I know Joseph denied polygamy many times, but has any other church official? Now with the essay it would show that TSCC lied?

Larry King (whose wife was Mormon) interviewed Gordon B. Hinckley on his nationally broadcast television show Larry King Live on September 8, 1998. He asked Hinckely about polygamy. Hinckley said: "When our people came west they permitted it [polygamy] on a restricted scale."

Here's a quote from the pamphlet "The Truth About the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints" published by the Public Affairs Department of the church in Salt Lake City. This pamphlet was widely distributed to non-Mormons as a first introduction to Mormonism:

"During the early years in Utah, some members of the Church practiced polygamy, patterned after similar Old Testament practices, which they considered to be a religious principle revealed by God to the Church founder, Joseph Smith."

Notice it says it started in Utah, implying that Joseph Smith did not practice it himself.

From the Mormon Newsroom, official voice of the church
( http://www.mormonnewsroom.org/topic/polygamy ):

"The standard doctrine of the Church is monogamy, as it always has been, as indicated in the Book of Mormon (Jacob, chapter 2)" Although the article says that JS instituted it, it doe not say that he practiced it.

This is a case of lying by omission. Hinckley didn't specifically say Joseph didn't practice polygamy, but he said a few things which would lead people to assume he didn't, and I'm sure he was fully aware of what he was doing.

A couple of weeks ago, I had cited a similar statement as it had appeared on the church's website:

http://exmormon.org/phorum/read.php?2,1431489,1431489#msg-1431489

If I had the time, I would like to track down the origin of false assertions like those. Obviously, some church writer originated the lie.

A companion lie is some variation or combination of "Polygamy was practiced because so many men were killed" or "because more women than men joined the church" or "there were more women than men in Utah in the early days."

I've tracked those lies down to the seminary textbook "The Restored Church," first published in 1936. The lies are repeated in my 1977 edition. The author, William Berrett, cites BH Roberts Comprehensive History, vol. 3, p. 291, but I've been unable to locate Roberts' exact quote.

Tracking down the origins of those false statements would be a good research project for someone who has the time. Maybe somebody like Sandra Tanner's already done it, and I just haven't come across it yet.

Apostle John Taylor, later to become 3rd president of the LDS denied the practice in 1850 after being accused of same by a Methodist minister. Here is a quote from his rebuttal:

"We are accused here of polygamy... and actions the most indelicate, obscene, and disgusting, such that none but a corrupt and depraved heart could have contrived. These things are too outrageous to admit of belief

Taylor then quoted the following from the articles of faith.

‘We declare that we believe that one man should have one wife, and one woman but one husband, except in the case of death...’"

At the time of this denial Taylor had 11 polygamous wives.

I believe many apostles (when apostles used to serve full time missions) denied plural marriage. This John Taylor incident was recorded in writing, but I'm sure every apostle and other missionary lied about the Mormon practice of polygamy.

European clergy were aware of polygamy and warning their congregations of the Mormon missionaries and their practice of polygamy. Had LDS missionaries been honest about this practice during the European missionary period converts would have been very few.

I thought that they all denied it for a few years after they came out West. Eventually BY owned up to it.

Enjoy. It's a beautiful sight to behold:

"Fellow Ex-Mo's, get a load of the spin-doctoring, convoluted thinking, and mental gymnastics employed below to apologize for early Mormon leaders' denials of polygamy.

"Randy [J.] wrote:

"'Until 1852, the official policy of the Utah LDS church concerning "plural marriage" was to deny that they practiced it, and condemn all those who accused them of practicing it.'

"[Mormon apologist] Guy Briggs wrote:

"'And what was it that happened in 1852 to change things? Oh yes, it was that little thing about presenting it in General Conference for the sustaining vote of the membership, making it official Church doctrine. That's it.'

"Randy [J.} wrote:

"'The subject under discussion here is whether or not early Mormon leaders denied or lied about teaching or practicing polygamy before 1852. Since you concede that LDS leaders first publicly admitted the practice of polygamy in 1852, you are by default conceding that they denied or lied about it before 1852. Also, since you admit that polygamy wasn't 'sustained' by the membership until 1852, you concede that all polygamy practiced before that date was illicit and unapproved--since that is the same standard you use for such items as the 'Adam-God' doctrine.

"'In other words, the corporate Church didn't practice polygamy until then, although someof the leaders did.

"'Although most Nauvoo-era polygamists were leaders, some others just happened to be in Joseph Smith's circle of people whom he thought would go along with the illegal, immoral practice. As William Law said in his 1887 interview with Wilhelm von Wymetal:

"'In what manner would Joseph succeed to keep you and others from knowing what was going on behind the curtain?'

"'Marks, Yves, I and some others had, for a long time, no idea of the depravity that was going on. This was simply the result of a very smart system adopted by the prophet and his intimate friends like Brigham Young, Kimball and others. They first tried a man to see whether they could make a criminal tool out of him. When they felt that he would not be the stuff to make a criminal of, they kept him outside the inner
circle and used him to show him up as an example of their religion, as a good, virtuous, universally respected brother.'

"In other words, since polygamy was illegal in Illinois, and directly contradicted LDS policy, those who accepted Smith's secret, illegal, immoral practice (such as Young and Kimball) were of an immoral or criminal bent. But Law, Marks, and
others---the honest, moral men who opposed polygamy--- are ironically viewed today as 'sinners' by Mobots like yourself.

"Law, a prominent Nauvoo businessman, was solidly devoted to Smith until mid-1843. During the Bennett scandal, he quickly came to Smith's defense, reassuring the Saints that Church leaders did not condone 'spiritual wifery' or any such behavior. Smith held his counselor in such high esteem that he included him in the first small group of male initiates to the endowment ceremony in May 1842. And Law rendered much moral and financial support to a discouraged Smith when Missouri officials were attempting to extradite him on the Boggs case.

"'By early 1843, however, Law began to waver in his commitment to Smith. Initial difficulties between the two centered on business matters. . . .But a deeper source of the Laws' disaffection was their detestation of polygamy. In an 1887 interview William explained that Hyrum Smith had shown him the "revelation on celestial marriage" in the fall of 1843. "Hyrum gave it to me in his office," Law said, and "told me to take it home and read it. . . . He and Jane "were just turned upside down by it" . . . William took the document directly to the prophet and commented that it was in contradiction to the Doctrine and Covenants. Smith noted that the section on marriage in the Doctrine and Covenants was "given when the Church was in its infancy, when they were babes, and had to be fed on milk, but now they were strong and must have some meat. He seemed much disappointed in my not receiving the revelation," William wrote. "He was very anxious that I would accept the doctrine and sustain him in it. He used many arguments at various times in its favor.' ("Mormon Polygamy: A History," Richard van Wagoner, pp. 64-65)

"Thus we see that Smith kept his own counselor in the First Presidency in the dark about polygamy, even allowing Law to naively file an 1842 affidavit swearing that Bennett, rather than Smith, was the originator of 'spiritual wifery.' And because Law opposed Smith's illegal, immoral, secret, contradictory polygamy practice, Smith assassinated his character and excommunicated him in absentia; and Law, the honest man in the case, has become the 'bad guy' to Mobots like yourself.

"The above passage also shows that Smith acknowledged the authority of theArticle on Marriage,' as published in the 1835 D&C, but Smith treated it as 'milk' doctrine that was to be replaced by the 'meat' of polygamy. The fact that Smith acknowledged the efficacy of the 'Article on Marriage' refutes the fallacious assertion which you and Woody Brison have repeated, that Smith did not approve of the 'Article on Marriage,' which specifically prohibited polygamy.

"Official Church doctrine was monogamy, as stated in the Book of Commandments.

"And that fact of history makes Smith's secret polygamy practice contradictory to 'official Church doctrine.' You, more than any other Mobot on ARM, have repeatedly stated that no teaching or practice is "official" unless it is agreed on by the First Presidency and the Q12, and approved by the sustaining vote of the Church members. But your above silly remark tries to justify Smith's attempt to have one "approved" standard of behavior for public consumption, and an opposite, secret, 'unapproved' standard of behavior for the benefit of a few elite leaders. Those of us who live on Planet Sane call that 'hypocrisy.'

"'. . . [N]either shall anything be appointed unto any of this Church contrary to the Church covenants. For all things must be done in order, and by common consent in the Church . . . ' (D&C 28:12-13.) Smith's secret polygamy practice
contradicted his own 'revelations,' and your support of his secret, contradictory practice makes you as hypocritical as he was.

