A Brief History of LDS Polygamy
"A plural wife is not half as much a slave as a single wife. If her husband has four wives, she has three weeks of freedom every single month."
- Martha Hughes Cannon, first woman state senator in the U.S.
"It is no wonder that the women of Utah are not beautiful... [J]ust as soon as they reach womanhood the curse of polygamy is forced upon them, and from that moment their lives are changed, and they grow hard or die - one of the two - in their struggles to become inured to this unnatural life. This system either kills its victims outright, or crushes out every bit of hope and ambition from them, leaving them aimless and apathetic, dragging out existence without the least ray of present happiness or future anticipation to lighten it."
- Ann Eliza Young, Brigham Young's ex-wife
- Martha Hughes Cannon, first woman state senator in the U.S.
"It is no wonder that the women of Utah are not beautiful... [J]ust as soon as they reach womanhood the curse of polygamy is forced upon them, and from that moment their lives are changed, and they grow hard or die - one of the two - in their struggles to become inured to this unnatural life. This system either kills its victims outright, or crushes out every bit of hope and ambition from them, leaving them aimless and apathetic, dragging out existence without the least ray of present happiness or future anticipation to lighten it."
- Ann Eliza Young, Brigham Young's ex-wife
The Old Testament mentions several men, including prophets, who practiced polygamy, though it gives no indication that God commanded them to do so. Jacob 2 in the Book of Mormon teaches that David's and Solomon's polygamy was "abominable" before the Lord and that polygamy is forbidden unless he commands it to "raise up seed unto me." Between 1841 and 1904, many men in The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints married multiple women. I, like many other Americans born into the church, have some of these men and women in my ancestry. It would be difficult to overstate how central this practice was to LDS theology, yet the church has since tried very hard to downplay it to a piece of weird but irrelevant trivia. Many members hate talking about it at all, willing only to point out that they no longer practice it and end the discussion there. Some are bold enough to consider it a mistake by Joseph Smith, which would make him a sexual predator unworthy of his prophetic calling and largely undermine the legitimacy of his religion. As part of its efforts to become more transparent due to pressure from the internet, the church released a set of groundbreaking essays on plural marriage in 2013-14, well after I had written this section.
The term "polygamy" refers only to having more than one spouse, and what most of us think of as polygamy is more properly called "polygyny", or having more than one wife. Having more than one husband is "polyandry." Both are found in the animal kingdom (minus the marriage component) and evolutionary psychology suggests that humans are, by nature, a polygynous species. Within the LDS Church (as within Islam and most polygamous cultures) polygyny was the version practiced, but for the sake of using the same terminology as everyone else, I'll just refer to it as "polygamy." From a purely adaptive standpoint polygyny is good for women (who find it easier to get a mate) and not so good for men (who find it harder). But from a (probably more important) human relationship standpoint, it's the opposite, as it multiplies men's access to companionship and sexuality but divides women's access to the same. I would never ever want to practice it, but as a man, I can never fully understand how it impacted women and to an extent still does.
The term "polygamy" refers only to having more than one spouse, and what most of us think of as polygamy is more properly called "polygyny", or having more than one wife. Having more than one husband is "polyandry." Both are found in the animal kingdom (minus the marriage component) and evolutionary psychology suggests that humans are, by nature, a polygynous species. Within the LDS Church (as within Islam and most polygamous cultures) polygyny was the version practiced, but for the sake of using the same terminology as everyone else, I'll just refer to it as "polygamy." From a purely adaptive standpoint polygyny is good for women (who find it easier to get a mate) and not so good for men (who find it harder). But from a (probably more important) human relationship standpoint, it's the opposite, as it multiplies men's access to companionship and sexuality but divides women's access to the same. I would never ever want to practice it, but as a man, I can never fully understand how it impacted women and to an extent still does.
Polygyny
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Polyandry
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Allegedly as early as 1831, when he was revising the Bible, Joseph Smith asked the Lord how he "justified" the polygamous practices of several men in the Old Testament. His list included David and Solomon, whom the Book of Mormon had already clearly said the Lord did not justify. The earliest possible indication of polygamy in LDS history is July 17, 1831, when, according to an 1861 recollection by William W. Phelps, he taught a group of married men: "It is my will, that in time, ye should take unto you wives of the Lamanites and Nephites, that their posterity may become white, delightsome, and Just, for even now their females are more virtuous than the gentiles." He may have taken his first plural wife, his teenaged domestic helper Fanny Alger, in Kirtland in the early or mid-1830s, but late and secondhand sources disagree about whether he was married to her or simply had an extramarital affair. It's especially complicated because the sealing power, usually associated with plural marriage, wasn't introduced until 1836. William McLellin claimed that Smith's first wife, Emma, first learned of their relationship when "she went to the barn and saw him and Fanny in the barn together alone. She looked through a crack and saw the transaction!!!" Oliver Cowdery called the relationship "a dirty, nasty, filthy scrape" and was excommunicated in part for his criticism of it. Fanny apparently left the LDS Church when she left Kirtland in September 1836. Years later, when her brother asked about her time with Joseph Smith, she said, "That is all a matter of my own. And I have nothing to communicate."
Smith didn't marry any more women for a few years. According to several late second- and third-hand accounts, Smith claimed that between 1834 and 1842 an angel visited him three times to chasten him for his inaction. The final time, the angel allegedly held a drawn sword (or flaming sword in some accounts) and threatened to destroy him. In 1894 Zina Huntington said he had told her brother, "Tell Zina I put it off and put it off till an angel with a drawn sword stood by me and told me if I did not establish that principle upon the earth, I would lose my position and my life." She had rejected the proposal to become his fifth wife and married Henry Jacobs instead, but after hearing of this divine threat, she changed her mind.
