The Mormon Church’s odd explanation for Joseph Smith’s polygamy

Last week, the Jesus Christ Church of Latter-Day Saints announced that its founder, Joseph Smith, had as many as 40 wives.

The news itself isn’t that surprising, and subsequent assertions in the media that this was the first time the LDS Church had admitted to their founder’s plural marriages are a bit of an exaggeration.

After all, the Church had said many times before that not only did Smith practice polygamy, he received a revelation commanding him to do so in the early 1840s.

And, of course, Mormon President Wilford Woodruff received a similar revelation commanding the faith to cease practicing polygamy in 1890 — not too long after the practice was outlawed in the United States.

So the question one has to ask in light of the recent announcement shouldn’t be whether the Church has already acknowledged its history with respect to plural marriage. Instead, we should be asking what’s up with these new “revelations.”

Last week’s announcement includes the word “revelation” thirteen times, the first of which comes in the second paragraph:

After receiving a revelation commanding him to practice plural marriage, Joseph Smith married multiple wives and introduced the practice to close associates. This principle was among the most challenging aspects of the Restoration — for Joseph personally and for other Church members…Few Latter-day Saints initially welcomed the restoration of a biblical practice entirely foreign to their sensibilities. But many later testified of powerful spiritual experiences that helped them overcome their hesitation and gave them courage to accept this practice.

LDS Bishop: Harry Reid Not Worthy Of Being Mormon Because He’s A Democrat

A Los Angeles LDS bishop says Harry Reid isn’t worthy of entering a Mormon temple because of his support of Democratic issues.

LDS bishop Mark Paredes conceded Friday that, in retrospect, he could have worded his concerns about Reid, a fellow believer, “more artfully.” 

Writing on his long-standing blog at the Jewish Journal, Paredes began by describing one of the “temple recommend” questions (meant to gauge adherence to Mormon beliefs and practices) that asks members if they “support, affiliate with or agree with any group or individual whose teachings or practices are contrary to or oppose those accepted by the [LDS Church].” He then detailed his beliefs that Democrats’ support for same-sex marriage and abortion rights — along with Reid’s shilling for the gambling industry — ran in opposition to the church’s positions on those issues. 

“I have no problem with an average Mormon in the pew who supports the Democratic Party because one of its issues or positions appeals to him,” Paredes wrote. “However, occupying a national Democratic leadership position is an entirely different matter.” 

Reid may be a “wonderful man,” Paredes added, but not “a man of serious religious faith.”… 

In response to the column, LDS Democrats cried foul over Paredes using his lay position as a bishop to judge a person for his political beliefs, especially given the church’s efforts to remain politically neutral.

LDS Church 'Sad' About Salt Lake City Gay Bar's 'Dress Like a Mormon' Party: VIDEO

A gay club is making headlines in Salt Lake City for a promotion meant to take advantage of the LDS General Conference in town over the weekend, KUTV reports.

The club erected a muscular Moroni statue on its roof, posted photos of its staff as missionary "Elders" and gave them similar nametags. It is also offering liquor specials such a "Sacrament shots", "Baptism by Fireball", and "Garment Droppers" and is offering free entry to those wearing "garments, missionary nametags, or their missionary suit."

The stunt has offended at least one patron who says she'll "think twice" about going back.

An LDS Church released a statement about the promotion:

"In recent years many people in our community, including religious leaders and representatives of the LGBT community have worked hard to create greater understanding and develop more sensitivity and good will toward each other. It is sad to see events like this - deliberately designed to offend and alienate - given any kind of attention."

This Straight Mormon Guy Photobombed An Anti-Gay Rally

Justin Anderson (right) holding a sign amidst marriage equality opponents
under the Utah State Capitol rotunda.

“Inalienable rights trumps states rights!” That’s the message 22-year-old Justin Anderson held to show his support for LGBT rights during a recent rally in opposition to marriage equality for same-sex couples at the Utah State Capitol. He was likely the only marriage equality supporter there.

Dozens of people led by conservative groups gathered for the rally Sept. 18 in support of “traditional marriage” and decried families headed by same-sex parents as harmful to children.

