questioning Mormons and non-mormons but also to support Mormons who are having a faith transition and to support people who are rebuilding their lives after Mormon Orthodoxy or after leaving the church so and of course helping people find community and friends and support during difficult 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respond to your feedback um and of course you can always email us at Mormon stories gmail.com and Mike I think you have a email as well if people want to email you directly is that right Mike yeah you can always email us at LDS discussion with no s gmail.com if you want to reach out um and I'm on Instagram and LDS discussions that's another place or um you know either way is there an email you want to give people oh maybe not yet okay DM DM her at what a tick tock Faith unravel no no DS no DM you know what you can go to my Tick Tock and tag me and I always look at my tags okay I unraveled I have a question follow me back okay all right we're getting there we're gonna expand eventually to Instagram I didn't want to get excommunicated I'm sure it's too late for that now but you're too awesome to be actually all right well thanks again everybody thanks for this episode and uh check us out next week or next episode for part two of our episode on Joseph Smith's plural marriage proposals and know that we've got uh at least a few at least two dozen episodes remaining after we're done with the polygamy series which will now be a six-parter we're still going to cover a book of Abraham we're going to cover kinderhood plates Joseph Smith's translations uh the the witnesses to the Book of Mormon and other scripture um how the church handles doubt we're going to talk about Joseph Smith's Revelations the Transfiguration of Brigham Young apologetics so much more on this series with LDS discussions so please join us in the days weeks months and years ahead we love you all be kind to each other be good to each other and we'll see you all again soon on another episode of Mormon stories podcast uh take care everybody