Talk:Mormonism and polygamy/Archive 3

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Archive 1 Archive 2 Archive 3

Non-relevant mention of John C. Bennett in Edmunds-Tucker section

Inserted in the section regarding the Edmunds-Tucker Act is a strange segment about John C. Bennett. This passage is strange for two reasons; it has nothing to do with the Edmunds-Tucker Act and is also written in a biased tone which implies that the mainline practice of polygamy was appropriate, whereas Bennett's was not. I could not think of a way to edit this segment to make it fit under the heading, but it's large enough that I don't want to delete it altogether without asking a moderator about it. I have added requests for reference, however, on statements that feel out of place, are opinion, or require backing up. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.177.233.228 (talk) 00:35, 7 September 2013 (UTC)

Land ownership

Is it not true that after many mormon men were murderd, women entered plural marriages for the sake of inheritance out west (Utah) because women could not own land for themselves at the time? I'm not positive though. Superbuttons (talk) 16:57, 3 July 2013 (UTC)

No, not true; this is yet another titillating, but unfounded speculation surrounding this issue. -- 208.81.184.4 (talk) 16:25, 10 September 2013 (UTC)

Lead image

I'm so excited to see a picture of my ancestors on this Wikipedia page, however I would like to clarify a few things. The caption “Polygamist in Utah” is not entirely accurate. In the picture the woman on the right holding the baby is my great-great-grandmother Ann (Bunting) Ward. She is pictured with her in-laws. The Ward/Bunting family were not polygamists. The photographer of this picture, Andrew J. Russel, was in Utah capturing the joining of the railroads. At the time polygamy was a topic of interest to the country and the photographer knew that by labeling the picture as a polygamist family, it would sell better. He was correct in that assumption, and the picture became quite famous. The original is housed in the Union Pacific Railroad Museum in Iowa. The picture is labeled with a disclaimer “the information regarding the photograph has now been corrected by a descendant of the family”. The photo was also used in a Utah history book called “The Great West Illustrated” which has also confirmed the correction through a history professor at Utah State University, Dan Davis. In the followinglink you will find the genealogy of Ann Ward and her Husband Samuel Ward along with a portion of the picture on your page. I am quite happy that my families' picture is used as a piece of Utah's history. I just ask that the caption be removed or noted with the correction. Yokotaashi (talk) 18:20, 8 July 2015 (UTC)Nancy A. Foster

polygamy ≠ polygyny

Polygamy has many forms. Since Mormon plural marriage was always polygynous (one man, plural wives) and never polyandrous (one woman, plural husbands) or polyamorous (plural members of both sexes), should "polygamy/ous" be changed to "polygyny/ous" throughout this article and Mormons? Please {{Ping}} me to discuss. --Thnidu (talk) 02:40, 24 October 2015 (UTC)

  • Keep "polygamy". First, "polygamy"—along with "plural marriage"—is the term that is most often associated with the Mormon practice, so we are using the common name. Second, there are some examples within Mormonism of technical polyandry, most notably when Joseph Smith married other mens' wives while the women were still married to their first husbands. Thus, these women had more than one husband—their original husband plus Smith—which constitutes polyandry. Good Ol’factory (talk) 08:51, 24 October 2015 (UTC)

Question about the caption to the Parrish picture

Just came to this page randomly, but I'm concerned that the caption is confusing: "Joel Parrish and his two sisters, Jane and Pricilla who were married to their own husbands." Any woman in a (heterosexual) marriage is "married to her own husband." It seems like this caption is trying to communicate something, but it's not coming through. (Not trying to be critical, just trying to understand/improve the caption.) NathanReading (talk) 18:58, 4 November 2016 (UTC)

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Why Polygamy?