Smith didn't marry any more women for a few years. According to several late second- and third-hand accounts, Smith claimed that between 1834 and 1842 an angel visited him three times to chasten him for his inaction. The final time, the angel allegedly held a drawn sword (or flaming sword in some accounts) and threatened to destroy him. In 1894 Zina Huntington said he had told her brother, "Tell Zina I put it off and put it off till an angel with a drawn sword stood by me and told me if I did not establish that principle upon the earth, I would lose my position and my life." She had rejected the proposal to become his fifth wife and married Henry Jacobs instead, but after hearing of this divine threat, she changed her mind.
Plural Marriage in Nauvoo
After Fanny Alger, Smith didn't marry his next (or first) plural wife, Lucinda Morgan Harris, until around 1838, and he married the rest between 1841 and 1843. It appears that he eventually had about thirty-four wives, including but historical records are sketchy because all such marriages were illegal under Illinois law and therefore conducted in secret. Oliver Cowdery wrote a resolution disavowing polygamy, which was passed by William W. Phelps and a church assembly on August 17, 1835 and became Section 101 (later Section 109) of the Doctrine and Covenants. It read, "Inasmuch as this church of Christ has been reproached with the crime of fornication, and polygamy: we declare that we believe, that one man should have one wife; and one woman, but one husband, except in case of death, when either is at liberty to marry again."
Smith also taught plural marriage to some fellow church leaders, who began to practice it on a smaller scale, but he didn't put it into writing until July 12, 1843 when his brother Hyrum asked for a revelation to help him convince Emma to stop opposing the practice. Hyrum's son Joseph F. Smith later noted that this document "was not then designed to go forth to the church or to the world. It is most probable that had it been then written with a view to its going out as a doctrine of the church, it would have been presented in a somewhat different form." Following the legal and social norms of the nineteenth century, it describes women as objects being "given unto" their husbands. It was canonized as Doctrine and Covenants 132 in 1876, when it finally replaced the anti-polygamy resolution. In addition to plural marriage, it explained the principle of sealing marriages for eternity (monogamous or otherwise) that the church still practices. The LDS Church has long cherry-picked these verses in its curriculum.
The revelation commanded Emma "to abide and cleave unto my servant Joseph, and to none else. But if she will not abide this commandment she shall be destroyed, saith the Lord..." She did not find it as persuasive as Hyrum had hoped, and she begged Joseph to let her burn it. He agreed because he had another copy. Eventually she came to terms with it and from then on alternated between reluctant support and adamant opposition; sometimes getting along with plural wives and sometimes fighting with them, and usually insisting that he let her choose them. Mary Jane Johnston recalled her saying on one occasion, "What I said I have got [to] repent of. The principle is right but I am jealous hearted. Now never tell anybody that you heard me find fault with that [principle;] we have got to humble ourselves and repent of it." On her deathbed she told her son Joseph Smith III, "No such thing as polygamy, or spiritual wifery, was taught, publicly or privately, before my husband's death, that I have now, or ever had any knowledge of... he had no other wife but me, nor to my knowledge did he ever have." This became the official position of the Community of Christ (formerly the Reorganized Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day [sic] Saints) until the mid-twentieth century when it shifted to an agnostic stance on the topic.
On one occasion Smith asked an already-married man, Heber C. Kimball, for his wife Vilate. After much agony, Elder Kimball agreed, only to learn that it had just been a test, like when the Lord commanded Abraham to sacrifice Isaac and then stopped him at the last minute. On fourteen occasions Smith actually was sealed to already-married women in what at first glance looks like polyandry, which is forbidden in D&C 132. The original husbands consented and their wives continued to live with them. While Smith more than likely had sexual relations with some of his wives, it's apparent that he didn't with these ones. These anomalies may have been experiments as the newly revealed sealing power and its implications were figured out. Some women couldn't be sealed because their husbands were unworthy or not members of the church, so Smith helped ensure their exaltation. Other women whose husbands were faithful members still wanted to be sealed to the Prophet in a dynastic chain, not understanding that being sealed to someone else was sufficient for their exaltation. Interestingly, many of these widows were resealed to Smith in the Nauvoo Temple after his death, with their living husbands acting as proxies. Critics often claim that he sent men on missions so he could marry their wives while they were gone, but of the fourteen men whose wives he was sealed to, only one, Orson Hyde, could fit in this category. The four extant antagonistic accounts contain demonstrably false and/or contradictory information (for example, half claim Orson was aware of the marriage and the other half claim he wasn't), and Orson had been on his mission for an entire year before Smith was sealed to his wife.
In 1842, nineteen-year-old Nancy Rigdon rejected Smith's marriage proposal, and he dictated what has become known as the "Happiness Letter" in an attempt to change her mind. One line has been quoted many times by LDS leaders: "Happiness is the object and design of our existence; and will be the end thereof, if we pursue the path that leads to it; and this path is virtue, uprightness, faithfulness, holiness, and keeping all the commandments of God." Some of the unquoted portion reads: "That which is wrong under one circumstance, may be and often is, right under another…Whatever God requires is right, no matter what it is,... Everything that God gives us is lawful and right, and ’tis proper that we should enjoy his gifts and blessings whenever and wherever he is disposed to bestow... as God has designed our happiness, the happiness of all his creatures, he never has, he never will institute an ordinance, or give a commandment to his people that is not calculated in its nature to promote that happiness which he has designed, and which will not end in the greatest amount of good and glory to those who become the recipients of his laws and ordinances. Blessings offered, but rejected are no longer blessings,…unto him that hath not, or will not receive, shall be taken away that which he hath, or might have had..." Nancy ignored his direction to destroy the letter and still refused to marry him, so he slandered her in the local press until she left Nauvoo in 1844.