Anderson stood with his poster among many others under the capitol rotunda, several of whom held their own signs with messages like “marriage means a mother and a father for every child” and “tradition marriage blesses children” and “a states rights issue.”

At one point during the rally, activists projected photos of same-sex couples and their children, saying the kids will “pay the price” because of married same-sex couples, The Salt Lake Tribune reported.

“The rally wasn’t just an attack on same-sex couples, but on their character,” Anderson told BuzzFeed News when reached by phone. “This was not just about opposing same-sex marriage, but it was opposing the character and integrity of the LGBT community.”

Some in attendance thought Anderson, who is of Mormon faith and a student at the LDS Business College, was there in support of the rally’s message, but many others made insulting remarks to him even before he got up the steps into the building.

Mormon Church Abused Tax Status with Anti-Gay Campaign, New Docs May Prove

Towards the end of the exhausting battle over California’s anti-gay marriage initiative Proposition 8 in 2008,documents came to light suggesting the Utah-based Church of Latter Day Saints abused and exceeded the limits of their tax-exempt status. The documents showed that the Mormon Church had been calculating a California referendum as early as 1997. But now, in preparation for a challenge to the church’s status with the IRS, gay activist Fred Karger (pictured)—former candidate for the 2012 Republican presidential nomination—is revealing a document-based smoking gun showing the referendum the Mormons were actually shooting for was California’s Proposition 22 in 2000.

Karger went public with a batch of the leaked documents at a news conference in Salt Lake City in February 2009, calling the church’s secret political machinations “Mormongate” and challenging the church’s claim that it fully disclosed its financial involvement in the Prop. 8 campaign. After all, LDS spokesperson Don Eaton told KGO-TV in San Francisco, “The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints put zero money in this.” 

LDS spokesperson Michael Otterson concurred, showing (Mormon-owned) KSL TV a copy of a filing indicating $190,000 worth of “in kind” contributions but no actual cash donations. Otterson called Karger’s news conference “grandstanding” and a “publicity stunt” that “confuses” the conversation about traditional marriage, KSL reported.

In June 2010, however, the California Fair Political Practices Commission found the church guilty on 13 counts of late campaign reporting connected to Prop. 8 and reached an agreement whereby the church admitted to spending $2,078 in an amended filing and had to pay $5,538 in fines. Some have estimated that the church raised $30 million from Mormon families for the Prop. 8 fight, along with “in kind” services such as phone banking, direct mail and more.

But, as the leaked documents show, the church learned how to raise and hide money in the run-up to successfully passing Prop. 22, which became a blueprint for other anti-gay marriage initiative battles.

Church spokesperson Scott Trotter would not say whether the documents were real, valid or leaked. “We are unconcerned about these documents,” Trotter told the Salt Lake City Tribune in March 2009. “The church’s position on the importance of traditional marriage has been consistent over the years.”

The church has not yet responded to a recent request for comment from Frontiers. (Update: a Church spokesperson did call back but well after the story was filed.)

Karger says the new documents are even “juicier” than the ones he released over Prop. 8, showing a highly adept, political organization within the church’s complicated, authoritarian hierarchy and vast business holdings. Karger contends the documents prove the Mormons exceeded the percentage of time and money allowed by the IRS for a nonprofit such as a religious organization to participate in politics.

“These documents show how the Mormon Church is such a political machine that they singlehandedly wrote and orchestrated this initiative,” says Karger. “Prop. 22— they made it happen. And that’s what’s so revealing. I was aghast at how much influence they had.”

In 1996, the California Family Code already limited civil marriage between a man and a woman, but anti-gay conservative Republican Sen. Pete Knight of Palmdale proposed legislation to close a “loophole” permitting recognition of gay marriages from other states, such as Hawaii, where the issue was hotly working its way through the courts.

As early as Aug. 20, 1996—a month before President Bill Clinton signed the Defense of Marriage Act—ElderLoren C. Dunn took a lead on the marriage issue as President of the North American West Area and as a new member of the First Quorum of the Seventy in the LDS hierarchy. He wrote a memo, “Re: Status Update on California HLM [Homosexual Legal Marriage] Legislation,” on Church stationary to Elder Neal A. Maxwell, a member of the Presidency of the First Quorum of the Seventy.

