Tyler Perry
So, this series has been making some waves, whether due to
its style, tone, or content. I also
doubt that the algorithm is going to put it in your path unless you have a very
specific history.
FairMormon is an apologetics group that seeks to answer the
tough questions directed to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints,
whether these be issues with truth claims, church history, racial issues,
treatment of LGBTQ people, or issues with modern policy and practices. In other words, this is a source that is
favorable of, not critical toward, the church.
It is also one of my go-to sources for raising questions in
my blogs because the apologetics are frankly terrible, even by apologetic
standards.
One of the recent (since about 2015) challenges to the church's
truth claims has been what is called the CES Letter. The CES Letter is a list of questions (about
70 or 80 pages worth) written by a disaffected member looking for answers to
hard questions. The questions were
directed to a CES director (hence the title), and, instead of receiving answers
from that CES director, the author of the letter found himself facing a
disciplinary council and certain excommunication. Since its publication, groups like FairMormon
have tried to answer the questions contained in the CES Letter to... varying
levels of success. Efforts like the
video linked here seek to answer the questions raised by the CES Letter, and I
am going to post these so that you can have an opportunity to see whether you
find these compelling answers to the difficult questions posed within. The rest of my post here will be my
commentary, but I encourage you to first watch the video before proceeding on
through my response.
(0:01) Almost right off the bat, Kwaku and other guy try to
frame the issue of polygamy around sex.
While sex was certainly an issue, such as in the case of Fanny Alger,
which Oliver Cowdery described as a “dirty, nasty, filthy affair” between the
Prophet and an underage girl (Rough Stone Rolling, Bushman, pg. 323-324). However, this narrow focus on the sexual
aspect of Joseph Smith’s polygamy will ignore the other effects and issues of
consent. And when they get into one of
those problems, instead of addressing it, they just go after the author of the
CES Letter. But we will get into that in
just a moment.
(0:32) Kwaku and other guy list a primary goal of sealings
that would have been a primary motivator for the polygamy and polyandry that
Joseph practiced as “binding humanity together”. I have heard this used many times as a
description of the purpose of sealing, so I have no qualms with the definition. I wonder if they are going to use this definition
later in their response to the CES Letter?
(1:03) Here is where things start to get juicy. Joseph Smith had himself sealed to Marinda
Hyde, who was married to Orson Hyde when Orson Hyde was sent on a mission. They provide three defenses for this
action. First, John D. Lee, the man who would
later be executed for his role in the Mountain Meadows Massacre, stated that Orson
had given consent. Second, Orson was sealed
to another woman when returned from his mission. Third, Orson and Marinda wound up being
sealed together anyway after Joseph died.
No mention of whether Marinda, or Emma (in accordance with Doctrine
and Covenants 132), had given consent to the marriage to Joseph. No mention of whether Orson’s new wife, or
Marinda, had given consent to Orson’s second marriage. And we will just brush past the fact that
Joseph’s actions, which may have reasonably caused great hardship to Marinda
and Orson, was undone after his death, rendering it all pointless anyway. This does not answer the question that the
CES Letter actually asks, which is, for this question and pretty much all the
others, “Why?”
(1:24) Other guy and Kwaku again try to state that the CES
Letter is “flippantly” dismissing the polygamy issue as purely sexual. I wonder if my comments above had anything to
do with sex? If not, then this response
is irrelevant to the actual questions at hand.
I wonder if we will see other places where this misrepresentation of
questions is an issue?
(1:37) Kwaku makes a joke here about how “if you want to
have sex, you don’t start a religion”.
Jim Jones and Keith Raniere would like to have a word with you about
that, Kwaku. Starting a religion gives
you immense power over your followers, who trust that you speak for God or some
higher power. Thus, you can say things
like, oh, I don’t know, “If you don’t marry me I will be destroyed” or “Marry
me and your family will be guaranteed salvation” to a 14-year-old girl, and she
and her family will “consent” because of their trust in you. But we aren’t to that story yet.
(2:00) Are you watching?