Several of Joseph Smith's wives were widows considerably older than him. His youngest was fourteen-year-old Helen Mar Kimball, daughter of Elder Kimball, who proposed the marriage. (Nancy Winchester may have been the same age, but the evidence is spotty.) A few others were sixteen or seventeen. Marriages of such young girls were acceptable both by the legal age of consent (ten) and American frontier culture, but they were uncommon by the 1840s and weren't to men twenty-three years older. Helen stated that, like the polyandry, this sealing was for eternity only. She continued to live with her parents. After Smith died just over a year later, she married Horace Whitney for time only. Helen struggled to have a normal life as a teenager but defended the principle of plural marriage until she died. In her 1881 biography she reminisced: "I have long since learned to leave all with [God], who knoweth better than ourselves what will make us happy. I am thankful that He has brought me through the furnace of affliction & that He has condesended [sic] to show me that the promises made to me the morning that I was sealed to the Prophet of God will not fail & I would not have the chain broken for I have had a view of the principle of eternal salvation & the perfect union which this sealing power will bring to the human family & with the help of our Heavenly Father I am determined to so live that I can claim those promises."
Joseph Smith publicly denied the polygamy rumors. He declared on May 26, 1844, "What a thing it is for a man to be accused of committing adultery, and having seven wives, when I can only find one. I am the same man, and as innocent as I was fourteen years ago; and I can prove them all perjurers." But the first issue of the Nauvoo Expositor, published by dissenters from the church on June 7, included affadavits testifying that he had taught "the plurality of wives." Smith ordered the destruction of the newspaper's printing press, leading to his arrest and murder in Carthage Jail.
Critic Jonathan Streeter has pointed out, "Self-proclaimed prophet David Koresh and the Branch Davidians claimed special divine permission to take child brides for the purpose of producing the 24 elders foretold in the Book of Revelations. Self proclaimed prophet Wayne Bent of the Lord Our Righteousness Church claimed special divine permission for having sexual relations with children, even his own daughter in law in order, to avoid God's punishment. Self proclaimed prophet Julius Shacknow of the sect known as The Work, claimed special privilege to promise salvation in exchange for sexual intercourse with women and children, including his own stepdaughter. Self proclaimed prophet Tony Alamo of Alamo Christian Ministries claimed special biblical permission to illegally marry multiple women and children. Self proclaimed prophet David Berg of the Children of God claimed special divine permission to normalize sexual relation with children. Prophets, justifying their own predations as special, divine permission through the use of pious language and religious sentiment, is nothing new."
Smith also taught plural marriage to some fellow church leaders, who began to practice it on a smaller scale, but he didn't put it into writing until July 12, 1843 when his brother Hyrum asked for a revelation to help him convince Emma to stop opposing the practice. Hyrum's son Joseph F. Smith later noted that this document "was not then designed to go forth to the church or to the world. It is most probable that had it been then written with a view to its going out as a doctrine of the church, it would have been presented in a somewhat different form." Following the legal and social norms of the nineteenth century, it describes women as objects being "given unto" their husbands. It was canonized as Doctrine and Covenants 132 in 1876, when it finally replaced the anti-polygamy resolution. In addition to plural marriage, it explained the principle of sealing marriages for eternity (monogamous or otherwise) that the church still practices. The LDS Church has long cherry-picked these verses in its curriculum.
The revelation commanded Emma "to abide and cleave unto my servant Joseph, and to none else. But if she will not abide this commandment she shall be destroyed, saith the Lord..." She did not find it as persuasive as Hyrum had hoped, and she begged Joseph to let her burn it. He agreed because he had another copy. Eventually she came to terms with it and from then on alternated between reluctant support and adamant opposition; sometimes getting along with plural wives and sometimes fighting with them, and usually insisting that he let her choose them. Mary Jane Johnston recalled her saying on one occasion, "What I said I have got [to] repent of. The principle is right but I am jealous hearted. Now never tell anybody that you heard me find fault with that [principle;] we have got to humble ourselves and repent of it." On her deathbed she told her son Joseph Smith III, "No such thing as polygamy, or spiritual wifery, was taught, publicly or privately, before my husband's death, that I have now, or ever had any knowledge of... he had no other wife but me, nor to my knowledge did he ever have." This became the official position of the Community of Christ (formerly the Reorganized Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day [sic] Saints) until the mid-twentieth century when it shifted to an agnostic stance on the topic.
On one occasion Smith asked an already-married man, Heber C. Kimball, for his wife Vilate. After much agony, Elder Kimball agreed, only to learn that it had just been a test, like when the Lord commanded Abraham to sacrifice Isaac and then stopped him at the last minute. On fourteen occasions Smith actually was sealed to already-married women in what at first glance looks like polyandry, which is forbidden in D&C 132. The original husbands consented and their wives continued to live with them. While Smith more than likely had sexual relations with some of his wives, it's apparent that he didn't with these ones. These anomalies may have been experiments as the newly revealed sealing power and its implications were figured out. Some women couldn't be sealed because their husbands were unworthy or not members of the church, so Smith helped ensure their exaltation. Other women whose husbands were faithful members still wanted to be sealed to the Prophet in a dynastic chain, not understanding that being sealed to someone else was sufficient for their exaltation. Interestingly, many of these widows were resealed to Smith in the Nauvoo Temple after his death, with their living husbands acting as proxies. Critics often claim that he sent men on missions so he could marry their wives while they were gone, but of the fourteen men whose wives he was sealed to, only one, Orson Hyde, could fit in this category. The four extant antagonistic accounts contain demonstrably false and/or contradictory information (for example, half claim Orson was aware of the marriage and the other half claim he wasn't), and Orson had been on his mission for an entire year before Smith was sealed to his wife.
In 1842, nineteen-year-old Nancy Rigdon rejected Smith's marriage proposal, and he dictated what has become known as the "Happiness Letter" in an attempt to change her mind. One line has been quoted many times by LDS leaders: "Happiness is the object and design of our existence; and will be the end thereof, if we pursue the path that leads to it; and this path is virtue, uprightness, faithfulness, holiness, and keeping all the commandments of God." Some of the unquoted portion reads: "That which is wrong under one circumstance, may be and often is, right under another…Whatever God requires is right, no matter what it is,... Everything that God gives us is lawful and right, and ’tis proper that we should enjoy his gifts and blessings whenever and wherever he is disposed to bestow... as God has designed our happiness, the happiness of all his creatures, he never has, he never will institute an ordinance, or give a commandment to his people that is not calculated in its nature to promote that happiness which he has designed, and which will not end in the greatest amount of good and glory to those who become the recipients of his laws and ordinances. Blessings offered, but rejected are no longer blessings,…unto him that hath not, or will not receive, shall be taken away that which he hath, or might have had..." Nancy ignored his direction to destroy the letter and still refused to marry him, so he slandered her in the local press until she left Nauvoo in 1844.
