Polyandry Pt. 2 - The CES Letter: A Closer Look

Did Joseph Practice Sexual Polyandry?

VIDEO: CES Letter pages 31 - 34 Polyandry

CES Letter Claim

Polyandry: Of those 34 women, 11 of them were married women of other living men.

CES Letter, Page 52

Sexual Polyandry - Lack of Evidence For

Critics provide half-truths to create the appearance that Joseph Smith practiced sexual polyandry. Looking at all available evidence, he did not practice it and would not have permitted others to do so.

Available evidence supports that most of Joseph’s sealings to legally married wives were non-sexual eternity-only sealings. Lucy Walker, who became a plural wife of Joseph Smith on May 1, 1843, recalled his counsel: “A woman would have her choice, this was a privilege that could not be denied her.” Perhaps three of the sealings were time-and-eternity to women who were no longer experiencing conjugal relations with their legal husbands in the equivalence of a Church divorce.

The new and everlasting covenant of marriage causes all “old covenants … to be done away” (D&C 22:1), so a woman with a legal marriage and an eternal sealing would not thereafter have two genuine husbands in the eyes of God. The sealing would supersede the civil union and constitute the only valid marital vow.

Polyandry is more controversial than a plurality of wives, yet none of the “polyandrous” wives complained. Their legal husbands left no grievances against the Prophet. Officiators and witnesses made no protest. Even apostates in Nauvoo did not exploit these relationships in their anti-Mormon literature. It appears no one mentioned it as a possibility until the anti-Mormon claims were voice in the 1850s.

Dan Vogel acknowledged: “There is no solid evidence of polyandrous sexuality in any of Joseph Smith’s plural marriages.” Also, Mike Quinn agreed that there is no unambiguous evidence supporting it (see endnote 267 on page 118).

Celestial marriage requires everyone to be sealed to a spouse in order to be eligible for exaltation. Non-sexual eternity-only sealings facilitated this in Joseph Smith’s day but they are not permitted today.

Michael Quinn explained: “Despite my decades-long expectation for those specific words to be in the written records of sealing, Brian Hales has recently persuaded me that Joseph Smith was sealed during his lifetime to one already-married woman in a ceremony that she, her non-Mormon husband, and the Prophet all regarded as applying only to the eternities after mortal life. This was Ruth Vose Sayers.”

Proponents of the position that Joseph Smith practiced sexual polyandry need to answer the question whether the alleged behavior was in accordance with his teachings or in contradiction to them. If it was in accordance, then where are those teachings? If it is in contradiction, then where are the complaints of hypocrisy and adultery?

Every known statement from early leaders including Joseph Smith, Brigham Young, and others condemns sexual polyandry as adultery.

Charges that Joseph Smith practiced sexual polyandry depict unreality.