The psychosocial argument against polygamy
Further theological arguments against polygamy being a true doctrine of God, and integrating them with the psychosocial evidence that validates monogamy as being the Lord's only acceptable model of marriage. Reading each section in order of which they are listed is recommended for ease of understanding.
Sections 1-10
Sections 11-20
Sections 21-30
Sections 31-40
Sections 41-50
Sections 51-60
Sections 61-70
Sections 71-80
Sections 81-90
Sections 91-100
Sections 101-110
1 ~ God established the intended order of marriage & partnership with Adam & Eve ~
The very first commandment ever given to Adam and Eve was, "Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth..." (Genesis 1:28) That Eve was the only woman given to Adam as a wife means that this commandment can be fulfilled completely with one man and one woman. That this pattern of monogamy is meant to be applied not only to Adam and Eve but to all men is contained within that same creation narrative, in the second commandment given by God to Adam and Eve, which reads, "Therefore shall a man leave his father and his mother, and shall cleave unto his wife: and they shall be one flesh." (Genesis 2:24)
2 ~ "Isn't God the Father a polygamist, and married to multiple Heavenly Mothers?"
The idea that Heavenly Father is a polygamist began with Brigham Young, not Joseph Smith. The Doctrine and Covenants reads,
15 And again, verily I say unto you, that whoso forbiddeth to marry is not ordained of God, for marriage is ordained of God unto man.
16 Wherefore, it is lawful that he should have one wife, and they twain shall be one flesh, and all this that the earth might answer the end of its creation;
17 And that it might be filled with the measure of man, according to his creation before the world was made.
This clearly states that the earth answers "the end of its creation" by a man and woman being married together monogamously. This also states that monogamous marriage allows for the earth to be filled with the full measure of man "according to his creation before the world was made." This suggests that the monogamous pattern of humanity's creation on earth is in perfect accordance with "his creation before the world was made", and this could also perhaps suggest that it is even only through monogamy that the earth is filled "according to" our creation in heaven.
3. "Wouldn't being a polygamist mean that God the Father can produce more spirit children more quickly?"
Many Latter-day Saints have assumed that if we teach of resurrected bodies, eternal marriage, and eternal progeny, then there must be eternal procreative sex too. This assertion has been used to argue for the validity (and even advantage) of eternal polygamy as well. While a woman living infinitely could be consecutively pregnant with an infinite number of children even if produced one-by-one, it is noted that a God-man with more than one immortal partner can produce an infinite number of children at an even faster rate than if He has only one partner. This has been an argument for eternal polygamy for at least a hundred years. It has caused outside critics to point out that such an idea means a heaven of men potentially having eternal harems of women who are eternally pregnant and burdened with child-bearing. This "women as eternal incubators" idea has sometimes been given as reason when asked why we do not hear more of Heavenly Mother, asserting that She is too busy spiritually birthing more spirit children, and so being more involved in our lives is therefore not part of Her role. But it would be worthy to consider why the mechanics of human reproduction are as they are, and consider if they are perhaps mechanics that only apply to humans —
Males emit about 200 to 500 million sperm with each ejaculation. Even when conception succeeds, only one (or in rare cases, two or three) sperm ever successfully fertilize an egg. This "less than 100,000,000 to 1 odds" is an evolutionary feature to help ensure that only one of the highest caliber of sperm succeed in fertilizing the egg, but the inefficiency of having literally hundreds of millions of sperm be wasted with every emission in order to weed out any defective or weak sperm would not likely be a feature of reproduction in a heavenly realm with no risk of genetic imperfections.
Having mothers carry developing babies in their own body is protective to the survival and the development of the child. It serves as a safety feature by which the developing baby cannot be separated from the mother; the placenta acts as a mechanism for all needed nutrients to reach the developing baby from the mother; and the placenta also acts as a barrier to protect the baby from environmental toxins. That women are usually only pregnant with one developing baby at a time is also a survival mechanism, as it helps ensure the survival of one baby by not having that baby be competing for nutrients with another.
These evolutionary protective mechanisms are potentially features that are only existent on earth. If we know that human fertilization is an act of evolutionary "one winner to many losers" feature, and that female childbearing is to protect a developing human fetus from the threats of a brutally-naturalistic earth, it could be reasoned that our fertilization and child-bearing mechanism for creating human life is solely a telestial-based model. The creation of spirit bodies in a higher realm would not necessitate any "survival of the fittest" competition between genetic material (if our spirit bodies have anything that could be termed "genetic material"), there would be no mortality-based threats against any "infant" spirit children being created, and no limitation of nutrient, space, attention, or anything else to hinder one Father and Mother God from forming an unlimited number of spirit children simultaneously.
4 ~ Perhaps born of the creation-mind of God, not of Their bodies ~
We have not been explicitly given any doctrinal answer as to by what mechanism God the Father and Mother formed our spirit bodies, but if we believe that God created the earth, and everything on it, through the organization of existed matter and the guided development of biological organisms, and that this was achieved solely through the intended will of the mind of God acting on natural laws, could our spirit bodies have also been formed by solely the intention of God? Could we suppose it to be possible that our spirit bodies were perhaps formed by the united mind of a Man & Woman God, rather than by some kind of resurrection-fluid passing between resurrected bodies? The idea that we were created by the will of God (as opposed to thinking that our spirit bodies exited out of a god-vagina) is a belief held by all the rest of Christendom, and it fits more closely with the language of Abraham 3:22 where we read, "Now the Lord had shown unto me, Abraham, the intelligences that were organized before the world was;"
5 ~ Brigham Young's idea of polygamy eugenics shown to be false ~
The very first argument used as reasoning to institute polygamy was not to produce greater numbers of children, but as a model of divine order — and of human eugenics. Brigham Young, acting as church president and speaking from the podium at that same special conference in 1852 said,
'If the United States do not adopt that very method [polygamy], let them continue as they now are, pursue that precise course they are now pursing and it will come to this: that their generations will not live until they are thirty years old. They are going to destruction. Disease is spreading so fast among the inhabitants of the United States that they are born rotten with it, and in a few years they are gone.' Said he, 'Joseph has introduced the very best plan for restoring and establishing strength and long life among men...'
Deseret News, Great Salt Lake City, U.T., September 14, 1852; page 25
The idea was that by having the more righteous men have a greater number of wives and children, the following generations of people would be healthier and stronger — essentially by having such a high proportion of them be from the most holy and good men. In fact, the opposite of this is now known to be genetically true — the more limited the male gene pool, the more genetic diseases and shortened lifespans you will have occur. Due to polygamy, as reported by the BBC, "more human disease genes have been discovered in Utah — with its Mormon history — than any other place in the world."
Brigham Young claimed that he was quoting an unnamed 'senator friend' when he stated the above, however there is no 1800s era (or any other era) scientific theory that provides precedence to the thought that monogamy produces children "sick at birth", and that polygamy is somehow the cure. There is no U.S. senator at the time who is known to have publicly shared such ideas — they are not ideas that have been supported by any known medical professionals or scientific researchers of the time or since. The only words said of polygamy within the political sphere were to claim it as one of the "twin relics of barbarism." There is no evidence against the presumption that Brigham Young (or his "senator friend", whomever it may be) conceived this idea solely on his own.
Certain families are still facing fatal illness and early deaths to this day as a result of past Mormon polygamy practice - see "Fatal Inheritance: Mormon Eugenics" for Linda Walker's introductory exposition on the topic.
6 ~ God didn't even command polygamy in our scriptures for greater genetic diversity ~
It is significant that God never commanded nor appointed polygamy even in those repopulation circumstances in which having a higher number of childbearing women to one man would add to the genetic diversity of their descendants. Polygamy was not practiced by Adam & Eve, by their children, by Noah and his sons, nor by Lehi and his family, even though even having just one additional wife for each man would increase the genetic diversity of the population by 33%. Even in these extreme cases, God did not appoint polygamy to be practiced, even temporarily. It is difficult to argue a more "needed" scenario for polygamy than a circumstance in which there are only two families or even two individuals to populate a civilization, but monogamy is apparently a law that God does not give exception for, not even in order to achieve greater genetic diversity.
7. 'Couldn't the practice of polygamy still have been given to Brigham Young as a temporary commandment?'
One talk in the October 2024 General Conference contained this quote,
The Lord’s commandments are of two types: permanent, like the doctrine of Christ, and temporary. Temporary commandments are those necessary for the needs of the Lord’s Church or the faithful in temporary circumstances, but to be set aside when the need has passed. An example of temporary commandments are the Lord’s directions to the early leadership of the Church to move the Saints from New York to Ohio, to Missouri, and to Illinois...
Dallin H. Oaks, October 2024 General Conference
Some have argued this to be the case for early Mormon polygamy — that it was a temporary commandment, meant to be followed for only a set period of time before being discontinued. But this assertion does not align with an exegetical reading of D&C 132, as the text does not leave itself open to be viewed as a temporary commandment when it reads, "all those who have this law revealed to them must obey the same." (D&C 132:3)
Another issue with applying a commandment to "move the Saints" with a practice like polygamy is that moving homes doesn't break any previously-established commandments, whereas polygamy will always break the previously-given commandment to have only one wife. A "temporary commandment" cannot be morally described as such if it is something that breaks a permanent commandment.
8. 'But the Spirit told Nephi to kill Laban, which was against the commandment to not kill.'
Nephi's actions of killing Laban qualified as self defense (and defense of others), even under the conditions of the law of Moses and the law of the land of his time, as Laban was actively seeking to kill Nephi and his brothers. That Laban had already given the orders to kill Nephi (and had even sent his men out to fulfill those orders) justified Nephi under the law to take the actions against Laban that he did. Laban had also stolen Nephi's family's property by force, meaning Nephi was then justified to take Laban's brass plates by the law of Moses "eye for an eye" reasoning of recovering property of an equal or lesser value. It is significant that the Lord did not deliver Laban into Nephi's hands until the conditions had been met that Nephi would be morally justified in taking the plates for his family. Nephi did not violate any law of God or law of the land by killing Laban or taking his plates, and the Lord from the outset orchestrated it to be so.
However, these conditions of self defense did not apply to Mormon polygamy, and cannot apply to polygamy in any circumstance. There is no scenario in which a Mormon man has to practice polygamy as a means of self defense.
9 ~ Polygamous lies can't be argued as justifiable ~
Lying in self defense is as morally permissible as is killing in self defense — one Biblical example being when the Hebrew midwives lied to Pharaoh to help keep the Hebrew newborn boys alive. (Exodus 1:19) LDS members have argued that Joseph Smith's supposed dishonesty of polygamy to Emma, church members, and to the public was morally justified due to the opposition he would have faced for it, but there is no circumstance of the time in which lying about polygamy would have been necessary to save his own life or the life of another person. This also means that the lies of polygamy told by Brigham Young and other church leaders cannot be justified by any clause of self defense either.
10 ~ God does not change the order of marriage to better suit culture ~
If God was never willing to change the order of marriage for those circumstances in which greater diversity would have been of genetic benefit (as with Adam, Noah, and Lehi), it is hard to argue why God would change it for the more subjective purpose of suiting cultural desires and norms. It was given in the law of Moses that kings are not to multiply wives for themselves, (Deuteronomy 17:17) even though doing so was culturally acceptable for the time. It was given in the New Testament that elders, bishops, and deacons are to be the husband of one wife (Titus 1:5-6, 1 Timothy 3:2, 1 Timothy 3:12) even though having more than one was both legal and culturally acceptable at the time. The idea that certain commandments of God do not need to be followed in certain cultures is not a teaching of our church — we preach that the commandments of God as taught by the LDS church must be followed in the same manner by LDS members all over the world, regardless of which world culture they are born to and live in.
11 ~ The culture of the United States in the 1800s was not more tolerant towards polygamy anyway ~
Those who maintain that early Mormon polygamy was commanded by God argue that those of us who are against it are refusing to view early Mormon polygamy within the cultural context of the time. But polygamy was not somehow "more culturally acceptable" in early Mormon times than it is now — polygamy was illegal, liable to fines and imprisonment, and declared in congress by Abraham Lincoln's party platform to be one of the "twin relics of barbarism" — the other relic of barbarism was slavery itself.
12. 'But early Mormon pioneers practiced "ethical" polygamy. If polygamy is conducted in a proper manner, then there isn't anything bad about it.'
There was very little regulation or restriction with regards to how polygamy was carried out amongst the early Mormons. Consent from the first wife or any of the wives was not necessary to obtain an additional wife, as D&C 132:65 states that a husband must ask for the first wife's consent, but he is not required to receive her consent. There were no restrictions set as to how old a bride must be, no upper limit as to how much of an age gap there could be between the bride and groom, no rules set to prevent either blatant favoritism or neglect, and no declaration of funds made to show that an additional wife and child would not cause a sunken standard of living for the older wives and children.
Muslim men are restricted by doctrinal Islam to four wives, whereas Mormon men had no declared upper limit. Mosaic Law and Islamic doctrine forbids the practice of marrying your sister, half sister, one of your wife's sister's, your daughter, or your stepdaughter, but Mormons also did not have any of these restrictions. Brigham Young stated, "by marriage Lot's two daughters were sealed to him, and will be his to all eternity." (27 October 1869, Lehi, Utah) He also taught,
The whole world will think what an awful thing it is. What an awful thing it would be if the Mormons should just say we believe in marrying brothers and sisters. Well we shall be under the necessity of doing it, because we cannot find anybody else to marry. The world are at the same thing, and will be as long as man exists upon the Earth.
- Brigham Young, 22 February 1852 sermon
In the evening, Hudson and I (Rodger Clawson), had a conversation with Lorenzo Snow about various doctrines. Brother Snow said I would live to see the time when brothers and sisters would marry each other in this church. All our horror at such union was due entirely to prejudice, and the offspring of such unions would be as healthy and pure as any other. These were decidedly the views of President Young when alive, for Brother Snow talked to him freely on this matter."
- Rudger Clawson, 15 July 1886, Abraham H. Cannon's journal
It has been argued by LDS apologists that Mormon women fared generally well under polygamy, and that while exceptions occurred, it was altogether a system that the Saints were able to progress and grow fruitfully in. This site will show that such was not the case, and that polygamy on a societal level never brings about good fruit...
13 ~ It was due to the voices of polygamous women that the Anti-Polygamy Society of Utah was formed and gained support ~
One of the most famous anti-polygamy women of history is Jennie Anderson Froiseth. Jennie was a well-educated and well-traveled Catholic from an extremely prominent family in New York. She married an army surveyor stationed in Salt Lake City and, feeling isolated from the outside world once there, created an exclusive women's education club called The Blue Tea. Mormon women were not permitted as members of the club — monogamous wives seem to have not liked associating closely with polygamists who might start preaching things to their husbands or to their daughters.
This segregated tolerance towards Mormons and their polygamy ended one night in 1878 when a polygamist wife, Carrie Owens, went running from house to house knocking on doors of non-Mormons asking for help to leave her husband. Members of the Blue Tea immediately became involved and the next day Carrie's husband was arrested for bigamy. However, "There were no witnesses, no marriage records at the time, and there was no legal case that could be made due to the lack of evidence and the inability for a woman to legally testify in the Utah territory without the permission of her husband." [a] The members of the Blue Tea then acted to form the Anti-Polygamy Society of Utah. Jennie started a monthly newspaper aimed to educate those within and outside of Utah regarding all that was occurring with polygamy in the Territory. She interviewed many dozens of Mormon women in polygamous families and compiled their stories in a book titled, The Women of Mormonism: Or, The story of polygamy as told by the victims themselves. The book records many accounts of abuse and neglect, all except the worst ones — it states that abuses which were too 'indecent' to be published to the public were not included. Jennie's book and The Anti-Polygamy Society were instrumental in the LDS church becoming disincorporated and church property being seized — it was less than ten years after the Anti-Polygamy Society was founded that the Edmunds–Tucker Act was passed.
