Polygamy in the Mormon Church

Some do, despite legal precedent and all the obscenity standard "doesn't lend itself to Edwin Meese. This must do for an answer. supposed reverence for the printed word scientific exactitude." Of course not. But the I didn't ask Hudson about the readership expressed in the July 1986 Commission on chairman had concurred with the majority of the report. The answer is my own, and Pornography's final report. of his commission that the printed word, purely derivative. I believe there is a sub- The most opaque, obtuse portion of especially in books without graphics, should strata of society that consumes audio-visual Roth, restated in Miller, is the part on "con- be protected from prosecution by virtue of garbage and magazines designed by psy- temporary community standards." In the First Amendment freedoms. chotics for other psychotics. The commission spring of 1982, the jovial, cigar-chomping Scientific exactitude wasn't disputed agreed that such materials are not in the Studs Terkel was in the nation's capital to much during the commission's tenure. Com- "mainstream." I therefore posit a maverick give talks for the American Civil Liberties missioner Dobson, in his statement of liberal's opinion that the audience for the Union and the Institute for Policy Studies. opinion, called hard-core pornography "ad- sexually explicit materials deemed obscene His oral history, Working, was having cen- dictive and progressive." I asked Hudson if by the commission is small—a genuine sorship difficulties in many places. By 1982 he agreed with this. In a cautionary reply, "underground" in American culture on the the purveyors of hard-core smut had intro- he said he was uncertain about the narcotic fringes of or even within the criminal under- duced kiddie porn, "snuff" films, and all that properties of pornography to physiologically world. The public at large is not interested disgusted and incensed those who served on addict anybody. He did, however, find in in this stuff and has no use for it, or for the Hudson's commission three years later. After hard-core pornography an element of psy- report. We have a pornography report in Terkel gave an informal speech at the Korn- chological habituation for some individuals. two volumes not so lots of people will read blatt Gallery, I asked him if he believed, Most of all, 1 wanted from Hudson the it and praise it but so the Reagans and based on the Roth/ Miller test, there could answers to two paramount questions. First, Edwin Meese and the rest of the New Right be any such criteria as "contemporary com- who provided the stimulus for the Commis- phalanx can hoist it high. The actual con- munity standards." sion on Pornography in the first place? tents of the volumes are almost meaningless "It's town standards," Terkel answered. Second, who or what group of people are when piled against this greater threat. "Whoever is in power in that town. The the target audience for its immense, two- Put another way, the mallet-headed tele- shifts in power of that conglomerate power volume report? Hudson told me that the vision shamans like Jerry Falwell and bloc will determine the community primary push for a commission to investigate Donald Wildmon and Mel and Norma standards." pornography came from the president and Gabler have some 1,960 pages to vilify their When 1 asked Henry Hudson the same the first lady, who were concerned that the foes in publishing and other media, and lend question relevant to Studs Terkel's Working, nature of such materials had become far aegis to their own dangerous and obscuran- Hudson granted that community standards more explicit and violent since 1970. They tist agenda. The report's mere existence, with can't be applied the same way in every legal had so informed then Attorney General the Department of Justice seal emblazoned jurisdiction because of plurality and regional William French Smith, who framed the in gold on the navy-blue paper covers, is diversity. He said candidly that applying the commission. The project was inherited by enough to serve sinister purpose. • from Yale to Berkeley, and in archives of the LDS (Mormon) Church in Salt Lake Polygamy in City, Utah, and the RLDS (Reorganized) Church in Independence, Missouri. Emma Hale, whose genealogy goes back the Mormon Church to the Mayflower, lived in Harmony (now Oakland), Pennsylvania, in 1825 when her uncle's business partner, Josiah Stowell, hired Joseph Smith to use his magical seer- stone to divine the location of hidden George D. Smith treasure. Since the site was near Emma's home, her father boarded the digging com- Mormon Enigma: Emma Hale Smith, by of the Latter-day Saint prophet, in Mormon pany, and Emma met her future husband. Linda King