"Since neither Smith's polygamy practice, nor his 'revelation on celestial marriage' were approved by the First Presidency or the Twelve, (or even known about by many of them), nor sustained by the Church membership at any time during Smith's life, his secret teaching and practice of it ran directly against the principles of 'common consent' that supposedly governs Mormon policy.

"At various times, Oliver Cowdery, Sidney Rigdon and William Law were Joseph Smith's counselors in the First Presidency; and William Marks was the Nauvoo Stake and High Council President, which at that time, was the governing body
of the Church, rather than the Quorum of the 12. Since all of those men were strongly against polygamy, Smith's secret polygamy practice ran counter to the laws and orders of the Church which he himself established. As I've documented for you many times, when Smith tried to have his 'revelation on celestial marriage' sustained by the High Council on August 12, 1843, his attempt was defeated:

"'In early 1843 Austin [Cowles] . . . .played an important role when a storm of opposition confronted Joseph Smith in the summer. On July 16 Smith preached, denouncing internal traitors, and Willard Richards, writing to Brigham Young,
guessed that the church president was referring to William Marks, Austin Cowles and Parley P. Pratt. These men--the Nauvoo Stake President, his First Counselor, and an eloquent Apostle--would be a serious obstacle to Smith, despite his charismatic authority and ecclesiastical position, especially when one considers the dominance of central stake leadership in early Mormonism.

"'Soon William Law, a counselor in the First Presidency, would be another formidable opponent.

"'Their opposition became public when Hyrum Smith read the revelation on polygamy, presently LDS Doctrine and Covenants 132, to the Nauvoo High Council on August 12. Three of the leading Brethren opposed it: William Marks, Austin
Cowles and Leonard Soby. Considering the secrecy of polygamy, it is remarkable that Hyrum would announce it even to the high council. It is also remarkable that Marks, Cowles and Soby would openly reject it. This was awatershed moment in Latter-Day Saint history.

"'Undoubtedly, Austin soon saw that he could not function as a Church leader while he and Marks were opposing one of Joseph Smith's revelations so bluntly and completely. On September 12, according to the High Council minutes, "President Austin Cowles resigned his seat in the Council as Counselor to President Marks which was accepted by the Council." Ebenezer Robinson later wrote that Austin "was far more outspoken and energetic in his opposition to that doctrine [polygamy] than almost any other man in Nauvoo." After resigning his presidency, he 'was looked upon as a seceder and no longer held a prominent place in the Church, although morally and religiously speaking he was one of the best men in the place." . . . Toward the end of April 1844, the anti-polygamy dissenters began organizing a new church. William Law was appointed President and selected Austin Cowles as his First Counselor. Not surprisingly, Austin was "cut off" from the main LDS Church for apostasy soon thereafter, on May 18. He then helped write the fateful first and only issue of the "Nauvoo Expositor," the paper which so infuriated Smith with its criticisms of him and public discussion of polygamy. It appeared on June 7, with an anti-polygamy affidavit by Cowles on the second page. The destruction of the "Expositor" press, engineered by Smith, set off a chain of events that
led to his martyrdom.' ("In Sacred Loneliness: The Plural Wives of Joseph Smith," pp. 549-50)

"The Nauvoo High Council's failure to sustain the 'revelation on celestial marriage' should have brought an end to the practice, if the LDS Church operated according to its stated rules of order; but to the contrary, Smith retaliated against those who refused to sustain his heinous practice by having his pro-polygamous minions swear false accusations against them, assassinating their characters, and excommunicating them in absentia. These actions of Smith's show that the rule of 'common consent' in the LDS Church is a sham, and that Joseph Smith alone held absolute power.

"Like Law and Marks, Austin Cowles had his character assassinated, and was accused of sexual sins, simply because he opposed Smith's secret sexual practices. And to this day, Mobots like Woody Brison believe that those men were all libertines, because Woody believes the demonstrable liar Joseph Smith, rather than the men who sought to expose the liar.

"Also, in both Taylor's speech and the Section CI, "polygamy" is also linked to 'fornication.' Any first-year programming student can tell you that if any of the conditions of the IF are false then the whole statement is false.

"You're a liar. Taylor SPECIFICALL DENIED ANY AND ALL SORTS OF NON-MONOGAMOUS MARRIAGE SYSTEMS [emphasis added] in his debate:

"'We are accused here of polygamy . . . and actions the most indelicate, obscene and disgusting, such that none but a corrupt and depraved heart could have contrived. These things are too outrageous to admit of belief; . . . I shall content myself by reading our views of chastity and marriage, from a work published by us containing some of the articles of our Faith. "Doctrine and Covenants," p. 330: . . . "Inasmuch as this Church of Jesus Christ has been reproached with the crime of fornication and polygamy, we declare that we believe that one man should have one wife, and one woman but one husband, except in the case of death, . . . "' (tract published by John Taylor in England, in 1850, p. 8; published in "Orson Pratt's Works," 1851 edition)

"If you weren't a dishonest spin-doctor, you would realize that Taylor quoted from the 'Article on Marriage' to support his lie: 'we believe that one man should have ONE WIFE, and one woman but ONE HUSBAND, EXCEPT IN THE CASE OF
DEATH' [emphasis added]. Taylor did not qualify his statement with 'fornication,' as you deceitfuly attempt to do; he stated uncategorically that his Church's published rules allowed for only one wife, unless she died.

"Taylor's 'inspiration' for such deceit was obviously Joseph Smith's lie of May 6, 1838: 'Do the Mormons believe in having more wives than one? No, not at the same time. But they believe that if their companion dies, they have a right to marry again.' ("Teachings of the Prophet Joseph Smith," p. 119)

"The same verbiage was used to deny polygamy again in the 'Times and Seasons,' vol. 6, p. 894 (May 1, 1845): 'As to the charge of polygamy, I will quote from the Book of Doctrine and Covenants, which is the subscribed faith of the church and is strictly enforced. Article of Marriage, sec. 91, par. 4, says, "Inasmuch as this Church of Christ has been reproached with the crime of fornication and polygamy, we declare that we believe that one man should have but one wife except in the case of death when either is at liberty to marry again."'

"Thus we see that the 'Article on Marriage' was nothing more than a smokescreen--an 'official policy' that was used to hide the secret, opposite practice of polygamy. . . .

"Church leaders, Taylor included, did not believe that plural marriage was fornication. Adultery either, for that matter.

"Both the laws of the state of Illinois and the published laws of the LDS Church stated that plural marriage was fornication and prohibited. If plural marriage, and thus fornication, was not illicit and immoral, neither Taylor nor any other Mormon leaders would have had to lie about it.

"The argument might be made that they were mistaken--but they certainly weren't lying about the fornication part.

"Since plural marriage was illegal in Illinois and Taylor was secretly practicing polygamy at the time, and Mormon plural marriage included sexual relations, then plural marriage was indeed illegal fornication. What they BELIEVED [original emphasis] is irrelevant, just as Osama bin Ladin's 'belief' that he is led by God is irrelevant to the issue of whether his activities are illegal and immoral.

"Lying is when one deliberately makes a statement one knows is untrue.

"Since Taylor quoted from the "Article on Marriage" in his debate, which specifically forbade more than one living wife, while he was simultaneously a 'husband' to seven living 'plural wives,' his statement was indeed a lie.

"Thus, the 'IF (polygamy AND fornication)' statement [original emphasis] tests false--because 'fornication' was false (at least, in their minds) regardless of whether polygamy was true or not.

"What was 'in their minds' is irrelevant. If they had sex with their 'plural wives,' they were fornicators and adulterers, according to the laws of Illinois and of the LDS Church. If they didn't think so, they wouldn't have lied about it.

"As quoted by Steve:

"'We [that is, the Church] are accused here of polygamy,... AND [emphasis mine] actions the most indelicate, obscene, and disgusting, such that none but a corrupt and depraved heart could have contrived.'

"In other words, enemies of the Church were spreading lies about plural marriage.

"False. People who got wind of polygamy, such as Law, Marks, Cowles, etc., were disgusted by it, and sought to expose the TRUTH [original emphasis] about it. The liars were Smith, Taylor and other polygamists, as the documentation clearly shows.

"They weren't content to just tell the truth - that certain of the leaders were practicing it--they felt the need to embellish and distort the truth.

"Here is your latest attempt to 'spin' the case away from the Mormons who were lying, and focus on 'embellishments and distortions' of those who exposed it:

"Since Mormons such as Smith and Taylor were obviously blatantly lying about polygamy, why do you have any problem with 'embellishments and distortions' of their opponents? Do you hold the exposers of polygamy to a higher moral standard than you hold the 'prophets of God?' No need to answer, you've shown many times over the years that the answer is 'yes.'