Jennie and the other members of the Anti-Polygamy Society have been regarded in LDS history as anti-Mormons who fought against the church due to a prejudiced vendetta to erode the religious freedom of Mormon society. But it was only because of the pleadings of a Mormon woman that they ever first became involved, and it was only because so many polygamous women were willing to let a non-Mormon publish their grievances that Jennie could create her 470-page publication.
14 ~ The reported afflictions of polygamous women, and their feelings of it, are validated by Jacob chapter 2 ~
Jacob chapter 2 tells us that the painful experiences of Mormon polygamous women are not incidental nor irrelevant when it says,
For behold, I, the Lord, have seen the sorrow, and heard the mourning of the daughters of my people in the land of Jerusalem, yea, and in all the lands of my people, because of the wickedness and abominations of their husbands.
Ye have broken the hearts of your tender wives, and lost the confidence of your children, because of your bad examples before them; and the sobbings of their hearts ascend up to God against you... [with] many hearts died, pierced with deep wounds.
Here the Lord states that the pain of polygamy bourne by women is universal amongst all His people, and is so grievous to Him that He would sooner bring cursing and destruction to the men rather than allow the men to prosper in it. Jennie Anderson Froiseth's 470-page book is the largest record ever compiled of the 'sorrow', 'mourning', 'cries', 'sobbings of the heart', and 'deep wounds' of the 'captive', 'broken-hearted' polygamous women whose 'hearts [have] died.'
15 ~ "Ye have broken the hearts of your tender wives" ~
Jacob states that the Lord wanting to protect the women from pain is the whole purpose for Him to be commanding the men so strongly and explicitly to be monogamous,
And I will not suffer, saith the Lord of Hosts, that the cries of the fair daughters of this people, which I have led out of the land of Jerusalem, shall come unto me against the men of my people, saith the Lord of Hosts.
Jacob 2:32
For they shall not lead away captive the daughters of my people because of their tenderness, save I shall visit them with a sore curse, even unto destruction;...
...Behold, ye have done greater iniquities that the Lamanites, our brethren. Ye have broken the hearts of your tender wives,... Jacob 2:33,35
The LDS church argues that Jacob is only here condemning unauthorized polygamy, but as Steve Reeds of Oneclimbs.com asked,
Does it seem reasonable that the Nephite women and children were so profoundly heartbroken over the men's practice of taking multiple wives and concubines simply because they lacked "authorization"?...Would there have been no “sorrow,” “mourning,” “cries,” “sobbing,” “captiv[ity],” or “hearts [dying], pierced with deep wounds” if only there were “authorization”?
https://oneclimbs.com/2017/01/05/a-proposed-reinterpretation-of-jacob-230/
When Ann Eliza Young was asked by a visitor to Utah where polygamy hurt the most, she responded, “It hurts all over, body and soul, mind and heart … I can’t tell a spot that it does not hurt.”
16 ~ Brigham Young condemned polygamous women who voiced their feelings ~
Brigham Young, when confronted himself by the grievances of polygamous women, did not follow after the Lord's model of concern for them,
Men will say, ‘My wife, though a most excellent woman, has not seen a happy day since I took my second wife; No, not a happy day for a year,' says one; and another has not seen a happy day for five years. It is said that women are tied down and abused: that they are misused and have not the liberty they ought to have; that many of them are wading through a perfect flood of tears, because of the conduct of some men together with their own folly... I wish my women, and brother Kimball's and brother Grant's to leave, and every woman in this Territory, or else say in their hearts that they will embrace the Gospel – the whole of it.... say to your wives, ‘Take all that I have and be set at liberty; but if you stay with me you shall comply with the law of God, and that too without any murmuring and whining. You must fulfill the law of God in every respect, and round up your shoulders to walk up to the mark without any grunting.' ...But the first wife will say, ‘It is hard, for I have lived with my husband twenty years, or thirty, and have raised a family of children for him, and it is a great trial to me for him to have more women;' then I say it is time that you gave him up to other women who will bear children. If my wife had borne me all the children that she ever would bare, the celestial law would teach me to take young women that would have children....
But I do know that there is no cessation to the everlasting whining of many of the women in this Territory; I am satisfied that this is the case. And if the women will turn from the commandments of God and continue to despise the order of heaven, I will pray that the curse of the Almighty may be close to their heels, and that it may be following them all day long.
Brigham Young, Journal of Discourses, v. 4, pp. 55-57, also printed in the Deseret News, v. 6, pp. 235-236
17 ~ Women's feelings of polygamy viewed by men as a hindrance to women's reasoning of polygamy ~
In our present day, there continue to be LDS men who consider women's opinions of polygamy to be clouded by their feelings. It is thought that women who are against the idea of doctrinal polygamy are most likely unfairly biased due to projection of emotion. It is curious that the same men who tout divine polygamy as being acceptable under gender egalitarianism also assume that a woman dislikes it because of her gender. It is worthy to ask what it is, about what a man knows of polygamy, to cause him to think, "She only doesn't like the thought of polygamy because she'd be one of the women in that situation." It is possible that even these men are able to recognize, on however small a level, that being a man in polygamy is an arguably less painful position than being a woman in polygamy.
Even more inherently wrong in this perception is the acknowledgment that women do on average feel worse about the idea of polygamy, and that such is a point of discredit to a woman's opinion, rather than a point of evidence. When the God of Jacob chapter 2 says that polygamy is wrong because of how it hurts the hearts of women, and modern-day LDS men then argue that women's voices against polygamy needn't be given full weight because women are only speaking from their feelings, we can see how far removed LDS men have strayed from the words of their God in heaven. Men who argue that women ought to conduct discussions regarding polygamy in only the most academic and scholarly of terms, without any involvement of their own personal feelings on the matter, are also fundamentally and critically missing this same point. Women's feelings towards polygamy are relevant, and are even so important to the topic as to be an essential aspect. No academic analysis of polygamy is complete unless it fully includes women's feelings against polygamy and their pain experienced from it. LDS men would do well to aim to be the protectors of women's 'tender feelings', not the dismissers, minimizers, or discrediters of them.
The Lord made it clear in Jacob chapters 2 & 3 that men's amenable feelings towards polygamy are to be laid aside in deference to women's feelings against it. LDS men are not more tolerant, more enlightened, or more 'willing to do whatsoever the Lord may ask of them' by feeling more accepting of the idea of polygamy than women are. The Lord states that men are guilty of a "grosser crime" than pride when they argue polygamy as being justifiable. (Jacob 2)
18 ~ Polygamy reversal ~
One LDS man in a recent year received a confronting illustration of what early Mormon polygamy was like for some women,
The other night I had a pretty wild dream. I had a distant view of a middle-aged man at home playing with his kids. He was just a typical guy who was going bald and was slightly overweight. His wife came home with two young guys who looked like they belonged in a body building magazine. They were young, probably late teens and early twenties. The man asked who they were and she replied that she met them on a church assignment. One was single and she decided to take him as a second husband. The other was already married, but because she was the Relief Society president, her rank allowed her to take him as hers too. The man was baffled and broken-hearted. “But what about me?” he cried. “Oh, I built a dugout way out in the desert for you and the kids,” she said. “Don’t worry, I’ll visit every now and then.” And with that she turned and took one of the men into the bedroom. That was the end of the dream (thank goodness).
As personally related to the author. Name has been withheld.
If men would not feel comfortable with a gender-reversal of polygamy, then it can't only be due to 'women having more tender feelings than men' for women to not feel okay with it.
In Kenya in the year 2014, the male members of parliament were seeking to pass a polygamy bill that would legally allow a man to have more than one wife. The female Kenyan members of parliament, who were greatly outnumbered, strongly opposed the bill and tried to stop it from being passed. One woman MP named Joyce Laboso, in effort to derail the bill, added an amendment that would allow a woman to also have more than one husband. Due to the men's opposition to this amendment, the bill did not pass in its original form.
19 ~ No equality of pain in polygamy ~
There are still those who argue that any pain experienced by women in a polygamous marriage is equally felt by married polygamous men, as dealing with multiple women is "so troublesome" (because us women are so unreasonably difficult to ''keep happy'') and because managing polygamous households is "so hard" (despite the women doing the vast majority of all household management and childcare labor. Such sufferings to the husbands ought to be alleviated with a baked and delivered cake, frosted with the words, "Poor, Unfortunate Man" — or a country song titled, "I Have Wives Who Don't Like Me But It's Not My Fault".)
But by math alone, there can never be an equal amount of men experiencing pain in polygynous marriages than women, due to polygyny by definition being one man to more than one woman. There are always more women married polygamously than there are men, meaning the pain brought on by being married polygamously will always be experienced by greater numbers of women than men. This is the case even if we were to pretend that a polygamist husband suffers as much pain as one polygamist wife does — but it should be restated that the Lord professes polygamy as being unacceptable to Him due to the pain it brings to the women (and says nothing about any unwarranted pain that it brings to men.)
20 ~ What if the doctrine of polygamy is just something that we're not supposed to understand? Or something that we can't fully understand with our limited human understanding? ~
Moroni 7:15-16 states,
For behold, my brethren, it is given unto you to judge, that ye may know good from evil; and the way to judge is as plain, that ye may know with a perfect knowledge, as the daylight is from the dark night.
For behold, the spirit of Christ is given to every man, that he may know good from evil;
The Book of Mormon here states that the divide between good and evil is apparent, and plain as night and day, and that we ourselves are given the power to judge and know the difference between them even with "a perfect knowledge." The tangled arguments in favor of polygamy — that bring confusion, discomfort, pain, and spur explanations of, "We're just not inspired enough to understand" ought to be recognized as not having the convincing enlightenment of the Spirit.
21 ~ Marrying for love was a culturally embedded idea before the 1800s ~
It has been argued by certain LDS apologists that the idea of romance or marrying for love was not as culturally prevalent during and immediately after the time of Joseph Smith, and so women's hearts were not "broken" by early Mormon polygamy in the same way that modern women would feel today. This assertion disregards the fact that romance novels were such a prevalent literary genre in the late 1700s that Jane Austen, in the year 1790, wrote a novella (comedically and intentionally misspelled, "Love and Freindship") satirizing common tropes and plot devices used in romance writings of the period — she was only fourteen years old. Her own six romance novels were published even before Joseph Smith's First Vision of 1820. The first novel she ever wrote (Northanger Abbey, completed in 1799) intentionally and metacritically played on themes and storylines that were commonly found in the gothic style of romance novels being published at the time. It is culturally significant that the romance genre of literature was so prolifically developed before the turn of the 18th century as to have its own evolved stylistic themes. Modern published research in the fields of 18th and 19th century English literature and sociology include tens of thousands of works detailing and analyzing the romance writings that were in common distribution (directly before and during the life of Joseph Smith), including how they both influenced and were affected by the societal romantic culture of the time.
While arranged marriages and marriages of convenience still occurred among the elite, they were not the cultural norm for societies of the English-speaking world at any point during the time that polygamy was practiced by the early Mormons or after, even among the religiously devout. Among Christians outside of Mormon polygamy, there was no religious rhetoric arguing that women ought not to expect to marry for love due to some unexplained order of heaven that is just not yet fully understood.
22 ~ "Who says polygamy necessarily ruins love or romance in marriage if it is done ethically?" ~
Kody Brown, the polygamist husband of the reality TV show, "Sister Wives", is a member of the Mormon polygamist offshoot group called the Apostolic United Brethren, and began practicing polygamy in 1993. Together with his four wives, their family was portrayed in the series as an ethical model of modern-day polygamy, in which they prioritized the values of transparency, equal treatment, and mutual consent. But now, after twenty years of practicing polygamy, three of the wives, including his first legal wife, have all divorced Kody, leaving only the youngest wife who has not left. Kody now disavows polygamy as a healthy system of marriage, stating, "Polygamy kills emotional intimacy. It makes everybody defensive, and I really want an emotionally vulnerable, intimate relationship with a woman, and you're not going to get that in polygamy."
23 ~ "That's an isolated instance, what about ethical polygamy on a larger demographic level?" ~
The country of Malaysia, while allowing Islamic polygamy to be legal, maintains since 1984 one of the strictest legal guidelines for polygamous families to adhere to, mandating five conditions a husband must demonstrate before being permitted to take an additional wife:
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that he has the financial means to provide for an additional wife
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that he can guarantee equal treatment of the wives
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that no harm will be caused to the existing wife/wives by him taking an additional wife
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that the additional marriage is either “just or necessary”
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and that the proposed marriage would not directly or indirectly lower the existing wife and dependants’ standard of living
The men are also limited by doctrinal Islam to having a maximum of four wives. However, even with these conditions being set before a polygamous marriage can even take place, Malaysian polygamous families in all twelve peninsular states were found in an over-ten-year Sisters in Islam (SIS) demographic study to experience high rates of infighting and neglect, across all economic classes. (https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-981-97-9104-0) OpenDemocracy's 2010 article of the study's preliminary findings reports a number of polygamous wives stated, "I might as well be a single mother," and a number of children reported their fathers sometimes having difficulty immediately recognizing them or remembering which wife they were born from.(https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/stress-quarrels-and-neglect-normal-polygamous-family/)
The report also showed that first wives sometimes only give consent to add a subsequent wife out of duress, being afraid of divorce or mistreatment if she does not give her court-mandated permission. Dr. Wan Zumusni Wan Mustapha wrote, "Some voice their dissatisfaction but some, in order to save the marriage or for the sake of the children, will just go on with it... I don't see how it [polygamy] can be in the interests of the first wives." (https://www.wikiimpact.com/is-polygamy-still-practiced-and-legal-in-malaysia/) Their analysis showed that polygamous circumstances were one of the most often given reasons for divorce. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xFQDnnNGrgQ)
24 ~ Jacob indicates that polygamy is not in accordance with familial love ~
6 And now, this commandment they observe to keep; wherefore, because of this observance, in keeping this commandment, the Lord God will not destroy them, but will be merciful unto them; and one day they shall become a blessed people.
7 Behold, their husbands love their wives, and their wives love their husbands; and their husbands and their wives love their children;...
Jacob 3:6-7
Jacob's inclusion of the words of Lamanite husbands loving their wives and children appears to be a premise that the Nephite men's desire to implement polygamy was antithetical to and not in proper accordance with loving one's wife and children.
25 ~ 'Were the words of Jacob perhaps only meant for the Nephites?' ~
The Book of Mormon was written for our day. Mormon's selection of writings to transcribe onto the gold plates were chosen specifically based on what would be needed for our day. There is no other passage in the Book of Mormon that we consider to perhaps only be applicable to the Nephites and not to ourselves. At one point in his record Mormon even records that the Lord had him include the writings of the smaller plates of Nephi, for a "wise purpose" that he did not know himself. The book of Jacob is part of those smaller plates of Nephi that he is referring to in that passage. In addition to all this, the Lord told the Nephites that the pain of polygamy was borne by the women, "in all the lands of my people," — there is no evidence to make the assertion that the pain borne by the Nephite women and the women "in all the lands" of the Lord's people wouldn't be felt by women today, or that the Lord wouldn't care as much about the pain of women today as He did the women of the Nephite's day.
The Book of Ether, which suggests polygamy in the genealogy verses telling of men having high numbers of children, cannot be considered proof that the Lord sometimes approves of polygamy, as the Lord in Jacob chapter 2 tells the Nephites, "I the Lord God will not suffer that this people shall do like unto them of old."
