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I'm an active member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, and I've tried to be as educated as possible about the controversial/anti-mormon stuff

I'm an active member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, and I've tried to be as educated as possible about the controversial/anti-mormon stuff (for example I've read the CES letter). But this is the first time I've come across this claim: "During that time [when plural marriage was part of the doctrine] some male followers of the Latter Day Saint movement took dozens of wives each, disproportionately favoring girls between 14 and 16 years old." There's no reference, does anyone have a source for that?

andrewl 8y ago
I've never been involved with the LDS church, but you could find a lot of interesting information at the Ex Mormon section of Reddit: https://old.reddit.com/r/exmormon/top/ https://old.reddit.com/r/exmormon/top/ And the wiki that goes along with it: https://www.reddit.com/r/exmormon/wiki/index https://www.reddit.com/r/exmormon/wiki/index
- richeyrw 8y ago
  There's no dearth of places to find ex-mormon/anti-mormon info. I'm looking for documentation of that specific claim. I did follow the links, but I didn't see anything promising.
  - save_ferris 8y ago
    A quick Google search returned a Wikipedia article[0] listing 49 women that were allegedly married to Joseph Smith, plus other articles detailing his marriages, so there's one good lead to follow up on. Wikipedia also has a table of other early church leaders with the number of wives they had[1], which at least gives you some leads to dig further to validate their claims. [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Joseph_Smith%27s_wives https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Joseph_Smith%27s_wives [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Latter_Day_Saint_practitioners_of_plural_marriage https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Latter_Day_Saint_pract...
  - andrewl 8y ago
    A lot of people in that sub Reddit have researched the church's history. Maybe the way to go is to post a question there and see if anybody can get you a source in support of the claim, or a source that refutes the claim. No need to redo legwork that's already been done.
  - richeyrw 8y ago
    Fair point. I will give it a shot.
  - slavik81 8y ago
    > There's no dearth of places to find ex-mormon/anti-mormon info. Off-topic, but I visited Salt Lake City last year and I was surprised by a bookstore that had both a Mormon section and an Anti-Mormon section. I'd never seen an Anti-Mormon section in a bookstore before, and I certainly didn't expect to see it in SLC of all places. But in retrospect, it kind of makes sense that people would have stronger opinions about Mormonism—good or bad—in places where its influence is greater.
    - deleted 8y ago
      [deleted]
    - rurp 8y ago
      I've found Salt Lake City to have a surprisingly diverse population and to be fairly politically moderate. Most smaller towns in Utah though are much closer to what many people think of when they hear Utah.
  - benatkin 8y ago
    It's actually hard to find anti-mormon anything. There isn't as many people who have something in particular against the Mormon church as Mormons were raised to believe (including me - I'm an ex-mormon). Most of the compaining is by freethinkers who are against religions that are overly strict or exclusive (Mormons are encouraged not to date or marry outside of the Mormon church even though Mormons call themselves Christians, for example).
    - zcid 8y ago
      It exists in some areas. I was raised in an area of the south where a large Baptist church wielded a significant amount of influence. I often saw anti-Mormon flyers passed around. I don't know if it's very common, but those messages have been out there for a long time.
    - DanCarvajal 8y ago
      I'm not Mormon and never was but I've seen plenty of anti-Mormon statements and bias. I live on the East Coast and I head plenty of comments about Romney and Mormons during 2012.
    - kevin_thibedeau 8y ago
      There is plenty of anti-Mormon sentiment among American Protestants who happily deny Mormon status as Christians while willfully ignoring that their own particular stream of Christian practice is only a small slice of the doctrines that have been developed over the millennia.
      - User23 8y ago
        It's not just protestants. The Catholic Church also teaches that Mormons are not Christians, because they don't have valid baptism[1]. I wouldn't be surprised if the Orthodox teach the same, but someone else will have to speak to that. [1]https://www.catholic.com/qa/why-doesnt-the-catholic-church-accept-mormon-baptism https://www.catholic.com/qa/why-doesnt-the-catholic-church-a...
sago 8y ago
The original demographic research: https://www.dialoguejournal.com/wp-content/uploads/sbi/articles/Dialogue_V34N0102_135.pdf https://www.dialoguejournal.com/wp-content/uploads/sbi/artic... And a review of its more recent book-length expansion: https://www.dialoguejournal.com/wp-content/uploads/sbi/articles/Dialogue_V42N04_221.pdf https://www.dialoguejournal.com/wp-content/uploads/sbi/artic...
- richeyrw 8y ago
