Thursday, February 22, 2007

If any Mormon can justify this, I would love to hear from you!

Today is my niece's thirteenth birthday. And she also happens to be Mormon. I am grateful that she didn't live during Joseph's Smith's day, or in the days before 1890, when The Manifesto was adopted by the LDS church (even though it took another 20 years or so for the practice to finally stop within the bounds of the church). When I think about her, or my own daughter, I can't help but think about another young teen girl named Helen Mar Kimball. She was only fourteen when she married 38-year-old Joseph Smith. At the time, she was neither orphaned or widowed, she was not in need of being looked after, she was taken from her parents home to be sealed to Joseph Smith for the express purpose of ensuring her family's place in the Celestial Kingdom. That's not even the worst of it. As a consequence, she had to give up her remaining childhood, and become a woman overnight. She couldn't even be allowed to attend social functions where Joseph would be, for fear that Emma would find out about the relationship. She became isolated from her peers, and hidden away as Joseph's "dirty little secret". She wasn't even the only young maiden Joseph had made his "wife".

Fanny Alger 16
Sarah Ann Whitney 17
Lucy Walker 17
Flora Ann Woodworth 16
Emily Dow Partridge 19
Sarah Lawrence 17
Maria Lawrence 19

Helen Mar Kimball 14
Melissa Lott 19
Nancy M. Winchester [14?]

Anyone still having doubts that any of these women were plural wives of Joseph Smith, take a look at your own familysearch.org under Joseph Smith, you will get a list of 33 wives. most sealed to him before his death in 1844. And don't delude yourselves into thinking that they were sealed in name only, There would be no reason for Emma to have cast the Partridge sisters from her home if she didn't have proof that Joseph was having sex with them.

This is Helen's story:

In 1843 Apostle Heber C. Kimball had an important talk with his only daughter, fourteen-year-old Helen Mar. She wrote: “Without any preliminaries [my Father] asked me if I would believe him if he told me that it was right for married men to take other wives...The first impulse was anger...my sensibilities were painfully touched. I felt such a sense of personal injury and displeasure; for to mention such a thing to me I thought altogether unworthy of my father, and as quick as he spoke, I replied to him, short and emphatically, ‘No I wouldn’t!’...This was the first time that I ever openly manifested anger towards him...Then he commenced talking seriously and reasoned and explained the principle, and why it was again to be established upon the earth. [This] had a similar effect to a sudden shock of a small earthquake.”

Then father “asked me if I would be sealed to Joseph...[and] left me to reflect upon it for the next twenty-four hours...I was sceptical-one minute believed, then doubted. I thought of the love and tenderness that he felt for his only daughter, and I knew that he would not cast her off, and this was the only convincing proof that I had of its being right. I knew that he loved me too well to teach me anything that was not strictly pure, virtuous and exalting in its tendencies; and no one else could have influenced me at that time or brought me to accept of a doctrine so utterly repugnant and so contrary to all of our former ideas and traditions.” Unknown to Helen Mar, Heber and Joseph had already discussed the prospect of Helen Mar becoming one of Joseph’s wives. Heber now sought her agreement. Helen recalls, “Having a great desire to be connected with the Prophet Joseph, he offered me to him; this I afterwards learned from the Prophet’s own mouth. My father had but one Ewe Lamb, but willingly laid her upon the alter”

Joseph promised Helen eternal salvation if she would agree to marry him:

"[He explained] the principle of Celestial marrage...After which he said to me, ‘If you will take this step, it will ensure your eternal salvation & exaltation and that of your father’s household & all of your kindred.[‘] This promise was so great that I willingly gave myself to purchase so glorious a reward. None but God & his angels could see my mother’s bleeding heart-when Joseph asked her if she was willing...She had witnessed the sufferings of others, who were older & who better understood the step they were taking, & to see her child, who had scarcely seen her fifteenth summer, following in the same thorny path, in her mind she saw the misery which was as sure to come...; but it was all hidden from me.”