26 ~ 'What if it's only desiring many wives and concubines that is wrong?' ~
Jacob 1:15 reads,
And now it came to pass that the people of Nephi, under the reign of the second king, began to grow hard in their hearts, and indulge themselves somewhat in wicked practices, such as like unto David of old desiring many wives and concubines, and also Solomon, his son.
From this, some men have insisted that the sin is only in "desiring" many wives and concubines, and that actually having them is a-okay so long as you don't want to have them. But Jacob said that having more than one wife is an abomination, regardless of the circumstances. This idea also contradicts D&C 132:62 which says that if a man desires a virgin who's promised to no one else and he asks for consent then he can have her. There is also no other commandment in which we believe this could apply to — we do not teach that stealing is okay so long as you don't want to steal, or that worshipping false gods is okay so long as you do not "desire" to worship false gods.
27 ~ "Ye (fathers) have lost the confidence of your children" ~
The Lord states that the negative effects of polygamy are not only suffered by the women, but by children as well. Children are on average more closely bonded to their mothers than to their fathers, to such an extent that children's hearts are liable to be turned fully against their father for any mistreatment they perceive their mother receiving from their father. In cases of children witnessing their mother being physically abused by their father, children are widely reported as interfering to fight back against their father, in protection of their mother, however small they themselves might be, or run in front of their father to use their own bodies as human shields. With children being so strongly bonded to their mothers as this, it should come as no surprise that children would lose confidence in a father for any perceived pain that comes to their mother as a result of polygamy.
28 ~ Polygamy leads to there being more absent fathers ~
Some pain of polygamy was borne directly by the children. As Mormon men were not required to live with or even near all of their wives and children, polygamy therefore created more fathers who were absent from at least some of their children. There are stories of fathers not recognizing their children and not being able to remember their children's names. In 2016 famed LDS author Carol Lynn Pearson published her work titled, "The Ghost of Eternal Polygamy", which in part shared select stories of Mormon individuals who have struggled with the doctrine and history of Mormon polygamy. One contributor stated,
One of my great-grandfathers was a high-ranking leader in the LDS Church. He had three wives, and my grandfather was one of his children. As Grandpa played in the garden, an old man walked up the path to his front door. Grandpa ran in the house and said, "Mama, who is that funny-looking man coming up the path?" She replied, "Why, that's your father."
GEP, page 126
Those who have defended polygamy by saying that the greater absence of fathers was compensated by the mothers giving eachother increased support, are using the same arguments used by modern-day proposers of fatherhood redundancy who argue that children having fathers or father figures does not provide any unique benefit to child development.
29 ~ Absent fathers leads to higher mortality rates in children ~
One study published in 1992 showed that in traditional societies where the father leaves or dies, children's survival rate declines by over 50 percent. (Hill and Hurtado 1992 --- EOP page 14, 2nd pgh) The figures in Historical Monogamy Doctrine section 28, showing that the children of early polygamous Mormon men had higher mortality rates than the children of monogamous men, are not solely a Mormon phenomenon, as analyses of modern polygamous societies also show this same effect, with it being empirically shown from data sourced from over 170 countries that children of modern day polygynous families are 24 percent more likely to die as children than those born to monogamous families, even when controlling for gross domestic product (GDP). (EOP, page 16, 2nd pgh)
30 ~ Polygamy is empirically correlated to higher mortality rates for women ~
The same data set sourced from over 170 countries shows that polygamy is linked to higher mortality rates for women, and this correlation continues even when controlling for GDP. This was measured in the figures for mother mortality rates, (McDermott, Page 77) described as women who die during childbirth, and in the figures of lower female life expectancy in general. (McDermott, Page 78) The prevalence of polygyny in a country was measured on a five-point scale, with the data showing that the more polygynous a country is, the higher the rate of mother mortality and the lower overall female life expectancy. (McDermott, Page 78) This, together with the figures showing that polygamist families experience higher rates of child mortality than their monogamous counterparts, we see two more of the "deep wounds" suffered by Mormon women as a result of polygamy.
Unfortunately, Brigham Young was against the practice of physicians and did not consider it desirable (or even acceptable) for a doctor to attend a woman giving birth. In 1851 he is recorded as saying,
“The practice of doctors in visiting women in childbirth is damnable. Women should be let alone and let nature have its perfect work. Let a woman keep her child if she can 2 or 3 years, but she cannot do it. When the time has come, nature will deliver her of her child without a doctor...“
10 December 1851. Discourses of Brigham Young, Wilford Woodruff Journal. Volume 4, page 82
In total, Brigham Young had eight wives who died before the age of 45 (this number excludes any wives who divorced him before their deaths). One of the eight, Olive Grey Frost, is confirmed to have died in childbirth six years earlier in 1845 at the age of 28, and another, Margaret Maria Alley, died four days after giving birth in 1852 at the age of 27, just over a year after Brigham Young made the above remarks.
31 ~ Polygamous communities experience higher rates of wife & child neglect ~
The higher rates of mortality for both wives and children in polygamy is thought to be in large part from higher rates of neglect, as theorized by the researchers studying the higher mortality rates of children from early Mormon polygamous families. When one wife becomes sexually inaccessible either due to exhaustion from pregnancy or recent childbirth, due to caring for a sick child or being sick herself, or while burned out from caring for multiple children, a polygamous husband is sexually incentivized to visit another wife who is more sexually available (or find a new bride for himself altogether). This dynamic leads to a husband being more likely to take leave of a wife when she is at her most vulnerable, as opposed to a monogamous man who is more likely to remain at his wife's bedside in sickness and health. There were also no regulatory measures set to ensure that a husband divided his income with equanimity among his wives and children, meaning there was nothing to prevent a husband from giving a greater portion of his income to a more favored wife (or even his entire income, as oversight ensuring that a husband provides for all or any of his wives and children was scant.)
32 ~ "The bull is not responsible for the calf" — polygamist husbands were not strictly required to provide for their wives, even those who had children ~
This directly contradicts 1 Timothy 5:8, which states,
But if any provide not for his own, and specially for those of his own house, he hath denied the faith, and is worse than an infidel.
It is ironic that the same church that taught polygamy was to take care of the widows, also had no set consequences for a husband who did not adequately provide for all his wives. Brigham Young had, according to himself, a "too high to count" number of wives (that he did not all provide for), and most of Brigham Young's wives and children were left without inheritance or provision after his death,
The Lord knows if I had lost a rib for each wife I have, I should have had none left long ago. Some try to say how many wives the Governor of Utah has. But if they can tell, they can tell more than I can, for I do not know how many I have; I have not counted them up for many years. I did not know how many I had before I left the United States I had so many. I heard that I had ninety. Why bless your souls, ninety is not a beginning. You might ask me if I have ever seen them all; I answer no; I see a few of them I pick up myself here."
There were no measures taken to limit the number of wives a man could have, whether for reasons of economic provision or any other reasoning. Wilford Woodruff recorded him as prophesying,
He [Brigham Young] also said the Lord was about to Empty the earth th[at?] men would be destroyed & He should live to see the day when thousands of women would Come to the men of this Church for salvation. One man would have to take thousands to save them.
Journal of Wilford Woodruff
As this did not occur in the lifetimes of either Brigham Young or Wilford Woodruff, this is apparently another failed prophecy of Brigham Young's.
33 ~ Polygamy was a bad economic model, even for those men who were committed to providing for all of their wives and children ~
Economically, polygamy made it harder for Mormon men to provide for their families even when they legitimately strived to, as more women and children were financially dependent on one man. There were more women and children to become destitute with the unexpected loss of a husband's income due to economic factors or a husband's illness, and a lesser share of inheritance passed to the widows and their children at the death of the husband. The men of the church with the highest number of wives (which were also the men who held the highest church leadership positions) all had their livings provided wholly or in large part by church tithing funds.
In the Malaysian SIS polygamy study, it was found that despite initial requirements to prove financial support capability in polygamous marriages, 63% of polygamous husbands were not able to support their entire family's financial needs. (https://www.wikiimpact.com/is-polygamy-still-practiced-and-legal-in-malaysia/) This could perhaps be due to unexpected income loss, unexpected expenses, overspending by one or more of the wives — or simply due to a growing number of children. While the courts mandate evidence that a polygamous husband is able to provide for an additional wife along with his current wives and children, he is not required to prove that he can provide for any additional children that may be produced by any of his wives in the future, not even future children from his prospective wife.
34 ~ Exceptions for he, but not for she ~
It has been proposed by some that polygamy doesn't actually violate the Lord's command for marriage to be between one man and woman at all, with the idea being that each additional wife that a husband takes is an entirely new marriage. They argue that Jacob's marriage to Leah was a marriage between one man and one woman, and that his marriage to Rachel was another marriage between one man and one woman, etc. and so no violation of the principle of "one man and one woman" is made. This idea was popularized by LDS apologist Greg Matsen, and has since been spread by others. But by this line of logic, it would be just as perfectly lawful to the Lord for a man to have fifty wives as to have one, or two, or three, since each additional wife, no matter how many wives there were to be, would be a new marriage entirely. This idea however does not align with an exegetical reading of Jacob chapter 2, in which the Lord condemns David and Solomon for having many wives, and then states, "For there shall not any man among you have save it be one wife;"
This line of logic, if it were to be valid, would also then mean that a wife herself could have more than one husband without being in violation of this principle, since each additional husband she received would be a new marriage altogether. In this aspect then, LDS apologists like Greg Matsen, for whatever reason, don't think their own logic to be applicable both ways.
35 ~ Economic and other arguments for polygyny, but not for polyandry ~
The argued point in favor of multi-wife polygamy by LDS apologists of it being ethical — even necessary — in cases in which a woman needs someone to provide for her is also an argument that LDS apologists never use to argue for the morality of a wife sometimes having more than one husband. If a wife and her children's needs were not being fully met by her one husband, it would have still not have been considered an ethical possibility by LDS theologists for her to receive a second husband to help provide for the remainder of her currently unmet economic needs —no exception. If a wife were married to a husband she loved but who for any reason became permanently disabled and unable to provide, she would not have been permitted to receive a second husband for herself under the circumstances of early Mormon polygamy, but would have been obligated to leave him indefinitely and marry another if she desired or needed to be provided for. (The "raise up more seed" argument in favor of Mormon polygamy was also never considered a legitimate exception in those rare cases in which it could have applied either — if a wife had a husband she loved but who, due to injury or illness was himself sterile, it would not have been allowable for herself to receive a second husband to "raise up seed" with, but would be required for her to leave her first husband before remarrying.)
In either case of economically-motivated polygyny or economically-motivated polyandry, it is far more ethical for those who need provision to be provided for without requiring them to marry anyone.
36 ~ Societal wealth inequality shown to be a predictor of societal polygamy ~
Predictive polygyny models, as analyzed in The Evils of Polygyny, predict polygyny as more likely to occur in a society when there is wealth inequality among the men. Researchers studying this effect explain that when economic resources are equally limited for all in poverty, or when economic resources are in surplus and equally distributed to all, monogamy will be the societal practice to a higher degree than in societies of economic inequality. (EOP, page 14, 2nd pgh.) This shows a pattern of polygamy being linked to societies that are not striving towards the Zion-like principles of freely sharing resources, and all being like unto another. This also has an interesting parallel to Jacob chapter 2, in which immediately after chastising the members for having fallen prey to the pride of riches and wealth above another, he then chastises the men for wishing to implement polygamy for themselves.
37 ~ Mormon polygamists had higher divorce rates ~
The true percentage of early Mormon polygamous marriages that ended in divorce would be difficult to ascertain. As the marriages were illegal and often undocumented, the divorces were also often undocumented as well, and Brigham Young stated that a woman did not even need to obtain a divorce if a man of higher priesthood authority wanted to "take her on" (Brigham Young took on an estimated six wives under such circumstances himself.) It was years after polygamy was publicly announced before the church under Brigham Young even began recording divorces. However, it is readily agreed by historians that the rate of divorce among Mormon polygamists was significantly higher than the average divorce rate of the United States at the time. As documented by government records, "Only about 5% of marriages [in the United States] contracted in 1867 ended in divorce." (Preston SH, MacDonald J. The Incidence of Divorce Within Cohorts of American Marriages Contracted Since the Civil War. Demography. 1979;16:1–25. [PubMed] [Google Scholar])
But paradoxically, the higher divorce rates of early polygamist Mormons has been touted by LDS apologists as a point in favor of Mormon polygamy, with it being viewed as a positive sign of there being greater rights for Mormon women due the greater ease for wives to obtain a divorce than in other regions of the continent at the time. This however, can only be argued as being a point in favor of women being granted divorces by their own wish — not something that can be argued as being a point in favor of polygamy. But even this ignores the fact that Mormon women who were granted church divorces were not granted alimony or child support either before or upon finalization of the divorce, meaning that Mormon women were more economically punished for seeking and securing a divorce than women outside of Mormondom, even to the point of divorce potentially being an altogether financially unfeasible alternative for a Mormon woman whether or not she were able to more easily secure one for herself.
Certain LDS apologists have stated that Brigham Young always granted divorce in the case of a woman petitioning for one, but the historical records show otherwise. Brigham Young's first plural wife, Augusta Adams Cobb, was denied a divorce from him after continued written requests and despite her having another man she wished to remarry, and another report was of a wife who left to Idaho with her intended fiancé after being denied a church divorce from her polygamist husband.
Many details of early Mormon polygamy have been lost to time, but polygamy is still present in many modern communities, making it available to study certain psychological and social effects in real time. Outside of Mormon polygamy, societies with the same divorce processes for both monogamous and polygamous families have higher rates of divorce among those who are polygynous. A 2012 academic review reads,
Systematic and controlled analyses from polygynous societies generally show higher divorce rates for polygynous vs. monogamous marriages in the same society. … Relative to monogamous families, polygynous families with more than two wives are five times more likely to divorce. (https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/22271782/ --The Puzzle of Monogamous Marriage, as quoted by https://www.thepublicdiscourse.com/2012/05/5338/ -- The Perils of Polygamy)
38. 'If so many early Mormon pioneers didn’t like polygamy, why wasn’t there an anti-polygamy movement within the church?'
Many anti-polygamists were excommunicated after the martyrdom. In the church vote of succession by the members, the Twelve with Brigham Young as president were elected by majority vote to be the new leaders of the church. Those who opposed the vote were all later excommunicated.
Those not of the Twelve who vied the Twelve for the presidency of the church after the martyrdom — Sidney Ridgon, James J. Strang, William Smith, and Granville Hedrick — afterward either established or joined off-shoot branches of Mormonism that all taught and practiced monogamy. William Marks, John E. Page, and Lyman Wight were three other high-ranking Nauvoo leaders who dissented from the church under Brigham Young's leadership and rejected the doctrine of polygamy.
The Twelve under the leadership of Brigham Young continued to excommunicate those who disavowed polygamy over the following decades. One of those was Brigham Young's plural wife Ann Eliza Webb, who wrote an anti-polygamy memoir titled, Wife No. 19. Fanny Warn Stenhouse, T. B. H. Stenhouse, Gudmund Gudmundson, and Samuel Broadhurst were other members who disavowed polygamy and were excommunicated. However, a full list of anti-polygamist Mormons would likely never be feasibly formed as the given reasons for such excommunications at the time were the more vague terms of "apostasy". Anti-polygamy sentiment was not possible to become organized within the church itself.