  I did a search for the number 14 and 16 without seeing anything that matched the claim. The closest I saw was "These men averaged thirty-six years of age (range: 24-60) and had been married an average of ten years (1-32 years) before marrying a second wife of a mean twenty-five years of age (14-39 years). At that time, their legal wives averaged thirty-two years of age (22-56)."
  - deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]
  - lazyasciiart 8y ago
    I don't think that claim is about Joseph Smith and marriages while he was alive, because polygamy wasn't official church doctrine then. I haven't found a good dataset, but this book has this comment: "Latter-day Saints were surprisingly obedient to the counsel to marry, and in 1860 Manti, only 1.6 percent of women over the age of 16 had never been to the altar." I believe 14 was the minimum legal age of marriage for at least part of that time, so that would mean almost all women were married between 14-16. Depending how many of them re-married after being widowed or divorced, or how many older women migrated in for marriage, I'm not sure what the overall stats of 'age at marriage' would look.
    - dTal 8y ago
      That's a rather horrifying statistic, especially as nowadays we would not class 14-16 year olds as "women". It beggars belief that 98.4% of Mormon girls would have fallen in love by age 16, especially with older men who already have a harem of wives, so we have to assume a shocking degree of social pressure, amounting essentially to arranged marriages. I've always wondered at the historical accuracy of "A Study In Scarlet", but its depiction of the social climate regarding marriage among the LDS would appear to be spot-on...
stevenwoo 8y ago
The founder Joseph Smith had 14, 16, 17 year old brides. If it was allowed for Joseph Smith why should anyone else be different?
- richeyrw 8y ago
  I'm not saying it didn't happen. It's clear it happened, a lot. I'm taking issue with the idea that the wives were "disproportionally" 14-16.
  - amazingman 8y ago
    >I'm taking issue with the idea that the wives were "disproportionally" 14-16 Isn’t the usual proportion somewhere slightly above 0%?
- kbutler 8y ago
  No reason at all. It was generally allowed in the U.S. Age of consent was typically 10 years old until 1885 https://discover-the-truth.com/2013/09/09/age-of-consent-in-european-american-history/ https://discover-the-truth.com/2013/09/09/age-of-consent-in-... "After 1885, age of consent laws changed around the country, reaching 16 in New York in 1889 and 18 in 1895. Prior to these changes the age of consent in most places in the United States was 10 or 12 years." There's a very strong trend to criticize historical figures for not conforming to modern standards, but it's not usually very useful in understanding their character.
  - twblalock 8y ago
    > There's a very strong trend to criticize historical figures for not conforming to modern standards, but it's not usually very useful in understanding their character. Smith was considered an outlier by his contemporaries. This is not simply a case of applying modern standards to a 19th-century person. People alive at the time considered his marriages abnormal.
    - jjeaff 8y ago
empressplay 8y ago
"Bountiful has come under intense scrutiny for its involvement in the polygamous sect. Warren Jeffs, who was one of the FBI's Ten Most Wanted Fugitives, is thought to have visited a dozen or so times in 2005. The Vancouver Sun on January 28, 2006, released information stating that Utah's Attorney General is collaborating with British Columbia's Attorney General in attempting to deal with polygamy and the alleged abuse in these communities. Jeffs was captured by the authorities outside Las Vegas during August 2006 during a routine traffic stop. On September 25, 2007 Jeffs was found guilty of being an accomplice to rape. Prosecutors said Jeffs forced a 14-year-old girl into marriage and sex with her 19-year-old first cousin." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bountiful,_British_Columbia#Allegations_of_abuse https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bountiful,_British_Columbia#Al...
- colejohnson66 8y ago
  The FLDS are not related to the LDS
  - nesyt 8y ago
    They're both offshoots of Smith's movement.
cronix 8y ago
The quote you quoted does say "some...took dozens...disproportionately favoring..." That could be 2 out of a million to count as "some," and maybe those 2/1,000,000 disproportionately took very young wives. If they used most instead of some, your point would be more valid I think. some is ambiguous and could be any number.
squidbot 8y ago
https://www.dialoguejournal.com/wp-content/uploads/sbi/issues/V27N01.pdf https://www.dialoguejournal.com/wp-content/uploads/sbi/issue... Starting on page 37, the complete data is published including the marriage age of husband and wife (I didn't actually download it, and was looking at the charts sideways.) There are definitely a lot of <= 16 wives. I guess the question is disproportionate to what? The rest of the US population at the time? It's a vague statement to begin with. Anyway, you can count them yourself, I just took a quick glance, and yes, there are a lot.
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
SmirkingRevenge 8y ago
FWIW, in places where polygamy is widespread, there is usually a shortage of potential female mates. This puts a downward pressure on the age at which girls are sought for marriage.