“If the legislation dies on the floor of the California Senate, one alternative would be to organize an initiative to bring the issue before the people of California in a general election,” Dunn writes. “Judging from past initiatives, it would take about $1 million to get the necessary signatures to get the initiative on the ballot and another $2-3 million to help insure its passage.”

READ MORE!

BYU Students Recovering After Horrifying Same-Sex Marriage Cards Appear On Bookstore Shelves

The diligent student staff of the Brigham Young University bookstore are relieved to have spotted and removed the ungodly cards celebrating same-sex marriage from their shelves this afternoon.

Though no reports of injuries or widespread panic were made in the very short time that the Hallmark greeting cards crassly labeled “Mr. and Mr.” and “Mrs. and Mrs.” remained in public view — it was “not long,” BYU spokeswoman Carri Jenkins tells the AP — the stench of their former presence will surely remain on the minds of many concerned students.

The placement of said cards was apparently the handiwork of an insensitive Hallmark employee tasked with regularly stocking the school’s retail shelves. As an almost exclusively Mormon school owned by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, the cards’ mere presence on school property was a direct violation of the honor code.

The AP reports: “It states that while being attracted to people of the same gender doesn’t violate the honor code, acting on those feelings is a violation.” Jenkins added that “homosexual behavior includes not only sexual relations between members of the same sex, but all forms of physical intimacy that give expression to homosexual feelings.”

Strangely enough, BYU has an Understanding Same Gender Attraction (USGA) club, and its senior president Samy Galvez can’t stop raving about “how welcoming and how loving people are [at BYU].”

Though he declined to comment on the greeting card situation, Galvez mentions that changes in the honor code now “allow students to talk about their sexual orientation without fear of being expelled.” Phew!

“Even though you know people adhere to a standard of conduct of not advocating for same-sex marriage, at the same time that doesn’t mean they aren’t capable of showing empathy,” he said.

Mormon LGBT Rights Advocate John Dehlin Faces Excommunication

John Dehlin, a Mormon advocate of LGBT rights, has said that no decision has been made on whether he will be excommunicated from the church.

Last month a top Mormon official reiterated the church's stance against same-sex marriage.

Speaking to The Washington Post, Dehlin, who runs the Mormon Stories website, said that regional Mormon church leader Bryan King told Dehlin he needed time to think and pray on whether to send the case to a disciplinary panel.

Writing on Mormon Stories, Dehlin says “that many LDS church leaders have good intentions, but I am deeply troubled by their historical and current treatment of women, racial and sexual minorities, and scientists/intellectuals.”

He also writes:

“I believe that I am being considered for disciplinary action because of: 1) the popularity of Mormon Stories podcast, 2) my support for LGBT rights within Mormonism, and for the legalization of same-sex marriage, 3) my support for Ordained Women, and 4) I believe that both local and high-level church leaders are blaming Mormon Stories for the fact that some people inevitably leave the church.”

Although Mormon officials have not specifically discussed the case, they have said the church welcomes questions and conversations about the faith.

Dehlin has agreed to no longer talk with the media about the case.

Mormon leader outlines opposition to gay marriage at church’s biannual conference

A top Mormon leader reiterated the church’s opposition to gay marriage Saturday during the church’s biannual general conference.

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints’ stance on homosexuality has softened in recent years, but this marks the second consecutive conference in which leaders took time to emphasize the faith’s insistence that marriage should be limited to unions between a man and a woman, as God created.

Scott G. Winterton, The Deseret News (AP)

Neil L. Andersen of the Quorum of the Twelve speaks during the 184th Annual General Conference of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints Saturday, April 5, 2014, in Salt Lake City.

Rick Bowmer, AP

People walk pass the Salt Lake Temple on the way to the Conference Center during opening session of the two-day Mormon church conference Saturday, April 5, 2014, in Salt Lake City.