Several of Joseph Smith's wives were widows considerably older than him. His youngest was fourteen-year-old Helen Mar Kimball, daughter of Elder Kimball, who proposed the marriage. (Nancy Winchester may have been the same age, but the evidence is spotty.) A few others were sixteen or seventeen. Marriages of such young girls were acceptable both by the legal age of consent (ten) and American frontier culture, but they were uncommon by the 1840s and weren't to men twenty-three years older. Helen stated that, like the polyandry, this sealing was for eternity only. She continued to live with her parents. After Smith died just over a year later, she married Horace Whitney for time only. Helen struggled to have a normal life as a teenager but defended the principle of plural marriage until she died. In her 1881 biography she reminisced: "I have long since learned to leave all with [God], who knoweth better than ourselves what will make us happy. I am thankful that He has brought me through the furnace of affliction & that He has condesended [sic] to show me that the promises made to me the morning that I was sealed to the Prophet of God will not fail & I would not have the chain broken for I have had a view of the principle of eternal salvation & the perfect union which this sealing power will bring to the human family & with the help of our Heavenly Father I am determined to so live that I can claim those promises."
Joseph Smith publicly denied the polygamy rumors. He declared on May 26, 1844, "What a thing it is for a man to be accused of committing adultery, and having seven wives, when I can only find one. I am the same man, and as innocent as I was fourteen years ago; and I can prove them all perjurers." But the first issue of the Nauvoo Expositor, published by dissenters from the church on June 7, included affadavits testifying that he had taught "the plurality of wives." Smith ordered the destruction of the newspaper's printing press, leading to his arrest and murder in Carthage Jail.
Critic Jonathan Streeter has pointed out, "Self-proclaimed prophet David Koresh and the Branch Davidians claimed special divine permission to take child brides for the purpose of producing the 24 elders foretold in the Book of Revelations. Self proclaimed prophet Wayne Bent of the Lord Our Righteousness Church claimed special divine permission for having sexual relations with children, even his own daughter in law in order, to avoid God's punishment. Self proclaimed prophet Julius Shacknow of the sect known as The Work, claimed special privilege to promise salvation in exchange for sexual intercourse with women and children, including his own stepdaughter. Self proclaimed prophet Tony Alamo of Alamo Christian Ministries claimed special biblical permission to illegally marry multiple women and children. Self proclaimed prophet David Berg of the Children of God claimed special divine permission to normalize sexual relation with children. Prophets, justifying their own predations as special, divine permission through the use of pious language and religious sentiment, is nothing new."
Plural Marriage in and Around Utah
After Brigham Young took over in Smith's stead and the Saints fled from the United States to what was then Mexico, polygamy evolved to focus more on building up large families and building a cohesive people. Missionaries in Europe continued to lie about the practice. In a public debate with Protestant ministers at Boulogne-sur-Mer, France in 1850, which was also printed as a tract in England, John Taylor said, "We are accused here of polygamy, and actions the most indelicate, obscene, and disgusting, such that none but a corrupt and depraved heart could have contrived. These things are too outrageous to admit of belief; therefore... I shall content myself by reading our views of chastity and marriage, from a work published by us containing some of the articles of our Faith. 'Doctrine and Covenants,' page 330." At the time, he had twelve wives. By the time European converts arrived in Utah and realized they had been lied to, they were impoverished in the middle of nowhere and didn't often have the option to turn around and go back. The LDS Church literally trafficked European women into polygamy.
In 1852 Orson Pratt publicly announced the practice of polygamy to the church and the world, and it became an essential pillar of the faith. Conversions in Europe plummeted. Brigham Young proclaimed, "It is the word of the Lord, and I wish to say to you, and all the world, that if you desire with all your hearts to obtain the blessings which Abraham obtained, you will be polygamists at least in your faith, or you will come short of enjoying the salvation and the glory which Abraham has obtained. This is as true as that God lives. You who wish that there were no such thing in existence, if you have in your hearts to say: 'We will pass along in the Church without obeying or submitting to it in our faith or believing this order, because, for aught that we know, this community may be broken up yet, and we may have lucrative offices offered to us; we will not, therefore, be polygamists lest we should fail in obtaining some earthly honor, character and office, etc,' - the man that has that in his heart, and will continue to persist in pursuing that policy, will come short of dwelling in the presence of the Father and the Son, in celestial glory. The only men who become Gods, even the Sons of God, are those who enter into polygamy." Of course, it would be mathematically impossible for all men to enter into polygamy, especially if they all had as many wives as Brigham Young.
Brigham Young is perhaps the most famous polygamist of all time. Yet of first learning the principle from Joseph Smith he stated, "It was the first time in my life I had desired the grave, and I could hardly get over it for a long time. And when I saw a funeral, I felt to envy the corpse in its situation." Obviously he got over it by the time he ended up with perhaps as many as fifty-five wives (the absolute number is unclear because some weren't temple marriages, some were less public than others or didn't live with him, and so forth). He and other leaders not only promoted polygamy, but denounced traditional marriage. For example, he preached in 1862, "Monogamy, or restrictions by law to one wife, is no part of the economy of heaven among men. Such a system was commenced by the founders of the Roman empire…. The scarcity of women gave existance [sic] to laws restricting one wife to one man. Rome became the mistress of the world, and introduced this order of monogamy wherever her sway was acknowledged. Thus this monogamic order of marriage, so esteemed by modern Christians as a holy sacrament and divine institution, is nothing but a system established by a set of robbers…. Why do we believe in and practice polygamy? Because the Lord introduced it to his servants in a revelation given to Joseph Smith, and the Lord’s servants have always practiced it. 'And is that religion popular in heaven?' it is the only popular religion there..."