39. 'Since polygamy ended so long ago anyway, no woman's feelings are actually being actively harmed now'
Those who argue that principles of polygamy do not inherently cause harm in environments in which they are not being actively practiced forget that Jacob accused the men of breaking the hearts of their wives and losing the confidence of their children simply for seeking to justify polygamy — without having yet practiced it at all,
4 For behold, as yet, ye have been obedient unto the word of the Lord, which I have given unto you.
35 Behold, ye have done greater iniquities than the Lamanites, our brethren. Ye have broken the hearts of your tender wives, and lost the confidence of your children, because of your bad examples before them; and the sobbings of their hearts ascend up to God against you.
In these passages, God validated the pain of women who had not experienced polygamy first-hand, indicating that women's feelings of polygamy by first-hand experience and women's vicarious feelings against polygamy are both valid, according to the Lord.
40 ~ God warned Jacob (and the women) preemptively ~
17 Wherefore I, Jacob, gave unto them these words as I taught them in the temple, having first obtained mine errand from the Lord.
4 For behold, as yet, ye have been obedient unto the word of the Lord, which I have given unto you.
5 But behold, hearken ye unto me, and know that by the help of the all-powerful Creator of heaven and earth I can tell you concerning your thoughts, how that ye are beginning to labor in sin, which sin appeareth very abominable unto me, yea, and abominable unto God.
According to Jacob, it was the Lord Himself who revealed to him that the men were beginning to justify polygamy in thought. The Lord didn't even allow the men to progress as far as to start implementing polygamy before He acted to put a stop to it. It could be interpreted that the Lord was evidently so eager to correct the men's beliefs of polygamy, before any single woman had been persuaded to enter into it, that He intervened to warn Jacob first. This is evidence of the lengths God is willing to go to in order to help protect His daughters from His sons.
41 ~ Polygamy not being denounced has caused LDS women to fear for their future on earth ~
Pearson recorded one woman state, "As a Mormon, I had grown up learning that polygamy could come back any time... It hurt my stomach when I thought about it. It colored every crush I had, and carried through into my marriage." (GEP, page 161) As Karen Humes Hyatt has remarked, the idea of divinely-appointed polygamy mentally positions a dagger over the hearts of LDS women, ready to "pierce with deep wounds" if and when their Beloved God ever decides to command it again. Certain church leaders and other priesthood holders have perpetuated such beliefs of polygamy being "restored" here in mortality, as church apostle Bruce R. McConkie did in Mormon Doctrine when he stated, "Obviously the holy practice [of polygamy] will commence again after the Second Coming of the Son of Man and the ushering in of the millennium."
42 ~ Polygamy not being denounced has caused LDS women to fear for their future in heaven ~
In "The Ghost of Eternal Polygamy," one woman shared that after marrying in the temple, she developed severe hypochondria from anxiety of death, due to her fear that if she dies before her husband he will be permitted to remarry, causing her to live an eternity in polygamy. (GEP, page 9) Another woman wrote that she was so disturbed learning of the doctrine of polygamy as a teenager in seminary that she vowed to never marry at all, and went through a decade of severe depression as a result. (GEP, page 87-88) Another contributor wrote,
Recently my highly orthodox mother and I had a conversation that I found devastating. She said, "The only thing that would cause me to lose my faith and leave the church would be if a bishop called your dad and me in and told us that we had been chosen to practice polygamy. I couldn't do it. I will never do it."
I said, "Even if you truly thought the instruction came straight from God?"
"Even then. I don't care who it came from."
This shocked me because my mother had never given even a whisper of disagreeing with God or his church about anything! I asked her, "Mom, what will you do in the afterlife, in the celestial kingdom? What will you do when Dad has been given plural wives to populate his 'worlds without number'?"
She replied with a sad smile, "Oh, sweetie, I won't be there."
Confused, I asked, "You won't be in the celestial kingdom? You're the best woman I know! How can you say you won't be there?"
"Well, I make sure that I commit little sins — nothing big — just little sins like lying and being judgmental and other things — just enough so I don't have to go to the highest level of the celestial kingdom. So I'll never have to worry about that polygamy stuff."
"So — so you won't be with Dad in heaven?"
Sadly, Mom shook her head and said, "I just try not to think of it too much."
"The Ghost of Eternal Polygamy". Carol Lynn Pearson. 2016. Page 24-25
Another woman recorded,
My mother was petrified of dying because she was the second wife of my father and knew she would have to live polygamy forever. It broke my heart to watch her trying so hard not to die.
"The Ghost of Eternal Polygamy". Carol Lynn Pearson. 2016. Page 48
There are LDS men who have stoutly professed their willingness to benevolently "save" women from eternal singlehood by being their celestial polygamist husbands in the next life. These stories above and others like them, however, show that certain women feel they would rather live in a heaven of eternal singlehood with the Savior than be in a heaven eternally sharing a polygamist husband.
43 ~ The mate selection competitiveness of polygamy always leads to high numbers of single men ~
One inherent societal debilitation of polygamy that is present regardless of any individual circumstance or feeling is mate selection competitiveness, referred to in Historical Monogamy Doctrine. The mate selection competitiveness seen in historical Mormon polygamy is not an isolated feature of Mormon polygamy in the 1800s but is an endemic aspect inherent in all societies which are moderately or largely polygamous, due to the natural gender-at-birth ratio being near-50:50 in every nation on earth. (The nations that have a skewed gender-at-birth ratio experience such due to unnatural selection in the form of female infanticide and female-selective abortions.) Even having a minority of men in the population practicing polygamy can bring significant imbalance to the pool of available single women to prospective suitors. The Economist reports,
Polygamy nearly always means rich men taking multiple wives. And if the top 10% of men marry four women each, then the bottom 30% cannot marry at all.
https://www.economist.com/the-economist-explains/2018/03/19/why-polygamy-breeds-civil-war
The single men of this demographic that have been reported on most especially are the young men of present-day Mormon polygamous groups, who have been termed "lost boys". While young single men are not so widely discriminated against in most polygamous societies in the world, in certain Mormon polygamous groups like the FLDS they are preemptively ousted as teenagers, beginning around the same ages that the teenage girls are being married off, in order for the church leaders to have less competition in obtaining additional wives for themselves. Over twenty years ago The Guardian reported,
Up to 1,000 teenage boys have been separated from their parents and thrown out of their communities by a polygamous sect to make more young women available for older men, Utah officials claim.
Many of these "Lost Boys", some as young as 13, have simply been dumped on the side of the road in Arizona and Utah, by the leaders of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (FLDS), and told they will never see their families again or go to heaven.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2005/jun/14/usa.julianborger
44 ~ The mate selection competitiveness of polygamy leads to brideprices ~
On a global scale, where young single men are not being systematically exiled in order to maintain lower levels of mate selection competitiveness, the competitiveness inherent in polygyny has led to the practice of brideprices, in which parents are offered money by a suitor in order to be given their daughter in marriage, with the "bride market" soon evolving to any man becoming required to provide large payment to a prospective wife's parents in order for him to marry. Under modern international laws, marriages which do not involve the informed consent of the bride as a consenting adult constitute human trafficking, and brideprices increase their occurrence. With single women being a perpetually scarce resource, brideprices are perpetually higher than what a large share of single men can feasibly pay from customary labor. This leads to higher rates of financially-motivated crimes, as well as outright bride capture. (EOP, page 17)
45 ~ Polygamy contributes to higher rates of violent crime ~
Even without the presence of brideprices, the unavoidable gender ratio gap inherent in all polygamous systems leads to higher occurrences of violent crime committed by unmarried men. Direct bride capture occurs in high rates wherever there is a shortage of brides, and when most of the single females are young girls, the girls who are kidnapped are then equally young. (page 17)
Bride scarcity also leads to higher rates of financially-motivated enlistment in violent rebel groups, with some rebel groups promising young men either a future bride or a brideprice upon enlistment. Many of us are aware of the hundreds of school-girl kidnappings of Boko Haram, but a fewer number are aware that a chronic shortage of potential brides for young men due to polygamy is a major contributing factor to these kidnappings: (https://academic.oup.com/ej/article-abstract/132/645/1927/6501205?redirectedFrom=fulltext&login=false) Regarding polygamy, The Economist reports, "When large numbers of men are doomed to bachelorhood, they get desperate." (https://www.economist.com/the-economist-explains/2018/03/19/why-polygamy-breeds-civil-war) Unmarried young men have the highest testosterone levels among any other cohort of males, (EOP, page 15) and have reached their full size and capacity for strength before having developed their full capacity for emotional regulation, impulse control, or logical reasoning. A 2012 meta-analysis of polygamous societies reads,
Faced with high levels of intra-sexual competition and little chance of obtaining even one long-term mate, unmarried, low-status men will heavily discount the future and more readily engage in risky status-elevating and sex-seeking behaviors. This will result in higher rates of murder, theft, rape, social disruption, kidnapping (especially of females), sexual slavery and prostitution.
(https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/22271782/ --The Puzzle of Monogamous Marriage, as quoted by https://www.thepublicdiscourse.com/2012/05/5338/ -- The Perils of Polygamy)
The destabilizing effect of bride shortage caused directly by polygamy is significant enough to cause disorder on a national level. The Economist has argued that polygamy "breeds" civil war, reporting, "The 20 most fragile states in the world are all somewhat or very polygamous." (https://www.economist.com/the-economist-explains/2018/03/19/why-polygamy-breeds-civil-war)
46 ~ Polygamy linked to more violent rule ~
Perhaps in part due to the heightened societal instability from violence and other crime, polygyny is also correlated to more militarized governments, described as higher GDP spent on military and defense expenditures. (EOP, page 88) McDermott states that the higher military and defense expenditures are "particularly on arms expenditures for weapons." (EOP, page 86) This suggests that the higher rates of violence manifested by civilian men in polygamous states is responded to by their governments with a higher prevalence of military presence and military violence, in attempt to maintain order. This dynamic of government-against-civilians could also lead to an environment in which it is only the more violent men who are able to gain and maintain the highest positions of power within the government itself, and when violent men hold the highest positions of power, they are more likely to respond to neighboring nations with violence as well. There is precedent to propose that polygamy contributes to men being both more internally violent (aggression towards their fellow countrymen) and externally violent (aggression towards their neighboring countries), with men in polygynous societies being more violent when they are unmarried (by committing crime, as explained above), and when they are married (due to fears of themselves and their families becoming the victims of crime, and due to having to carry out violent government orders to maintain government rule.)
47 ~ Polygyny is linked to lesser civil rights for women ~
Polygyny is associated with lesser legal rights for women, with McDermott reporting that the more polygamous a society is, the more legal inequity women experience. (EOP, page 84) McDermott measured the components of this as whether there are young teen girls being married, whether brides are permitted to choose their spouse, whether divorce is possible for women to obtain, whether women may inherit property, whether women have access to and jurisdiction choosing reproductive medical care, and whether women have the same legal standing and rights as men. On a five-point scale, these civil rights for women were found to be less prevalent the more polygamous a country is.
48 ~ Polygyny is linked to more civil rights losses for all citizens ~
Polygyny is also correlated to lesser societal freedoms for the entire population, in addition to the above factors analyzing solely women-associated rights. McDermott writes, "Polygyny also influences the degree of rights and freedoms experienced by citizens in a given country. Specifically, states with higher rates of polygyny display fewer political rights and civil liberties than those with less polygyny." (EOP, page 88) Even when controlling for GDP, every stepwise increase in the prevalence of polygyny in a state is associated with a stepwise decrease in the overall political freedoms that are available to citizens. One possible explanation could be that in response to the heightened levels of violence associated with polygamy, governments implement greater restrictions on citizens in order to maintain law and order.
49 ~ Polygamy clinically shown to lead to higher rates of child abuse ~
Another category of violence that has been linked to polygamy is child abuse. The 2012 meta-analysis reads,
Much empirical work in monogamous societies indicates that higher degrees of relatedness among household members are associated with lower rates of abuse, neglect and homicide. Living in the same household with genetically unrelated adults is the single biggest risk factor for abuse, neglect and homicide of children. Stepmothers are 2.4 times more likely to kill their stepchildren than birth mothers, and children living with an unrelated parent are between 15 and 77 times more likely to die “accidentally.” (https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/22271782/ --The Puzzle of Monogamous Marriage, as quoted by https://www.thepublicdiscourse.com/2012/05/5338/ -- The Perils of Polygamy)
The phenomenon of stepparents being many-times more likely to abuse stepchildren than biological parents who abuse biological children is known in evolutionary psychology as "The Cinderella Effect", with stepfathers having a higher statistical risk factor for child abuse than stepmothers. Polygamous families have greater numbers of children living with unrelated adults if sister wives reside in the household, and early Mormon polygamous Utah had a greater number of stepfathers due to the higher number of divorcées and young widows who remarried.
50 ~ Polygamy clinically shown to be harmful to children's health, wellbeing & academic futures ~
In addition to higher rates of child abuse and child mortality, polygamy is also linked to higher rates of violence due to the empirical evidence showing that "children of young mothers have worse outcomes in education, long-term economic prospects, and higher risk for crime..." (EOP, page 16, 2nd prgh) A 2013 study of student academic performance in Nigeria concluded that students in polygamous families fare worse on average academically than those from monogamous families (with the daughters shown to have the greatest disparity), and another Nigerian study of its kind conducted ten years later in 2023 came to this same conclusion.
https://academicjournals.org/journal/IJPC/article-full-text-pdf/D004AFF38778
Adesehinwa Olayayinka Adenike, "Effects of family type (monogamy or polygamy) on students' academic achievement in Nigeria," International Journal of Psychology and Counseling 5, no.7 (October 2013) 153-56.
51 ~ Polygamous communities experience higher rates of physical spousal abuse ~
Domestic violence (DVS) increases in polygyny, even when controlling for GDP. The factors included by McDermott were reportedly, "DVS, rape, marital rape, and honor killings, as well as the extent and strength of the enforcement of the laws prohibiting these crimes in any given state." (EOP, page 80-84?) With this evidence that polygamous communities are empirically shown to experience higher rates of domestic violence, it must be asserted that on a demographic level, polygamy is harmful to marital relationships and to women's health and wellbeing.
In many parts of the world, male violence is the greatest single threat to the lives and wellbeing of women. As reported by the U.N. Security General in 2006 and quoted by Pearson, "Globally, women between the age of fifteen and forty-four are more likely to be maimed or die as a result of male violence than through cancer, malaria, traffic accidents or war combined." (GEP, page 4 -- source link on page 211)
It should be noted that the higher rates of violence empirically seen to occur in polygamous societies are significant regardless of the causal relationship between the two. Whether it is violence that causes polygamy, whether it is polygamy that causes violence, whether it is a loop of mutual negative-reinforcement, or whether it is a third unknown factor linking the two, violence and polygamy are empirically linked on every level studied.
52 ~ Polygamy has been shown to lead to decreased GDP ~
The data sourced by McDermott of negative societal outcomes were all adjusted for GDP, but polygamy has been shown to have negative impacts on GDP itself. It appears that when externally limited to one wife, men begin working towards familial and future wellbeing to a greater extent, with the 2012 meta-analysis reporting,
When males cannot invest in obtaining more wives (because of imposed monogamy) they invest and save in ways that generate... more rapid economic expansion (increasing GDP per capita).… the nearly threefold increase in GDP per capita between Comparable Monogamous Countries and Highly Polygynous Countries is partially caused by legally imposed monogamy. (https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/22271782/ --The Puzzle of Monogamous Marriage, as quoted by https://www.thepublicdiscourse.com/2012/05/5338/ -- The Perils of Polygamy)
53 ~ Extreme poverty has decreased in every country of the world, except for polygamous ones ~
This link to lower GDP and higher violence can give some insight as to why we see that the most polygamous countries in the world are also the most perpetually impoverished, as shown in the recent and current figures of extreme poverty reported by the World Bank,
Lest the figures of these areas be attributed solely to the interreligious violence of certain Middle Eastern and African regions, we have a separate isolated example in Haiti, where non-religious polygamy is commonly practiced, and which over the past fifty years has also been the poorest and arguably most unstable country of the western hemisphere. Haiti is our best example of modern day polygamous societies being fundamentally unstable even without any religious dogma or religiously-motivated violence being present.