"Girls being imported from the farthest reaches of the Eastern Hemisphere, communities of communal wives, 'Cloistered Saints' or "Saints of the Black Veil.' Leaders of the Church had every right to deny these 'actions most indelicate, obscene, and disgusting' because they were untrue.

"Your attempt to shift the conversation on to perceived 'embellishments' does not wash away Smith's or Taylor's bald-faced denials of ANY SORT OF NON-MONOGAMOUS MARRIAGE SYSTEMS. What you cannot get through your brick-wall skull is that Mormon leaders, until 1852, CATEGORICALLY DENIED ANY AND ALL TYPES of marriage relationships EXCEPT for monogamy. THAT IS THE ISSUE. Your repeated drumming up of perceived 'embellishments' and 'distortions' of anti-polygamists pale in comparison to the bald-faced lies of Mormon leaders. [original emphasis]

"You are apparently too dense to realize that Joseph Smith's categorical denial of polygamy on May 6, 1838, occurred six years before your perceived 'embellishments' and 'distortions' of the 'Expositor' in 1844; and Taylor's categorical denial of polygamy in 1850 was six years AFTER the 'Expositor,' and half a world away, in England. Thus, Smith's and Taylor's denials of polygamy could not possibly have been due to your perceived "embellishments" and 'distortions' of Bennett, Law, etc.

"In fact, one of the earliest allegations that Smith was secretly advocating a 'community of wives' came not from'"anti-Mormons,' but from 'Gold Plate witness' and Church historian John Whitmer, in 1838, which Smith denied even then.

"Mormon converts in England had heard the rumors about Nauvoo polygamy, but the apostles like Taylor, who were overseeing the missionary work there, steadfastly reassured them that the rumors were false. Then, in 1852, when the main body of Mormons had settled in Utah, seemingly safe from prosecution, they reversed themselves and publicly admitted polygamy;

"That reversal caused thousands of European Mormons to leave the Church because they were disgusted at having been lied to by Church leaders for years. I recommend you read Fannie Stenhouse's 'Tell It All' to see how LDS Church leaders' lies affected Mormon success in Europe for years.

"But did they have the duty to reveal all that they knew?

"There is a difference between not revealing all you know and stating the opposite of what you know to be truth. That is what Smith and Taylor did, and it is called 'lying.' If, when Smith or Taylor were asked about polygamy, they replied 'no comment,' that would fall in the category of 'not revealing all you know.' But they specifically denied teaching or practicing anything other than monogamy, and that was a lie.

"I think that's the real question here. In court, the witness is sworn to tell 'the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.' Does that mean that a Doctor is obligated to reveal 'the whole truth' about his patient? No, it does
not. Does that mean an attorney is obligated to reveal 'the whole truth' about his client? Again, no. Must a wife reveal the 'whole truth' about her husband and testify against him? Still no. Does the witness have the obligation to tell the'"whole truth' if it incriminates him? No, and the right is constitutionally protected.

"In your examples, if someone is asked a question, and they decline to answer, that is their right and no can call them a liar if they don't respond, In other words, 'pleading the Fifth.' In contrast, Smith and Taylor were asked specifically
about whether they practiced polygamy, and they gave answers that were contrary to the truth. And that, Oh, Brickwall, is called 'lying.' Your inability to perceive that distinction tells us as much about the level of your own morality and honesty as this entire subject tells us about Smith's and Taylor's.

"Or how about Peter, James and John, descending the Mount of Transfiguration when Christ instructed them to ' . . . tell the vision to no man, until the Son of Man be risen from the dead. . . .?' Did they have the obligation to reveal the experience in direct disobedience to the Saviour's command?

"What an utterly invalid analogy. For your analogy to have any relevance whatsoever to the issue under discussion, Jesus and the apostles would have had to be involved in some illegal activity that they didn't want revealed, the apostles would have to be asked specifically the question you pose, and the apostles would have to give a response that was contrary to the truth. That story doesn't relate at all to the specific questions asked of Smith and Taylor, or excuse their false responses.

"And, since later Mormon leaders have admitted that early Mormons lied about polygamy, your spin-doctoring for them is moot.

"Best Regards, Guy.

"Randy J."
__________


Take a much-deserved bow, Randy J.!

:)



Edited 5 time(s). Last edit at 12/02/2014 09:28AM by steve benson.

They certainly denied it after the manifesto, but were all liars. They still did it for quite a while.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 11/30/2014 08:03PM by rationalist01.

They officially denied it in Europe until the mid 1850s. New converts were assured that was all anti Mormon lies. They got quite a surprise when they crossed the Atlantic.

"Orson Pratt...was selected to introduce the doctrine officially during a
church conference on 19 August 1852.....church leaders recognized the
difficulties in convincing the non-Mormon populace of the divine origin of
Smith's revelation.....European Mormons were evidently aghast at the church's
announcement of polygamy. English missionary Thomas D. Evans noted that the
Saints had 'heard nothing of that principle, and it brought on a great deal of
persecution.' His future wife, Priscilla Merriman of Tenby, England, related a
scene which may have been typical of the reaction. One of the Mormon girls in
her branch had come to her 'with tears in her eyes' asking if it were true
'that Brigham Young has ninety wives?' Thomas B. Stenhouse, also a Mormon
missionary at the time, later wrote that during the first six months polygamy
was preached 1,776 British Saints left the church." ("Mormon Polygamy: A
History," Richard van Wagoner, pp. 85-86.)

It's been a cover-up, secret, hush-hush; dont ask dont tell; deny (to protect the profit/chirch/yerself!) or lie if you have to, since day one. Many have pointed to this already in this thread. At the end of the day, they don't really know what to do.

From the beginning to the end Mormons high and low have and will often deny/ lie/ not know (the real/ whole stories)/ change the subject and/ or be surprised and/or curious, if not OUTRAGED upon discussing-learning just some of these facts and truths (if they only want to know - open their ears, eyes, arms, and hearts, not to mention [hypnotized] minds) about JS & T.M.C. (The most disguised, disgusting, designing, distorting and mocking (physically and spiritually), blasphemous, so-called (CULTural) "church".

Joseph Smith's Practices (JSP) -[polygamy/polyandry/bigamy/adultery/lustfulness/manipulative/lying/cons/thievery/jealousy/envy/darkness/witchcraft/blasphemy/two-facedness/double-crossing/un-faithful/apostatehood/fraudulence/bad-habbits/ill-gains/ill-authority/egotistical] many of which remain today, to some degree or another, have just morphed into pretty websites, polished images and ["SAFE", though never meaningful, lasting or independent] passing fancies.

Shoot, when I was young you weren't even allowed to talk about Emma Smith, let alone address the whole polygamy thing.

Not talk about Emma? Because she refused to follow Brigham and worshipped with/went over to the RLDS side? She and they originally refused to acknowledge that JS engaged in polygamy, right? Was it that? Or something else?

When JS was discussed, or marriage, or her role as wife to JS, she just didn't come up by name, or at all?

Any time that someone wondered why she stayed behind and started another church, the conversation was waved away. "We're not supposed to discuss that," someone would say. "We'll find out why she did that in the Hereafter, but for right now it is something that we just don't understand. All we know is that 'Brother Joseph' said that he would descend into the depths of hell to bring her back."

Talking about Emma was not openly forbidden, it was just something you knew not to bring up, like your pedophilic uncle or something.

Maybe that's another way to put it, possibly more accurate. I only remember that all conversations that crept into the Emma question were waved away, the tack of the conversation changed.

Whether there were official denials or not the fact remains that members were encouraged to believe that Emma was Smiths only wife.

I well remember just a few years ago, mentioning Smiths 30 odd polygamous wives to my Mormon (thankfully now ex-Mormon) ex-wife. She literally screamed back at me,

“That’s an anti Mormon lie, he had just the one wife. Polygamy was started by Brigham Young”

I wonder where she got that idea from if it wasn’t from the LDS?

Let's not overlook the obvious. Yes, there was a church leader who denied it. His name was Joseph Smith.

In an unending effort to twist history and turn it on its head, the Mormon Church dishonestly declares (despite mountains of documented evidence to the contrary) that its 1890 "Manifesto" ended, dead in its tracks, the Mormon practice of polygamy. As is so often the case, the historical record speaks loudly and clearly to the contrary.