Polygamy was central to the LDS Church's doctrine in the nineteenth century. Young preached on June 3, 1866, "We are told that if we would give up polygamy — which we know to be a doctrine revealed from heaven and it is God and the world for it — But suppose that this church should give up this holy order of marriage, then would the devil, and all who are in league with him against the cause of God, rejoice that they had prevailed upon the Saints to refuse to obey one of the revelations and commandments of God to them. Would they be satisfied with this? No; but they would next want us to renounce Joseph Smith as a true Prophet of God then the Book of Mormon."
Mark Twain wrote of him, "He was an absolute monarch - a monarch who defied our President - a monarch who laughed at our armies when they camped about his capital - a monarch who received without emotion the news that the august Congress of the United States had enacted a solemn law against polygamy, and then went forth calmly and married twenty-five or thirty more wives." Indeed, the federal government back east soon began to prosecute the church. The Republican Party was founded in 1854 with the promise "to prohibit in the territories those twin relics of barbarism, polygamy and slavery," and it "prohibited" the former beginning with the Morrill Anti-Bigamy Act of 1862. This law was intended to punish bigamy and adultery, and since Mormons didn't believe that plural marriage fit either category, their judges and juries in Utah felt no guilt for failing to enforce it. The federal government didn't enforce it either, largely owing to the more pressing matter of the American Civil War. Abraham Lincoln told an visitor from Utah to Washington D.C., "Stenhouse, when I was a boy on the farm in Illinois there was a great deal of timber on the farm which we had to clear away. Occasionally we would come to a log which had fallen down. It was too hard to split, too wet to burn, and too heavy to move, so we plowed around it. You go back and tell Brigham Young that if he will let me alone I will let him alone."
The Poland Act of 1874, however, aimed to enforce the Morill Act by moving court jurisdiction in the territories from local courts to federal appointees. George Reynolds, secretary to the First Presidency, was asked to turn himself in for a test case of the act's constitutionality. The church felt that the law unconstitutionally infringed on religious freedom, and to strengthen its case it canonized the revelation on plural marriage in 1876. But in 1879, Supreme Court Chief Justice Morrison R. Waite rendered the decision in United States v. Reynolds that while laws "cannot interfere with mere religious belief and opinions, they may with practices. Suppose one believed that human sacrifices were a necessary part of religious worship, would it be seriously contended that the civil government under which he lived could not interfere to prevent a sacrifice?" With this comparison the Court set an important precedent for limitations on religious freedom. Elder George Q. Cannon opined, "Our crime has been: We married women instead of seducing them; we reared children instead of destroying them; we desired to exclude from the land prostitution, bastardy and infanticide. If George Reynolds is to be punished, let the world know the facts.... Let it be published to the four corners of the earth that in this land of liberty, the most blessed and glorious upon which the sun shines, the law is swiftly invoked to punish religion, but justice goes limping and blindfolded in pursuit of crime."
This was followed by the Edmunds Act of 1882, which made it a felony to even state a belief in plural marriage, ignoring the Court's ruling just three years earlier and blatantly violating the U.S. Constitution by any definition. After this, polygamous husbands - including apostles - were pursued and arrested en masse. Many went into hiding or lied to protect themselves. In their absence, their wives and children suffered greatly from the lost income. Others escaped to Mexico (again) and Canada where polygamy was tolerated.
In 1852 Orson Pratt publicly announced the practice of polygamy to the church and the world, and it became an essential pillar of the faith. Conversions in Europe plummeted. Brigham Young proclaimed, "It is the word of the Lord, and I wish to say to you, and all the world, that if you desire with all your hearts to obtain the blessings which Abraham obtained, you will be polygamists at least in your faith, or you will come short of enjoying the salvation and the glory which Abraham has obtained. This is as true as that God lives. You who wish that there were no such thing in existence, if you have in your hearts to say: 'We will pass along in the Church without obeying or submitting to it in our faith or believing this order, because, for aught that we know, this community may be broken up yet, and we may have lucrative offices offered to us; we will not, therefore, be polygamists lest we should fail in obtaining some earthly honor, character and office, etc,' - the man that has that in his heart, and will continue to persist in pursuing that policy, will come short of dwelling in the presence of the Father and the Son, in celestial glory. The only men who become Gods, even the Sons of God, are those who enter into polygamy." Of course, it would be mathematically impossible for all men to enter into polygamy, especially if they all had as many wives as Brigham Young.
Brigham Young is perhaps the most famous polygamist of all time. Yet of first learning the principle from Joseph Smith he stated, "It was the first time in my life I had desired the grave, and I could hardly get over it for a long time. And when I saw a funeral, I felt to envy the corpse in its situation." Obviously he got over it by the time he ended up with perhaps as many as fifty-five wives (the absolute number is unclear because some weren't temple marriages, some were less public than others or didn't live with him, and so forth). He and other leaders not only promoted polygamy, but denounced traditional marriage. For example, he preached in 1862, "Monogamy, or restrictions by law to one wife, is no part of the economy of heaven among men. Such a system was commenced by the founders of the Roman empire…. The scarcity of women gave existance [sic] to laws restricting one wife to one man. Rome became the mistress of the world, and introduced this order of monogamy wherever her sway was acknowledged. Thus this monogamic order of marriage, so esteemed by modern Christians as a holy sacrament and divine institution, is nothing but a system established by a set of robbers…. Why do we believe in and practice polygamy? Because the Lord introduced it to his servants in a revelation given to Joseph Smith, and the Lord’s servants have always practiced it. 'And is that religion popular in heaven?' it is the only popular religion there..."
Polygamy was central to the LDS Church's doctrine in the nineteenth century. Young preached on June 3, 1866, "We are told that if we would give up polygamy — which we know to be a doctrine revealed from heaven and it is God and the world for it — But suppose that this church should give up this holy order of marriage, then would the devil, and all who are in league with him against the cause of God, rejoice that they had prevailed upon the Saints to refuse to obey one of the revelations and commandments of God to them. Would they be satisfied with this? No; but they would next want us to renounce Joseph Smith as a true Prophet of God then the Book of Mormon."
