Now, more on the dinner I had with this Mormon Historian.
One of things that I asked him in our long conversation, was, well I have to tell you
this was when I was working on the newsletter that we just put out ‘sacred marriage’
or ‘secret affair’. I had just been working on all of that, and going through all of the
stories of Joseph wives and was fairly appalled by the whole thing.
So I’m having dinner with this guy and I said, “How can you avoid the conclusion
that Joseph Smith was a sexual predator?”
And He said well that’s… He was sincere
But, I said well no I don’t think that’s the way he did it. For instance in the newsletter
I tell about the case of Lucy Walker, now here’s a young girl, she’s in a family
of 10 children. The family converted to Mormonism, they end up moving to Nauvoo, the Mother gets
Malaria and dies, and then one of the children dies. So now we’re down to 9 kids, and Joseph
Smiths solution to this family’ s situation is to send the father on a two year mission
to the East Coast, divide up the children into different homes, and take the teenagers
into his home.
So now he has this 16 year old girl living in a home with her brother that’s a year
or so older than her. He starts privately going to the sister to try to convince her
to become his plural wife. And she’s praying about the whole thing, she doesn’t know
what to make out of it. Well then it turns out that Joseph’s wife Emma and the brother
go on a shopping trip to St Louis and while they are gone Joseph gets the girl to marry
him, and she’s just the day before turned 17, when she marries him in Polygamy behind
Emma’s back.
She later wrote in her own story of her life what a devastating thing and how hard this
was for her to do. She said here I was without Mother and Father to consult no one around
to go to, to talk to. And yet being presented with this great issue. And of course she prays
and finally feel’s God spoke and told her to do this and she goes into this plural marriage.
But, so I’m talking to this historian. I said this shows a deliberate effort of isolating
this girl from her family, from everyone around her from any support system, in a time of
grief, and loneliness, to put that kind of pressures on her, is signs of a spiritual
predator. I don’t see how we can excuse this kind of behavior and say “well, he
was sincere.” You wouldn’t give that kind of leeway to
someone that approached your 16-year-old daughter. If your pastor came to your 16-year-old daughter
behind your back and proposed something like that to her, and you found out about it you’d
be so mad you would try to kill the guy.
So, why does Joseph get a pass on these things? I don’t understand how they keep saying
its ok, and if you read the story of the different wives they all are horrible, going to young
teenage girls and saying God sent an angel with a drawn sword that was gonna kill Joseph
Smith if he didn’t go into polygamy if she didn’t marry him God was gonna kill him.
And these, struggle the weight of responsibility this would put on a teenage girl. “I’m
gonna be responsible for the prophets death”. Then he would also put the responsibility
on these young girls, that if you consent to this it will ensure your parents eternal
salvation, they will have exaltation. How can a girl say no, I’m not gonna help
my parents have eternal life. And so she finally submits to this. But to me it clearly is the
pattern of a sexual predator. But this fellow feels the Mormon church does
more good than harm, we’re here now and that’s where his family’s at, and of course
he’s not living in Utah so he’s got a lot of non Mormons around him and so he doesn’t
feel the same pressure as you would if you were here locally.
But we see this more and more with the scholars of this, moving away from any truth claims
and everything becomes relative. It doesn’t work for you, if it’s working for you stay
there if its not working look for something else.
And so, our heart is that they come to see truth is important,. What we do with our lives
is important. The lies of Joseph Smith do affect people, they aren’t just innocent
things that don’t touch other people. Because of Joseph Smith’s polygamy we have all the
polygamists today. Mormons will say to me “but look at the fruits of Mormonism.”
I say “yeah the fruits of Mormonism are 60.000 people living in Polygamy today,”
that’s the fruit of Joseph Smith. Those people would not be in those situations had
it not been for him privately going to teenage girls and coercing them into plural marriage.