If the Mormon Church's assertion was actually true, then the Mormon Church and its loyally-lying apologists need to explain why most Mormon polygamists in the Manifesto era (with the benefit of Mormon Church's clearly expressed and well-understood blessing) continued to practice multi-wifery in violation of the Edmunds-Tucker Act of 1887 (which disincorporated LDS Inc. for its crime of fostering polygamy).

Indeed, Mormon polygamists of the 1890s and early 1900s continued their multi-wifing ways precisely because they had the wink-and-a-nod support of none other than their LDS Church presidents--leaders who lied for the Lord under oath (and wherever else they felt they needed to) about Mormonism's supposed abandonment of its heavenly-harem herding.

Let's kick some behinds and take some names.
_____


--Mormon Church President Woodrow Lies About Abandoning Polygamy While Authorizing Its Continued Practice--

Since Woodruff officially started the Big Lie, let's start with him in step-by-step debunking it.

**Woodruff’s Lie That the Manifesto Only Banned Future Polygamous Marriages**

Woodruff, as Mormon Church president, asserted that the cessation of polygamy only applied to future marriages:

"This [1890] Manifesto only refers to future marriages, and does not affect past conditions. I did not, I could not, and would not promise that you would desert your wives and children. This you cannot do in honor."

(Marriner W. Merrill, diary entry, 1890-10-06, in LDS Church archives, cited in B. Carmon Hardy, "Solemn Covenant: The Mormon Polygamous Passage" (Urbana, Illinois: University of Illinois Press, 1992) p. 141)

What the record actually shows:

**Woodruff’s Continued Encouragement and Authorization of Post-Manifesto Polygamous Marriages—from Behind an Unsaintly Scheme of Cover-up and Distortion**

As historian D. Michael Quinn notes in his essay, "LDS Church Authority and New Plural Marriages: 1890-1904" (the publication of which led directly to Quinn's excommunicated), Mormon Church president Woodruff clearly did not view the 1890 Manifesto as banning future polygamous marriages.

Quite to the contrary, the historical record shows that under Woodruff’s direction the Mormon Church continued to perform multi-wife wedlock in private, while Woodruff continued to lie about it in public.

Quinn unmasks the grand Mormon façade which Woodruff and his co-conspirators constructed in a truth-impaired design to hide from public view the reality Mormonism's post-Manifesto non-monogamous marriages:

"On 24 September 1890, President Wilford Woodruff issued his famous Manifesto which stated in part:

"' . . . [A]nd I deny that either 40 or any other number of plural marriages have during the period [since June 1889] been solemnized in our temples or in any other place in the Territory,' and concluded, 'And I now publicly declare that my advice to the Latter-day Saints is to refrain from contracting any marriage forbidden by the law of the land.'

"The Church-owned 'Deseret Evening News' editorialized on 30 September [1890]: 'Anyone who calls the language of President Woodruff's declaration 'indefinite' must be either exceedingly dense or determined to find fault. It is so definite that its meaning cannot be mistaken by any one who understands simple English.' On 3 October it added, 'Nothing could he more direct and unambiguous than the language of President Woodruff, nor could anything be more authoritative.'

"A few days after this last editorial, the Church authorities presented this 'unambiguous' document for a sustaining vote of the General Conference. Yet during the next 13-and-a-half years, members of the First Presidency individually or as a unit published 24 denials that any new plural marriages were being performed. The climax of that series of little manifestoes was the 'Second Manifesto' on plural marriage sustained by a vote of a general conference. President Joseph F. Smith's statement of 6 April 1904, read in part:

"'Inasmuch as there are numerous reports in circulation that plural marriages have been entered into contrary to the official declaration of President Woodruff, of September 24, 1890, commonly called the Manifesto . . . I, Joseph F. Smith, President of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, hereby affirm and declare that no such marriages have been solemnized with the sanction, consent or knowledge of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.'"

Way to go, Joseph. Wilford would have been so proud of you.

**Woodruff Did Not Receive the Manifesto by Divine Revelation; Rather, It Was Written for Him by Mere Mortals, Mormon and Non-Mormon Alike**

Before addressing who actually authored the 1890 Manifesto, let's dispense with the notion that God was the Penman.

Woodruff, of course, claimed that he had received the Manifest from God, declaring:

"The Lord showed me by vision and revelation exactly what would happen if we did not stop this practice [of polygamy]. . . . [A]ll ordinances would be stopped . . . . [M]any men would be made prionsers . . . ."

(Wilford Woodruff, in John A. Widstoe, "Evidence and Reconciliations," 1 vol. ed., pp. 105-06)

Unfortunately for Woodruff, eventual Mormon Church president, Joseph F. Smith, stated unequivocally that he did not regard the 1890 Manifesto as having heavenly origins, nor did he believe it constituted an order from On High to halt the practice of polygamy.

Quinn reports the confession:

“Responding to Heber J. Grant’s question in August 1891, if he regarded the Manifesto as a revelation, ‘President Smith answered emphatically no.’ [adding that] . . . he did not believe it to be an emphatic revelation from God abolishing plural marriage.’”

Further undermining Woodruff's tale that God prompted the Manifesto's command that polygamy be discontinued, Woodruff had earlier claimed just the opposite--declaring that God had revealed to him not to give into the federal government by abandoning polygamy. Apostle Abraham H. Cannon wrote in his journal of 19 December 1889 (less than a year before Woodruff issued the Manifesto):

"During our meeting, a revelation was read which President Woodruff received Sunday evening, November 24th. Propositions had been made for the Church to make some concession to the Courts in regard to the principles [of polygamy]. . . . [President Woodruff] laid the matter before the Lord.

"The answer cam quick and strong. The word of the Lord was for us not to yield one particle of that which he had revealed and established. . . . [W]e need have no fear of our enemies when we were in the line of duty. We are promised redemption and deliverance if we will trust in God and not in the arm of flesh . . . . [M]y heart was filled with joy and peace during the entire reading. It sets all doubts at rest concerning the course to pursue."

Apparently, Woodruff's God decided to reverse course.

Now, who actully wrote the Manifesto?

Woodruff insisted that God dictated the Manifesto's contents to him, saying: "I went before the Lord, and I wrote what the Lord told me to write . . . ."

(Widstoe, "Evidence and Reconciliations," pp. 105-06)

Never let the facts get in the way of a good faith-promoting story. Instead of supposedly being handed to Woodruff by God, the Manifesto was instead authored behind the scenes by assorted LDS authorities, with the assistance of non-Mormon officials from the United States government.

Quinn notes, for example, that Secretary to the First Presidency, George Reynolds, admitted to participating in the creation of the Manifesto--in collaboration with Woodruff's two First Presidency counselors, Charles W. Penrose and John R. Winder.

In addition, Quinn reports that "Lorin C. Woolley told Mormon Fundamentalists that Wilford Woodruff was not the author of the Manifesto but that it was actually written by Charles W. Penrose, Frank J. Cannon, and 'John H. White, the butcher,' revised by non-Mormon federal officials and that Woodruff merely signed it."

Richard Abanes, in his book, "One Nation Under Gods: A History of the Mormon Church," observes that the Manifesto lacked the look and feel of a genuine revelation: "Its wording and the way leaders publicly released it dramatically differed from every other 'revelation' that had been give to the Saints.

"Before being issue, this so-called 'revelation' was written re-written, edited and re-edited many times behind closed doors by various persons ranging from Mormon politicians, to LDS apostles, to non-Mormon legal advisors.

"It was addressed 'To whom it my concern,' a decidedly secular phrase that failed to hold the authority of a 'Thus saith the Lord' declaration.

"It was publicly issued as a press release from Washington by Utah's delegate in Congress, John T. Caine, rather than being presented to the congregation by Church authorities at a Church Conference, which was how other revelations had been presented.

"It was not signed by the First Presidency, but only signed by Wilford Woodruff.

"Woodruff carefully worded the Manifesto to read, 'I now publicly declare that my advice to the Latter-day Saints is to refrain from contracting any marriage forbidden by the law of the land,' which means that the entire declaration was Woodruff's personal advice, rather than a command from God. Thus, a sort of tehological loophole was give for disobedience."

(Richard Abanes, "One Nation Under Gods: A History of the Mormon Church," Chapter 14, "The Politics of Compromise" (New York/London: Four Walls Eight Windows, 2002), p. 324)

Not only did Woodruff not receive the 1890 Manifesto in a blaze of celestial glory, it was not regarded by Woodruff himself as signaling a wholesale Mormon Church suspension of polygamous practices. Despite such inner attitudes, however, Woodruff was more than willing to lie in public, as he perjuriously insisted under oath that polygamy had been completely abandoned by the Mormon Church.

