I'll let my fellow fact-checking sharpies sink their apostate fangs and claws into this bit of shinola. First though, all here who don't have polygamy in their ancestry might hold a shout-out on a separate thread...

http://www.sltrib.com/sltrib/news/57272299-78/lds-plural-marriage-church.html.csp

>Just days after a federal judge struck down parts of Utah’s anti-polygamy laws, the LDS Church published an official essay about its historic ties to plural marriage, including an acknowledgment that the practice persisted even into the early 20th century.

>The carefully worded article, "Plural Marriage and Families in Early Utah," was posted Monday on the gospel topics page at lds.org, the faith’s website, and spells out Mormonism’s experiment with polygamy.

>Most of the details in the piece on plural marriage are well-known to historians, but some of them may be news to longtime Mormons or new converts in the 15 million-member Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

>The practice of LDS men marrying more than one wife began with a divine revelation to church founder Joseph Smith in the early 1840s, the site says. "Thereafter, for more than half a century, plural marriage was practiced by some Latter-day Saints."

That "some" was what sent me to Costco for some new you-know-what filters and led me to ask "those who don't have polygamy in their genealogy" to speak out. I've variously read that polygamy was practiced by more than 30% of Mormon males and all of the church leadership. Some indeed...

Early 1840's? Anybody have the date of Joseph Smith's "marriage" to Fanny Alger?

Cue up their old faithful non-Mormon companion and go-to gal...

>Jan Shipps, a retired American religion scholar in Indiana and a pre-eminent expert on Mormonism, lauds the essay as a "well-done summary of what has been covered by several scholars who have spent years researching plural marriage."

>It also is a timely response to all the bad historical information on the Internet, Shipps says. "Now the people who Google a question about Mormon history will get good scholarly answers, rather than the kind that have been provided by anti-Mormons or people who are not experts in the field."



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 12/16/2013 10:10PM by SL Cabbie.

As a youngster living in Idaho Falls, I was taken
every July 24th, downtown to see the pioneer parade.

There were REAL pioneers on the floats -- old codgers
with one foot in the grave, attended by two or three
equally decrepit, white haired "plurals" from Ammon
or Rexburg.

Long about 1958-59 the REAL pioneers disappeared from
the annual parade floats and were replaced by guys
wearing fake beards and wide-brimmed hats. Their "plurals"
had also disappeared.

I suspect that all the 1950s polygamists I then saw
displayed were post-manifesto folks, celebrating forty
or fifty years of multi-wife togetherness. Pre-manifesto
polygamists would have been a mite too elderly to climb
up on the floats.

All of that disappeared about the time Sputnik got put
into the sky, and Fawn Brodie's book began to be sold
openly, without the old brown paper wrappers.

Too bad that I didn't snap any photos -- but I was too
young to own a camera.

UD



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 12/16/2013 10:28PM by dalebroadhurst.

Peggy once again reveals herself to be a blogger not a journalist.