Denying Joseph’s Polygamy is Rape Apologetics

Joseph Smith was a polygamist. Period. End of sentence.

Plural marriage was introduced to the Latter-day Saint church and community by Joseph Smith during his lifetime. However, there is an increasingly vocal minority that refuses to acknowledge this, instead building a vast conspiracy and denial of historical and textual evidence to claim that Joseph fought polygamy, was killed for it, and that Brigham Young actually started the practice. I’m not going to use this article to break down any arguments as I know the history is sound and arguing with conspiracy theorists is a waste of time. Instead, I want to focus on why defending this conspiracy actively harms women and perpetuates rape culture. In order to deny that Joseph Smith instituted and practiced plural marriage, not only must we deny history, we must erase and throw out real women’s lived experiences and testimonies.

When we deny Joseph’s involvement in plural marriage, we’re doing the same terrible thing that polygamy itself does: reducing women to objects that can be ignored and defined as only pawns of powerful men. We’re making men’s image and reputation more important than women’s lives. Polygamy denial is actively engaging in rape apologetics in order to save and prop up patriarchal individuals and structures that allow men to harass, exploit, and rape women with impunity.

I understand the desire to absolve Joseph of this crime. As I’ve written before, polygamy is an abusive system and not from God. I can understand feeling cognitive dissonance around growing up with this larger-than-life figure that you revere as the founder of your faith, only to find out later that he did horrible things to women. Just like the JFK assassination, our brains don’t want to believe that a superhuman like Joseph Smith could be so sadly flawed and suffer such an ignominious death. We want to assign a larger conspiracy to it because it helps us feel more in control of a chaotic world that doesn’t line up with our reasoning. But as with all conspiracies, the simplest answer is usually the correct one and its better to deal with the dissonance rather than close ourselves off into a falsehood just to make us feel better. It’s okay to admit and accept that Joseph manipulated, lied, and exploited people, especially women.

Melissa Lott. Image from Joseph Smith’s Polygamy.

In the Temple Lot Case in 1890s, the RLDS church (now the Community of Christ) contested the ownership of the temple lot in Independence, Missouri against the Church of Christ (known as Hedrickites). To prove their case, they needed to prove that they were the true heirs of Joseph Smith’s church and thus entitled to the property. The Utah-based LDS church also participated in this case to support the Hedrickites against their anti-polygamy rivals. Members of the LDS church provided testimony on Joseph Smith’s polygamy, as that was a key argument in who was the rightful successor of Joseph’s authority. The Temple Lot Case provides us with first-hand testimony from women who lived in polygamy with Joseph, under oath in a court of law.

From Melissa (Malissa) Lott’s testimony:

Q. Did you ever room with Joseph Smith as his wife?

A. Yes sir.

Q. At what place?

A. At Nauvoo

Q. What place in Nauvoo?

A. The Nauvoo Mansion.

Q. At what place in the Mansion?

A. Do you want to know the number of the room, or what?

Q. Well just what part of the house the room was in if you can give it?

A. Well I can give it and the number of the room too. It was room number one.

Q. Room number one?

A. Yes sir.

Q. Who else roomed there?

A. I don’t know of any one. . . .

Q. So you roomed with him [Joseph Smith] in the Nauvoo Mansion in room number one?

A. Yes sir. . . .

Q. How often did you room there with Joseph Smith?

A. Well that is something I can’t tell you.

Q. Well was it more than once?

A. Yes sir, and more than twice.

Melissa states, quite plainly, that she was Joseph’s wife and that she slept with him on more than one occasion. Her testimony goes on to say she slept with him in other locations as well, including her father’s house. She married Joseph at age eighteen while she worked in the Smith household.

Emily Dow Partridge Smith Young. Image from Joseph Smith’s Polygamy.

In Emily Dow Partridge’s Temple Lot Case deposition, she shared, “[Joseph] came there into the room [in the Smith home] where I was one day, when I was in the room alone, and he asked me if I could keep a secret. I was about eighteen years of age then I think,-at any rate I was quite young[.] He asked me if I could keep a secret, and I told him I thought I could, and then he told me that he would some time if he had an opportunity,-he would tell me some thing that would be for my benefit, if I would not betray him, and I told him I wouldn’t.”

In Emily’s autobiography, “Incidents of the Early Life of Emily Dow Partridge,” she wrote, “I cannot tell all Joseph said, but he said the Lord had commanded [him] to enter into plural marriage and had given me to him and although I had got badly frightened he knew I would yet have him. So he waited till the Lord told him. My mind was now prepared and would receive the principles. . . . Well I was married there and then. Joseph went home his way and I going my way alone. A strange way of getting married wasent [wasn’t] it. Brother Kimball married us, the 4th of March 1843.” Her sister, Eliza, was also married to Joseph four days later, though neither sister knew the other was married to him at the time.

Emily also wrote of her conflict with Emma over this secret marriage and how she was re-married to Joseph to appease Emma, who thought she had handpicked the Partridge sisters as sister wives: “I was married to him on the 11th of May [1843], by Elder James Adams. Emma was present. She gave her free and full consent. She had always, up to this time, been very kind to me and my sister Eliza, who was also married to the Prophet Joseph with Emma’s consent, but ever after she was our enemy.”

Helen Mar Kimball. Image from Joseph Smith’s Polygamy.