Quinn writes:

"Two weeks after having the General Conference of the Church re-sustain the Manifesto on 6 October 1891, President Wilford Woodruff took the witness stand in [a] confiscation case [involving the return by the U.S. government of property to the Mormon Church, stipulated on the LDS Church's agreement to abandon, along with polygamy, the practice of unlawful co-habitation].

"He [Woodruff] made the following statements under oath which were reprinted in three editions of the 'Deseret News':

"'A[nswer, from Woodruff]: Any person entering into plural marriage after that date [24 September 1890] would be liable to become excommunicated from the Church.

"'Q[uestion]: [Per] the concluding portion of your statement [the Manifesto] . . . Do you understand that the language was to be expanded and to include the further statement of living or associating in plural marriage by those already in the status [of plural marriage]?

"'A: Yes, sir; I intended the proclamation to cover the ground, to keep the laws--to obey the law myself, and expected the people to obey the law. . . .

"'Q: Was the Manifesto intended to apply to the Church everywhere?

“’A: Yes, sir.

"'Q: In every nation and every country?

"'A: Yes, sir; as far as I had a knowledge in the matter.

"'Q: In places outside of the United States as well as within the United States?

"'A: Yes, sir; we are given no liberties for entering into that anywhere--entering into that principle. . . .

"'Q: Your attention was called to the fact, that nothing is said in this Manifesto about the dissolution of the existing polygamous relations. I want to ask you, President Woodruff, whether in your advice to the Church officials and the people of the Church, you have advised them that your intention was--and that their requirement of the church was--that the polygamous relations already formed before that [Manifesto] should not be continued; that is, there should be no association with plural wives; in other words, that unlawful cohabitation, as it is named and spoken of, should also stop, as well, as future polygamous marriages?

"'A: Yes, sir; that has been the intention."

Woodruff was lying out his Masonic garments--as proven by his private admission to a gathering of the Mormon Church's highest leaders.

Quinn recounts the moment:

". .. [A]fter he made the most explicit and authoritative public pronouncements that the Manifesto prohibited polygamous cohabitation and that excommunication was the penalty for violating the Manifesto, President Woodruff told the First Presidency and Twelve on 12 November 1891 'that he was placed in such a position on the witness stand that he could not answer other than he did; yet any man who deserts and neglects his wives or children because of the Manifesto, should be handled on his fellowship.'"

**Under Woodruff, Post-Manifesto Polygamy Continued Both the United States and Abroad**

In reality, both the solemnization and practice of post-Manifesto Mormon polygamous marriages was proceeded at various times and rates of speed, particularly in Mexico, as well (as will be detailed later) in the United States.

Quinn reports:

" . . . [T]he understanding of the First Presidency and apostles in September-October 1890 was that the Manifesto prohibited new polygamy only in the United States. The First Presidency’s secretary, George F. Gibbs, later wrote:

"'President Woodruff’s Manifesto of 1890 abandoning the practice of polygamy was not intended to apply to Mexico, and did not, as the Church was not dealing with the Mexican government, but only with our own government; and for the further reason that the Mexican government extended the hand of welcome to Mormon polygamists.'

"As regards continued sexual cohabitation and child-bearing in polygamous marriages entered into before the Manifesto, a meeting of the First Presidency, Quorum of the Twelve, and all stake presidencies on 7 October 1890 clearly indicated the scope of the Manifesto in that respect: 'President Woodruff drew the attention of the brethren to the fact that the Manifesto did not affect our present family relations, but it simply stated that all plural marriages had ceased.'"

**Woodruff Covered His Tracks by Having Others Authorize Post-Manifesto Marriages in His Behalf**

Doing most of the lying-for-the-Lord legwork in that regard was Woodruff’s First Presidency Counselor, George Q. Cannon.

Quinn writes:

“Sometime between this meeting and July 1894, he [Cannon] signed a temple recommend, ‘W.W [Wilford Woodruff’ per G.Q.C. [George Q. Cannon],’ for Hattie Merrill, daughter of Apostle Marriner W. Merrill, president of the Logan Temple. The stake presidency was the highest recommending authority necessary for temple ordinances; Cannon’s signature indicates clearly his knowledge that the marriage would be polygamous. Apostle Merrill performed the ceremony for his daughter and John W. Barnett on 16 July 1894 in the Logan Temple.

“Cannon’s act on behalf of President Woodruff . . . was the first of several unambiguously polygamous marriages Merrill performed after the Manifesto in the Logan Temple, and Counselor Cannon’s initialed endorsement was what he kept as evidence of First Presidency authorization. . . .

“According to Apostle Brigham Young, Jr., by 1895 President Woodruff had delegated all authorizations for plural marriages to George Q. Cannon. After a private conversation with Cannon in April 1895, Apostle Young wrote:

"‘Brother George and I had a pleasant chat on [the] doctrine of marriage, etc. His views are peculiar but I know the responsibility of this whole question rests upon him and how can he meet the demands in this nation? Rulers will have a heavy bill to settle when they reach the spirit world.’ Two months after this talk, Apostle Young traveled down to the Mexican border with two prospective polygamists, and ‘I furnished a guide to both men, they had their wives with them.’

**Under Woodruff, Excommunication Show-Trials Were Conducted In Order to Mislead the Federal Government**

With the Mormon Church under increasing pressure from the U.S. authorities to completely jettison the practice of polygamy, the LDS Church, under the leadership of Woodruff, began excommunicating certain polygamists, especially as the involvement of these individuals in plural marriage became matters of public knowledge.

Quinn reports:

"During 1899 . . . [p]lural marriages were being performed in Mexico and in various places in the United States but because anti-Mormons began publishing accusations of these violations of the Manifesto, Church authorities began excommunicating a few new polygamists.”

**Under Woodruff, Post-Manifesto Polygamous Marriages Were Officially Authorized by the Mormon Church Not Only in Mexico, But Also in the United States and Canada**

Despite window-dressing excommunication of selected multi-wifers, the Mormon Church did not discontinue the practice of polygamy--in either the LDS colonies in Mexico or in the United States itself.

Quinn charts the chronology of post-Manifesto Mormon polygamous unionizing taking place in Mexico, the United States and Canada:

-"From the publication of the Manifesto until November 1890, the First Presidency authorized seven residents of the United States to go to Mexico to be married there. All but one of the couples remained in the Mexican colonies. . . .

-"In July 1892, the First Presidency authorized a couple of marriages to be performed in Mexico and Canada . . . .

-"In 1893, the Presidency authorized . . . one U.S. resident to visit Mexico for a plural marriage ceremony, and . . . one was performed there for a local resident."

Woodruff was clearly involved authorizing and permitting the ongoing consummation of Mormon polygamous marriages.:

-" . . . [Although for] nearly two years, President Woodruff did not encourage new plural marriages and permitted only three United States residents and one local resident to marry plural wives in Mexico and Canada, . . . [t]hat changed in 1894. At the meeting of the Presidency and Twelve in the Salt Lake Temple on 5 April 1894, President Cannon expressed regrets that there were no provisions for polygamous marriages, to which President Woodruff replied: 'The day is near when there will be no difficulty in the way of good men securing noble wives.'

"A month later, President Woodruff wrote a letter of instruction to Apostles Brigham Young, Jr., and John Henry Smith concerning their second trip to Mexico in five months, authorizing them 'in adjusting all matters that properly come under your calling.'

“. . . Apostle Young--who had told the Mexican Saints in February that it was impossible for any man to marry a plural wife anywhere in the world and to cancel any polygamous engagements--performed at least five plural marriages there when he returned in May-June 1894. Among these plural marriages was one for Franklin S. Bramwell, then a stake high councilman, who later wrote, 'When I took my second wife I had a letter signed by President Woodruff himself and went to Mexico with a personal letter from President George Q. Cannon.'

". . . [T]here can be no question that in October 1894 President Woodruff personally authorized Apostle Abraham H. Cannon to marry a new plural wife [with Abraham Cannon writing the following]: 'Father [George Q. Cannon] also spoke to me about taking some good girl and raising up seed by her for my brother David. . . . Such a ceremony as this could be performed in Mexico, so President Woodruff has said.'

"Six months later, Wilford Woodruff gave a newspaper interview: 'I hurl defiance at the world,' said President Woodruff, 'to prove that the Manifesto forbidding plural marriages has not been observed.'

