This is an archived copy of a post written by Conflict Of Justice (conflictofjustice.com). Used with permission: Conflict Of Justice may not agree with any alterations made.
For Afterlife Only
“Out of the 34 women, 7 of them were teenage girls as young as 14-years-old. Joseph was 37-years-old when he married 14-year-old Helen Mar Kimball, twenty-three years his junior.”
(CES Letter)
No Physical Relationships – Helen Mar Kimball and the other teenage women sealed to Joseph Smith were sealed for “eternity only,” which meant that it did not involve sexual or earthly relations. A sealing in the “new and everlasting covenant” took effect for the afterlife. The women did not live with Joseph Smith as a married relationship and did not have sexual relations with him. It was literally a matter of Joseph Smith and the woman speaking some words in a ceremony and then that was it.
Early Mormons carefully distinguished between marriage “for time” and celestial sealing “for eternity.” A sealing for eternity was the promise that two people would be married in the afterlife. But this did not mean that they had to be married for earth-life. It could be “eternity only.”
Helen described her marriage as “celestial marriage” and “for eternity alone.”
(see Helen Mar Whitney, Autobiography, p. 2) She made it clear that the relationship did not involve the arrangements and interactions of marriage.
Civil marriage and eternal sealings were different things. One could be sealed “for eternity” and effectively not have a marriage relationship because the sealing involved eternal cohabitation in the afterlife did not involve sexual or earthly relations. The “new and everlasting covenant” of eternal marriage would nullify civil marriage in the afterlife: “All old covenants have I caused to be done away.”
Women Married As Teenagers – The average marrying age for women at that time was 21 years old.
The 1850’s census shows 36% of married women were teenagers compared to only 2% of married men. Stats show it was common for there to be an age gap, as 13% of women married men 10 years or older than them. We are talking about how society was two centuries ago, after all.
Considering it was all just a sealing ceremony for the afterlife, people were not very scandalized by this.
Joseph Smith Had No Physical Relations – Modern DNA testing proves that Joseph Smith had no children with plural wives, though he had five children with his original wife Emma. Out of the 34 alleged women, we would expect some kind of evidence, but there is none. He did not have physical relations with any of the women, even the older ones who, some of them, may have been sealed for time and eternity.
This Happened Two Centuries Ago – It is easy for us to judge historical cultures, but unless you were there you have no idea how things were and why people made the choices they did. There are all kinds of theories about why Joseph Smith was told to institute polygamy, but it is pretty much futile to speculate about a pre-Civil war culture. It was a different time, and I find it truly bizarre that scholars, the media, and popular culture cherry-picks this one thing to obsess over, while there are so many peculiar and offensive things from this early America time period they could complain about. What does this say about them?
CES Letter Logical Fallacies
| Anachronism | CES Letter judges something that happened almost 200 years ago by modern standards. |
| Repetition | CES Letter picks words that emphasize the girls’ young age: “7 of them were teenage girls as young as 14-years-old. Joseph was 37-years-old when he married 14-year-old Helen Mar Kimball, twenty-three years his junior. Even by 19th century standards, this was shocking.” (CES Letter) CES Letter uses a number rather than a word for how many girls were teenagers: 7. They repeat the age of Helen Kimball also with a number rather than a word, 14, which could subtly lead people to think that there is a connection here, that this issue involved girls as young as 7, which is false. Note also that the dedication page of CES Letter reads “To my beautiful young children.” This argument repeats the word “young” in association with children, subtly making the accusation more personal. Now you worry about your young children being victimized. CES Letter repeats their claim 4 times, without ever providing evidence that these were “marriages” with physical relations. Each repetition is framed with greater emotional hysteria. “Unions with teenagers as young as 14-years-old.” “Marriages to young girls living in Joseph’s home” “marry underage and teenage girls.” “perverted license to secretly marry other living men’s wives and teenage girls barely out of puberty” |
| Argument From Ignorance | Joseph Smith did not have sexual relations with Helen Mar Kimball or the other young women, as he was sealed for “eternity only.” He likely did not have sexual relations with any plural wife. The “new and everlasting covenant” of sealing was different from civil marriage, as it was for the afterlife and did not involve earthly relations by itself. Only those sealed “for time and eternity” could have involved sexual relationships. There is no evidence of sexual relationships between Joseph Smith and any of his polygamous wives. |
| Falsehood | CES Letter incorrectly claims “The Church now admits that Joseph Smith married Helen Mar Kimball.” They never admit this. They say she was “sealed to Joseph,” not married, an important difference of words. |
| Strawman Argument | For all their vast research into “the real origins of polygamy and how Joseph Smith really practiced it,” CES Letter totally misunderstands what happened. It is easy to tell salacious tales of sordid affairs, but CES Letter provides zero evidence that the sealing to those women was the same thing as marriage. |
| Emotional Language | CES Letter says “by 19th century standards” the plural marriage “was shocking.” Not really. |
| Ad Hominem | This entire argument is an attack on Joseph Smith’s character. |
Big Lie – CES Letter uses the same big lie tactic that they used against the Book of Mormon and the Book of Abraham. This lie, that marriage for time and for eternity are the same, compounds and leads to other lies to attack Joseph Smith’s character.