The only reason Mormons started having multiple wives was because many men died during the pilgrimage to what is now Utah, leaving many widows, without anyone to take care of them.66.18.44.203 (talk) 04:15, 13 December 2017 (UTC)Porter Hamilton (I am a Mormon)

Polygamy was practiced by mormons while they still resided in Illinois so the above is false. Maerlon0 (talk) 02:40, 14 January 2018 (UTC)

Porter, I am a member of the LDS Church as well (which is more correct than the statement "I am a Mormon", according to Church leaders). Any active LDS member could tell you that the Lord's commandment to institute polygamy is outlined in section 132 of the Doctrine and Covenants. It was instituted in the days of Joseph Smith, and continued as Church practice until the 1890 manifesto was issued by fourth Church president Wilford Woodruff (which can be found in the modern D&C in Official Declaration 1). During the presidency of Joseph F. Smith, the sixth Church president, a second manifesto was issued to clarify definitively that the practice of polygamy would no longer be observed, and that anyone found practicing it after the fact would be excommunicated. Those are the facts, as verified by the Church's own published essay on polygamy, which you can find here. Hope this information is helpful to you. --Jgstokes (talk) 03:20, 14 January 2018 (UTC)

Polygyny

Are we denying that polyandry was also practiced? There is evidence that Smith was sealed to women who were already married. Maerlon0 (talk) 00:10, 17 January 2018 (UTC)

The crux of the issue here is that Wikipedia is not so much concerned about what may or may not have been true, but rather what can be verified by a reliable source as defined by the policies on that subject. The key word there is "reliable." If you can find a source that, according to those guidelines, is reliable, it can be cited for inclusion here. Until that time, we need to be very careful about the way wording is introduced. It may also be worth mentioning that unless the proposed content is approved for inclusion by a majority consensus, that would not be eligible to add even with with reliable sourcing. We have to tread very carefully on that subject, as there are currently widespread scholarly disputes about which parts of polygamy can be verified as being practiced by Smith. But we can discuss the evidence here and go through the process of determining two things: 1. Is it verifiable by reliable sourcing? 2. Would the consensus support or oppose conclusion? Once that process has taken place, we can either include or exclude it. It goes without saying, of course, that with no eyewitnesses alive who actually knew what was really going on in that regard, we have to be careful to balance verifiability and hearsay. Does that help? --Jgstokes (talk) 03:47, 17 January 2018 (UTC)

From https://www.lds.org/topics/plural-marriage-in-kirtland-and-nauvoo?lang=eng&old=true "Following his marriage to Louisa Beaman and before he married other single women, Joseph Smith was sealed to a number of women who were already married. Neither these women nor Joseph explained much about these sealings, though several women said they were for eternity alone. Other women left no records, making it unknown whether their sealings were for time and eternity or were for eternity alone." Original source appears to be: John A. Widtsoe, “Evidences and Reconciliations: Did Joseph Smith Introduce Plural Marriage?” Improvement Era 49, no. 11 (Nov. 1946): 766–67. I'm sure I can find other sources, but it appears to me to be dishonest, or at least disingenuous to deny that polyandry did occur, making polygamy the best word choice. I'm not trying to push for polyandry to be on the page, but it wasn't solely polygyny. Maerlon0 (talk) 08:33, 17 January 2018 (UTC)

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Incestuous Marriage

The current section appears to simply be talking about familial sealings, not marriage. Instead should we re-write it to talk about marriages where there were multiple people from the same family married in? Like Joseph Smith with Patty Bartlett Sessions and Sylvia Sessions Lyon, or the sets of sisters that he married? Maerlon0 (talk) 19:19, 12 March 2018 (UTC)

Joseph Smith Offspring Genetics discussion

As I understand it there is some disagreement due to the fact that there may be biases from the geneticist who performed the test and one user wishes people to be aware of that fact. To be fair, concerns over the legitimacy of the test is reasonable. I'm not super savvy on wikipedia is there a way to include this or do we just leave it for other people to fact check on their own? Thanks for feedback Maerlon0 (talk) 04:12, 3 April 2019 (UTC)