Watch closely. Kwaku in a silly
voice reads the quote that asks, “How is not having sex with a living man’s wife
on earth only to take her away from him in the eternities to be one of your [Joseph’s]
forty wives any better or any less immoral?”
Remember when I said that the CES Letter is not actually attacking the polygamy
question from a sexual perspective? Remember
when I noted that there was no conversation about consent? Surely, Kwaku or other guy will offer a
defense here, right? The CES Letter is
clearly no longer talking about the sexual aspect of polygamy. I mean, these guys are helped by the best apologists
in Mormonism. Surely they will have a
good answer for this, right?
(2:18) “Well, the ironic thing is the CES Letter is atheistic,
and against the idea of God in general,” Kwaku answers. You are seeing this, right? Like, you, the reader, understand why this is
a problem, right? The CES Letter asks a
question about morality, framed from the perspective of the doctrines and
practices of the church. The key to
understanding the CES Letter is that it is framed from the perspective of a questioning
member of the church, not from an outside atheist attacking the church. And even if it Runnels were the biggest
atheist since Dawkins, how does that change the value of this question from the
believing Mormon perspective? When you
have an “eternal perspective”, how is taking a wife away from her husband in
the eternities any better or any less immoral than it would be in this
life? That’s the point of the CES Letter’s
question. But does Kwaku or other guy
answer it?
To this point though about atheists and polygamy, Kwaku is
correct when he says that as long as all parties are consenting, polyamory in
its various forms are morally acceptable under most humanist or other secular
worldviews. Atheism is not a moral framework,
it is a statement about one’s acceptance of the proposition that gods
exist. Just as the terms “monotheist”
and “polytheist” have no inherent moral framework (look at the differences in
moral beliefs between the ancient Greeks and modern Hindus, or between progressive
Muslims and fundamentalist Christians), the term “atheist” has no inherent
morality attached to it. However, many atheists
do espouse the principles of humanism, which would state, as Kwaku insinuates,
that polyamory among consenting adults is acceptable.
Interesting to note here, the criteria for moral acceptability
of polyamory are “consenting” and “adults”.
I wonder how many of Joseph Smith’s wives meet these criteria.
(2:55) Maybe study a bit on Jim Jones and how he got his
followers to drink the poison for a better understanding of why the CES Letter
includes this as a problem. In light of
that information, is Kwaku and other guy’s answer here sufficient?
(3:19) Going into this, let us recall that teenagers cannot
consent to marriage or sex with a 37-year-old man. So, any number of teenagers should be
troubling. And 14-year-olds should be
especially troubling. How do Kwaku and
other guy other defend Joseph’s actions here?
By suggesting that Helen Mar Kimball, the 14-year-old girl that Joseph
took as one of his wives, offered consent and that the marriage was for
eternity alone. But as Kwaku and other
guy note, there is even more to the story (not that there should be, this story
is already disturbing enough as it is) [1].
If you are truly believing member of the church, I want you
to take off your Mormon goggles for a minute, and think about how you would
feel about this story if it was, say, Warren Jeffs doing this? Which, by the way, Warren Jeffs has done [2].
Using the same principles as Joseph
Smith. I imagine that you are repulsed
at the thought of Warren Jeffs taking on girls under the age of consent as
wives, as I am. The question that the
CES Letter poses is why is it okay for Joseph but not for Jeffs? Do you think that Kwaku and other guy answered
that question?
(4:02) The Presentism Defense: does it apply here? This is a common defense for issues like
polygamy, race and the priesthood, and the time that a small Mormon town
castrated a 24-year-old and nailed his testicles to the door [3]. But does presentism apply when you claim to
have a special communication with the divine, to know His will for mankind? I, for one, would be inclined to accept the
presentism defense under the condition that the church be ahead of its time on moral
issues. I mean, surely the church was
never racist or homophobic, right? And the
church has a better understanding of transgender people than the secular world,
right?