Rick Bowmer, AP

Thousands gather inside the Conference Center during the 184th Annual General Conference of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints Saturday, April 5, 2014, in Salt Lake City.

“While many governments and well-meaning individuals have redefined marriage, the Lord has not,” said Neil L. Andersen of the Quorum of the Twelve. “He designated the purpose of marriage to go far beyond the personal satisfaction and fulfillment of adults, to more importantly, advancing the ideal setting for children to be born, reared and nurtured.”

In the October 2013 church conference, Dallin H. Oaks of the Quorum said human laws cannot “make moral what God has declared immoral.”

The church sent a letter to local leaders that includes that message, Andersen said Saturday. “As the world slips away from the Lord’s law of chastity, we do not,” he said.

During the first of five sessions held over the weekend, LDS leaders on Saturday also encouraged missionaries to stay strong amid the inevitable personal abuse they will encounter and parents to shelter their children from the damaging effects of pornography.

The conference brings more than 100,000 Latter-day Saints to Salt Lake City to find out church news and soak up words of guidance and inspiration from the faith’s top leaders. Thousands more will listen or watch from around the world in 95 languages on television, radio, satellite and Internet broadcasts. More than half of all 15 million Latter-day Saints live outside of the U.S., church figures show.

The conference is widely followed and analyzed on social media, with many using the Twitter hash tag, “#LDSconf.”

Gay marriage has been an especially hot topic in Utah since December, when a federal judge overturned Utah’s voter-approved ban on same-sex marriage. More than 1,000 gay and lesbian couples married until the U.S. Supreme Court issued a stay on marriages pending a ruling from a federal appeals court in Denver. A hearing is set there for Thursday.

Andersen is a member of the church’s Quorum of the Twelve, which is the second-highest governing body of the church. Modeled after Jesus Christ’s apostles, the 12 men serve under the church president and his two counselors.Andersen encouraged church members not to buckle under the pressure of a growing movement on social media and elsewhere by advocates who want to make gay marriage legal. He offered the example of a woman who articulated her support for “traditional marriage” on Facebook and refused to take it down despite backlash.

Andersen said church members who “struggle with same-sex attraction” should be of special concern. He said he admires people who confront this “trial of faith and stay true to the commandments of God.”

“But everyone, independent of their decisions and beliefs, deserves our kindness and consideration,” Andersen said.

The church teaches that while same-sex attraction itself isn’t a sin, succumbing to it is.

The church’s message on homosexuality has evolved since it was one of the leading forces behind California’s Proposition 8, a ban on gay marriage.

A website launched last year encouraged more compassion toward gays, implored them to stay in the faith and clarified that church leaders no longer “necessarily advise” gays to marry people of the opposite sex in what used to be a widely practiced Mormon workaround for homosexuality.

In May, church leaders backed the Boy Scouts’ policy allowing gays in the ranks. Some gay Mormons who left or were forced out of the church say they are now being welcomed back — even though they remain in same-sex relationships.

It may seem like negligible progress to outsiders, but Mormon scholars said 2013 was landmark year for the religion on gay and lesbian issues.

Mormon Church Pushing For Second Prop 8 In Hawaii

According to Mormon Church doctrine, worthy male members who marry a worthy woman in the Church’s temples are eligible to become gods and kings after the Second Coming. (The women are eligible to become goddesses and queens “unto their husbands.”) These gods and goddesses will be tasked with having numberless children in the afterlife and will form worlds of their own to reign over.

The current battle over marriage equality in Hawaii isn’t the first time the Aloha State has tried to legalize equality. Back in 1998, after the state’s Supreme Court ruled a ban on gay marriage unconstitutional, a ballot initiative went directly to the voters who chose to reject the rights of same-sex couples. And just like Hawaii’s 1998 fight—and the 2008 Prop 8 battle in California -— the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (a.k.a. the Mormon Church) is once again leading the charge against equality.