-"[Also in] 1894, the First Presidency committed themselves to the position that there were circumstances under which plural marriages would not only be permitted but also encouraged, and by the authority of the Presidency, one plural marriage occurred in Canada, six in Mexico, and two in Utah temples.

-“Th[is] pattern continued about the same in 1895 and 1896.

-“Plural marriages had ceased for six months in Mexico even for residents of the newly created Juarez Stake until two apostles visited the colonies early in 1897 and performed plural marriages for two residents. During the last six months of 1897 the First Presidency authorized seven U.S. residents to visit Mexico for plural marriage ceremonies and also authorized two ceremonies to occur aboard ship.”

" . . . [S]pecific evidence of Wilford Woodruff’s direct involvement in new polygamous marriages emerge[d] . . . [in] 1897. In June 1897, the First Presidency authorized Juarez Stake President Anthony W. Ivins to perform polygamous ceremonies in Mexico and in the fall President Woodruff authorized [apostle] Anthon H. Lund to perform two plural marriages aboard ship, one on the Pacific Ocean and one on the Great Lakes.

"President Woodruff met with Lund on 1 December 1897, apparently to authorize the aboard-ship ceremony that Lund would perform exactly one month later en route to Palestine, and Lund made the following observation: 'President Woodruff took me to one side and spoke to me concerning Mrs. Mountford. I was rather astonished.' Born in Jerusalem and raised as a Christian, Madame Lydia Mary von Finkelstein Mountford claimed descent from Ephraim and Judah, and lectured throughout the United States about Palestine and evidences for Christ’s life. She was baptized in the LDS Church shortly after her first lectures in Salt Lake City in February 1897."

-"During 1898, mounting pressures for polygamy resulted in an expansion of orderly avenues for performing new plural marriages. The First Presidency authorized nine more U.S. residents to visit the Juarez Stake for their polygamous ceremonies but visiting apostles were the only ones who would perform plural marriages for residents of the Mexican colonies who were becoming impatient that their stake president would perform plural ceremonies only for visitors who had letters from the First Presidency, not for them. Toward the end of the year, the First Presidency instructed the Juarez Stake president to perform plural marriages for worthy residents of the stake without obtaining specific authorization from the First Presidency for individual cases.

"Although lower-ranking Church members continued to travel from Utah with letters from the Presidency for their plural marriages to be performed in Mexico, during 1898 the First Presidency established still another avenue for plural marriages to be performed by an apostle in the United States for higher-ranking Mormons.”

-“The Church president stopped plural marriages in Mexico in 1899 but turned a blind eye to those still occurring in Utah and Idaho."

Abanes notes the extent of post-Manifesto polygamous marriages that occurred, desite Mormon Church denials to the contrary:

"Countless plural marriages . . . [took] place throughout Utah, Canada and Mexico." He puts the actual documented count at "262 post-Manifesto marriages between October 1890 and December 1910 involving 200 different Mormon men."

(Abanes, "One Nation Under Gods," Chapter 14, "The Politics of Compromise," pp. 325, 328; and "Notes" for Chapter 14, pp. 591n53, 593n67)
_____


--Not Only Did Woodruff Lie About Post-Manifesto Polygamous Marriages Being Authorized by the Mormon Church, He Himself Was Polygamously Wed While Performing His Lying Duties--

Quinn notes:

"Circumstantial evidence indicates that Wilford Woodruff married Madame Mountford as a plural wife," writing that "[t]he evidence seems compelling that L. John Nuttall performed a polygamous marriage for Wilford Woodruff and Madame Lydia Mary Mountford aboard ship on the Pacific Ocean on 20 September 1897. That such a marriage has never been acknowledged in the Woodruff family’s published genealogies is no argument against its existence: those genealogies also fail to mention that he married Eudora Young Dunford as a plural wife in 1877, even though she bore him a child that died the day of its birth."

Quinn also writes that “Woodruff’s nephew, Apostle Matthias F. Cowley, later told the Quorum of Twelve, 'I believed President Woodruff married a wife the year before he died, of course, I don’t know, I can’t prove it,' and still later, Mormon Fundamentalists (who had no access to the Lund diary) stated that Madame Mountford was the plural wife Wilford Woodruff married after 1890."

In short, Woodruff had a regular habit of lying about the ongoing official Mormon sanction of post-Manifesto polygamy, both in his word and in his deed.

Quinn summarizes Woodruff's history of untruthful wanderings:

"In the last year of his life, Wilford Woodruff thus maintained a public stance that was at variance with his private activities regarding polygamy. When Protestant ministers charged the [Mormon] Church with allowing new plural marriages, President Woodruff wrote the editor of the Protestant newspaper that 'no one has entered into plural marriage by my permission since the Manifesto was issued.'

"Four days after that denial was published, President Woodruff held a special meeting with the married children born to his youngest wife and had L. John Nuttall read them the revelation he had received in 1880, which stated in part: 'And I say again, woe unto that Nation or house or people who seek to hinder my People from obeying the Patriarchal Law of Abraham,' and concluded, 'Therefore let mine Apostles keep my commandments and obey my laws and the gates of hell shall not prevail against you.' One of Wilford Woodruff’s sons at this meeting was an apostle, took this reading to heart and married a plural wife three years later.

"In August 1898, a student at Brigham Young Academy in Provo went with her prospective husband to request President Woodruff’s permission to marry polygamously: 'He brushed them aside with a wave of his hand and said he would have nothing to do with the matter, but referred them to President George Q. Cannon. . . . Then they were given a letter by President George Q. Cannon to President Ivins, of the Juarez stake, and they went to Mexico' where Ivins performed the ceremony.

"The First Presidency’s office not only authorized these post-Manifesto plural marriages in Mexico as performed by the presiding authority there, but also was aware of and recorded the plural marriages that visiting apostles performed in Mexico.

"First Presidency clerk George Reynolds wrote to A. W. Ivins asking for the name of the officiator of four sealings that occurred in Mexico during March 1898 (two were polygamous) with the comment: 'I imagine it was Brother John W. Taylor,' and then he routinely recorded the ordinances in the record book of the then-defunct Salt Lake Endowment House.

"Until his death in September 1898, Wilford Woodruff maintained a public image of opposition to, a private image of official aloofness from, and a personal involvement with post-Manifesto polygamy."
_____


--Under the New Management of President Lorenzo Snow, the Mormon Church Continues Its Campaign of Lies and Cover-ups Regarding Official Sanction of Post-Manifesto Polygamy--

Despite its behind-the-scenes wink-and-nod sanctioning of post-Manifesto polygamy, the Mormon Church persisted in vehemently denying that the practice was occurring with its ecclesiatical blessing.

Quinn observes:

" . . . [I]n January 1900. . . . Church president [Lorenzo Snow] made a public denial that either new polygamous marriages or polygamous cohabitation had his or the Church’s sanction."

Yet, post-Manifesto polygamous marriages sanctioned by the LDS Church’s president were still occurring, with them being authorized in limited respects under Woodruff's successor:

"[While] Lorenzo Snow stopped plural marriages in Mexico for United States residents who needed First Presidency recommends, . . . , he simultaneously authorized an expansion of post-Manifesto polygamy that Wilford Woodruff never allowed: the performance of plural marriages by the Juarez Stake president for stake members who needed no First Presidency authorization. Since March 1898 Miles A. Romney of the Juarez Stake High Council had written three letters to Salt Lake City asking for such permission. It was not granted until October 1898 when Anthony W. Ivins began performing plural marriages for Romney and other residents of the stake."

Snow also permitted post-Manifesto polygamous marriages in the United States:

". . . B]efore performing a plural marriage in Idaho in October 1898 for Joseph Morrell, Apostle Matthias F. Cowley asked permission of President Snow who 'simply told me that he would not interfere with Brother Woodruff’s and Cannon’s work.' . . . What President Snow had done in October 1898 was stop plural marriages that required his personal knowledge and consent for specific individuals; what Ivins did in Mexico and Cowley did in the United States no longer required the Church President’s personal knowledge."

Despite ongoing indulgence and approval of post-Manifesto polygamy, Snow continued the time-honored Mormon practice of Woodruff in lying about it.

Quinn writes:

"As 1899 closed, more than seven million Americans signed a petition asking the U.S. House of Representatives to exclude B. H. Roberts from his elected seat because he was a polygamist. There were proposals to pass a Constitutional amendment prohibiting polygamy and polygamous cohabitation, and even talk of efforts to disfranchise all Mormons.