The warning of violent destruction given from the Lord to the Nephites should they practice polygamy bears resemblance to the violent destruction we see among polygamous nations in our present day.
54 ~ Polygamy is linked to extremism ~
While polygamy-associated societal instability can be found outside of strict patriarchal religious traditions, as in the case of Haiti, it must still yet be highlighted that polygamy is strongly correlated to religious and theocratic extremism — so much so, that it was through the topic of religiously-motivated foreign terrorism that socioeconomic researcher Rose McDermott began her studies of polygyny. She was seeking to verify a theory put forward by human evolutionary biologist Richard Wrangham, who argued that the violence of terrorism is initially incubated by the patriarchal violence against women in the form of polygyny — and who, when he first put forward such a theory to his fellow university faculty members, received "a bunch of blank stares." (EOP, page 10) Recognizing there to be almost no collected data analyzing systems of polygyny within the context of systems of violence, McDermott spent the next decade gathering evidence and statistics — during which time, she astoundingly found these correlative and causational links to domestic violence, sexual assault, marital rape, honor killings, deaths of neglect, child abuse, kidnappings, militaristic violence of authoritarian rule, a stripping of civil liberties for men, an even greater stripping of civil liberties for women, and financially-motivated crimes — apparently every category of violence studied being linked to polygyny.
When we see that empirical data links polygyny to heightened levels of interpersonal violence, familial violence, societal violence, and even national violence, it becomes much more easy to see why Richard Wrangham posited polygyny as being a core seed contributing to the behaviors leading to the international violence of global terrorism. Valerie Hudson and Andrea den Boer (2004) showed that polygamy and other sex ratio imbalances are associated with states who take aggressive foreign policy stances, arguing that such national leaders are intentionally seeking to redivert young men's aggression towards foreign entities in order to prevent the men's anger from being turned to their own government. (EOP, page 16)
The Lord said that the pain of polygamy was borne by "all the women" of His lands practicing it, and it can be seen by our modern demographic figures that polygamy harms women in every culture in which it is practiced. The pain experienced by women in polygamy is a feature more inherent than transient cultural beliefs and attitudes — it supersedes cultural background entirely. It is neither xenophobic nor culturally prejudiced to be speaking out against polygamy in any culture in which it may be practiced.
55 ~ The systemic harm of polygamy has been challenged and ultimately defended in modern judicial court ~
Beginning in 2010, the Supreme Court of British Columbia in Canada held proceedings challenging the constitutionality of Canada's criminal prohibition of polygamy (both polygyny and polyandry.) Canada is a country with a high percentage of immigrants comprised from nearly every country on earth, including from dominantly polygamous countries, with 23% of its current total population being first-generation immigrants and 17.6% being second-generation immigrants. (https://www.statcan.gc.ca/en/subjects-start/immigration_and_ethnocultural_diversity) Canada is also generally regarded as a country with high societal levels of religious tolerance, and its city of Bountiful, British Columbia has settlements of two Mormon fundamentalist polygamist groups. The question as to whether Canada's 120-year-old legal ban of polygamy violates rights of religious freedom as a relic of antiquated prejudice was therefore brought forward. The court was presented with, "a voluminous amount of evidentiary records on the impact of polygamy on individuals, communities, and nation-states." (The Evils of Polygamy, page 7) The court ruled that polygamy causes inherent and systemic harm, and that there should be no exceptions made to legally allow any form of it. British Columbia Supreme Court Chief Justice Richard Bauman said of his ruling,
I have concluded that this case is essentially about harm; more specifically, Parliament’s reasoned apprehension of harm arising out of the practice of polygamy. This includes harm to women, to children, to society and to the institution of monogamous marriage. (https://www.canadianlawyermag.com/news/general/bc-court-upholds-polygamy-law/271111)
56. 'Doesn't polygamy produce different outcomes if it's sanctioned by God?"
There are those who have argued that data from polygamous or polyamorous groups outside of early Mormonism should never be applied to the polygamy of early Mormonism. They argue that polygyny as practiced by Muslims, FLDS, or non-religious individuals is unsanctioned polygamy, and so ought never to be compared to the polygamy that was supposedly commanded by God to the early Mormons. They argue that God blessed the early Mormons with divine strength, understanding, and purity of heart, and so any polygamy figures from groups outside early Mormonism is therefore misapplied data. But with the early-Mormon-isolated data that young children of polygamous Mormons had higher mortality rates, that polygamous Mormons had higher divorce rates, and that polygamous Mormon women and children suffered under greater levels of neglect, we can see that the level of suffering and dysfunction experienced by early Mormons in polygamy refutes such an argument. Whatever it was that God still blessed early Mormon polygamous family members with, they were not blessed to be as demographically healthy, secure, prosperous, or functional as their monogamous counterparts. Early Mormon monogamous families fared better than Mormon polygamous families during every period in which Mormon church leaders practiced polygamy.
It is significant that so many of the exact same societal issues of early Mormon polygamy — higher rates of neglect, poverty, contention, and death itself — are found in present day polygamous societies as well.
57 ~ Monogamy has been shown to reverse the negative societal effects seen in polygamy ~
The 2012 study analyzing the effects of polygamy on social outcomes — "Considered the most comprehensive study of polygamy and the institution of marriage," (https://sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/01/120124093142.htm) while studying the direct and indirect outcomes of polygamy, also analyzed the outcomes associated with a societal shift from polygamy towards monogamy. It was found that transitioning to monogamy reduced the prevalence of all negative social outcomes, even among societies that had been practicing polygamy for centuries. This gives evidence to the theory that violence is in part caused by polygamy, as opposed to solely being correlated to it. This data is also remarkably significant, given the propensity of violence to beget more violence, that even one stepwise generational shift towards monogamy, after centuries of polygamy-induced violence, could lead to empirically measurable decreases of violence.
This also suggests that the negative outcomes in polygamy experienced by early Mormons were not due to the early Mormons simply being unfamiliar with polygamous social systems, or them merely needing time to learn how to be a "properly functioning" polygamist family.
The dysfunction seen in polygamy has often been argued as being unfairly attributed as causing those issues — after all, spousal abuse, spousal neglect, child abuse and neglect, and familial disharmony can all be found in certain monogamous households as well. But the evidence expounded on this site, illustrating that such factors are inarguably higher in polygamy, shows that the problems experienced in polygamy are, even on a societal level, inherently systemic in nature, not individualistic.
58 ~ Polygamy empirically shown to be harmful to women's mental health & wellbeing ~
Men who would wish to minimize women's feelings against polygamy by arguing such emotions to be more closely related to transient "moods" than to core emotions would do well to read the literature of basic human psychology showing that circumstances of mistreatment have serious and negative overall effects on mental health. The data showing that polygamous women have higher mortality rates and higher rates of becoming victim to violence are argument enough to assert that polygamy is more harmful to a woman's health and wellbeing than monogamous marriage. But mental health research studies also show that polygamy is psychologically destructive to women. A 2012 systematic review and meta-analysis found that there was a higher prevalence of "somatization, depression, anxiety, hostility, psychoticism and psychiatric disorder in polygynous wives as well as reduced life and marital satisfaction, problematic family functioning and low self-esteem." (https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/22794315/) (Rahmanian P, Munawar K, Mukhtar F, Choudhry FR.Arch Womens Ment Health. 2021 Jun;24(3):339-351. doi: 10.1007/s00737-020-01070-8. Epub 2020 Oct 1.PMID: 33000343) It could not be feasibly argued that women's feelings on the matter are somehow separate from their mental and emotional health. When the Lord says He forbids polygamy due to the women's "tender feelings", it is evident that He was not doing so out of a sense of, "Women are irrational and must have their half-superficial preferences catered to," but rather out of a legitimate need to protect women's mental and emotional wellbeing. For women, polygamous marriage is shown to produce worse health outcomes than if she were to remain single. It would appear then that from a human health perspective, women are better off being unmarried than being polygamously married.
59 ~ Polygamy empirically shown to be harmful to men's health & wellbeing ~
If we assume male violence to be a marker of severely poor mental health, then polygamy is significantly destructive to men's mental health and wellbeing as well. And certain poor health markers that are not directly related to mental health have also been observed in higher rates in polygamous men, too. A 2015 European Society of Cardiology study reported that polygamous men experience over four times the average rate of heart disease when compared to monogamous men, with both the risk and severity of the disease increasing with the number of wives he has. This included coronary artery disease, left main disease, and multivessel disease. (https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2015/04/150428141954.htm)
The figures that polygamous men experience poorer health outcomes is especially notable when viewed with the evidence that monogamously married men tend to experience better overall health and longevity than single men. On a demographic level then, monogamous marriage is shown to produce greater health outcomes for men than remaining single, but if he adds any polygamous wives, his cardiovascular health will suffer with each addition.
60 ~ Polygamy demographically seen to be harmful to women's relationships ~
The imagined ideal of sister wives working together in harmony with shared purpose, sharing the joys of motherhood and providing supportive female companionship to one another appears to not be reality for any of the polygamous households that have been empirically studied. The 2012 polygamy meta-analysis reported,
Co-wife conflict is ubiquitous in polygynous households. From anthropology, a review of ethnographic data from 69 non-sororal polygynous societies from around the globe reveals no case where co-wife relations could be described as harmonious, and no hint that women’s access to the means of production had any mitigating impact on conflict. (https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/22271782/ --The Puzzle of Monogamous Marriage, as quoted by https://www.thepublicdiscourse.com/2012/05/5338/ -- The Perils of Polygamy)
The Malaysian Sisters in Islam study itself reported high levels of competitiveness among sister wives and their children, to even such an extent as there being multiple women who self-reported resorting to native non-Islamic witchcraft curses against fellow sister wives, with such levels of animosity also spreading to children against their half-siblings.
Reports of severe contention within early Mormon polygamy have survived as well, with one former LDS member reporting in 1880,
There was an outward semblance of good will, but in reality, the Mormon wives hate each other with deadly hatred. This alone is one of the most evident evil effects of the dreadful system, this hatred that exists under roofs called homes, what are often perfect hells, and scenes of the most disgraceful quarrels.
Dora. Chicago Times, 11 September 1880. See Newspapers.com, Library of Congress
One woman of Mormon ancestry who wrote to Carol Lynn Pearson shared,
My mother told me stories passed down from her mother, who knew people who practiced polygamy, and she said the only family where it worked at all was one in which the two wives got on well with eachother and [mutually] disliked the husband.
(GEP page 127)
61 ~ Belief of polygamy causing personal harm in marriages, even when no polygamy is being practiced ~
Another contribution to "The Ghost of Eternal Polygamy" was the following story,
I ended up marrying a man who was a recent convert. One thing I liked about him was that he was appalled by the idea of polygamy. Finally! An actual male who felt the same as I did.
But still, after we were married — polygamy moved in with us. Every time I would show affection to my husband, I immediately flashed to what the celestial kingdom was going to be like, and I saw that this man who I loved more than anything was basically going to be taken away from me and all these tender moments we had together would be shared with other women.
I would cry inside, already feeling like a part of me was living a polygamous relationship. I withheld love. I wasn't as kind as I wanted to be. I wasn't purposefully mean, but I was protecting myself. All this created a wedge between us. Polygamy was in our future, and I hated it!
Luckily. that changed one day when I began to read church history. The deeper I got into it, the more I knew it was all a big mistake. The Spirit confirmed it, and it felt so good! I could practically hear the Lord saying, "Noooo! Polygamy is wrong!"
My marriage changed dramatically. I knew polygamy would never rear its head. My husband says I'm much kinder to him now, and we're both so grateful for the closeness we now feel.
(GEP page 156)
It is a significant testament against polygamy that, like the empirical data showing that monogamy helps resolve the societal ills associated with polygamy, relinquishing belief of polygamy in favor of monogamy has been shown to resolve the individual pains associated with past belief of polygamy.
62 ~ The familial problems caused by polygamy are an inherent hindrance to participating in temple prayer circles ~
In our LDS temples, we are taught that only the best of feelings must be present in a temple prayer circle. With polygamy causing as much disharmonious feeling as it did in practice, and still does now in doctrine, it therefore in both practice and doctrine interferes with our LDS temple practice of being participant in a prayer circle. It can be seen as significant that the one-to-one gender balance of a prayer circle would never even allow for a polygamous husband to be alone in a prayer circle with all of his wives.
63 ~ Women's vicarious feelings against polygamy are protective to them.
With the empirical evidence that polygamy causes greater abuse, neglect, death, and poorer mental health, emotional health, and relationship health, we can see that women's feelings against polygamy are spiritually and fundamentally protective to them. Women's feelings against polygamy, even of the strongest kind, are not feelings that are in need of being overcome.
In that same sense, when taking the empirical evidence of higher rates of child abuse from step-parents and other non-related adult into account, we can also see that a parent's 'jealous' tendencies to not wish children to bond with non-related adults is evolutionarily protective for children. A mother not wishing her children to be co-parented by an adult that the mother does not herself feel safely bonded to (as would often be the case with sister wives living together) provides protection to her children, meaning that those feelings do not stem from character flaws either.
64 ~ The most vain city in America? ~
In 2007, Forbes listed the 50 highest-populated U.S. cities and divided their population with the number of licensed plastic surgeons, dubbing the one with the highest number of plastic or reconstructive surgery practitioners per capita and higher expenditures on cosmetics and toiletries, "The Most Vain City in America". Forbes reported that the "winner" was none other than Salt Lake City, the city with the highest number of Mormons than any other on the list. That Salt Lake City beat out New York City, Los Angeles, Hollywood, Las Vegas, and Miami for "Most Vain City" was a surprise to many people, including those at Forbes themselves. Salt Lake City had the highest number of practicing plastic surgeons per capita, as well as high per capita expenditures on hair, facial, and other cosmetic products. (https://www.forbes.com/2007/11/29/plastic-health-surgery-forbeslife-cx_rr_1129health_slide.html)
Many were quick to 'blame' Salt Lake City's first-place ranking on perfectionistic Mormon mindsets based on high-demand religion — but such a dynamic of greater body modification is not seen with other high-demand faiths within the United States. Even still, many have continued to assert that the Mormon women they know are under high self-imposed pressure to act and look as "perfectly" as possible for as long as possible, to the point of burnout and medicated depression. But with the Sisters in Islam and other epidemiological studies showing extremely high levels of competitiveness between sister wives in polygamy, we can ask whether some degree of mental competitiveness may exist for monogamous Mormon women who have been taught principles of eternal polygamy, and ask whether any of them may be competing with "invisible women", in hopes that their husband will be prevented from ever desiring a second wife for himself, even in his mind. In all other respects, Mormon women are known for placing high value on selflessness, serving God and others, and valuing family, which are characteristics that are incompatible with self-centered aspects of extreme vanity. Is it possible that rather than Mormon women being more vain and materialistic, they are instead more insecure of themselves as wives?