The Church has used this unique belief of the afterlife as the basis for its opposition to marriage equality. As marriage equality becomes law in a growing number of states, the Mormon Church has asserted that same-sex married couples, being unable to produce children, threaten that familial structure. It doesn’t make any difference that the religion’s ministers and clergy would never be required to perform the ceremonies for gay couples themselves, nor would the Church’s sacred buildings be required to host such functions.

It was against this backdrop that the leaders of the Mormon Church first got involved in the battle against equality in the 1990s. As I detailed in Political Research Associates’ “Resisting the Rainbow” report several years ago, the Mormon Church was acutely aware of its unpopularity among more mainstream Christian communities. Leaked letters between Mormon “apostles” and “prophets” (their highest ranking leaders) revealed a coordinated campaign they had created with the Catholic Church and Evangelicals, where the other faiths would provide a public front, while the Mormons would use their substantial wealth and volunteer abilities in the background. The campaign was an enormous success, overwhelmingly defeating advocates for justice and overriding the Hawaiian Supreme Court’s ruling.

It’s time for the Mormons to endorse ENDA

I’ve always been skeptical of the Mormons, in part based on the details of their faith, but mostly because on their visceral hatred of gays.  Nonetheless, the Mormons could wipe the slate clean by endorsing the Employment Non-Discrimination Act (ENDA), a bill to outlaw anti-gay and anti-trans job discrimination at the federal level.
As a Christian who comes from a branch of Christianity that’s been around for two thousand years, I’ve always been somewhat suspicious of the new kids on the block who only discovered their faith in the past few centuries.  (Not that I fully believe that any faith has the keys to the Kingdom, as it were.)
But when I discovered that the Mormons were viciously anti-gay, with an almost evangelical fervor to their anti-gay advocacy – with a penchant for flaunting their homophobia – my opinion of the Church of Latter Day Saints headed decidedly south.

The Mormons have spent 20 years and millions of dollars bashing gays

For the past twenty years, the Mormons have spent tens of millions of dollars, in state after state, trying to impose their anti-gay zealotry on states far outside of their native Utah.  It started in Nebraska and Alaska way back in the 1990s.  But most famously, the Mormons made their mark in California, the Mormons are given single-handed credit for making Proposition 8, the repeal of gay marriage in that state, possible in 2008.
So it’s understandable why gay Americans, and our allies, even putting aside the Christianity argument, have a problem with Mormons.  Quite simply: We have a problem with Mormons because they have a problem with us.
But it doesn’t have to be this way.

Mormon alliance with the far-right was wrong from the beginning

I never understood why the Mormons chose, so long ago, to throw their hat in the religious right ring of hate.  The Mormon leadership, for whatever reason, felt that saddling up to the religious right was the best way to guarantee their inclusion, and acceptance, in American society at large.  I’d argue that it was the worst decision they ever made. And I suspect they’ve begun to realize the same.
The Mormons aren’t unlike the Jews, in many ways.  They’re a small religious minority with a history of being oppressed, who then oppress back, often proactively, in an understandable, albeit heavy-handed, effort to guarantee they’re continued existence.  But unlike America’s Jews, most of whom have sided with liberalism, the Mormons went Republican, and even worse, evangelical.
And here’s the problem.  When you’re a minority that makes your bed with a political party, and a religious movement, that has serious problems accepting minorities, you’re never going to be welcome, ever.  Yes, the Republicans and the evangelicals will be happy to use Mormon money to push their anti-plural goals, but when push comes to shove, they don’t like you, they don’t respect you, and they’re waiting for the day to send you back to where you belong, which isn’t at their side.
The Jewish analogy again is relevant.  Evangelicals LOVE Jews and Israel.  But not because they actually love Jews and Israel.  The only reason evangelicals are such fans of Jews and Israel is because evangelicals need Jews and Israel… to die… in order for Christ to come back in the Second Coming.
That’s right, Christ will return and two-thirds of the world’s Jews will go up in flames.  That’s what the Bible says.  And evangelicals know that if the Arabs, or whomever, are permitted to push the Jews into the proverbially sea, and if it happens too soon, then there will be no Israel left that can then be destroyed (again) in order to usher the comeback of the Lord.
So, evangelicals quite literally love Jews to death. And the Mormons aren’t far behind.