During the winter of 1843-44, there were weekly parties at Joseph Smith’s Mansion House. Many of Helen’s friends attended, as well as her sixteen-year-old brother William. Disappointed, Helen wrote,

“my father had been warned by the Prophet to keep his daughter away...I felt quite sore over it, and thought it a very unkind act in father to allow [William] to go and enjoy the dance unrestrained with others of my companions, and fettered me down, for no girl loved dancing better than I did...and like a wild bird I longed for the freedom that was denied me; and thought myself an abused child, and that it was pardonable if I did murmur.”


Here is a fourteen-year old girl who lost her childhood, and then became a widow at fifteen when Joseph Smith was murdered. If you think it was an honor and a privilege for her to have been "chosen" as a wife, think hard about whether or not you would sacrifice your teenage daughter to a man who already had 15 wives in secret, all over town. Would you gladly hand over your daughter to a church authority figure, say the bishop of your ward or the stake president, who is sure to be at least 20 to 30 years older than your child, if not more, in order to "purchase so great a reward?"

Perhaps I'm being too harsh....

Should we judge Joseph Smith by today's standards? It seems that the argument presents itself time and time again when anyone wants to talk about the necessity of plural marriage. I know when I was raised in the Mormon church, and even through adulthood I was lead to believe that plural marriage was only practiced to ensure widows without a man to lead their families would be secured and provided for by having her married through polygamy. I was taught that it was for the benefit of the WOMAN. Now I have learned that this is a cover-up for Joseph's pedophilia, and Brigham Young was the biggest perpetuator of that false teaching. Most of the members found the practice to be abhorrent, and refused to follow Brigham Young out of Nauvoo, preferring to follow Joseph's son, or any one of a half-dozen other factions that refused the teaching of polygamy.


For those who think that Joseph Smith was a called man of God:

When has it ever been a "standard" in the history of the U.S. for a married man in his 30s, who is an alleged Christian minister, to engage in sexual relationships with women and teenage girls to whom he was not legally married? (Remember that polygamy WAS illegal, even in Joseph Smith's time, just as gay marriage is considered illegal even if a ceremony is performed)

Another question for those who claim to no longer believe in Mormonism, but still defend Smith's polygamous behavior:

Does not the fact that:

*polygamy was illegal in Smith's day

*Smith desperately tried to keep his polygamy teachings and practices secret, and denied them to his dying day

*Smith and his fellow polygamists viciously attacked and slandered people who tried to expose his secret polygamy practice

...tell us that Smith's sexual behavior was *anything* but "standard" for his time?


Some of Joseph's defenders claim that his modern critics are judging him unfairly by holding him to today's standards of behavior. In fact, the opposite is true, and that any adult could make such an assertion, is only testament to how deeply our capacity for rational thought can be corrupted by emotional attachment to ideology.

Mormon defenders cannot have it both ways.

EITHER, as say Mormon general authorities, society has fallen from a far superior moral state, and we now live in an era characterized by shockingly loose morals, where chastity is denigrated and mocked, where "traditional family units" are under threat "as never before", where sexual anarchy appears to be a possibility, etc. ad nauseam -

OR, our era is in no way superior in sexual restraint and order to past eras.

If it's the same now as it was back in Joseph's day, then Mormon GA's cannot be believed when they claim society has fallen from this far superior moral state. And if they cannot be believed, then they are in fact "leading the church astray", and if that is the case, a canonized item of official doctrine is not true (see the Manifesto page in the D&C), and if that is the case, then Joseph's church isn't the only true religion in the world.

But if is true (as the general authorities claim) that society HAS fallen, then illegitimacy, immodesty, sexual "looseness" and "experimentation", promiscuity, etc., were ALL far RARER in Joseph Smith's era, than now - meaning that his era was far stricter sexually, than ours is. But if that is the case, and as church defenders ask, we judge Joseph Smith according to the "standards of his time", then modern critics are NOT JUDGING HIM HARSHLY ENOUGH. And in fact, history suggests exactly this.

For, who do these genius church defenders think would best be in a position to judge Joseph according to the standards of his own time, other than THE PEOPLE WHO LIVED IN HIS OWN TIME? And how did THEY judge him?

