Polygamy Is Not Doctrinal

I am active LDS and a descendant of polygamists, and I do not think that the founder of the religion, Joseph Smith Jr. was a polygamist. As a Brigham Young fan I do not think that this creates a "succession crisis" for the mainstream Salt Lake LDS Church, and I do not think Brigham Young was a "fallen prophet." I think prophets make big mistakes all the time, and that Brigham Young was aware of his own limitations as a prophet.

Brigham Young knew that his way of leading the Church and his spiritual gifts as a prophet were different from Joseph Smith Jr's. Brigham Young stated in the context of the Utah War that was beginning: 

"...They have not as good a man to deal with as they had when they had Joseph Smith. I do not profess to be very good. I will try to take care of number one, and if it is wicked for me to try to preserve myself, I shall persist in it; for I am intending to take care of myself... I am not going to interpret dreams; for I don't profess to be such a Prophet as were Joseph Smith and Daniel; but I am a Yankee guesser..." https://journalofdiscourses.com/5/17

Brigham Young led The Church in a very violent and racist era of American history. In the context of African American slavery, extermination orders, the US Military mobilizing against his people and bloody civil war, Brigham Young's sins (talking women into joining a harem, saying black people can join the church but only with limited access, having some strange interpretations of Genesis, rewriting Church history and coming up with doctrinal justifications for violence) do not seem relatively serious compared to the evils of his day. In today's world such actions would be unforgivable, but the Mormon people (a few of them black themselves) were in a run and gun battle for their survival in those days.

It is really clear that all of Joseph Smith Jr.'s public comments on polygamy before he died were against the practice, and emphatically so. He would have people excommunicated for it and then publicly describe exactly why they were excommunicated. The Book of Mormon itself is strangely anti-racist (with some of the prophets being racist and then as the book goes on those racist views are corrected by other prophets, God, etc.) It is also overtly anti-Polygamist, with the practice being condemned as "abominable." 

There's supposedly a verse in the middle of an anti-polygamy rant in Jacob Chapter 2 v 30 that says "For if I will, saith the Lord of Hosts, raise up seed unto me, I will command my people; otherwise they shall hearken unto these things." But in previous verses he just called it a "whoredom" and "abomination," so since God doesn't command people to do whoredoms and abominations, that verse must necessarily be interpreted as something like "If you are my followers and I want you to have a ton of kids, believe me, you will. Otherwise you need to avoid abominations and whoredoms anyways." No one in the vast period of time covered in the Book of Mormon is commanded to do polygamy by God.

Most of the characters focused on in the Book of Mormon believe they have descended from Israelites escaping Jerusalem in around 600 BC. In that same chapter of Jacob in the Book of Mormon, God calls David and Solomon's polygamy "...abominable before me..." Verse 30's supposed justification of polygamy particularly does not make sense in this context, because of math. The average married woman without birth control will have about 8 kids. Solomon had 700 wives. This means for Solomon to be able to keep that birth rate up to average, he needed to have 5,600 children. Similar problem by the way with Brigham Young's own polygamy. Even if only 25 of Brigham Young's 55 wives were both fertile and seducable, Brigham Young needed to have at least 200 children for his polygamy to keep up with the monogamous average... but he only had 57 children... that is only one child per wife instead of 8!

And about polygamy in the Bible, I can't find a clear case of anyone being commanded to do it. In general "going after many wives" is frowned upon in the Old Testament. In the New Testament, Christian congregation leaders are required to both be married AND to have only one wife. Taken as an over all work, The Bible frowns on polygamy as less than ideal if not sinful.

Most of the women claiming to be Joseph Smith Jr.'s wives during his lifetime made those claims decades after he was dead. Their husbands were none other than Brigham Young himself and Heber C. Kimball, his right hand man. At around this time these two had to demonstrate that polygamy was part of their religion, because they were under the scrutiny of the USA, and thus were highly motivated to prove Joseph Smith Jr. practiced polygamy. Evidence suggests they rewrote history in order to protect themselves and the Mormon people from the invading forces of the US government.

The people closest to Joseph Smith Jr. while he was alive (his brother Hyrum and his wife Emma) always maintained that Joseph was against polygamy. This is important to note because none of the people who have been DNA tested to see if they were Joseph Smith Jr. secret polygamy love children have actually turned out to be his. Hundreds of sections of the Doctrine & Covenants, only 1 supposedly supports polygamy, section 132.

Section 132 is basically in two parts, the part that is compatible with the rest of the D&C, and the part that is sex-pirate crazy. Versus 1-20 read something like this, "in regards to your questions about polygamy, understand that a one on one marriage between a man and a woman sealed together for eternity is the stuff Gods are made from." Then, no joke, starting in verse 21 the writing style totally changes to what I can only describe as a very horny pirate, who by the end of the chapter is threatening to kill Emma, "...I will destroy her..."

As critics have looked into 132 there are numerous problems with dates. The sealing power being revealed in 127 and 128, years after Joseph supposedly started using it according to 132. William Clayton is supposedly in October writing down Joseph's revelation, when he was fired as Joseph's scribe the February before for stealing money.

Some of the people spreading rumors about polygamy were specifically doing it to try to kill Joseph. Polygamy was introduced to the community through notorious scoundrel John C. Bennet. John had abandoned his family to come to live with the Mormons, and as soon as he was able to gain some status started using his plural wife scheme to seduce Mormon women. Joseph had him excommunicated but John saw himself as a rival leader of the Mormon movement, and continued to spread rumors of plural marriage regarding Joseph as to enrage the locals into wanting to kill Joseph.