Evangelicals will never accept Mormons as equals, liberals will

The Republican/evangelical embrace of the Mormons isn’t any prettier.  Let’s face it: Who do you think has a bigger problem accepting Mormonism as legit: evangelical Republicans or liberals?  Evangelicals don’t even accept Catholics as legit – they think Catholics worship Satan and that the Virgin Mary is a “whore.”  And that’s a quote.  So if they think Catholics aren’t Christians, what do you think evangelicals really think about Mormons?
Liberals on the other hand, while not terribly religious, don’t terribly care if you are.  To be liberal is to embrace diversity, be it black, white, straight, gay, male, female, Latino, Jewish, or whatever. I think the Mormons made a huge tactical mistake hitching their wagon to a load of intolerant bigots who, in the end, don’t like the Mormons any more than they like gays or blacks. 

It’s time for the Mormons to endorse ENDA

So back to ENDA.  The Mormons could take a huge step towards burying the hatchet – or more accurately, removing the hatchet from the backs of gays – by publicly endorsing a federal ENDA.
It’s not like there isn’t a precedent.  GOP Senator Orrin Hatch, who is a Mormon from Utah, just yesterday voted for ENDA in a vote before a key Senate committee.  Hatch’s conservative and Mormon credentials are unquestioned.  And he provides other Mormons, in Congress and in Salt Lake City, with the necessary cover to publicly endorse ENDA.
And the Mormons haven’t already begun to inch in this direction.  Soon after Prop 8 was passed, the anti-Mormon backlash began.  It was so fast and so furious that it quickly became apparent to the Mormon leadership that Prop 8 had become a “PR fiasco” for them.  In the ensuing years, the Mormons even launched a $6 million ad campaign to try to rectify the damage.  To no avail.
In part, the PR offensive didn’t work because the Mormons simply refused to let up on the hate.  In 2009, the Mormons joined a push to kill civil unions in Illinois. In 2012, the Mormons joined the religious right in funding hate in Africa. And in 2013, the Mormons signed on to a viciously anti-gay religious right brief to the Supreme Court supporting Prop 8. It’s difficult to be forgiven when the sinner continues the sin.

But there have been some signs of hope.  Mormon-founded Marriott corporation now supports the repeal of the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA).  The Mormons also stayed quiet when the Boy Scouts announced their decision to permit gay scouts.  Many thought the Mormons might break with the Boy Scouts over the decision, yet the Mormons did not, thus showing their tacit approval of the new pro-gay policy.
And finally, and most importantly, the Mormons endorsed a Salt Lake City gay and transgender non-discrimination ordinance that was, in essence, a mini-ENDA for Salt Lake City.  If it’s good enough for Salt Lake City – and ideologically compatible with LDS doctrine – then why isn’t it good enough for America?
What the Mormons have found over the past few years is that being pro-equality is not inimical to their faith.  On the contrary.  As numerous religions have already come to realize, if Jesus was anything, it wasn’t intolerant.
It’s not going to be easy for the Mormons to move away from the dark-side of Christianity and American politics.  Change never is.  But you’d think a people who are historically used to being stepped on would understand the dilemma posed by pro-actively stepping on others. It’s far more Christian to make common cause with the downtrodden, than to join their oppressors.
It’s time for the church of Latter Day Saints do the Christian thing and endorse ENDA.

They allow the Mormon's to use it on Saturdays

AFA's Brian Fischer: Mormons ok with gays in BSA because they want polygamy!

Even though he has "no evidence that this is the case," American Family Association radio host Bryan Fischer has figured out why the Mormon church ended up supporting the 'Boy Sodomizers of America' decision to lift the ban on gay scouts, Right Wing Watch reports, and it fits neatly into the longtime right-wing talking points that gay marriage will lead to polygamy.

Says Fischer:

"The LDS leadership, these people are smart, they're sharp, they're thinking all the time and I believe one of the reasons they may have gone soft on the homosexual agenda is that they believe that the homosexual agenda may be the secret to restoring polygamy to America and this would vindicate Mormon doctrine from the very beginning."