Mark Twain wrote of him, "He was an absolute monarch - a monarch who defied our President - a monarch who laughed at our armies when they camped about his capital - a monarch who received without emotion the news that the august Congress of the United States had enacted a solemn law against polygamy, and then went forth calmly and married twenty-five or thirty more wives." Indeed, the federal government back east soon began to prosecute the church. The Republican Party was founded in 1854 with the promise "to prohibit in the territories those twin relics of barbarism, polygamy and slavery," and it "prohibited" the former beginning with the Morrill Anti-Bigamy Act of 1862. This law was intended to punish bigamy and adultery, and since Mormons didn't believe that plural marriage fit either category, their judges and juries in Utah felt no guilt for failing to enforce it. The federal government didn't enforce it either, largely owing to the more pressing matter of the American Civil War. Abraham Lincoln told an visitor from Utah to Washington D.C., "Stenhouse, when I was a boy on the farm in Illinois there was a great deal of timber on the farm which we had to clear away. Occasionally we would come to a log which had fallen down. It was too hard to split, too wet to burn, and too heavy to move, so we plowed around it. You go back and tell Brigham Young that if he will let me alone I will let him alone."
The Poland Act of 1874, however, aimed to enforce the Morill Act by moving court jurisdiction in the territories from local courts to federal appointees. George Reynolds, secretary to the First Presidency, was asked to turn himself in for a test case of the act's constitutionality. The church felt that the law unconstitutionally infringed on religious freedom, and to strengthen its case it canonized the revelation on plural marriage in 1876. But in 1879, Supreme Court Chief Justice Morrison R. Waite rendered the decision in United States v. Reynolds that while laws "cannot interfere with mere religious belief and opinions, they may with practices. Suppose one believed that human sacrifices were a necessary part of religious worship, would it be seriously contended that the civil government under which he lived could not interfere to prevent a sacrifice?" With this comparison the Court set an important precedent for limitations on religious freedom. Elder George Q. Cannon opined, "Our crime has been: We married women instead of seducing them; we reared children instead of destroying them; we desired to exclude from the land prostitution, bastardy and infanticide. If George Reynolds is to be punished, let the world know the facts.... Let it be published to the four corners of the earth that in this land of liberty, the most blessed and glorious upon which the sun shines, the law is swiftly invoked to punish religion, but justice goes limping and blindfolded in pursuit of crime."
This was followed by the Edmunds Act of 1882, which made it a felony to even state a belief in plural marriage, ignoring the Court's ruling just three years earlier and blatantly violating the U.S. Constitution by any definition. After this, polygamous husbands - including apostles - were pursued and arrested en masse. Many went into hiding or lied to protect themselves. In their absence, their wives and children suffered greatly from the lost income. Others escaped to Mexico (again) and Canada where polygamy was tolerated.
By 1885 even John Taylor, successor to Brigham Young, was forced to go into hiding and direct the church's affairs vicariously for the rest of his tenure. In his last public appearance on February 1, he said, "Very well, what would you advise us to do? Are we suffering any wrongs? Yes. Well, what would you do? I would do as I said some time ago. If you were out in a storm, pull up the collar of your coat and button yourself up, and keep the cold out until the storm blows past. This storm will blow past as others have done; and you will see that many of the miserable sneaks who are active in those measures, and who are crawling about your doors, and trying to spy into your houses, etc., will be glad to crawl into their holes by-and-by. Well, what will you do? Get angry? No, not at all. Let these men have their day and pursue their own course; we will protect ourselves from them as well as we can."
![$800 Reward! [Pictured] John Taylor. [Pictured] George Q. Cannon. To be Paid for the Arrest of John Taylor and George Q. Cannon. The above Reward will be paid for the delivery to me, or for information that will lead to the arrest of JOHN TAYLOR, President of the Mormon Church, and George Q. Cannon, His Counselor; or $500 will be paid for Cannon alone, and $300 for Taylor. All Conferences or Letters kept strictly secret. S. H. GILSON, 22 and 23 Wasatch Building, Salt Lake City.](/uploads/4/9/4/8/49486603/published/2354720.jpg?1653507287)
Taylor's death in 1887 was probably hastened by the stress of the situation, and he was widely regarded within the church as a martyr of religious persecution. An unpublished revelation in his handwriting, dated September 27, 1886, was found among his papers by his son John W. Taylor. It read in part, "You have asked me concerning the new and everlasting covenant and how far it is binding upon my people.... I have not revoked this law nor will I, for it is everlasting and those who will enter into my glory must obey the conditions thereof." Thirty-five years later, Lorin Woolley claimed that Taylor had received this revelation at a meeting of thirteen people, and at a subsequent even smaller meeting had placed him and four others "under covenant that while we lived we would see to it that no year passed by without children being born in the principle of plural marriage. We were given authority to ordain others if necessary to carry this work on, they in turn to be given authority to ordain others when necessary, under the direction of the worthy senior (by ordination), so that there should be no cessation in the work." There is no contemporaneous evidence for these meetings from any of the alleged participants.
Congress went a step further with the Edmunds-Tucker Act of 1887, which, in addition to outlawing polygamy yet again, dissolved the church as a legal entity and allowed the government to seize its assets. Church leaders tried to get around this by giving assets to loyal monogamist members, but it wasn't enough. Wilford Woodruff, Taylor's successor, was actually a far bigger polygamist than Brigham Young. As an apostle he had celebrated his 70th, 71st, 72nd, and 74th birthdays by having 267 deceased girls and women sealed to him as wives, most of them his own relatives from the Hart family. One of them, Lydia Hart, was six years old when she died. The church has hidden or deleted these sealings from its FamilySearch website. He wasn't the obvious choice, then, to end the practice. Yet in April 1889 he began refusing permission for new plural marriages, and in October he told a reporter that the Saints had no intention of evading or ignoring the anti-polygamy laws. The next year, 1890, the Edmunds-Tucker Act was upheld by the Supreme Court in Late Corporation of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints v. United States. The federal government then stood poised to confiscate the church's temples and halt the ordinances taking place inside.