Possibly! See, as a good example, Wikipedia's coverage of the "cherry tree" story surrounding George Washington. Note that reliable secondary sources question the original source of the cherry tree story, rather than the article itself pulling together the evidence necessary to do that.
Of course, the only reason to mention and then contextualize the story at all is that the story itself is notable. If some kook had published a message on Reddit asserting that George Washington was a time traveller, there'd be no reason to cover that assertion or to dismiss it; it wouldn't be a reliable source, and it wouldn't be a notable assertion, so one could simply ignore it. So the situation could be:
  1. The source is, considering the various factors, reliable. In that case, the claim can be used (and sourced) directly, if it benefits the article. If there are other reliable sources which explicitly refer to and then disagree with the original claim, those can be used as well if appropriate to the article.
  2. The source is not reliable, but the claim is notable. In that case, it's still appropriate to describe the claim, but only based on how other (reliable) sources have covered it. That is, it's those other sources that you'd actually be using, not the geneticist, and not sources which implicitly conflict with it (that would be synthesis).
  3. The source is not reliable and the claim isn't notable. In that case, it doesn't have a place in the article. Sneftel (talk) 15:08, 3 April 2019 (UTC)

"A deceased woman may also be sealed to multiple men, but only through vicarious sealing if they are also deceased."

who does "they" refer to? Wouldn't it be the case that any marriage of a deceased woman is vicarious? --142.163.195.197 (talk) 17:35, 14 December 2020 (UTC)

I believe that "they" refers to the multiple men. All of the parties have to be deceased. Good Ol’factory (talk) 23:29, 14 December 2020 (UTC)

One additional sentence about Joseph Smith's underage plural wives

At a fellow editor's request, I will further explicate here on the talk page.

I had added one sentence to the first paragraph of the Underage plural marriages section of the page. Given that the first sentence of the paragraph raises the question of conjugal relations ("Critics of polygamy in the early LDS Church claim that church leaders sometimes used polygamy to take advantage of young girls for immoral purposes," citing One Nation Under Gods from Thunder's Mouth Press), and given that Joseph Smith inevitably looms large in any early Mormon history topic, it seemed appropriate to add another sentence from scholarship on Smith's plural marriages. The last sentence of the paragraph prior to edits was "Historian Todd Compton documents that Joseph Smith married two girls as young as fourteen" (citing Todd Compton's In Sacred Loneliness). Immediately following, I added this sentence: "Documentary research suggests there were no sexual relations between Smith and these particular plural wives." This had the following reference and footnote:

Hales, Brian C.; Hales, Laura Harris. "Sealings to Young Brides". Joseph Smith's Polygamy. Retrieved May 10, 2021. Helen Mar Kimball Mar Kimball was fourteen-years old, and her marital sealing to Joseph Smith is well-documented. However, historical documents suggest she was never alone with Smith without a chaperone, and Kimball's attitude toward their marriage—including surprise that her father disapproved of her desire to go to a party and dance with teenage boys—point to their relationship being nonsexual. Though not as well-documented, Nancy Winchester was either fourteen or fifteen-years-old when she was sealed to Joseph Smith. As with Kimball, there is no documentary evidence that she and Smith had sexual relations.

(There was a formatting error on my part; I accidentally rendered the text as a quote when the text was a paraphrased lay summary. If the sentence is added again, I will correct that error.)

This and another sentence were removed for being "speculative or apologetic." I would suggest the charge of speculation seems like an overstatement. The claim is a careful extrapolation, as occasionally done even in scholarship, and is based on a combination of multiple factors (no children; Kimball's attitude toward the marriage, no documented unchaperoned meetings, no participation in the Temple Lot trial). Nevertheless, the original version of the sentence stated "documentary research suggests" to respect the extrapolatory nature of the claim. I would add that the claim is not the Hales's own; they cite Michael Marquardt's The Rise of Mormonism: 1816–1844, page 609. Other speculative/extrapolatory claims are already on the "Mormonism and polygamy" page, such as the nature of Smith's relationship with Fanny Alger, counts of Smith's wives (Brodie's 48 count is included as one possibility), and the twelve persons "identified as potential Smith offspring."