andrewl 8y ago

I've never been involved with the LDS church, but you could find a lot of interesting information at the Ex Mormon section of Reddit: https://old.reddit.com/r/exmormon/top/ https://old.reddit.com/r/exmormon/top/ And the wiki that goes along with it: https://www.reddit.com/r/exmormon/wiki/index https://www.reddit.com/r/exmormon/wiki/index

richeyrw 8y ago
There's no dearth of places to find ex-mormon/anti-mormon info. I'm looking for documentation of that specific claim. I did follow the links, but I didn't see anything promising.
- save_ferris 8y ago
  A quick Google search returned a Wikipedia article[0] listing 49 women that were allegedly married to Joseph Smith, plus other articles detailing his marriages, so there's one good lead to follow up on. Wikipedia also has a table of other early church leaders with the number of wives they had[1], which at least gives you some leads to dig further to validate their claims. [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Joseph_Smith%27s_wives https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Joseph_Smith%27s_wives [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Latter_Day_Saint_practitioners_of_plural_marriage https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Latter_Day_Saint_pract...
- andrewl 8y ago
  A lot of people in that sub Reddit have researched the church's history. Maybe the way to go is to post a question there and see if anybody can get you a source in support of the claim, or a source that refutes the claim. No need to redo legwork that's already been done.
- richeyrw 8y ago
  Fair point. I will give it a shot.
- slavik81 8y ago
  > There's no dearth of places to find ex-mormon/anti-mormon info. Off-topic, but I visited Salt Lake City last year and I was surprised by a bookstore that had both a Mormon section and an Anti-Mormon section. I'd never seen an Anti-Mormon section in a bookstore before, and I certainly didn't expect to see it in SLC of all places. But in retrospect, it kind of makes sense that people would have stronger opinions about Mormonism—good or bad—in places where its influence is greater.
  - deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]
  - rurp 8y ago
    I've found Salt Lake City to have a surprisingly diverse population and to be fairly politically moderate. Most smaller towns in Utah though are much closer to what many people think of when they hear Utah.
- benatkin 8y ago
  It's actually hard to find anti-mormon anything. There isn't as many people who have something in particular against the Mormon church as Mormons were raised to believe (including me - I'm an ex-mormon). Most of the compaining is by freethinkers who are against religions that are overly strict or exclusive (Mormons are encouraged not to date or marry outside of the Mormon church even though Mormons call themselves Christians, for example).
  - zcid 8y ago
    It exists in some areas. I was raised in an area of the south where a large Baptist church wielded a significant amount of influence. I often saw anti-Mormon flyers passed around. I don't know if it's very common, but those messages have been out there for a long time.
  - DanCarvajal 8y ago
    I'm not Mormon and never was but I've seen plenty of anti-Mormon statements and bias. I live on the East Coast and I head plenty of comments about Romney and Mormons during 2012.
  - kevin_thibedeau 8y ago
    There is plenty of anti-Mormon sentiment among American Protestants who happily deny Mormon status as Christians while willfully ignoring that their own particular stream of Christian practice is only a small slice of the doctrines that have been developed over the millennia.
    - User23 8y ago
      It's not just protestants. The Catholic Church also teaches that Mormons are not Christians, because they don't have valid baptism[1]. I wouldn't be surprised if the Orthodox teach the same, but someone else will have to speak to that. [1]https://www.catholic.com/qa/why-doesnt-the-catholic-church-accept-mormon-baptism https://www.catholic.com/qa/why-doesnt-the-catholic-church-a...

sago 8y ago

The original demographic research: https://www.dialoguejournal.com/wp-content/uploads/sbi/articles/Dialogue_V34N0102_135.pdf https://www.dialoguejournal.com/wp-content/uploads/sbi/artic... And a review of its more recent book-length expansion: https://www.dialoguejournal.com/wp-content/uploads/sbi/articles/Dialogue_V42N04_221.pdf https://www.dialoguejournal.com/wp-content/uploads/sbi/artic...