One woman from a Mormon family wrote, "I've heard my true-believing sisters and sister-in-law talking about spiritual polygamy. They joke and say things like, 'My number one fear is that if I die, my husband will marry someone prettier than me, and I'll be the ugly wife in heaven.'" (GEP, page 51)
65 ~ Women given charge to help recruit additional wives for their husband ~
The idea that a wife must be in a polygamous marriage to obtain exaltation was contained in the following song published in the Deseret News in 1856, which went so far as to state that wives should be employed in helping their husbands find additional wives to secure their own exaltation,
Now sisters, list to what I say
With trials this world is rife,
you can't expect to miss them all,
Help husband get a wife!
Now, this advice I freely give,
If exalted you would be,
Remember that your husband must
Be blessed with more than thee.
Then O, let us say,
God bless the wife that strives
And aids her husband all she can
T' obtain a dozen wives.
Deseret News, 26 November 1856. Accessed at https://newspapers.lib.utah.edu/details?id=2574513
Certain LDS apologists have argued that even when polygamy was in practice, monogamy was still regarded as the primary law of marriage, and that polygamy was taught to be the exception. But the teachings of the church of Brigham Young's day could not have been further removed from honoring monogamy as the primary law of marriage.
66 ~ Inequality of past and current sealing practices ~
Our current gender inequality of sealing practices are that men are permitted to be simultaneously sealed to any wife he has ever been sealed to in the temple, whereas women can only be sealed to two husbands after her death. (And this is a progression from earlier practices — up until recent years, a woman was not permitted to be sealed to more than one husband, whether she or they were dead or alive, and sealing cancelations would often be denied without stated reason.) This has led to widows and still-sealed divorcées being seen as less desirable partners for single men in the church, whereas widowers and divorced men have never had to experience these disadvantages for themselves. A man married to a sealed widow will not be sealed either to her nor to any children he has with her at any point during her life — instead, their children are considered to be sealed to a man they have never met before (the deceased husband.) All of this is a relic of Mormon polygamy.
Sealing practices in the past have been even more unequal than this. For most of Mormon history post-polygamy, a mother who had her sealing to her children's father canceled would also no longer be sealed to her children if the father were to ever be resealed to a second wife — the children would be considered part of the father and second wife's sealed family, and no longer be sealed to their mother. This led certain mothers to never consider canceling a sealing to an ex-husband, not even to marry someone else. One member told of their mother remaining single the rest of her life after her divorce, and another only ever agreed to marry a nonmember outside of the temple, both of them believing that they would be cut off from being their children's eternal mothers if they were to ever be sealed to another man. All this is a relic of Mormon polygamy as well.
67. "Even if there isn't mass polygamy in Heaven, there would still have to be some polygamy. What about widowers who remarry? They have to be polygamists in heaven."
Widowers who remarry do not have to have two wives for all eternity any more than widows who remarry have to have two husbands for all eternity. It is just as reasonable to suggest that we may only be eternally paired with the one spouse to whom we are most mutually compatible with, and that any other remaining spouse will be paired with someone else who is more eternally and mutually suitable for them. If God doesn't allow for any polygamy exceptions in this life, it is reasonable to discuss whether there might not be any polygamy exceptions in the next life.
68 ~ Multiple eternal companions is not a feature in our patriarchal blessings~
It is worthy to ask why there remain LDS men who believe that they will receive multiple wives in heaven, when their patriarchal blessings only tell of them having an eternal companion — meaning one. No patriarchal blessings reported have ever foretold of a future when polygamy will be reinstated on the earth. Of all the men who have ever defected from the LDS church because they felt "inspired" by the Lord to follow the principle of plural wives, none of them have ever had validation from their patriarchal blessings to do so. The principle of eternal polygamy is not validated by any word of these men's patriarchal blessings either. LDS men should behave and speak accordingly — God has not promised any of you multiple wives in heaven.
69 ~ Joseph Smith taught against immediate remarriage ~
In 1838 Joseph Smith published the following in response to a non-Mormon's questions of Mormon doctrine to him,
Question 7th. Do the Mormons believe in having more wives than one. [sic] Answer. No, not at the same time. But they believe that if their companion dies, they have a right to marry again. But we do disapprove of the custom which has gained in the world, and has been practised [sic] among us; to our great mortification, of marrying in five or six weeks, or even in two or three months after the death of their companion. We believe that due respect ought to be had, to the memory of the dead, and the feelings of both friends and children."
Joseph Smith, July 1838 - [Editorial,] Elder’s Journal, 1 (July 1838), 43.
The polygamist Mormon leaders did not themselves follow this counsel. One such instance was in 1868, when Orson Pratt, one of the Twelve, married 16-year-old Margaret Graham even as one of his other wives, Eliza Crooks Pratt, lay dying, apparently of postpartum complications, exhaustion, exposure, and starvation. (https://archive.org/details/tellitallstoryof00sten/page/522/mode/2up?q=orson+pratt)
70. 'Isn't it unjust to denounce Brigham Young when Joseph Smith was also an imperfect man?'
Another story shared with Pearson reads, "I have spent many nights in tears since my temple marriage a little over a year ago. I feel so much love for my husband that the knowledge that I may have to share him with others has become 'a fire in my mind' and has shaken me to the core. How do I work toward a celestial glory that I dread with all my heart?" (GEP, page 22)
Brigham Young's "faults" of teaching polygamy doctrine, blood atonement doctrine, slavery doctrine, exclusion of exaltation for those of African descent, etc. cannot fairly be compared in the same breath as Joseph Smith's faults of trusting others too readily, taking on ventures too hastily, or setting up a bank without proper procedures in place to prevent fraud from occurring. The consequences of such "faults" between the two men cannot be seen as being on the same plane of severity either — as Carol Lynn Pearson herself writes, "No one today weeps in the night because in 1837 Joseph Smith made the monumental error of establishing the 'Kirtland Safety Society,'" (GEP, page 70) To minimize all wrongdoings as mere faults of the same order is to dismiss systemic abuses as being no more harmful — and the people who mandate them no more harmful — as those who have pure intentions and sincerely seek to follow the guidance of the Spirit. We would not ever seek to downplay the "faults" of the priests of King Noah by arguing that Abinadi wasn't a perfect man himself.
71 ~ Jacob promises destruction to the men over polygamy, even if they are following every other commandment ~
Jacob quotes the Lord as saying, "For they shall not lead away captive the daughters of my people because of their tenderness, save I shall visit them with a sore curse, even unto destruction;" (Jacob 2:33)
That the Lord would threaten the Nephite men with destruction for breaking the law of monogamy, even though they were obeying every other commandment, is significant. The Nephite men are even threatened by the Lord with destruction by the Lamanites, who were not following the law of Moses as the Nephites were. This suggests that the Lord considered the law of monogamy to be of greater importance to follow than the Mosaic Law. This also indicates that the Lord considers there to be no level of spiritual obedience to other commandments that can compensate for not obeying the law of monogamy.
72 ~ Polygamy can't be argued as being the Abrahamic covenant, & Levirate marriage is not proof of God's approval ~
It has been argued that polygamy was a "restoration of all things" by way of the Abrahamic covenant. This is not evidenced by the scriptural record of Abraham, as the Lord made His covenant with Abraham fulfilled through Isaac, not Ishmael. The Lord even refers to Isaac as Abraham's "only son", seemingly disowning Abraham from having parental claim to Ishmael, and bestowing sole parental rights of Ishmael onto Hagar (which is especially significant being that maidservant concubines of the time received less parental rights to their children, not more.)
This argument is also not evidenced by the text of the law of Moses itself. If polygamy was an Old Testament covenant commandment it would be listed in the 613 Mitzvot commandments of the Torah, which it is not. Levirate marriage, in which a young widow marries her deceased husband's brother, only occurred if neither the widow nor the brother-in-law rejected the arrangement, which either could do. It was understood that under such a remarriage, any child produced from it would be a child unto her deceased husband, meaning that the brother-in-law would be acting as a surrogate father, which is reminiscent of a maidservant acting as a surrogate childbearer for her mistress. In both the cases of Levirate marriage and maidservant surrogacy, they were done in very undesired circumstances — namely the early death of a husband and the barrenness of a wife. They were not practiced due to any notion of plural marriage being God's covenantal commandment or of it being heaven's intended, desired, or higher order.
Old Testament Levirate marriage cannot be used as proof that the Lord sometimes commands or approves of polygamy, any more than Old Testament maidservant surrogacy can be used as proof that the Lord sometimes commands or approves of polygamy. Both of those practices were done because a wife being childless was culturally seen as being a "reproach" — not due to any teachings or doctrines given by God. Christ is recorded in the Gospel of Matthew as teaching that Levirate marriages are not recognized in heaven. And it must also be remembered that Christ taught that the law of Moses is fulfilled in Him, and ought not to be followed any longer.
73 ~ The parable of Christ's bride being the church is a parable of a monogamous marriage ~
The Biblical, Book of Mormon, and Doctrine & Covenants parable of Christ's bride being His church is a parable of a monogamous marriage,
Let us be glad and rejoice, and give honour to him: for the marriage of the Lamb is come, and his wife hath made herself ready.
Revelation 19:7
And I John saw the holy city, new Jerusalem, coming down from God out of heaven, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband.
Revelation 21:2
And there came unto me one of the seven angels which had the seven vials full of the seven last plagues, and talked with me, saying, Come hither, I will shew thee the bride, the Lamb’s wife.
Revelation 21:9
Lift up thine eyes round about and behold; all these gather themselves together, and they shall come to thee. And as I live, saith the Lord, thou shalt surely clothe thee with them all, as with an ornament, and bind them on even as a bride.
Isaiah 49:18, 1 Nephi 21:18
And be adorned as a bride for that day when thou shalt unveil the heavens, and cause the mountains to flow down at thy presence, and the valleys to be exalted, the rough places made smooth; that thy glory may fill the earth;
Doctrine and Covenants 109:74
In all of the Lord's references to marriage, He is only recorded as using verbiage of monogamy — He isn't even recorded as using similitudes of polygamy allegorically.
74 ~ Male guardians marrying female wards ~
Ann Eliza Young tells of going to school with young girls who would say that when they grow up they are going to marry "Pa" (their stepfathers). A visitor to Utah wrote,
I am bold to acknowledge that we saw nothing at all indecent in the system of polygamy, such as obtains amongst the Mormons. However, certain appearances lead us to believe that everything there was not roses. As an evidence of it, I only beg leave to state the following fact:
One day, whilst sauntering about the gates of the city, we came upon two women sitting upon corn stubbles. They appeared to be the prey of bitter thoughts, for the tears were trickling down their cheeks. Recollecting to have seen them at the family fireside, we approached them and recognized a mother and her daughter. The mother, to all appearances, a very respectable lady, was married in her widowhood to a polygamous saints. We stopped to inquire into the causes of their sadness. The absence of all witnesses and their profound grief together with our character as strangers, inspired them with confidence to unbosom their hearts and give us this piece of information. The husband of the mother, whom we know, and who appeared to us to be one of the most reliable and candid men in the world, had conceived a terrible passion for his step-daughter, and had demanded her in marriage. The poor child, scarcely sixteen years of age, bearing upon her gracious countenance the rose of beauty, with the lily of virtue, could not brook the idea of erecting herself up into her mother's rival, and had rejected the alliance with the repugnance and dignity of a Roman matron. The mother, on her part, refused to exert her authority to overcome the scruples of the daughter. By consequence, the husband lover had confounded them both in one common and brutal hatred, and drove them from his house, and having beat them in the most inhuman manner. In the depth of their sorrow and depression, the poor woman invoked the sovereign judge of the universe to deal with them according to the laws of justice, and graciously put a period at once to their sufferings and to their existence.
As it was not legally, nor usually ecclesiastically, enforced for Mormon men to provide for their polygamous wives or children, there were often no consequences for a husband who chose to turn out a wife or child for not being satisfactorily obedient to him.
75 ~ Arranged marriages, even incestual ones ~
Zina D. Huntington Young, polygamous wife of Brigham Young and General Relief Society President, wrote, "...we believe in the good old custom by which marriages should be arranged by the parents of the young people" (Zina Diantha Huntington Young, New York World, November 17, 1869, as cited in The Lion of the Lord, p. 230)
This meant that, without opposition from the mother, a stepfather could arrange for his stepdaughter to be married to himself. There are also reports of nieces being promised at birth to their blood-related uncles. Some would argue that such was a cultural norm for the time in America that it occurred (though it wasn't), but regardless of the cultural norms of the time or not, we can know that such incestual unions were never inspired by God.
Some LDS apologists have defended the higher ethicality of certain early Mormon polygamist marriages, specifically those that were only the result of direct and specific command and not the result of the husband's desired choosing — it was commonplace for Brigham Young to instruct husbands to take a specific woman as a plural wife, with the husband being under threat of church discipline if he did not do so. But such arrangements are not in any way more ethical than when a husband marries a polygamous wife of his own choosing, as such a scenario of being commanded to polygamously marry a specific woman violates the moral agency of the husband, the first wife, and even perhaps the woman whom he has been commanded to marry. We see such an arrangement occur in the Old Testament story of Jacob, Leah, and Rachel, to the misery of all three. Men being "assigned" wives has not ever been an ethical practice, and LDS apologists should not have ever started using it as argument in their defenses of early Mormon polygamy.
76 ~ Polygamy leads to a greater number of teen brides ~
As the 50:50 gender split leads to there being an insufficient number of females in one age cohort for the men of that same cohort to be polygamists, polygamist males invariably begin to take wives from a younger cohort of females. McDermott measured this in the WomanStats data, empirically showing that every stepwise increase in the prevalence of polygyny in a society leads to the stepwise decrease of average marriage age for women. (EOP, page 75-76) This was also the case in regards to Mormon polygamy. During one period of early Mormon polygamy, 27% of Mormon girls were married by the age of sixteen, 83% by the age of eighteen, and 97% by the age of twenty-four. Many of the Mormon women who are recorded as first entering into marriage at a later age were women who didn't actually grow up in the Utah Valley but who were immigrants to Utah at an older age than their teens. LDS apologists who point to the records of older first-time brides in order to argue that women were not pressured into young marriage neglect the fact that, almost without exception, those women who only married when older were not in Mormon Utah during their teen years to begin with. (https://bhroberts.org/records/0uv3zL-JNcffk/kathryn_m_daynes_reviews_the_age_distribution_of_plural_wives_in_utah) (page 95)
77 ~ Age is not just a number — teen girls vs adult women in relationship dynamics ~
Teen girls are more likely to be abused in relationships. A 2011 review published in Journal of Advanced Nursing states, "Prevalence estimates of dating abuse among adolescent girls range as high as 37% for physical and 96% for verbal or psychological aggression." (https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC3092008/) Being that their prefrontal cortexes and self-identities are not yet fully formed, teen girls are many-times easier for a man to manipulate and exert control over than a more fully developed woman. This principle applies even when the teen girl is considered "mature" by measures of her being well-behaved. If she is coupled with a boy of her own age range, he will also have an underdeveloped prefrontal cortex, underdeveloped impulse control, and will also likely already be physically stronger than her while simultaneously experiencing perhaps the highest testosterone rates of his life — all factors that can increase the likelihood of abuse. The World Health Organization reports,
"Among adolescent girls who have been in a relationship, nearly a quarter (24%) – close to 19 million – will have experienced physical and/or sexual intimate partner violence by the time they turn 20 years old."
"Child marriage (before the age of 18 years) significantly escalates risks, since spousal age differences create power imbalances, economic dependency, and social isolation – all of which increase the likelihood of enduring abuse."