As for the charge of apologetics, while the Hales's own website might be classified as apologetic (in their words, they describe the site as "a recitation rather than an endorsement or condemnation of the practice, presented to help others with questions," but their choice of "common questions" and inclusion of a "Stories of Faith" section belies their probable point of view), I do not think that necessarily disqualifies the careful use of one interesting and relevant claim from the website. I do not think it would be practical to scrub from Wikipedia every reference to apologetic sources—say, FARMS—nor would it be necessary so long as citation is done carefully and wisely. On the one hand, the Book of Mormon critical text project originates from FARMS, and that is a rigorous display of documentary scholarship. On the other hand, some FARMS responses to books and archaeological studies are polemical and obfuscatory, criticized even by Latter-day Saint scholars like D. Michael Quinn and Brian Hauglid. Rigorous scholarship like the Book of Mormon critical text project could perhaps be cited on a Wikipedia page if relevant; meanwhile, many FARMS reviews should probably not be cited as secondary sources. Does that mean every FARMS reference should be eliminated? I do not think so. Rather, the references should be duly weighed and considered by editors. Similarly, the Tanners of the Utah Lighthouse Ministry have been criticized by non-Mormon LawrenceFoster for not adhering to scholarly standards, yet so long as their work is referenced thoughtfully, such that the useful is used and the questionable is not, references to books like The Changing World of Mormonism remain on various pages. (The Utah Lighthouse Ministry page also has another example of well-thought and thoroughgoing speculation/extrapolation included in the Wikipedia page; D. Michael Quinn is identified as the source of a quote although the document was published anonymously and the identification is based on the Tanners' estimation/extrapolation/speculation.)

In that spirit, I have narrowly referenced this one claim from the Joseph Smith's Polygamy website, itself citing the Marquardt book (though the website is more accessible to the average Wikipedia reader), that claim being that documentary research suggests Smith didn't have sexual relations with Helen Kimball. As the website (or perhaps rather, the book) mustered what seemed like a preponderance of documentary evidence, it did not seem particularly apologetic to include that narrow claim in the Wikipedia article. As I said in one of the edits, "but there probably wasn't sex" hardly seems like a stirring endorsement of the underage marriages. It is rather a point of relevant documentary research that may well be of interest to readers curious about the extent of conjugal relations, a question implicitly raised by the beginning sentence of the paragraph.

I think the edit is worthwhile. While the content is narrow—it regards specifically two of Smith's underage plural wives—it is one inevitably raised by the nature of the Wikipedia page (as aforementioned, Smith looms large in any early Mormon history topic) and by the topic sentence of the paragraph and therefore would satisfy some readers' curiosities. ~~~~ P-Makoto (talk) 00:15, 11 May 2021 (UTC)

