Actually Bennett may have been taking spiritual wives with Joseph’s complete sanction, as were Brigham Young and Heber C. Kimball early in 1842. But it is clear from the innuendoes in Joseph’s statement that Bennett looked upon the whole celestial-marriage paraphernalia as mere show and dispensed with it whenever he pleased. Unlike Joseph, he had never been troubled by the necessity of rationalizing his own impulses or of squaring himself with God.
