FAIR

Polygamy

Troy Wynn on O’Donovan’s Soapbox

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[editor’s note: Troy Wynn is a doctoral student studying physics. He runs Some Mormon Stuff which is a “blog about Mormon history, its people and beliefs.” He has done several well-researched articles dealing with racial issues in the LDS church, including one that addressed Lawrence O’Donnell’s charge made the height of the Romney campaign that Mormonism was pro-slavery. Troy has been invited as a guest blogger to do a series on interracial marriage and to provide a critique of Connell O’Donovan’s seminal work on the topic. Previous discussion can be found here at FAIR and at the Juvenile Instructor blog.]

In his paper titled “LDS Historical Rhetoric & Praxis Regarding Marriage Between Whites and Blacks,” Connell O’Donovan asserts that Brigham Young’s fear of black sexuality was the reason he prohibited black-white marriage and instigated the priesthood-temple ban, and that Young’s resistance to black-white marriage must be seen within the context of his own marital experimentation which at that time was receiving scrutiny via the press and the Massachusetts State Supreme Court. He then lists several topics of discussion, such as, examples of inter-racial marriages in LDS history, the fruition of anti-miscegenation laws under BY, statements about black-white marriage from the Deseret News, and eventually how LDS leaders abandoned their restrictions against black-white marriage. Or, as O’Donovan puts it, “unnecessary restrictions on the boundaries of love and marriage.”

His paper also demonstrates that LDS feelings at one time were deeply hostile to black-white marriage and that many Latter-day Saints believed black-white marriages would never be permitted, etc. [Read more…] about Troy Wynn on O’Donovan’s Soapbox

“Brother” Eli Johnson

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This is my second installment where I tackle the accusation that Joseph Smith was a rake (Ken Jennings wouldn’t say so either.) before he ever received a revelation about plural marriage. I am partial to Dan Bachman’s theory that section 132 was received in stages as he lays out in “The Ohio Origins of the Revelation on Eternal Marriage” in a JMH 1978 article. Critics have likewise turned to the Ohio period to frame Joseph Smith as a sexual predator before the revelation was made public. Clark Braden, in his 1884 debate with an RLDS apostle pursued this agenda. He claimed that the [March 24,1832] tar and feathering was brought about by Eli Johnson’s brotherly outrage of Joseph Smith’s impropriety against Eli’s sister, Marinda Nancy Johnson. I am going to present some new information about Eli Johnson, but if I don’t make much sense please see the following links for background information: 1 2 3 .
[Read more…] about “Brother” Eli Johnson

The Fanny Alger Marriage

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One of strangest trends in recent plural marriage publications by cultural Mormons has been to regress back to Fawn Brodie’s portrayal of Joseph Smith’s first plural marriage with Fanny Alger as an adulterous affair. This despite Todd Compton’s seminal treatment and a wide array of evidence in favor of a marriage from both hostile and friendly sources. I don’t wish to recap all this here as it would be a retread of G. L. Smith’s recent FARMS Review (I was thrilled to receive a shout out in the footnotes). Suffice it to say, the distorted version of Joseph Smith as a womanizer has really taking a beating and I have recently uncovered some additional information that will further vindicate the Prophet on that score, but that will have to wait for another post. [Read more…] about The Fanny Alger Marriage

Where the Lost Boys Go

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A recurrent criticism cropping up in the discussion on Egan’s New York Times article is that polygamy inevitably creates “Lost Boys.” These are young men that get kicked out of a polygamous community to reduce competition for a resource in short supply –that of marriage partners. One commenter put it this way:

A simple polygamous example involves 6 people:
one man has 3 wives
two men have none

In this model, one man’s gain is another man’s loss. I would like to explore, through some preliminary statistical analysis, why this isn’t an adequate model for 19th century Mormonism, but it may be relevant to contemporary FLDS. I say “may” because I do not have enough data about the FLDS to make a judgment. I can, however, address whether the criticisms lobbied at them apply to 19th century Mormonism.

[Read more…] about Where the Lost Boys Go

All the prejudiced sources that are fit to blog

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This week New York Times blogger Timothy Egan made a sophomoric attempt to connect the modern FLDS church’s practice of polygamy to that of early Mormon leaders Joseph Smith and Brigham Young. Excerpt:

[Mitt Romney’s] faith was founded in 1830 by Joseph Smith Jr., an itinerant treasure-seeker from upstate New York who used a set of magic glasses to translate a lost scripture from God. His personality was infectious, the religion very approachable.

It would have been just another Christian faith had not Smith let his libido lead him into trouble. Before he died at the hands of a mob, he married at least 33 women and girls; the youngest was 14, and was told she had to become Smith’s bedmate or risk eternal damnation.

Smith was fortunate to find a religious cover for his desire. His polygamy “revelation” was put into The Doctrine and Covenants, one of three sacred texts of Mormonism. It’s still there – the word of God. And that’s why, to the people in the compound at Eldorado, [Texas,] the real heretics are in Salt Lake City.

As his biographer, Fawn Brodie, wrote, Joseph Smith “could not rest until he had redefined the nature of sin and erected a stupendous theological edifice to support his new theories on marriage.”

It is hard for me to imagine more factual errors and loaded language that could be squeezed into four short paragraphs.

[Read more…] about All the prejudiced sources that are fit to blog

Plural marriage ponderings: An RLDS/CoC apologetic for Jacob 2:30

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Introduction

Since Mike Parker’s blog post on plural marriage has garnered more comments than all our other threads combined, my keen market research skills have told me that polygamy posts are traffic gold.

One of my research interests at FAIR is plural marriage, and I’ve been reading as much of the primary and secondary literature as I can get my hands on.

I thought our readers might be interested in a periodic look at a few of the things that I’ve found interesting, weird, or different from the common portrayals of plural marriage. In particular, primary sources that may have been misread or misrepresented, are also worth looking at. I hope that readers will spot things that I haven’t, or correct some of my own blind spots.

I’ll try to post at least once or twice a week, until people get bored, I run out of material, or FAIR tells me to stop so this doesn’t become the All Plural Marriage, All the Time blog.

[Read more…] about Plural marriage ponderings: An RLDS/CoC apologetic for Jacob 2:30

And we multiplied exceedingly

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This Jarom 1:8 phrase is used throughout the Book of Mormon and appears to borrow its language from the Abrahamic covenant in Gen 17:2 and elsewhere. It appears to be an apt description of the early Utah Saints, who saw themselves as modern heirs of the covenant. Mormon women welcomed many more children into their homes than their national counterparts, a phenomenon I attribute largely to polygamy.

As a disclaimer, I realize that this blog entry is not in good taste, especially from a feminist perspective. Some of the quantitative analysis that follows will no doubt feed into Mormon stereotypes that we like to keep our women barefoot and pregnant.

[Read more…] about And we multiplied exceedingly