The presentism defense works if we eliminate special
communication from an all-knowing, perfectly loving God who is unchanging from
everlasting to everlasting. So, does the
church not have special access to God? Is
God less moral than we are today? Please
explain to me, Kwaku or other guy, how the presentism defense can possibly
apply here. Otherwise, this seems as
dismissive and irrelevant as your earlier point about the CES Letter being
penned by an atheist.
Also, I do hope that the future judges me based on my
benefiting from slave labor, human trafficking, and other immoral societal structures
from which I benefit on a daily basis.
That will at least mean that humanity still exists as a species in the
future, and it will mean that society has improved and advanced. I hope that society learns from my mistakes,
and I hope to play a small role in the advancement of society into the future. I mean, history shows us that we may have
good reason to doubt that God will step up to take care of it for us…
(5:00) I wonder how common it was for 14-year-olds to marry
37-year-olds in the 19th century.
I also wonder what the average marriage was in 1844 [4].
(5:07) Yeah, Kwaku, marrying sets is weird. Furthermore, you insinuate the CES Letter
includes this to insinuate that the relationships were all sexual in nature. Again, whether or not the relationships were
sexual is not really the point. Joseph
created these weird, pseudo-incestuous unions that beg the question: why? The CES Letter is asking why Joseph took on
these marriages to drill down whether they were moral or becoming of a man who
claimed to speak for God. Again, would
this action be okay if it were Warren Jeffs doing it?
(5:39) That Joseph married older women as well as underage
girls is not a defense for the fact that he married underage girls. Would it be okay if it was Warren Jeffs doing
it?
(6:03) This noting that Joseph may not have had children
with his plural wives is only relevant if the objections to Joseph’s polygamy
have to do with sex. While sex is
certainly an objection to Joseph’s polygamy, it is not the crux of the
questions presented by the CES Letter.
The real issues have to do with morality and with the internal logic of
the doctrines and teachings of the church with respect to the issue of polygamy. Notice there is no conversation about Brigham’s
polygamy here, where we know that sex was involved. Big time.
We are talking about Joseph’s polygamy, which was swept under the rug,
lied about, a printing press was burned down to keep secret [5], and which is only
recently coming into public view.
(6:29) FairMormon does not like Emma Smith. She presents a real problem for them in most
cases. This is another attempt to
disparage and defame who the Doctrine and Covenants calls “an elect lady”. I suppose you are arguing with doctrine here,
Fair. I will leave you to it.
(6:45) The angel with the drawn sword. Honestly, I do not care how this was associated
with the polygamy. The idea that God
would send an angel with a drawn sword to kill the prophet for not practicing
polygamy, but the fact he allowed them to go on with denying black people the
priesthood, supporting CA Prop 8 in 2008, setting up the November policy in
2015, rescinding the November policy in 2019, or just allowing BYU to be BYU without
threatening them with a flaming sword to stop all of that means that God is an
asshole. Or that the church does not
have special access to God the way that they claim. I have said that before in other contexts, so
I will leave that point there.
(7:11) Kwaku makes an unqualified claim that there is a difference
between Warren Jeffs and Joseph Smith. I
am willing to grant that premise though to ask this question. Would it be okay if Warren Jeffs did what
Joseph Smith did? If those same actions
from Warren Jeffs are bad, how are they good from Joseph Smith?
(7:22) “The Letter is wrong when it states that these
marriages were performed without the consents of the husbands.” Kwaku, I need you to read that back to me,
slowly. And really emphasize that last
word for me, would you?
(7:30) I love how this is taken out of context. The CES Letter’s “narrative” includes this
part where the polygamy Joseph practiced is contrasted against the polygamy
laid out in scripture. It makes the
point that Joseph was not in compliance with the doctrines he was
teaching. Meanwhile, other guy seems to
think that the point to raise here is that some of these polyandrous wives remained
with their temporal husbands. But Joseph
was still going to get them in the eternities.
Remember when we asked how that was any better or less immoral way back
at the 2-minute mark? Do you remember
how they answered, or rather dodged, that question then? Here we are again, with that same question
coming to bear. Are there any answers
now, Kwaku or other guy?