"In separate interviews with newspaper correspondents, President Snow denied that polygamous marriages 'had been performed by the Church, or with its sanction, since he became its President' and decided, as a further concession, that polygamists should promise to obey the laws against unlawful cohabitation when brought to trial.

"When this decision was challenged in a meeting of the First Presidency with the apostles, the Presiding Bishop, and the senior president of the First Council of Seventy, President Snow asked, 'Which was worse: the abrogation of polygamy or the counsel to abstain from having children?' The meeting adjourned without formal vote. A week later on 8 January 1900, President Snow issued a formal statement written for him by non-Mormon Judge George W. Bartch, which stated:

"' . . . [T]he [Mormon] Church has positively abandoned the practice of polygamy, or the solemnization of plural marriages, in this and every other State; and . . . no member or officer thereof has any authority whatever to perform such plural marriages or enter into such relations. Nor does the Church advise or encourage unlawful cohabitation on the part of any of its members.

"'If, therefore, any member disobeys the law, either as to polygamy or unlawful cohabitation, he must bear his own burden, or in other words be answerable to the tribunals of the land for his own action pertaining thereto.'”

The Mormon Church continued to covertly practice and solemnize polygamous marriages, under the protective cover of Snow's dishonest public disavowals.

Quinn lays out the case in that regard:

"While President Snow was expressing public and private denials of new polygamy in 1900, he also seemed to be giving private, retroactive approval to new plural marriages already performed. At the temple meeting of the First Presidency and apostles on 29 December 1899, Apostle Owen Woodruff reported that at Colonia Oaxaca he had sealed some couples who could not afford to travel to the nearest temple and 'now asked for authority to perform sealings in that country.' President Cannon and Apostle John Henry Smith recommended that President Snow reinstitute this authorization to perform sealings outside the temple, particularly in Mexico, and President Snow agreed. . . .

"In May 1900, David Eccles asked Gibbs to intercede on behalf of his post-Manifesto plural wife whose bishop threatened to excommunicate her for refusing to identify the father of her child.

"'President Snow said he admired the grit of the girl,' said that he did not want to know the identity of the child’s father and told Gibbs to advise the man to move to Mexico with his plural wife. Presidents Snow and Cannon wrote a letter to the polygamous wife’s bishop instructing him to accept the woman’s admission that she had given birth to a child and to make no further requirement of her or take action against her."

Snow, in fact, was engaging in active permission-granting for certain Mormons to marry polygamously while, conversely, firmly denying ever doing such a thing.

Writes Quinn:

" . . . [I]n private instructions until well into 1901, the last year of his life, Lorenzo Snow seemed resolute in his refusal to authorize the performance of new polygamous marriages. When Alexander F. Macdonald asked permission in August 1900 to perform a plural marriage for a bishop in the Mexican colonies, 'President Snow then declared that no such sealings could be performed in Mexico any quicker than in the United States, with his consent, for such marriages had been forbidden.' Apostle Brigham Young, Jr., who wanted to marry a new plural wife, recorded their conversation on 13 March 1901:

"'He said there cannot be a plural marriage solemnized in this Church without my consent and I have never given consent for this to be done since president of the Church. God has removed this privilege from the people and until He restores it I shall not consent to any man taking a plural wife; it is just as fair for one as it is for all to go without . . . . Has any one of the apostles a right to seal plural wives to men by reason of former concessions made to them by presidency? No sir, such right must come from me and no man shall be authorized by me to break the law of the land.'"

As to Snow breaking the law of the land, the record speaks for itself, as Quinn lets it speak:

"It would be difficult to compose a more explicit, comprehensive denial of sanctioned polygamy; but the fact remains that during the presidency of Lorenzo Snow in 1901, four apostles (including Brigham Young, Jr.) married plural wives, and at least one other apostle attempted to do so.

"Abraham Owen Woodruff had been courting his prospective plural wife for months and, after several private meetings with Lorenzo Snow in January 1901, he married her.

"Apostle Matthias F. Cowley performed the plural marriage an 7 April 1901 for Apostle Marriner W. Merrill. Despite President Snow’s firm refusal when Brigham Young, Jr., spoke with him about new polygamy in March, Young married a plural wife the following August. In view of Young’s lifelong compliance even with Church presidents with whom he ardently disagreed, it is virtually impossible to see this marriage as an act of deliberate insubordination.

"John W. Taylor claimed that he married two plural wives in August 1901 with the permission of the Church president; but the clearest evidence that Lorenzo Snow gave permission individually to the apostles to marry plural wives in 1901 comes from Heber J. Grant, who later wrote: 'Before I went to Japan [in July 1901] my President intimated that I had better take the action needed to increase my family,' and Grant’s notebook indicates that President Snow gave this permission on 26 May 1901: 'Temple Fast meeting--17 years since Gusta and I married--She willing to have me do my duty, and President Snow.'

"But to make the ambiguity complete, despite what Lorenzo Snow may have told these five apostles privately, he told the Quorum of the Twelve as a body at the temple meeting of 11 July 1901:

“'Some of the brethren are worrying about the matter, and feel that they ought to have other wives. Brethren do not worry; you will lose nothing. . . . Brethren, don’t worry about these things, and if you don’t happen to secure the means you would like, don’t feel disappointed.'

“In these remarks, President Snow referred specifically to Heber J. Grant who concluded that these instructions to the entire Quorum repealed the private authorization the Church president had given him in May; he 'dropped the matter' and left within a few days for Japan."
_____


--Under the Enthusiastic Multi-Wifing and Deliberately Deceitful Leadership of Mormon Church President Joseph F. Smith, Post-Manifesto Polygamy Marches On--

Quinn reports how LDS President Joseph F. Smith retrenched and then expanded post-Manifesto polygamy:

"In 1902, . . . Church president [Smith] authorized the Juarez Stake president to resume performing plural marriages for Mexican colonists, who were also having their polygamous unions solemnized by the stake patriarch and visiting apostles. . . . [T]he first of which occurred on 9 March 1902 after the two-and-a-half year suspension originally imposed upon Ivins by Lorenzo Snow.”

"The year 1903 was the climax of post-Manifesto polygamy with [official] Church authority. Anti-Mormon newspapers were accusing Mormons of new plural marriages, a young man voted in Salt Lake stake conference against sustaining a prominent post-1890 polygamist, a grand jury in Salt Lake City convened to investigate this new polygamy, and the U.S. Senate received a protest to investigate these charges.

"Yet at the same time, apostles were performing new polygamous marriages in the United States and Mexico, where both the stake patriarch and president were also officiating for residents of the Juarez Stake. The stake president had, furthermore, been authorized by the First Presidency to perform plural marriages for U.S. residents with the necessary letter from Salt Lake City. In addition, for the first time since the establishment of the Canadian settlement of Mormons, the Church president authorized local Church authority to perform plural marriages there for Canadian Mormons."

“By the fall of 1903, Joseph F. Smith had decided to expand new polygamous marriages even further. During early September 1903, he was in the Mormon settlements of Canada to reorganize the Alberta Stake and organize the Taylor Stake. Up until this time, no polygamous marriages had been performed in Canada for local Mormons; but within a week Patriarch John A. Woolf performed the first such marriage for Franklin D. Leavitt.

“Later John W. Taylor, resident apostle in Canada, said he acted as intermediary in commissioning Woolf: ‘I simply delivered a message to him from some in authority."’ Matthias F. Cowley, who was Woolf’s brother-in-law, answered a question about Woolf’s authority by saying: ‘All I know, I think a Brother Le[a]vitt went to President Smith and asked him if it would be alright and he referred him to Brother Taylor who had charge of all things in Canada.’ Supporting evidence for President Smith’s authorization of these Canadian plural marriages from 1903 onward is found in the fact that the records of these ordinances have been kept under First Presidency control.”

Mormon President Joseph F. Smith also authorized the approval of post-Manifesto polygamous unions in the United States.

Again, Quinn:

“After leaving Canada, Joseph F. Smith and his party traveled to Wyoming . . . where] Matthias F. Cowley performed a polygamous marriage for [Big Horn] Stake President Byron Sessions. When asked later about that marriage, Cowley said that he ‘had the idea that President Smith was not opposed to these marriages if it could be done without trouble with the government.’

In fact, Church President Smith was an unabashed fan of post-Manifesto polygamy and let his feelings be known.

Quinn notes:

“President Smith . . . thoroughly communicated his sentiment in favor of post-Manifesto polygamy to his secretary George F. Gibbs . . . [who] . . . proposed polygamous marriage to a woman in 1903. She responded by asking whether the Manifesto was ‘just a gesture,’ and the First Presidency secretary replied, ‘Marvelous that you can see so far.’