There is an awful lot to unpack here and I want to get some words down even if this is rushed.
One of the first issues with the original edit which you have addressed was the use of a self-published website that is often apologetic in nature. While it may be worth including the idea that he might not have had sex with the 14 year old girls, the issue with this claim is that it really doesn't have any good sources. The Hales website and the Marquardt book both are self-published which is very strongly discouraged. This claim is also an incredibly odd one to make in general. We know they were married and they may or may not have had sex, but without children we can't ever say for sure. We do know that other Mormons were having sex with minors and it seems that this claim's origin is based in the idea that it would have been wrong if Smith had as well. It seems to me to be the most honest way forward to just omit any claims in either direction because we honestly don't know and most of the reasoning for the claims could be more readily explained by things as simple as "she liked dancing" or "she didn't feel like testifying". Maerlon0 (talk) 21:55, 15 May 2021 (UTC)
Ah, the Marquardt book was self-published? I should have examined that footnote more thoroughly; thank you for pointing that out.
I still think the claim is not an "incredibly odd one to make." It seems quite naturally like the sort of thing a reader would wonder about while reading this section of the Wikipedia page ("Critics of polygamy in the early LDS Church claim that church leaders sometimes used polygamy to take advantage of young girls for immoral purposes" raises the matter of conjugality), especially as the paragraph is presently written to specifically mention Smith's youngest plural wives.
I also appear to have been slightly mistaken in attributing the analysis to Marquardt. While the observation in the quote was Marquardt's, the analysis of the documentary record of Smith's marriage with Helen Mar Kimball appears to have originally been made in chapters 14, 23, and 33 of the book Joseph Smith's Polygamy, volume 1–2, History, written by Hales. Related to this, while self-published sources require much more caution, "Self-published expert sources may be considered reliable when produced by an established expert on the subject matter, whose work in the relevant field has previously been published by reliable, independent publications," and Brian Hales has written multiple books on polygamy, including Joseph Smith's Polygamy, which were published by Greg Kofford Books, one of which received a Best Book Award from the John Whitmer Historical Association. While the Marquardt book and Hales' website are self-published, Hales's books were not self-published. I regret that I haven't used Hales's books as a reference instead of the website, but I don't presently have direct access to the books. P-Makoto (talk) 00:45, 17 May 2021 (UTC)
"Reliable, independent publications" doesn't really apply to Greg Kofford Books which exists to publish pro-Mormon literature. Additionally, awards given by pro-Mormon groups doesn't really lend credence to either the scholarship or the claim. As near as I've been able to sort out this claim first surfaced in "Heber C. Kimball: Mormon Patriarch and Pioneer (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1981)" and has cropped up a few times throughout the years. Every time the argument is basically conjecture that could be better explained by Kimball wanting to dance or not wanting to testify. The argument really fails to have any real rigor and has only been made by those with a vested interest in the Mormon church being true. If we could find any independent sources for this claim then it may be worth including, but as it stands I feel that it fails to meet Wikipedia's standards. It would be nice if we could get some weigh-in from other editors on this issue besides us two though. As it stands though I feel the most we could honestly put on the page would be something along the lines of "Pro-Mormon apologists have made the claim that the marriage to Helen Mar Kimball was non-sexual" But even then this claim seems like very poor scholarship and I don't feel that it should be included. If no one else weighs in and you feel that it should be included we could possibly request a review for the addition. Maerlon0 (talk) 03:57, 17 May 2021 (UTC)
I'm not sure it'd be quite right to characterize Greg Kofford Books as existing only to "publish pro-Mormon literature." It's usually "seen as occupying a middle ground in terms of orthodoxy and scholarship" (AML). But while I can understand some reticence about Kofford Books, calling the John Whitmer Historical Association a "pro-Mormon group" is very inaccurate. Sure, the association is named after early church member John Whitmer, but many of its articles and book reviews are practically excoriating (which if anything is fitting, since Whitmer later in life was critical of Joseph Smith and Brigham Young). For example, the JWHA's book review of The Gift and Power calls the book "a sheer delight because it conforms so perfectly to what critics of Mormonism and the Book of Mormon have been saying for a long time, that it is a human production at the end of the day." And the JWHA's book review of Rough Stone Rolling just about calls Richard Bushman "an apologist for a simplistic, faithful master narrative," a dismissal that is almost extreme in the opposite direction. This is just the tip of the iceberg. "Interested in Mormonism" the JWHA is; "pro-Mormon" it is not.