78 ~ Age is not just a number — sperm deteriorates with age of the male ~
Brigham Young stated,
But the first wife will say, ‘It is hard, for I have lived with my husband twenty years, or thirty, and have raised a family of children for him, and it is a great trial to me for him to have more women;' then I say it is time that you gave him up to other women who will bear children. If my wife had borne me all the children that she ever would bare, the celestial law would teach me to take young women that would have children.
Brigham Young, Journal of Discourses, v. 4, pp. 55-57, also printed in the Deseret News, v. 6, pp. 235-236
Through modern research we now understand that male sperm deteriorates with age, making an older man married to a young wife to be a less biologically desirable couple than a young woman married to a young man (or even a woman of any childbearing age being married to a young man.) While the mitochondrial DNA of women's egg cells seem to be protected with age, making her egg quality largely stable throughout her fertile years, this is not the case for the mitochondrial DNA in sperm, (Science Advances, 2025) (https://www.psu.edu/news/research/story/brief-certain-age-related-dna-mutations-are-less-common-human-eggs)
As shown in the above graph, the average number of de novo mutations (genetic alterations) per parent associated with the age of parent are only half as high for the oldest mothers as they are for the youngest fathers, with the level contributed by the fathers increasing steadily with each age, with 50-year-old men conceiving children with 2.5 times the average number of mutations as 18-year-old men.
79 ~ Polygamy made greater age gaps ~
Divorce is more likely to occur the greater the age gap between husband and wife (https://www.scrippsnews.com/us-news/the-bigger-the-age-gap-the-greater-the-risk-of-divorce), which is a significant point against polygamy, as on a demographic level polygamy leads to there being more large age gaps than any other form of marriage. Age gaps have also been linked to higher rates of spousal abuse,
The larger the age gap, the more likely it is that a husband will kill his wife, and vice‐versa (the young wife murders her husband). … This suggests that polygyny is relatively (potentially) much more dangerous than monogamous relations because age gaps of 16 years are not uncommon when accumulating young wives. (https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/22271782/ --The Puzzle of Monogamous Marriage, as quoted by https://www.thepublicdiscourse.com/2012/05/5338/ -- The Perils of Polygamy)
Yet another argument against the idea that "age is just a number" when it comes to marriage is the stark contrast of numbers between men who marry significantly-younger women verses men who marry significantly-older women. The difference in numbers is incomparable. If age was ever truly "just a number" we would see a near-equal number of older women marrying much-younger husbands. Such has never been the case, even though from the graph above we see that the children of such unions would have greater genetic advantage than those of older men with younger women pairings.
80 ~ Age is not just a number — Older fathers leave more fatherless children, due to dying earlier in their children's lives
Another major and unavoidable social issue with older men marrying young women is that the fathers will be dying earlier in their children's lives than men who marry women of their same generation. From 1850-1900, when Mormon polygamy was most widely practiced, the average life expectancy for men in the United States who reached the age of 40 was 66-68 years, meaning that most Mormon men who were fathering children into their forties and fifties would be dying before those children reached adulthood themselves. (https://mappinghistory.uoregon.edu/english/US/US39-01.html)
81 ~ Polygamy made more widows, not less ~
Even though caring for widows has often been stated as one of the needed reasons for polygamy (as if there is no other way to care for a widow than by making her marry you first), the practice of older men marrying much-younger wives produces more young widows than any other possible model of marriage. Unlike monogamous marriages of same-generation couples — in which widows are more often elderly women who have grown children to help care for them — polygamous widows often have young dependent children at the time of their husband's death. Mormon polygamy led to there being more widows and more fatherless young children, with the only solution given being to have the widows and children be passed on to yet another polygamous man — with the liability that the polygamous husband might later wish to take one or more of his stepdaughters as wives.
82 ~ Evidence that the commandment of monogamy could have been written in the Book of Lehi ~
We do not have any full account of what was contained in the Book of Lehi, the 116 lost pages of the Book of Mormon, but Jacob chapters 2 & 3 suggest that it may have explicitly contained the Lord's law of monogamy to Lehi and his family,
And now behold, my brethren, ye know that these commandments were given to our father, Lehi; wherefore, ye have known them before; and ye have come unto great condemnation; for ye have done these things which ye ought not to have done.
Behold, the Lamanites your brethren... have not forgotten the commandment of the Lord, which was given unto our father—that they should have save it were one wife, and concubines they should have none, and there should not be whoredoms committed among them.
And now, this commandment they observe to keep; wherefore, because of this observance, in keeping this commandment, the Lord God will not destroy them, but will be merciful unto them; and one day they shall become a blessed people.
That Jacob tells the Nephite men, "ye know that these commandments were given to our father, Lehi;" and that the Lamanites, "have not forgotten the commandment of the Lord which was given unto our father" suggests that the law of monogamy was something that had already been recorded and shared among the people of Lehi previous to Lehi's death and previous to the Nephites splitting from the Lamanites.
83 ~ Broken heart contrite spirit cannot be used to justify the men breaking the women's hearts ~
After seeing that polygamy was the source of great pain to women, some have concluded that such was intended for them as part of the Lord's plan for their greater spiritual development. LDS elder Joseph Lee Robinson wrote,
Plural marriage is calculated in its nature to severely try the women even to nearly tear their heart strings out of them.
Journal and Autobiography of Joseph Lee Robinson, p. 50
This idea however directly contradicts the words of Joseph Smith where he stated,
He [God] will never institute an ordinance or give commandment to His people that is not calculated in its nature to promote happiness which He has designed, and which will not end in the greatest amount of good and glory to those who become recipients of his law and ordinances.
Joseph Smith, TPJS
84 ~ Polygamy was forced onto certain early Mormon women ~
It has been claimed by certain LDS apologists that women were never forced into early Mormon polygamous marriages, due to there being no reports of any women being threatened with violence at the altar should they decide to not go through with a wedding or sealing. But there are many reports of women entering into or being entered into a marriage that they were told would be monogamous, but was afterwards made polygamous without their knowledge. This occurred both for first wives and subsequent wives — first wives having their husband come home with a second wife that the first wife wasn't told of beforehand, or a plural wife being brought to a home that had a first wife she wasn't told about. After Brigham Young sent over a hundred men (some of them married) on missions in 1852, some of them returned with a wife from oversees — some of them without the knowledge of the first wife, and some first wives without knowledge of the second wife. These women were forced into polygamy by way of deceit. While D&C Section 132 states that a husband must ask a first wife for consent (without any stated need to ask any subsequent wives for consent) there were no church disciplinary consequences if a man did not follow that instruction (and as noted in Historical Monogamy Doctrine he didn't need to receive her consent anyway. There was no church-mandated requirement for a man to divulge to his wife or church leaders the names or even the number of plural wives that he had taken for himself. Brigham Young stated he didn't know the number of wives he had.) Other first wives were brought into polygamy by their husband openly taking another wife without her consent. These first wives who could not stop their husbands by withholding consent were also forced into polygamy in those situations in which they had no financial recourse to immediately divorce. Such women were forced into polygamy, even if they were never physically beaten into submission over it. Brigham Young published the following in the Journal of Discourses,
If it is the duty of a husband to take a wife, take her. But it is not the privilege of a woman to dictate the husband, and tell who or how many he shall take, or what he shall do with them when he gets them, but it is the duty of the women to submit cheerfully.
Brigham Young, 9 August 1874, Lehi City. Journal of Discourses Volume 17 p. 159
85 ~ Words of polygamy coercion are doctrinal, according to Section 132 ~
D&C 132:63-64 reads,
64 And again, verily, verily, I say unto you, if any man have a wife, who holds the keys of this power, and he teaches unto her the law of my priesthood, as pertaining to these things, then shall she believe and administer unto him, or she shall be destroyed, saith the Lord your God; for I will destroy her;
Teaching that God will destroy a woman if she does not "believe" and "administer" unto her husband in polygamy are words of coercion. LDS apologists have argued that this was only referencing Emma Smith, and not other women, but such an argument does not work with an exegetical reading of Section 132, as this verse states, "if any man have a wife...then shall she believe and administer unto him, or she shall be destroyed, saith the Lord your God; for I will destroy her;"
86 ~ Reports of overt polygamy coercion ~
One story showing signs of overt coercion was that of Levi Savage, who married both of his stepdaughters, Adelaide and Mary Ann, within a week of eachother. They were, respectively, 18 and 16 years old at the time. Adelaide, on the way to be married to him, jumped out of the carriage, and their bishop then spoke to her until she relented to go through with the ceremony.
This story shows strong signs of coercion.
One self-described story of forced marriage comes from Emma Lynette Richardson, who wrote in her autobiography,
About this time some old fanatics were preaching that a young man could not save a girl if he married her. That to be saved, she must marry some old codger, tried and true. My parents got the disease with the rest, and when one of the "tried and true" came our way, they said I must marry him. I cried and begged, begged and cried, but to no avail. I was forced to go into his family.... I will say that up to the time I speak of, my father had always been good to me. I can now see that it was the pressure of the times that caused him to act as he did.
Karen Humes Hyatt, "Wo Unto You Scribes"
She was 14 years old at the time of her marriage to a 61-year-old man.
87 ~ The many bad fruits of doctrinal polygamy
3 Nephi 14:17 reads,
17 Even so every good tree bringeth forth good fruit; but a corrupt tree bringeth forth evil fruit.
From the evidence put forward on this site and the preceding sister site, we can see the following "fruits" produced by polygamy:
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a greater risk of genetic abnormalities
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harm to women’s hearts
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harm to marital relationships
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harm to father-child relationships
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more absent fathers
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higher rates of wife & child neglect
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higher mortality rates for women
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higher mortality rates for children
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higher rates of extreme poverty
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a higher proportion of teen brides
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higher divorce rates
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higher societal instability and crime
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higher rates of all levels of violence
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empirically shown to be harmful to women’s health and wellbeing
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empirically shown to be harmful to children’s health and wellbeing
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demographically seen to be harmful to women’s relationships
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linked to higher rates of physical spousal abuse
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empirically linked to lesser rights for women
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empirically linked to lesser rights for all citizens
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higher rates of physical child abuse
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harm to women as a doctrine even when not in practice
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men having a greater economic difficulty supporting all family members
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more widows and more fatherless children
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harms testimonies of Joseph Smith, the Book of Mormon, and of Christ
88 ~ The current risk of being monogamy-affirming in the LDS church ~
As of the writing of this site, LDS men and women who are found to be open with their denouncement of past polygamy are not safe from facing church discipline. Karen Humes Hyatt and other faithful LDS members have been excommunicated solely for publicly asserting that Joseph Smith was not a polygamist and that polygamy is never of God. There is a need for the highest levels of church leadership to give amnesty in the LDS church to members who believe in the alternate historical narrative of monogamy, lest certain lower-level church leaders continue to use their positions to excommunicate or disfellowship us. So long as there remains such risk from local church leaders, monogamy-affirming members will continue to be preemptively withdrawing themselves from church activity in high rates.
89 ~ Current unalignment with other Christian faiths ~
The LDS church is the only Christian church currently teaching that God sometimes commands polygamy. The other Christian denominations of our day do not interpret the polygamy stories of Abraham, Jacob, King David, or King Solomon as evidence that God sometimes commands or recommends polygamy. LDS members appear to be the only or almost-only Biblical scholars who infer such from the text — even though we as LDS members have more scriptures condemning polygamy than other Christian churches do. Disavowing polygamy would make our teachings of marriage and family aligned in a more proper way with our Christian brothers and sisters of other belief backgrounds.
90. 'Admitting that the LDS church was wrong about polygamy would mean admitting the RLDS were right about it'
The LDS church has already now aligned with the RLDS church's 1865 stance on granting priesthood ordination to men of African descent. Five years after the RLDS church was formed, the question was put forward as to whether other ethnicities ought to be considered worthy of priesthood ordination. Joseph Smith III asked this question in prayer, and stated that he received this answer:
Hearken! Ye elders of my church, I am he who hath called you friends. Concerning the matter you have asked of me: Lo! It is my will that my gospel shall be preached to all nations in every land, and that men of every tongue shall minister before me: Therefore it is expedient in me that you ordain priests unto me, of every race who receive the teachings of my law, and become heirs according to the promise. RLDS Doctrine & Covenants 116:1
Our LDS doctrine is now the same: that men of all nations of every land, tongue, and ethnicity are meant to receive priesthood ordination and always have been. Hesitancy shouldn't be given in admitting wrong in other areas as well.
91 ~ Emma Smith's opposition was not the only reason why the RLDS did not practice polygamy ~
Many have assumed that the RLDS position against the practice of polygamy was solely due to the influence of Emma Smith. But in January 1853, less than six months after Brigham Young revealed the doctrine of polygamy to the entirety of the Brighamite church, the assembled members of the RLDS church put forward the question of polygamy to the Lord, as recorded in this account from RLDS elder Z. H. Gurley Sr,
Accordingly the subject was presented as follows:-
First. Is polygamy of God?....
Before opening the meeting we made the church acquainted with our design, and while singing the opening hymn, the Holy Spirit was sensibly felt. Several sung in tongues, and while engaged in prayer, the veil was at least partly rent, and the manifestation of the Spirit was such as was seldom witnessed by mortals on earth. I have been a member of the church some twenty-three years, and in the course of my ministry have witnessed the manifestation of the Spirit in many of the branches, but never had witnessed what I did that evening. God was truly with us, and many felt to say with the poet, 'Angels are now hovering o'er us.' This was on the eve of the 9th of January, 1853, ever memorable with the saints of God. About half an hour afterwards we received through the Spirit the following, as nearly as we could write it:-
"Polygamy is an abomination in the sight of the Lord God: it is not of me; I abhor it. I abhor it, as also the doctrines of the Nicolaitans, and the men or set of men who practice it.... Be ye strong; ye shall contend against this doctrine; many will be led into it honestly, for the Devil will seek to establish it, and roll it forth to deceive.
"They seek to build up their own kingdoms, to suit their own pleasures, but I countenance it not, saith God. I have given my law: I shrink not from my word. My law is given in the Book of Doctrine and Covenants, but they have disregarded my law and trampled upon it, and counted it a light thing, and obeyed it not; but my word is the same yesterday as to-day, and forever."
RLDS Church History Volume 3 pages 214-215
92 ~ Disparity between men vs women regarding the acceptability of polygamy — negative psychosocial effects on LDS girls ~
Many LDS women report learning of polygamy as young girls, and remember feeling immediately uncomfortable with the idea. Other LDS women who did not learn of Mormon polygamy doctrine until adulthood have expressed feelings of traumatic betrayal once they have learned of it. Many women have reported it to be the greatest challenge to their faith, and many have reported to have left the church entirely over it, even as young as during their teenage years. Suppressing feelings of discomfort towards polygamy by "putting it on a shelf" until a later date when a church president reveals better explanations for it stunts a woman's spiritual and emotional development. It causes her to be out of sync with her own innate, instinctual emotions and less in tune to the whisperings of the Spirit, making her compromised to spiritual attacks of the adversary and also making her less able to recognize other falsehoods for what they are. Polygamy teachings are compromising to the testimony of Joseph Smith, of the Book of Mormon, and to both Joseph Smith and the Book of Mormon's testimonies of Christ. Polygamy teachings are compromising to a woman's relationship with Heavenly Father, for as she prays to Him she believes herself to be speaking to a God who is liable to have multiple wives Himself. One woman wrote to Carol Lynn Pearson,
When I read in the Doctrine and Covenants about how Emma Smith was threatened that God would destroy her if she did not accept polygamy, I realized that if god didn't care about Emma's feelings, he certainly wouldn't care about mine. This led to depression and anger. I secretly hated God. (GEP, page 86)
What kind of different experiences in the LDS church would girls and women have if they never go through the self-reported fracturing experience of "learning" of polygamy being commanded by God? — "I wish I could get back all the years that I ever believed in 'divine' polygamy."