"Heber J. Grant later wrote that Apostle Abraham Owen Woodruff performed plural marriages in Mexico in November 1903 because Woodruff ‘was under the impression that President Joseph F. Smith sanctioned those marriages;’ and on 31 January 1904, when Ivins performed the last plural marriage in Mexico for a visiting U.S. resident, it was for John A. Silver, a business associate of President Smith who likely gave him the necessary recommend.”

Like Mormon Church presidents before him, Joseph F. Smith was an unrepentant, two-faced liar when it came to telling the truth about post-Manifesto polygamy, as Quinn demonstrates with specifics:

“Joseph F. Smith continued the familiar pattern of denying publicly what was happening privately throughout these years. More significantly, he was keeping his own counselors and half of the apostles in the dark about what he and the other half were doing to promote new polygamous marriages.

"At the temple meeting of 17 April 1902, Counselor Lund recorded, ‘Polygamy was referred to and President Smith said he must follow the example of President Snow and not give any permission to such marriages.' Apostle Clawson added the phrase, ‘within the United States’ in his diary, but even if President Smith said those words, that solved only half of the problem of what he was actually allowing despite the denial.

“In 1902, when members of the BYU board of trustees complained that the institution’s president Benjamin Cluff had actually succeeded in marrying a new plural wife, Joseph F. Smith (who had authorized the ceremony) ‘said that such a thing could not be, with the sanction of the church, and that if Cluff had done it he had done something he had no authority to do.’

“At the Salt Lake Temple fast and testimony meeting of 25 May 1902, President Smith testified to the truth of plural marriage but added, ‘at the present time there was no opportunity for any person to practice this principle.’

“More comprehensively, at a meeting on 5 June 1902 of the First Presidency and Quorum of the Twelve (half of whom had married new plural wives or had performed such marriages for others):

“’Pres. Smith denied that any plural marriages were taking place to his knowledge in the church either in U.S. or any other country. It is thoroughly understood and has been for years that no one is authorized to perform any such marriages.’

“On 19 February 1903, President Smith told the temple meeting that rumors expressed by Kanab Stake members that plural marriages were being solemnized under the sanction of the Presidency were ‘foundationless.’ At this time, the post-Manifesto plural wife of Kanab’s stake counselor-patriarch Thomas Chamberlain was secluded in the house of President Smith’s wife Julina, but the Church President told the Quorum of Twelve that he was sending two apostles to Orderville to ‘endeavor to correct any wrong impression in the minds of the people.’ The two he sent were Matthias F. Cowley (who had performed the Chamberlain plural marriage in Salt Lake City) and George Teasdale (whose own post-1890 polygamous marriage had been repeatedly described in the newspapers).

“When the Presidency and apostles discussed rumors of new polygamous marriages exactly nine months later, ‘President Smith told the brethren pointedly that he had not given his consent to anyone to solemnize plural marriages; that he did not know of any such cases, and if members of our Church have entered into such alliances, they have done it upon their own responsibility and without his approval or sanction, and they must therefore abide the consequences.’

When subpoenaed to testify before the U.S. Senate during the Reed Smoot hearings (which were called to determine whether or not Smoot should be seated in Congress whose Mormon Church was violating federal anti-polygamy statutes), Smith--to put it bluntly--lied his head off.

Quinn reviews the devastating record of deceit:

“Under oath before the Senate, Joseph F. Smith led future witnesses by example. He volunteered that he had cohabited with his wives and that they had borne him eleven children since the Manifesto, even though he said that the Manifesto ‘was a revelation to me.’ . . .

“Upon being questioned several times about whether there had been any plural marriages after the 1890 Manifesto, Joseph F. Smith testified:

“‘I know of no marriages occurring after the final decision of the Supreme Court of the United States on that question . . . and from that time till today there has never been, to my knowledge, a plural marriage performed in accordance with the understanding, instruction, connivance, counsel or permission of the presiding authorities of the Church, or of the Church, in any shape or form,’ and when asked if he had performed or knew of any post-Manifesto plural marriages:

“’Mr. Smith: No, sir; I never have.

“’The Chairman: Either in Mexico or--

“’Mr. Smith: Nowhere on earth, sir.

“’The Chairman: Do you know of any such.

“’Mr. Smith: No, sir; I do not.’

“He also testified that he had never heard an apostle publicly advocate or defend plural marriage since the Manifesto.349 Concerning the Abraham H. Cannon plural marriage in 1896, President Smith testified that he did not know when Cannon married Lillian Hamlin, that he did not marry them, that he did not know she was engaged to marry Cannon’s deceased brother, that he had never talked with George Q. Cannon about Abram’s marrying Lillian, and that none of the current apostles had married plural wives since the Manifesto. . . .

“Joseph F. Smith set a pattern for all other witnesses in the Smoot investigation by . . . risking a perjury indictment by concealing any evidence detrimental to the Church as an institution or to any individual (including himself) who acted in his capacity as a Church official in promoting post-Manifesto polygamy. As President Smith told another prospective witness in the Smoot case, ‘We should consider the interests of the Church rather than our own.’”

In the face of embarrassing revelations of the Smoot hearings, Smith decided to issue a "Second Manifesto." Abanes observes, however, that "[u]nfortunately, Smith . . . included in this declaration a blatant untruth in an apparent attempt to propagate the ongoing myth that LDS authorities were in no way connected to post-Manifesto plural marriages, saying, 'I, Joseph F. Smith, . . . do hereby affirm and declare that no such marriages have been solemnized with the sanction, consent or knowledge of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints."

(Abanes, "One Nation Under Gods," Chapter 15, "Making the Transition," p. 343)

In other words, Joseph F. Smith demonstrated a principle of doctrine central to the Mormon faith: When necessary, Lie for the Lord.

Federal invessigators picked up on the lying.

At the conclusion of the Reed Smoot hearings, the Senate Committee on Privileges and Elections submitted a report of findings of fact, which included the following:

"A sufficient number of specific instances of the taking of plural wives since the Manifesto of 1890, so called, have been shown by the testimony as having taken place among officials of the Mormon Church to demonstrate the fact that the leaders in this Church, the First Presidency and the Twelve Apostles connive at the practice of taking plural wives and have done so ever since the Manifesto was issued . . . .

"[A]s late as 1896 one Lillian Hamlin became the plural wife of Abrahm H. Cannon, who was then an apostle . . . . It was generally reputed in the community and understood by the families . . . that they had been married on the high seas by Joseph F. Smith."

With regard to the suppression of testimony by Mormon Church leaders, the Committee reported:

"It was claimed by the Protestants that the records kept in the Mormon temple in Salt Lake City and Logan would disclose the fact that plural marriages have been contracted in Utah since the Manifesto with the sanction of the officials of the Church. A witness who was required to bring the records in the temple at Salt Lake City refused to do so after consulting with President Smith. . . .

"The witness who was required to bring the records kept in the temple at Logan excused himself from attending on the plea of ill health. But the important part of the mandate of the Committee--the production of the records--was not obeyed by sending the records, which could easily have been done."

The Committee issued a scathing indictment of the Mormon Church leadership, accusing it of committing crimes at its highest levels:

". . . [N]ot only do the President and the majority of the Twelve Apostles practice polygamy, but in the case of eacn and every one guilty of this crime who testified before the Committee, the determination was expressed openly and defiantly to continue the commisson of this crime without regard to the mandates of the law or the prohibition contained in the Manifesto. . . . [T]hose who are in authority in the Mormon Church of whom Mr. Smoot is one, are encouraging the practice of polygamy among the members of that Church, and that polygamy is being practiced to such an extent as to call for the severest condemnation in all legitimate ways."

("Reed Smoot Case," vol. 4, pp. 476-82)

So much for "obeying, honoring and sustaining the law."
_____


--The Mormon Church Lied Then, and Lies Now, About its History of Polygamous Practice--

As Quinn concludes:

“Regardless of our personal views about polygamy itself, we are obliged to recognize that its practice at times required men [Mormons] revere as prophets, seers, and revelators to say and do things that do not strictly conform to our definitions of veracity and consistency.

"The resulting situation caused significant segments of the Mormon Church to function in ‘cognitive dissonance’ for prolonged periods of time. We can ignore that past; we can even deny it; but we cannot escape its intrusion upon our faithful history.”



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 12/02/2014 07:44AM by steve benson.

Whew, I think that about winds it up Steve. :-)