I don't know if the documents are "better explained by Kimball wanting to dance" or explanations like that. For example, it's not as if other women besides Kimball stopped enjoying dancing after they got married, and yet married women did not generally attend these dances. After all, in Nauvoo, community dances were charged with implicit courtship, yet that either didn't occur to or didn't bother Kimball. P-Makoto (talk) 19:09, 17 May 2021 (UTC)
I don't want to lose the forest through the trees, thanks for being willing to talk through this. AML is questionable to use to prove that Kofford books is "seen as occupying a middle ground in terms of orthodoxy and scholarship" when its current president and vice president (and many of its other members) are or were employed by the LDS church (looked up on linkedin).
Addressing the dancing issue, this one is slightly complicated by attitudes towards dance differing wildly from place to place. If you want me to pull up more information regarding dancing and its culture and acceptability for married women to dance then I could do more research on that later but I feel it misses the point. That being said, it would be nice if you have a source that dances in Nauvoo were not attended by married women. Additionally, Kimball herself stated about the dances: "I felt quite sore over it, and thought it a very unkind act in father to allow [my brother] to go and enjoy the dance unrestrained with others of my companions, and fetter me down, for no girl loved dancing better than I did, and I really felt that it was too much to bear." You do see how it's a non sequitur to state that wanting to dance (married or not) means that no sex has taken place right?
Also having looked more into JWHA you are right about them not being "pro-Mormon". Maerlon0 (talk) 05:55, 24 May 2021 (UTC)
Short version: We may disagree about how to interpret the primary sources, but your forest and trees comment reminded me that this is Wikipedia, and I need to consider the broader secondary discourse. In light of the lack of consensus on the question, I am willing to drop my proposed edit.
—
If the speculation were based only on Kimball's comment about dances it would be unreasonable. However, the hypothesis is based on a larger body than that. There is Kimball's interest in going dancing, Kimball's absence from the trial, Kimball making no record of spending time with Smith without a chaperone, and there being no children. (As we've discussed, that by itself is not an evidence one way or another, but it is accumulated alongside all the other factors; no factor alone is sufficient, and it is the totality that the hypothesis is founded on).
I don't think it's entirely reasonable or practical to say the Association of Mormon Letters is questionable merely because it has members who are Latter-day Saints or who are or have been employed by the church. Mormons of all denominations can be intellectually and religiously diverse. There are cases in which even Latter-day Saints who have been or are church employees have chosen to follow their interpretations of evidence to heterodox interpretations of scripture. (David Bokovoy wrote Authoring the Old Testament while a CES employee, and it was favorably reviewed by a BYU journal, and Brian M. Hauglid is pushing against "missing scroll theory" Book of Abraham apologia as a researcher for the Joseph Smith Papers.) The AML has also produced critical reviews of the work of John Gee, the Egyptologist-slash-Book of Abraham apologist typically respected in certain literalist orthodox circles, and it insists on using the term Mormon, further attenuating its connection with the Latter-day Saint-preferring church.
However, more important than that, I have realized that at the end of the day, what we're doing is disagreeing over how to interpret primary sources and whether Hales and Hales interpreted them rightly. However, because Wikipedia's encyclopedic mission is primarily to provide readers with the reputable secondary source consensus (with notable minority viewpoints as appropriate), perhaps the better course of action that I should have considered earlier is turning to the broader discourse.
After reading about a dozen book reviews of both Heber C. Kimball and Joseph Smith's Polygamy in scholarly journals, Most—even critical ones, such as Bergera's review of Polygamy for the JWHA—do not even mention the Helen Mar Kimball analysis. However, there is one direct discussion of the Helen Mar Kimball analysis, and it is in Merina Smith's some-praise-and-some-criticism review for the Journal of Mormon History. She takes a different interpretive approach which challenges the assessment in Polygamy.
That leaves us with writers disagreeing with each other, meaning there is not a consensus, meaning the page is probably better off not including the claim. (Or at least, better off not including the claim without context/discussion, but that would amount to "maybe they didn't have sexual relations, but then again maybe they did," which would not be very meaningful to include.)
My apologies for having been so insistent and for taking so long to realize you were right about it being more responsible to leave out the claim I strove to add. Thank you for your patience with me as we've discussed this, and for pointing out the need to not miss the forest for the trees, as it helped me realize I had failed to consider the broader secondary conversation. P-Makoto (talk) 17:21, 25 May 2021 (UTC)
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