Newell and Valeen Tippetts Enigma: Emma Hale Smith by Linda King Two years later, soon after they had eloped, Avery (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, Newell and Valeen Tippetts Avery. The Joseph claimed to recover some gold plates 1984), 394 pp., $19.95. Index, bibliography, mother of eleven children by the Mormon from a hill near Palmyra, New York, which endnotes, genealogical charts. founder, Emma was to discover her hus- supposedly contained a record of the Hebrew band's secret marital relations with many of ancestors of the American Indian. This solu- he curious story of Joseph Smith's her friends in the small, nineteenth-century tion to the question of the origins of the Tpolygamy has now been told from the religious community of Nauvoo, Illinois. American Indian, much discussed in those perspective of Emma Hale Smith, first wife Both Mormons, Newell and Avery re- days, reassured believers in the Adam and searched Emma Smith's life for nine years Eve story. George D. Smith is the president of Signa- to produce this closeup view of early Mor- Although Joseph kept the gold plates ture Books, which publishes the works of monism. The authors pieced together this boxed under their bed for months, Emma Mormon authors. He has written for Dia- well-documented story from diaries and cor- said she never saw them. She reported that logue and Sunstone, two intellectual Mor- respondence that emanated from Emma's Joseph used a seer stone in a dark hat to mon magazines. twelve homes in five states, much of which translate the Book of Mormon from the in- is now found in major university libraries scribed plates. Her father could not help Winter 1986/87 55 but notice that "the manner in which he marriage, he wrote this explanation to her: band, she was "stunned." The authors then pretended to read and interpret was the same "That which is wrong under one circum- describe a physical confrontation between as when he looked for money diggers." stance, may be, and often is, right under the two women, which by some accounts Mormon Enigma makes it clear that the another.... Whatever God requires is right, has Eliza falling down the stairs. This inci- aspects of plural marital relations were no matter what it is." dent in 1843 forced the issue of polygamy present near the inception of Mormonism, Joseph offered "spiritual blessings" to into the open: "Emma could no longer be- and reformist opposition to polygamy pre- parents who consented to give their young lieve that Joseph was not involved and he cipitated Joseph Smith's arrest and assas- daughters to him in marriage. Helen Mar could no longer deny it." sination fourteen years later, nearly destroy- Kimball was promised to the prophet at the Eliza was forced out of the house in ing the church. age of fourteen and was apparently unaware February of that year, but in March Joseph In 1831, the year after Joseph Smith of the consequences. She wrote in her auto- secretly married two daughters of a Bishop founded his church, he made public a revela- biography, "I would never have been sealed Partridge who moved into the Smith house- tion that allegedly conveyed God's request [married] to Joseph had I known it was hold that month. From this and other epi- for seven elders of the church, five of them anything more than a ceremony." sodes, a question arises that is not addressed married, to take Indian wives "that their Although the evidence is hard to docu- in the book: Did Joseph Smith have con- posterity may become white, delightsome, ment, the authors report that "persistent oral current marital relations with all of his wives and just." The Indians' dark skin was and family traditions insist that Joseph or only with the wives who were living in thought to embody God's curse for their fathered children by at least four of his the Smith home at any one time? Was his iniquity, described in the Book of Mormon. plural wives." polygamy cumulative or sequential? This is one of the earliest references to poly- The authors point out that Joseph Smith The authors do not understate the case: gamy in the Mormon church. kept his marital relationships secret from all "By late summer 1843 most of Emma's Although Joseph Smith's first docu- but a select few, especially from his wife, friends had either married Joseph or had mented plural wife was Louisa Beaman in Emma. They present evidence that Emma given their daughters to him." 1841, the authors suggest that as early as eventually learned of at least seven of It was ironic that while Emma used the 1830 he may have been accused of improper Joseph's plural wives. To the public, and to Mormon women's Relief Society as a pulpit conduct with women.

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