 Polygamy and The Mormon ConspiracyMormon Polygamy is deep rooted within the history of the LDS church. This information is from website Mormon Conspiracy where you can get the popular Mormon book "The Mormon Conspiracy" at amazon.com. John D. Lee describes Joseph Smith’s leadership in the development of the principle of Mormon polygamy as follows: “During the winters Joseph the Prophet set a man by the name of Sidney Hay Jacobs to select from the Bible such scriptures as pertained to Mormon polygamy and celestial marriage to write it in pamphlet form. This he did as a feeler among the people to pave the way for celestial marriage...it met with opposition, although a few favored it. John Lee went on to write: “The Prophet Joseph anxiously desired polygamy, but he dared not to proclaim it, so it was taught confidentially to such as were strong enough in the faith to take the forward step. About the same time the doctrine of sealing for an eternal state was introduced.” John D Lee wrote that by 1847, he was sealed to his eleventh wife in Council Bluffs, Iowa, [and] in 1856 to his sixteenth wife. Brigham gave him his eighteenth wife in 1859, after which he was the father of sixty children, ten of which died, with fifty six still alive as he was writing this book.” 1. As related earlier Lee was executed on March 23rd, 1877 for his role in the Mountain Meadows Massacre. Scott Wrote: “In addition, Joseph Fielding Smith, a former president of the Mormon Church, in his book, Blood Atonement and the Origin of Plural Marriage quoted an affidavit which verified that not only did Joseph have plural wives, but that he ‘cohabited with them as wives’. Worst of all was that Joseph Smith married women who were married to other men, besides committing adultery himself, he used his power and influence as a supposed prophet to coerce married women to join him in sin.” 2. Scott, a Mormon apostate added: “Some Mormon Apologists shrug off polygamy by claiming, as I did, that less than 3 percent of the Mormon men ever practiced polygamy. But others, like T. Edgar Lyon have admitted that the real figure might have as high as 10 per cent. 3. Non Mormons have estimated an accurate figure to be as much as 20 percent. A standard explanation of the necessity for polygamy is that there were many more women than men in the early church and that plural marriage was a good way to absorb the surplus women of the population. I grew up thinking that polygamous men married old or homely women just to give them a home and (if they weren’t past childbearing age) a family. But John A. Witsoe, a Mormon writer affirmed that “there seems always to have been more males than females in the church.” 4. Quinn confirms Witsoe’s statement. He reported that in 1871 every national census listed more males than females in Mormon populations and that the 20-40 percent of Mormons that had several wives demographically required bachelorhood in Utah’s majority population of males. 5. This would also support the contention by one of Brigham Young’s sons, Seymour B. Young, who observed that there was a prostitution house on every corner in Salt Lake City in 1871. 6.
This scholarly book was written by Charles L. Wood, Ph.D. Emeritus Professor at the University of Akron. 1. John D. Lee, The Mormon Menace, 183-187 2. Laytayne Colvett Scott, The Mormon Mirage (Also Jerald and Sandra Tanner, Mormonism, Shadow or Reality, Salt Lake City: Lighthouse Ministry, p 225), 113 3. Ibid., (Also John A. Widtsoe, Evidences and Reconciliations, Salt Lake City: Bookcraft, 1960 p 390), 113 4. Ibid,. 113 (Taken from John A. Widtsoe, Evidences and Reconciliations) 5. D. Michael Quinn, Mormon Hierarchy, Extension of Power, 767 6. Ibid., 768 |