93 ~ Negative psychosocial effects of polygamy teachings on LDS children ~
One woman has written, "The issue of eternal polygamy has caused me deep pain since I first came to understand it as a ten-year-old." (GEP, page 47) That there are children in our modern years who have wished to reject the idea of polygamy immediately after hearing of it should come as no surprise to us, and should also not be falsely attributed to be stemming solely from modern sensibilities, as Jacob specifically tells the men, "ye have lost the confidence of your children." Jacob's words of his sermon illustrate that even mere children of the Nephite's time were able to intuit the wrongfulness of polygamy, and had their "tender and chaste" feelings be pierced, with wounding to their "delicate minds" as a result.
94 ~ Polygamy having a much more serious fracturing effect on women's and girls' identities than any other past false doctrine ~
Past teachings of Adam-God theory, inhabitants living on the sun, sealing members to eachother "for time", and other banal false traditions have little effect when it comes to an understanding of oneself, of one's divine nature, or of one's eternity in heaven. Doctrinal polygamy, on the other hand, has caused such foundational rupture in certain girls and women as to lead to what appears to be an immediate and severe faith crisis. Polygamy as a doctrine interferes with core beliefs of human equity, eternal families, and eternal love itself. Another story shared by Pearson reads,
The adolescent female psyche is a fragile thing. It doesn't take much for a young girl to feel bad about herself. I had become completely convinced that marriage was not something to look forward to, but [is] rather the kick-off to a future of being owned by my priesthood-holding, exaltation-bound husband who would marry other women who would join my eternal marriage in the afterlife.
If a fraction of a doubt about the eternal aspect of polygamy existed for me at that point, it was shattered by my seminary teacher. He said earnestly, 'God did tell Emma Smith that she would burn in hell if she did not accept polygamy.' It was there in black and white in D&C 132. I left class that day in tears, and I never went back. (GEP, page 87-88)
In response, there have been plenty of LDS members to 'reassure' women that polygamy "shouldn't" cause such an effect on her sense of self worth; that women "shouldn't" feel less loved by God, less equal to men, or lesser in any way at all as a result of any teachings of eternal polygamy or teachings of it being commanded here on earth — that women don't even need to "worry" about it — that women might "feel differently" in the next life.
95 ~ Intuiting the wrongfulness of polygamy — self-condemnation ~
Unfortunately, some of our LDS sisters have internalized such messages, with the end result being self-accusation, self-judgment, and self-doubt. Stories shared with Pearson from three separate women portray this effect,
When I told my dad how the scriptures about polygamy really hurt me, he told me that if I were more spiritually mature polygamy would not bother me. From that point on, I always doubted my own feelings about it being wrong and assumed it was a lack of personal faith and an inner rebellion that kept me feeling so raw and angry about it. Through the years it put a major strain on my faith and kept me from ever really being able to experience the other elements of the gospel that might have brought me joy and peace that I so much yearned to feel. I tried my hardest to stay in the church, but eventually it was impossible...
GEP, page 87
I have struggled so deeply at times with feelings of mistrust for a God who could value me so little....The pain and guilt arising from doubts have affected my self-worth...
GEP, page
I remember feeling guilt and shame for hating the idea of sharing my future husband in heaven. I thought, "I guess I'm just not righteous enough or worthy enough to live with God again."
GEP page
Could these be more of the woundings to "delicate minds" that Jacob spoke of?
96 ~ "The history of Joseph Smith" listed as the highest contributing factor to members leaving the LDS church ~
Survey results from thousands of former LDS church members were released in 2024, showing that the most common listed reason for leaving the church by former members was, "History related to Joseph Smith". Of those who have left, 92% reported that it was at least "unlikely" that they would ever return to the church, with 82% reporting it to be "very unlikely". It would appear from this that at least certain parts of the current LDS narrative of Joseph Smith's history has a very strong repelling effect. In the 2013 Personal Faith Crisis Report commissioned by Elder Dieter F. Uctdorf, church history was the largest reported factor leading to loss of belief, with polygamy being one of the highest (if not the highest) of all the contributing historical factors. In a 2019 survey asking for contributing reasons why respondents left the LDS church, 31% of the respondents selected, “I did not trust the Church leadership to tell the truth surrounding controversial or historical issues.”
Church members and leaders have long seen those leaving the church over polygamy as faith-lacking individuals, but the reality could be that those who have left the church over polygamy were more keenly sensitive to the spiritual intuition of polygamy being an inexcusable abomination.
97 ~ Members are leaving the LDS church now at a higher rate than ever before in its history ~
A cooperative election survey, conducted annually from 2007 to 2025, charted the number of respondents in the United States who self-identify as Latter-day Saints. In the peak year of 2009, 1.89% of respondents identified as LDS; in 2025, that number was 0.93% — less than half. That the LDS church has lost over half of its self-identifying U.S. membership within sixteen years — a staggering, precipitous drop, that has not yet shown indication of having leveled off — is strong indication that the truth claims espoused by the LDS church are not convincing enough to secure the testimonies of most of its previously-baptized members.
Recently in May 2026 LDS member Jeff Strong released his book, "Torn: Why People We Love Are Leaving the Church and What We Can Learn from Them" in which he reported that a very high percentage of those who have left the LDS church are those who had previously been active members — in fact, 40 to 47% of those who have left since the year 2000 had been active previous to leaving. Some of those would be from what are considered to be the "strongest" cohorts of members — those who were born in the church, those who were from predominately or exclusively Mormon families, those who had been lifelong active members, those who had served full-time missions, graduated from the church's youth and seminary programs, married in the temple, held leadership positions, attended church universities, etc. And the number one reason given for leaving the church — a full 42% of respondents — was "problems with church history."
98 ~ For perhaps the first time ever in history, a generation of women are now leaving religion at a higher rate than men ~
A 2023 study showed that, among those categorized as Gen Z (born mid-to-late 1990s to early 2010s), 54% of those who have left religion are women, marking perhaps the first time ever that a subset of women are leaving their faith at a higher rate than the same subset of men. The ratio of women-to-men leaving religion has been marked to have risen for both Millennials and Gen X as well, when compared to their Baby Boomer counterparts. This could suggest that the traditional patriarchy-centered models of religion are becoming increasingly more distasteful to women with every passing generation, and that the future women of Generation Alpha may portray this effect in an even more compounded way.
99 ~ The gender disparity of polygamy belief — negative social implications for married members ~
Many women find that the anti-polygamy evidence immediately rings true and confirms the workings of the Spirit inside their hearts and minds. The gender disparity in which men on average tend to feel more amenable to the idea of polygamy doctrine than women do does in certain cases produce significant negative effects for married members of the church when the wife begins to question the validity of polygamy as a doctrine. Multiple stories have been reported privately of LDS women facing severe mistreatment from their husbands for studying this topic of polygamy and harboring feelings against it as a principle. If the LDS church does not denounce doctrinal polygamy, it is not unreasonable to expect that certain temple marriages will be lost.
100 ~ The gender disparity of polygamy belief — negative social implications for priesthood leaders ~
As one of the principle requirements of becoming a bishop, stake president, or any higher ecclesiastical leader is to be married, church leaders will inevitably have a difficult time disciplining members speaking out against doctrinal polygamy if ever their own wives learn of the evidence supporting the LDS anti-polygamy movement. A bishop who is receiving pressure from higher-ups to discipline members publicly sharing anti-polygamy evidence is in a very difficult marital position if his own wife has any sympathetic beliefs towards the anti-polygamy narrative herself. If the church were to ever seek to circumnavigate this by changing policy to allow a higher number of church leadership positions be offered to unmarried priesthood holders, then that would directly lead to a lower number of children in the church being born to church leaders — which would have other undesired repercussions. The current church narrative of polygamy cannot continue if the wives of our church leaders ever cease believing it.
101 ~ The gender disparity of polygamy beliefs — negative social implications for single men ~
One very common and immediate psychosocial effect for an LDS woman, once she has discarded belief in doctrinal polygamy, is that polygamy-believing LDS men suddenly become significantly less attractive as a potential partner to herself. This could be considered as having just as strong of an effect, if not more, for very young women who are not many years far removed from having watched princess movies and imagining their own "one true love". As the anti-polygamy message reaches ever-younger women in the church, this will have the effect that single men who believe in the church's pro-polygamy historical narrative will find themselves having less single LDS women who are wishing to date them — and if they never marry, then under current church policy they can never serve as a bishop, yet alone any higher church leadership position. An LDS man can of course still serve as a bishop if he has a wife who is not a member of the church — but women outside the church tend to be repulsed by men who believe in Mormon polygamy doctrine too. If single LDS women collectively cease to believe in the pro-polygamy historical narrative, then single LDS men who do still believe it will likely have a much more difficult time finding anyone wishing to marry them.
102 ~ Protecting the family ~
For a church that in recent decades has placed such great emphasis on the need to protect the family from breakdown and dissolution, it is deeply ironic that it teaches polygamy can be commanded of God. To loudly preach opposition to any system deviating from a father and mother raising children together, while simultaneously teaching that polygamy can be commanded of God — a system of marriage that leads to greater abuses, neglect, instability, disharmony, disfunction, defects, and death itself — is a theological inconsistency for which there is no reasonable logical explanation. LDS church leaders ought to read the words they have themselves said on 'protecting the family from the teachings of the adversary', and ask themselves if such words are not applicable to past and future polygamy.
103 ~ Denouncing polygamy is necessary to protect the family ~
Polygamy, once so widely hated by the American public as to be spoken in the same breath as slavery, is now garnering sympathetic sentiment among modern Americans. One in five Americans (21%) now say polygamy is morally acceptable, including 32% who are not religious, doubling from 2001. (https://www.huffpost.com/entry/polygamy-moral-acceptance_n_597f6976e4b02a8434b83e4f) This number is liable to continue to grow. It is necessary for us as a church to admit to the plague that is our polygamous past and loudly voice it, such that men and women of current and future generations will know to never repeat it. Our church history, our family histories, and our scriptures should be causing us Latter-day Saints to be the most resoundingly vocal anti-polygamists in the world.
104 ~ The negative future social consequences for the LDS church if we continue with the current narrative ~
Ultimately, it is already too late for the anti-polygamy message to be stopped. It has been immortalized on the internet and attempts to sequester it have led to so-called "Streisand" effects (in which attempts to either remove information or silence individuals have ultimately only brought more attention to the topic.) The online anti-polygamy Mormon community now consists of tens of thousands of individuals, with over 100,000 individuals subscribed to monogamy-affirming YouTube channels. Many of us researching and analyzing the anti-polygamy evidence have experienced divine help and guidance in finding previously-unknown sources and have received heaven-given knowledge and insight in our study, all signifying this to be information that the Lord wishes to be brought forth now. I know the Spirit has inspired my mind to write many of the words I've written, such that I don't venture to take credit for them all myself. I know that the Lord will continue to aid those of us who are striving to bring this message to more children of God, and that should the church continue clinging to the pro-historical-polygamy narrative more miracles will be performed to further our success. The longer the church adheres to the current narrative, the more negative consequences that will be incurred for the church.
105 ~ "Ye (leaders) have lost the confidence of your children" ~
If polygamy-justifying rhetoric is enough to cause children to lose confidence in their own father, should it be any surprise in circumstances which that same rhetoric causes church members to lose confidence in church leaders? If Jacob did not condemn the children for having lost confidence in their polygamy-justifying fathers, but rather blamed the fathers themselves, then church members ought not to be considered the ones at fault if they experience a loss of confidence in their own polygamy-justifying past and present church leaders. If Jacob's words were included to be an example to how church leaders should respond to the topic of polygamy, then LDS church leaders have not been following that example.
106 ~ The Lord in D&C confirms that members in Joseph Smith's time were under condemnation ~
Section 84 of the Doctrine & Covenants reads,
And they shall remain under this condemnation until they repent and remember the new covenant, even the Book of Mormon and the former commandments which I have given them, not only to say, but to do according to that which I have written—
That they may bring forth fruit meet for their Father’s kingdom; otherwise there remaineth a scourge and judgment to be poured out upon the children of Zion.
The Lord here states explicitly that church members will be under condemnation for not following the "former commandments" and the Book of Mormon, and that this condemnation will follow us until we both do and say according to that which the Lord has written. The Book of Mormon was written for Joseph Smith's day, for our day, and for the day of our future generations. We have never had any valid doctrinal excuse to dismiss the Lord's commandments to the Nephites through Jacob as only being for the Nephites.
107 ~ A release from condemnation — for our current church leaders ~
Jacob began his sermon in chapter 2 by stating,
Now, my beloved brethren, I, Jacob, accord-ing to the responsibility which I am under to God, to magnify mine office with soberness, and that I might rid my garments of your sins, I come up into the temple this day that I might declare unto you the word of God. Jacob 2:2
Jacob stated here that if he were to neglect speaking against the Nephite's sins (specifically of pride and what he calls the "grosser sin" of polygamy justification) then he would have his garments stained with their sins at the last day. Other Book of Mormon passages repeat the idea that leaders and parents who teach false doctrine, or even who merely refrain from proactively teaching true doctrine, will be held jointly responsible for the sins of their people and children that would have otherwise been avoided. Modern church leaders who have either been rationalizing historical polygamy or staying silent on it should consider what implications of this there might be for themselves.
108 ~ We are promised that once we are properly following the principles of the Book of Mormon, we will receive the revelations contained on the sealed plates ~
Speaking of the sealed scriptures of the gold plates, the Lord has said,
They shall not go forth unto the Gentiles until the day that they shall repent of their iniquity, and become clean before the Lord. Ether 4:6
The Lord went on to state that those who do not follow the lesser knowledge (of the Book of Mormon) will not be given the greater knowledge (of the sealed plates),
And he that will contend against the word of the Lord, let him be accursed; and he that shall deny these things, let him be accursed; for unto them will I show no greater things, saith Jesus Christ; for I am he who speaketh. Ether 4:8
So long as we as a church are teaching that God may sometimes command husbands to violate the law of monogamy, we are not fully following the principles of the Book of Mormon.
109 ~ We may as a church be able to learn more of and grow closer to our Heavenly Mother, once we stop teaching that there are many of Her ~
At the time the priesthood and temple bans were in effect, certain leaders in the church had prayed for several years that God would lift the bans — to no effect. While presidents of the church like David O. McKay and Spencer W. Kimball stated their openness to receiving such a revelation, they also state that God never did at that time manifest that He was now lifting the bans. It was not until church leaders learned that God never instituted nor sanctioned the bans and that more of the wider church leadership needed to first receive testimony of that, that the presidency then later collectively experienced what certain of them described as the "most powerful spiritual witness of their lives" as confirmation to allow those of African descent all the rites of temple and priesthood ordinances.
It might just be that once there is sufficient willingness to believe of there being only one Heavenly Mother for all Heavenly Father's children, that we as a church will then receive further witness of our Heavenly Mother's existence and divinity.
110 ~ Further study, and further opportunity for personal revelation ~
Most of the published empirical findings surrounding polygamy and its psychosocial ills have not been expounded on this website, but sources for a deeper individual study of the available literature can be found on the Further Study page. I attest that the deeper and more extensive one's personal study of the psychosocial research is, the deeper one's testimony of the divine design of monogamy will become.
Also seek confirmation of the truth from the Lord in prayer, as "by the voice of the Spirit ye may know the truth of all things," and as Joseph Smith read, "If any of you lack wisdom, let him ask of God, that giveth to all men liberally and upbraideth not, and it shall be given him."