Congress went a step further with the Edmunds-Tucker Act of 1887, which, in addition to outlawing polygamy yet again, dissolved the church as a legal entity and allowed the government to seize its assets. Church leaders tried to get around this by giving assets to loyal monogamist members, but it wasn't enough. Wilford Woodruff, Taylor's successor, was actually a far bigger polygamist than Brigham Young. As an apostle he had celebrated his 70th, 71st, 72nd, and 74th birthdays by having 267 deceased girls and women sealed to him as wives, most of them his own relatives from the Hart family. One of them, Lydia Hart, was six years old when she died. The church has hidden or deleted these sealings from its FamilySearch website. He wasn't the obvious choice, then, to end the practice. Yet in April 1889 he began refusing permission for new plural marriages, and in October he told a reporter that the Saints had no intention of evading or ignoring the anti-polygamy laws. The next year, 1890, the Edmunds-Tucker Act was upheld by the Supreme Court in Late Corporation of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints v. United States. The federal government then stood poised to confiscate the church's temples and halt the ordinances taking place inside.
The End of Plural Marriage (Kind of)
Gordon C. Thomasson observed, "As the conflict stretched out, the government began to lose face. [I]t was embarrassing that so great a power could not make so small a group conform to its will. In time public sentiment began to wane and the political mileage gained by crusading politicians through persecuting Mormons began to decline. Indeed, by 1890 the government had painted itself into a corner.... [It] had only two methods of punishment and repression left in its arsenal. The first was extermination, which had been suggested more than once before. The second was total political disenfranchisement of all Mormons. These were unhappy alternatives to the politicians who led the nation, not for any idealistic reason, but rather because they would be eliminating a population which might otherwise, someday, vote for their party. Washington was looking for a way out."
Finally, on September 23, 1890, Woodruff declared in the Manifesto, "Inasmuch as laws have been enacted by Congress forbidding plural marriages, which laws have been pronounced constitutional by the court of last resort, I hereby declare my intention to submit to those laws, and to use my influence with the members of the Church over which I preside to have them do likewise." This was later canonized as Official Declaration 1 in the Doctrine and Covenants. The magnitude of this revelation is difficult to imagine today; after decades of practicing and defending polygamy at such a cost, it was nearly as earth-shattering as doing away with temple sealings altogether. U.S. District Attorney Charles S. Varian noted with frustration, "They are not obeying the law of the land at all, but the counsel of the head of the Church. The law of the land, with all its mighty power, and all the terrible pressure it was enabled to bring with its iron heel upon this people crushing them to powder, was unable to bring about what this man did in an hour in the assembled conference of this people. They were willing to go to prison; I doubt not some of them were willing to go to the gallows, to the tomb of the martyr, before they would have yielded one single iota."
In 1894, Woodruff received another revelation that ended the dynastic sealing of members to church leaders or other non-relatives, such as had frequently been done with Joseph Smith, and established the current policy of only sealing family members to each other. Some members and even apostles continued to enter into new plural marriages, either because they disagreed with the Manifesto, they believed it was only a public relations facade, or they believed it only applied within the United States. Eventually in 1904 the Reed Smoot Senate hearings made it public knowledge that polygamy was still being practiced, and Joseph F. Smith issued a Second Manifesto announcing "that all such marriages are prohibited, and if any officer or member of the Church shall assume to solemnize or enter into any such marriage, he will be deemed in transgression against the Church, and will be liable to be dealt with according to the rules and regulations thereof and excommunicated therefrom." Apostles John W. Taylor (son of the former church president) and Matthias Cowley refused to abide by this policy and resigned from the Quorum of the Twelve in 1905, with Taylor being excommunicated in 1911 after further resistance. Both were posthumously reinstated years later.
On June 17, 1933, the First Presidency issued a scathing fourteen-page denunciation of post-Manifesto polygamy that J. Reuben Clark Jr. had drafted on his own initiative. It backfired in a big way. In the words of D. Michael Quinn, "it transformed a ragtag collection of polygamist sympathizers, who valued their church affiliation, into a cohesive movement of true schismatics. They thereafter rejected LDS leaders, militantly proselytized, and for the first time in the twentieth century became an actual threat to church stability." Because the statement was less than honest about the legitimacy of John Taylor's 1886 revelation and the church's sanctioning of plural marriages between 1890 and 1904, it "unintentionally gave credibility to Mormon fundamentalist claims that were otherwise indefensible." Twelve years later, Clark confided to Harold B. Lee "that one of the reasons why the so-called 'Fundamentalists' had made such inroads among our young people was because we had failed to teach them the truth." Apostle Richard R. Lyman was excommunicated for polygamy in 1943, but was later rebaptized and had his full priesthood privileges posthumously restored.
Americans' view of polygamists took a sharp turn in 1953. On July 26, with the cooperation and approval of the mainstream Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Governor John Howard Pyle launched a raid by 102 Arizona National Guard and police officers on the polygamous compound at Short Creek, Arizona. The authorities arrested the men and took 263 children away from their parents. To Governor Pyle's surprise, media coverage from the 100 reporters he had invited to observe the raid, as well as the general public, was overwhelmingly negative and cost him re-election along with any chance at the Republican presidential nomination. The Deseret News stood alone in editorializing, "The existence of this community on our border has been a smudge on the reputations of our two great states. We hope Governor Pyle will make good his pledge to eradicate the illegal practices conducted there 'before they become a cancer of a sort that is beyond hope of human repair."' LDS historian Juanita Brooks wrote to the newspaper, "That the official organ of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints should approve such a basically cruel and wicked thing as the taking of little children and babies from their mother strains the faith of many, many of us." The church never supported such actions again.