THEY FINALLY ASSASSINATED HIM. They drove Joseph's treasonous band of cult fanatics OUT OF THE UNITED STATES. And before that, they chased Joseph out of area after area. And why?

"Because Joseph's church was the only true church, and Satan wanted to destroy it!"?

It's far more possible to believe that it was Joseph's ACTIONS, his lewd behavior, his craving of young girls to take on as plural wives and claim as his own, his use of power and authority, his claims of being visited by an angel with a flaming sword, THESE are the things that earned him his fate. It had nothing to do with persecuting the church and everything to do with punishing the man for his actions.

Frankly, given past experiences with pedophiles and acts of lewdness towards little children, I am shocked that this information doesn't disturb each and every female member of the church who has ever had to deal with this in their own lives. I know that I have met some men in my lifetime that I wouldn't DARE leave in a room alone with my daughter, let alone sign her over to be married to him in order to secure my place in the Celestial Kingdom. In my mind, Joseph Smith is no better than the pedophiles, child-molesters, and child-pornography freaks of this day and age, except that our society seems to try to 'rehabilitate' these offenders, when in Joseph Smith's time, they would get lynched, and justice would be served.



While I'm on that subject, I'll just say here that I think it is HIGHLY IMPROPER to allow your young pre-teen or teenage daughter to be interviewed secluded behind a locked door, so that some bishop can ask her if she is sexually pure, has ever masturbated or had improper thoughts, all of these questions are part of a temple recommend process in order to do baptisms for the dead in the Mormon temples, and it is an open invitation for a man of a lewd nature to take advantage of young girls and make them confide personal information to someone who is in a position of authority. Think about that the next time you allow your daughter to be interviewed by a man 20-30 years her senior, and ask yourself if you REALLY trust the man that she is with, locked up in there alone with, and if you will ALWAYS trust men you don't know personally, just because he has been chosen to be the bishop. It happens all over the country, folks. Men in positions of power take advantage of young children every day, and if you are a childhood survivor of any kind of improper action by a person of authority over you, then why would you voluntarily allow your child to be placed in situations where they could become subject to the same actions against them?


Just because someone higher up 'called' this man to be bishop doesn't mean he couldn't be capable of harming your child in some psychologically damaging way. I just don't understand the blind faith of people in the church, thinking everyone in it is perfectly trustworthy and incapable of harming others within the "hallowed" walls of the 'one true church'. Joseph Smith did it in his day---and he was supposedly the most 'chosen' of them all...


Is the INTERNET itself Anti-Mormon? Or all the news agencies that report these cases? Or just the people who repeat the information and publish it on the web?

What makes an Anti-Mormon? Is it someone who just doesn't agree with you? Or is it someone who tries their damndest to try and help you see what kind of organization you are putting your trust in?

Is it someone who has never been a member, and just wants to attack your faith? Or maybe it's someone who has been there, had similar experiences, and is now trying to point out things that are 'true, but not very useful'?

Why label people as Anti-Mormons? Aren't you, as a member of the "true church" Anti-Catholic? Don't you try to point out and reason with other people why their beliefs are wrong, or incomplete? Do you ever spend time trying to persuade people to see the logic of your arguments and sway their beliefs? So, what makes Anti-Mormons so different from YOU?

If I could accomplish one thing in my life, it would be to help someone, anyone, understand that there are things the Mormon church would have you live your whole life never knowing, that they will go to great lengths to lie about, cover up and deny in order to maintain the base. And I cannot stand around here letting that go unchecked and unnoticed. I see people in bondage, trapped in a faith-system that isn't honest with their members, that creates fear of outsiders, and encourages blind faith and loyalty to their leaders. My blog will continue, into infinity, until I can help my family understand what I have come to know about the church, and until someone rises to the challenge of answering each and every one of the charges I have brought against it, in a fair, balanced, logical manner. All I have received so far is excuses. That's not going to change what I know for a fact. Faith has NOTHING to do with facts. And no amount of faith can change the facts, no matter how hard you deny the truth- one day the facts expose the fraud.



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