richeyrw 8y ago
I did a search for the number 14 and 16 without seeing anything that matched the claim. The closest I saw was "These men averaged thirty-six years of age (range: 24-60) and had been married an average of ten years (1-32 years) before marrying a second wife of a mean twenty-five years of age (14-39 years). At that time, their legal wives averaged thirty-two years of age (22-56)."
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
- lazyasciiart 8y ago
  I don't think that claim is about Joseph Smith and marriages while he was alive, because polygamy wasn't official church doctrine then. I haven't found a good dataset, but this book has this comment: "Latter-day Saints were surprisingly obedient to the counsel to marry, and in 1860 Manti, only 1.6 percent of women over the age of 16 had never been to the altar." I believe 14 was the minimum legal age of marriage for at least part of that time, so that would mean almost all women were married between 14-16. Depending how many of them re-married after being widowed or divorced, or how many older women migrated in for marriage, I'm not sure what the overall stats of 'age at marriage' would look.
  - dTal 8y ago
    That's a rather horrifying statistic, especially as nowadays we would not class 14-16 year olds as "women". It beggars belief that 98.4% of Mormon girls would have fallen in love by age 16, especially with older men who already have a harem of wives, so we have to assume a shocking degree of social pressure, amounting essentially to arranged marriages. I've always wondered at the historical accuracy of "A Study In Scarlet", but its depiction of the social climate regarding marriage among the LDS would appear to be spot-on...

stevenwoo 8y ago

The founder Joseph Smith had 14, 16, 17 year old brides. If it was allowed for Joseph Smith why should anyone else be different?

richeyrw 8y ago
I'm not saying it didn't happen. It's clear it happened, a lot. I'm taking issue with the idea that the wives were "disproportionally" 14-16.
- amazingman 8y ago
  >I'm taking issue with the idea that the wives were "disproportionally" 14-16 Isn’t the usual proportion somewhere slightly above 0%?
kbutler 8y ago
No reason at all. It was generally allowed in the U.S. Age of consent was typically 10 years old until 1885 https://discover-the-truth.com/2013/09/09/age-of-consent-in-european-american-history/ https://discover-the-truth.com/2013/09/09/age-of-consent-in-... "After 1885, age of consent laws changed around the country, reaching 16 in New York in 1889 and 18 in 1895. Prior to these changes the age of consent in most places in the United States was 10 or 12 years." There's a very strong trend to criticize historical figures for not conforming to modern standards, but it's not usually very useful in understanding their character.
- twblalock 8y ago
  > There's a very strong trend to criticize historical figures for not conforming to modern standards, but it's not usually very useful in understanding their character. Smith was considered an outlier by his contemporaries. This is not simply a case of applying modern standards to a 19th-century person. People alive at the time considered his marriages abnormal.
  - jjeaff 8y ago

empressplay 8y ago

"Bountiful has come under intense scrutiny for its involvement in the polygamous sect. Warren Jeffs, who was one of the FBI's Ten Most Wanted Fugitives, is thought to have visited a dozen or so times in 2005. The Vancouver Sun on January 28, 2006, released information stating that Utah's Attorney General is collaborating with British Columbia's Attorney General in attempting to deal with polygamy and the alleged abuse in these communities. Jeffs was captured by the authorities outside Las Vegas during August 2006 during a routine traffic stop. On September 25, 2007 Jeffs was found guilty of being an accomplice to rape. Prosecutors said Jeffs forced a 14-year-old girl into marriage and sex with her 19-year-old first cousin." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bountiful,_British_Columbia#Allegations_of_abuse https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bountiful,_British_Columbia#Al...

colejohnson66 8y ago
The FLDS are not related to the LDS
- nesyt 8y ago
  They're both offshoots of Smith's movement.

cronix 8y ago

The quote you quoted does say "some...took dozens...disproportionately favoring..." That could be 2 out of a million to count as "some," and maybe those 2/1,000,000 disproportionately took very young wives. If they used most instead of some, your point would be more valid I think. some is ambiguous and could be any number.

squidbot 8y ago

https://www.dialoguejournal.com/wp-content/uploads/sbi/issues/V27N01.pdf https://www.dialoguejournal.com/wp-content/uploads/sbi/issue... Starting on page 37, the complete data is published including the marriage age of husband and wife (I didn't actually download it, and was looking at the charts sideways.) There are definitely a lot of <= 16 wives. I guess the question is disproportionate to what? The rest of the US population at the time? It's a vague statement to begin with. Anyway, you can count them yourself, I just took a quick glance, and yes, there are a lot.

deleted 8y ago

[deleted]

SmirkingRevenge 8y ago

FWIW, in places where polygamy is widespread, there is usually a shortage of potential female mates. This puts a downward pressure on the age at which girls are sought for marriage.