Helen Mar Kimball was the youngest of Joseph’s wives, married at only age fourteen in a trade for her family’s salvation. She wrote in her journal of her father introducing her to polygamy: “I was skeptical — his only daughter, and I knew that he would not cast her off, and this was the only convincing proof that I had of its being right. I knew that he loved me too well to teach me anything that was not strictly pure, virtuous and exalting in its tendencies; and no one else could have influenced me at that time or brought me to accept of a doctrine so utterly repugnant and so contrary to all of our former ideas and traditions […] The next day the Prophet called at our house, and I sat with my father and mother and heard him teach the principle and explain it more fully, and I believed it, but I had no proofs, only his and my father’s testimony. I thought that sufficient, and did not deem it necessary to seek for any further.”

Later, she describes the reality of living as Joseph’s secret plural wife while only a child: “During the winter of 1843, there were plenty of parties and balls. … Some of the young gentlemen got up a series of dancing parties, to be held at the Mansion once a week. … I had to stay home, as my father had been warned by the Prophet to keep his daughter away from there, because of the blacklegs and certain ones of questionable character who attended there. … I felt quite sore over it, and thought it a very unkind act in father to allow [my brother] to go and enjoy the dance unrestrained with others of my companions, and fetter me down, for no girl loved dancing better than I did, and I really felt that it was too much to bear. It made the dull school still more dull, and like a wild bird I longed for the freedom that was denied me; and thought myself a much abused child, and that it was pardonable if I did murmur.”

In a poignant poem she penned about her conflicting feelings about plural marriage, Helen wrote:

“Thou dids’t not weigh the cost nor know the bitter price;
Thy happy dreams all o’er thou’st doom’d also to be
Bar’d out from social scenes by this thy destiny,
And o’er thy sad’nd mem’ries of sweet departed joys
Thy sicken’d heart will brood and imagine future woes,
And like a fetter’d bird with wild and longing heart,
Thou’lt dayly pine for freedom and murmor at thy lot;”

Her poem goes on to praise the celestial rewards she’ll receive, but concludes:

“I’d been taught to reveire the Prophet of God
And receive every word as the word of the Lord,
But had this not come through my dear father’s mouth,
I should ne’r have received it as God’s sacred truth.”

These are only three women of many who wrote about, shared testimony of, and were married polygamously to Joseph Smith in the 1840s. In order to deny that Joseph participated in polygamy or never had sex with his wives, you must directly erase these women’s words and lives. You must say that these women lied, were part of a vast conspiracy, or just ignore them as unimportant. By doing so you prioritize a man and his reputation over and against all the women he victimized. This is active harm and violence against women.

We’ve all read the newspaper stories of young men acquitted of rape charges because the judge “didn’t want to ruin his life.” We know stories of church members who received little to no punishment for sexual actions against women simply because they were “a good priesthood holder.” I’d hope you agree that this is despicable. How then is Joseph any different than these men? Just because he’s your favorite predator doesn’t mean he should get a pass.

Because this is exactly what polygamy deniers are doing––protecting and enabling a predator. It doesn’t matter that he lived over a century ago. His plural marriages were all nonconsensual. They were coerced through religious manipulation, spiritual threats, secrecy, and lies. His wives were survivors. Their story is built into the foundations of Mormonism and their trauma passes on to each generation so long as we can’t be honest about polygamy in either direction.

Polygamy conspiracists aren’t offering healing or answers; they’re further burying the truth so they don’t have to acknowledge the reality that the founder of Mormonism did bad things. It’s tempting to fall down the rabbit hole and clear Joseph so you can feel better about him. But weaving and defending a complicated conspiracy to make Joseph’s hands clean is no different than suggesting women frequently make up rape allegations. It’s the same as asking girls what they were wearing or hiding sexual misconduct to protect an institution or individual. It’s rape culture.

This is why this conspiracy matters. This is why I get so upset when I inevitably get comments on my posts about polygamy spouting this theory. At it’s heart, this conspiracy is about protecting men and patriarchy. It’s upholding unequal power structures that always give preference to men and their stories, whitewash their bad choices, and sweep women’s voices under the rug. Just like polygamy, denial theories boil down to power and optics. They’re designed to keep men in places of power and influence, while downgrading women into second-class roles. Polygamy turns women into objects that only matter when they prop up men’s lives and stories, just as denying it turns women into objects that only matter when they prop up the narrative of men that we want to tell.

If you believe that Joseph fought polygamy, we can get along and I can respect your right to believe that. But I will not confide in you my own survivor stories. I will not trust you as an ecclesiastical leader. I will not believe you when you call yourself a feminist, a girl’s girl, or pro-woman. Denying Joseph’s polygamy tells me that you don’t honor or care about women when put up against the life of a popular man. Saying Joseph never practiced polygamy actively feeds into rape apologetics that prioritize men’s personas over women’s bodies and trauma.

If you find yourself drawn to these conspiracies, maybe ask yourself why. Ask yourself how you can say you support and believe women while also denying Melissa, Emily, and Helen, who are telling you exactly what happened to them. Maybe ponder why you feel such a need to defend and support Joseph Smith over and above the broken bodies of women he left in his path. If you still want to believe this conspiracy, go ahead. But I and many other LDS woman know that you are not a safe person.