It goes on and on like this... since I was a child it made sense that Brigham Young was a polygamist based on his behavior, but not Joseph Smith Jr. When the DNA came out against Joseph Smith Jr. being the baby daddy I took a controversial troll stance against the position. Now the position that he was a polygamist is not making any sense at all anymore...

There are important LDS theological concepts at play here:

1. Again, we don't believe in ex Nihilo, so that creation is the act seizing chaos and organizing it into order.
2. We don't believe in infallibility of any mortal or scripture written down by mortals. Every mortal is a work in progress for God trying to help a sinful chaotic being become a good being of His order. 
3. This is true of prophets as well as the rest of us.
4. This is true of our community as time goes on generation after generation.
5. This is evident in our doctrine of "continuing revelation."

But more importantly this is evident in our doctrine of "personal revelation." The "first principles and ordinances of the gospel" are:

1. Faith in Jesus Christ
2. Repentance
3. Baptism
4. Gift of the Holy Ghost (source of personal revelation.)

Isn't interesting how 4 is not "strict obedience to the will of the Prophet"? During the era of mainstream LDS polygamy, over 2/3 of Mormons ignored Brigham Young's hellfire and brimstone sermons about how important it was to do plural marriage. Most just said "no thanks," and passed on it. Many of them had met if not known Joseph Smith Jr. personally, who once said:

"…God is not a respecter of persons; we all have the same privilege. … We believe that we have a right to revelations, visions, and dreams from God, our Heavenly Father; and light and intelligence, through the gift of the Holy Ghost, in the name of Jesus Christ, on all subjects pertaining to our spiritual welfare; if it so be that we keep His commandments, so as to render ourselves worthy in His sight." (Chapter 10: Prayer and Personal Revelation, Teachings of Presidents of the Church: Joseph Smith, 2007.)

As the LDS Church started to grow in popularity in the late 90's, the Warren Jeff (polygamist and child sex predator) controversy broke out, raising many questions about Mormons in popular culture. This is the same time I was on my mission in Western Pennsylvania.  The prophet of that time was Gordon B. Hinkley, who said on Larry King Live "...I condemn polygamy because I believe it is not doctrinal..."

In the end, the Prophet Gordon B. Hinkley openly disagreed with the Prophet Brigham Young on the doctrine of polygamy. This justified all those who had disregarded Brigham Young's suggestions to engage in polygamy. The lesson for LDS and non LDS alike is simple: don't be a lemming. God gave you a conscience, and He expects you to use it. 

Haves vs Have Nots

The activist (open source) game development team I am on has recently unleashed a tittle wave of productivity and are about to complete one project we have been working on for over 10 years (2nd Edition of the Squawk Role-Playing Game.) But maybe the most important project I have been working on lately is the Resilience Role-Playing Game, which I am hoping to have a hard-copy book version of this year. One insider knows there is a significant creative difference between how the online version looks and what the final product will look like, and has question this decision.

While the book uses photographs and a lot of them, the website only uses illustrations. Each and every photograph is being personally vetted by me to make sure it's 100% legally legit before I use it (we've been doing this open-source thing since the mid 90's and have a lot of experience with copyleft.) Yet I refuse to use photos on the website because of the Ghetty Images "extortion scheme."

Ghetty Images (or someone on behalf Ghetty Images) has some kind of bot that constantly crawls the web looking for people who use images that Ghetty Images considers themselves to have control of. Once they find such an image, if that website does not have a pre-existing agreement with them, Ghetty Images sends a letter to the web provider shutting down the website. Ghetty Images always asks for thousands of dollars to establish an agreement with them so that your website isn't shut down. The trick is they ask for a few thousand dollars less than it would take for you to get a lawyer. This has never happened to one of my projects, but it did happen to minority immigrant friends of mine who own an auto glass repair shop in Seattle in the late some time around 2009.

The image in question was:

1.  from a website that specifically gave anyone on the internet permission to use the image (Ghetty Images has a way of purchasing rights to collections of these kinds of images,) and 
2. was heavily modified as to without that permission be within the terms of "fair use." 

However the Ghetty Images bot discovered the photo, and the ACCUSATION was made. The ACCUSATION does the damage regardless of guilt or innocence.

When I was doing an internship in the Education programs at the King County Jail on 5th Ave in Seattle (2003-2004) through Americorps, I saw numerous people do something called "a plea for time served." Let's say a cop ACCUSED you of some wrong doing and throws you in jail. While you wait for your lawyer, the more law abiding you are, the more damage is being done to your career and your family by your absence as time goes on. After you have had some time to simmer in jail for a while, the prosecutor offers you a deal: say you are guilty, and we'll let you out of jail now, no more questions asked. If you are a career criminal with money you fight it, and probably win against their usually weak case. But if you are a law abiding working class citizen, you take that plea before you lose any more of time from your job or family than you already have.

It's the ACCUSATION that does the damage.

Back to Ghetty Images, if a lawyer typically costs $7,000 in your area, then they will ask for $3,000 to $5,000. And that's just it, law abiding working class people get criminal records in Seattle constantly for the crime of not having $7,000 to pay a decent lawyer who isn't in the cop's pocket. (Public defenders rely on the court system to give them referrals. The prosecutor is part of that system, and too many victories is going to encourage that court system to direct their referrals elsewhere.)

There's a lot of problems in Seattle with housing, addiction, income and healthcare, but those problems all impact rich and poor to one degree or another. What the rich never feel is the raw, pure injustice that happens when you can't afford your own lawyer. I know a lot of people don't like hearing this, but the difference between a have and a have not is only about $7,000.

The moral of the story is this: pick your battles. You can die on almost any hill you want to die on. However, you need to reserve your personal resources for whatever matters most to you in your life, which is probably not some hill a loud personality is waving a flag on the top of.