(7:58) The Zina Huntington point is fine, I guess, except for
the fact that this story makes me sad to read.
It is hard to read, so I will link it below [6].
(8:32) At this point, I have to be grateful that I have not
made a drinking game out of every time they say that the CES Letter is wrong and
misleading without qualification. Or out
of every time they make a bad, cringey joke.
I would be so wasted by now, and it isn’t even lunchtime yet. Also, Kwaku is going to spend a while here
rehashing arguments that do not have much bearing on the actual points being raised. Nice of him to build up a strawman of sex
being the issue (perhaps the sexiest strawman ever constructed), but the fact
of the matter is that the CES Letter’s points are not dependent on Joseph
having had sex with any of these women.
I hope that at this point in my response, that’s clear.
(9:00) Other guy raises a point here that he thinks is just
fantastic, but that I find problematic. “Can
the creator of marriage change the rules around marriage as he pleases?” he asks
in essence. If this is the case, then
why is God so discriminatory towards his LGBTQ children? It seems that if he can change the
laws around marriage to allow LGBTQ people to marry, then he is willfully choosing
not to, or Russel Nelson and company are not listening to him telling them to change
the rules. Thus, other guy has presented
an argument that I can use to say that God is a homophobe. Thanks, other guy!
(9:12) Kwaku is still stuck on this idea that the CES Letter
positively or negatively cares about the existence of one god or any gods or no
gods. The only positive thing to come
out of this comment is the recognition that the “other gods” discussion is not
relevant, though he does seem to miss the point that the CES Letter is framed
as being from the perspective of a questioning member, not an atheist.
(9:18) Other guy makes a great case for same-sex marriage
once again! Swap “polygamy” for “homosexuality”
and you’ve got a poorly worded but still substantially sound argument for
permitting gay marriage. Thanks again, other
guy!
(9:28) The last joke of the episode is just as cringey as
the rest. This could also be understood
as a common Mormon apologist defense strategy of “bear your testimony because
nobody can deny your testimony”. This was
the strategy that I was taught to use as a missionary. It is also an intellectually dishonest
strategy that allows you to metaphorically plug your ears and sing “la la la la”
at your interlocutor, instead of engaging with the questions and challenges
presented.
What did we learn from this?
If you were not familiar with the issues presented in this video, then
what you just watched was a series of bad arguments to defend a position that
was not under attack. You heard arguments
that could be turned around and used to harm another church position. You heard the same tired and poor apologetics
that FairMormon has used since its inception, only this time coupled with
eternally cringey humor. This video was
misleading. And it was wrong.
But I do appreciate other guy making such great arguments for
why the church should start allowing gay marriage among its members. Thanks, other guy!
References
[1] Helen
Mar Kimball - Joseph Smith's Polygamy
[3] Utah/Crime
and violence/Castration in the 1800's - FairMormon Apart from the fact that
this story is absolutely disgusting and that this defense isn’t much better, I
do find it interesting that Fair undercuts the John D. Lee source here, where
Kwaku seemed all too happy to use it when it favored their narrative about Orson
Hyde. Before you accuse me of the same, I
was questioning the morality, not the reliability of the source. John D. Lee did play a significant part in
the Mountain Meadows Massacre, so his thoughts on consent may not be morally
reliable, but this does not impugn on his ability to describe events that
occurred. When we look at corroborating
sources, we can help build a picture of the incident. I wonder if a people led by revelation from
God should ever be nailing testicles to doors.
Then again, God does seem to have a fixation with collecting bits of
male genitalia (1 Samuel 18:27).
[4] Age of
Marriage in the U.S. in the 1800s (theclassroom.com) Census data was not
available on this in Joseph Smith’s time, but as we drew to the close of the
century, the average was 22. It is
unlikely that this was a sudden rise in the average marriage age.
[5] Nauvoo
Expositor (churchofjesuschrist.org) From the church’s website. Of note, the church does not mention here
that Joseph was denying that he was practicing plural marriage.
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