This lie is easier for the reader to accept after all those earlier arguments that attached the same kind of narrative about the Book of Mormon and Book of Abraham. If Joseph Smith made up all these books of scripture haphazardly, isn’t it reasonable that he made up revelations about marriage in order to steal underage girls?
CES Letter can get away with this Big Lie because it is the consensus among so many people that Joseph Smith had carnal relations, and because it takes so long to actually investigate the evidence. People are too lazy to actually look through all the historical documents. Even mainstream church apologists are beaten down by all of the accusations and have give way to the big lie. They are too tired defending against it. They let CESLetter get away with the big lie. Even if you don’t believe the allegations, just the association frames Joseph Smith as a creep.
Use Opponent As Authority Tactic – This is a popular Marxist tactic that Anti-Mormons use. They use Mormonism’s own authorities to discredit the faith. “The Church now admits that Joseph Smith married Helen Mar Kimball.” Uh, no, not true. CES Letter pretends like the church hasn’t given any official answers about anything, which is totally false, and then they point to official evidence as evidence that they are ‘conceding’.
What makes this tactic powerful is that it:
- Deceptively discredits the vast research that has been done on Moron history and complicated circumstances of the time.
- Gives more focus to a phony binary frame that attacks the Mormon church.
- Divides the ranks of the church.
- Equates eternal marriage with civil unions and attacks Mormon marriage as an institution
Contradiction Strategy – CES Letter gives a few bits of leading evidence; the reader connects to dots in their mind; and CES Letter pushes it to a sweeping generalization. If Joseph Smith was a prophet, why did he commit adultery? People are much more likely to believe CES Letter‘s rhetoric because they connected the dots out on their own, subconsciously. They are also more likely to believe the evidences for that deduction.
We could see the intellectual tricks and sophistry CES Letter used in their arguments about the Book of Mormon and Book of Abraham. Well, even if that were all true and he were a fraud, so what? Aren’t Mormons still nice people who make the world a better place? The powerful thing with these polygamy arguments is that CES Letter tells you why Mormonism is still evil: it victimizes women. This is easy rhetoric for them to push, as the internet is filled with all kinds of false rumors about Mormon polygamy. It is easy to just repeat the claim over and over, not give any evidence, and make the issue personal through manipulative repetition.
Attack On Family – This frame of ‘predator versus victim’ leads us to a Marxist ideology. Marxism is all about protecting victims from the predators. Marxists think the biggest miracle about mankind is that we evolved to the top of the food chain without ever becoming predators of other animals. Economically, Marxists protect working classes from a predator class. Marxism is all about protecting the vulnerable from those seeking unequal advantage–and all about keeping people weak in order to keep them reliant on a benevolent dictator for safety. A major part of Marxism is the deconstruction of masculinity. They seek to pick positive masculine traits that propagate the ideology, such as the gusto to fight for the cause, and eliminate “toxic masculine” traits such as the desire to marry and have children in a traditional family. They think traditional families are evil because men contribute labor to the economy while women are “subjugated” as mothers and do not perform labor. The ideal for Marxists is a state where men and women are completely equal working bees and children are grown and raised by the benevolent dictator state. Nobody is preying on anybody. Total Hypocrisy From Anti-Mormons – Yet, in the Soviet Union the minimum age of marriage was 16! And age 15 was considered old enough and were quite common. By age 25 Russian girls were considered “old maids.” So Marxists really have no reason to complain about Joseph Smith! According to Marxist law, he didn’t do anything wrong–even if they were earthly marriages, which they weren’t. Therefore, any Socialist-leaning Anti-Mormon is a total hypocrite when he complains about Joseph Smith’s polygamy. They are only pushing the rhetoric to attack the Mormon traditional family and smear Joseph Smith’s character. This is a shaming tactic to make Mormon men feel insecure and to make Mormon women feel ashamed. Meanwhile, the “marriage equality” crowd pushes children to make ‘choices’ about their gender and applauds drag parties for 10 year old boys. All of their rhetoric flies out the window when it comes to influences pushed onto children in the name of Socialist “equality.” Isn’t it interesting that the same popular culture that shames Mormons for allegations two centuries ago is pushing sexuality onto people and teaching them to avoid traditional healthy family relationship? Mormon standards of modesty, chastity, and family obligations are desperately needed in our age. Most folks are adrift with no clue how to secure loving relationships or how to find peace and happiness in their lives. The polygamy narrative is a foil that prevents Mormons from sharing these important principles with the world, from encouraging behavior that was once common sense but is now lost to modern political correctness. It is really too bad. We don’t appreciate what we have, with these moral standards to guide us, and the unfathomable blessing of eternal marriage. We must not lose sight of our basic standards of decency, basic behaviors of modesty, or lose our focus on eternal families. Never be ashamed of our legacy. Never stop working to be part of a happy and successful family. Complete answers to CES Letter questions about Mormons: Polygamy Questions Related questions: With women already married? Foster daughters? Pressured into marriage? Extreme rules? Without wife’s consent? ‘Desire’ the only requirement? Complete Answers to CES Letter