Finally, on September 23, 1890, Woodruff declared in the Manifesto, "Inasmuch as laws have been enacted by Congress forbidding plural marriages, which laws have been pronounced constitutional by the court of last resort, I hereby declare my intention to submit to those laws, and to use my influence with the members of the Church over which I preside to have them do likewise." This was later canonized as Official Declaration 1 in the Doctrine and Covenants. The magnitude of this revelation is difficult to imagine today; after decades of practicing and defending polygamy at such a cost, it was nearly as earth-shattering as doing away with temple sealings altogether. U.S. District Attorney Charles S. Varian noted with frustration, "They are not obeying the law of the land at all, but the counsel of the head of the Church. The law of the land, with all its mighty power, and all the terrible pressure it was enabled to bring with its iron heel upon this people crushing them to powder, was unable to bring about what this man did in an hour in the assembled conference of this people. They were willing to go to prison; I doubt not some of them were willing to go to the gallows, to the tomb of the martyr, before they would have yielded one single iota."
In 1894, Woodruff received another revelation that ended the dynastic sealing of members to church leaders or other non-relatives, such as had frequently been done with Joseph Smith, and established the current policy of only sealing family members to each other. Some members and even apostles continued to enter into new plural marriages, either because they disagreed with the Manifesto, they believed it was only a public relations facade, or they believed it only applied within the United States. Eventually in 1904 the Reed Smoot Senate hearings made it public knowledge that polygamy was still being practiced, and Joseph F. Smith issued a Second Manifesto announcing "that all such marriages are prohibited, and if any officer or member of the Church shall assume to solemnize or enter into any such marriage, he will be deemed in transgression against the Church, and will be liable to be dealt with according to the rules and regulations thereof and excommunicated therefrom." Apostles John W. Taylor (son of the former church president) and Matthias Cowley refused to abide by this policy and resigned from the Quorum of the Twelve in 1905, with Taylor being excommunicated in 1911 after further resistance. Both were posthumously reinstated years later.
On June 17, 1933, the First Presidency issued a scathing fourteen-page denunciation of post-Manifesto polygamy that J. Reuben Clark Jr. had drafted on his own initiative. It backfired in a big way. In the words of D. Michael Quinn, "it transformed a ragtag collection of polygamist sympathizers, who valued their church affiliation, into a cohesive movement of true schismatics. They thereafter rejected LDS leaders, militantly proselytized, and for the first time in the twentieth century became an actual threat to church stability." Because the statement was less than honest about the legitimacy of John Taylor's 1886 revelation and the church's sanctioning of plural marriages between 1890 and 1904, it "unintentionally gave credibility to Mormon fundamentalist claims that were otherwise indefensible." Twelve years later, Clark confided to Harold B. Lee "that one of the reasons why the so-called 'Fundamentalists' had made such inroads among our young people was because we had failed to teach them the truth." Apostle Richard R. Lyman was excommunicated for polygamy in 1943, but was later rebaptized and had his full priesthood privileges posthumously restored.
Americans' view of polygamists took a sharp turn in 1953. On July 26, with the cooperation and approval of the mainstream Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Governor John Howard Pyle launched a raid by 102 Arizona National Guard and police officers on the polygamous compound at Short Creek, Arizona. The authorities arrested the men and took 263 children away from their parents. To Governor Pyle's surprise, media coverage from the 100 reporters he had invited to observe the raid, as well as the general public, was overwhelmingly negative and cost him re-election along with any chance at the Republican presidential nomination. The Deseret News stood alone in editorializing, "The existence of this community on our border has been a smudge on the reputations of our two great states. We hope Governor Pyle will make good his pledge to eradicate the illegal practices conducted there 'before they become a cancer of a sort that is beyond hope of human repair."' LDS historian Juanita Brooks wrote to the newspaper, "That the official organ of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints should approve such a basically cruel and wicked thing as the taking of little children and babies from their mother strains the faith of many, many of us." The church never supported such actions again.
The Legacy of Plural Marriage
One can imagine Brigham Young rolling over his grave when his successor, Gordon B. Hinckley, told Larry King in 1998, "I condemn [polygamy], yes, as a practice, because I think it is not doctrinal. It is not legal. And this church takes the position that we will abide by the law. We believe in being subject to kings, presidents, rulers, magistrates in honoring, obeying and sustaining the law." One can imagine his perplexity and/or outrage at the introduction the LDS Church added to the Manifesto in 2013, which begins, "The Bible and the Book of Mormon teach that monogamy is God’s standard for marriage unless He declares otherwise (see 2 Samuel 12:7–8 and Jacob 2:27, 30)." The church has retconned the status and the significance of this practice in a way that blatantly contradicts past prophets and apostles.
As I mentioned, I have several polygamists in my ancestry on my mother's side. (My father's parents were converts.) I'm just one of thousands, perhaps hundreds of thousands of people who owe our existence in part to the practice. Small sects that still practice polygamy in the Western United States and Canada are not affiliated with the LDS Church, though of course men like Warren Jeffs have benefited greatly from the foundation laid by Joseph Smith. The government's current approach is to leave them alone unless they molest underage girls or commit incest, and that's as it should be. Polygamous converts to the church must divorce all but one of their wives in order to be baptized. Though it's currently forbidden in mortality, some LDS men are still sealed for eternity to multiple women. Charles W. Penrose wrote that "In the case of a man marrying a wife in the everlasting covenant who dies while he continues in the flesh and marries another by the same divine law, each wife will come forth in her order and enter with him into his glory." Harold B. Lee wrote this brief poem after marrying his second wife:
My lovely Joan was sent to me: so Joan joins Fern
That three might be, more fitted for eternity.
O Heavenly Father, my thanks to thee.
As I mentioned, I have several polygamists in my ancestry on my mother's side. (My father's parents were converts.) I'm just one of thousands, perhaps hundreds of thousands of people who owe our existence in part to the practice. Small sects that still practice polygamy in the Western United States and Canada are not affiliated with the LDS Church, though of course men like Warren Jeffs have benefited greatly from the foundation laid by Joseph Smith. The government's current approach is to leave them alone unless they molest underage girls or commit incest, and that's as it should be. Polygamous converts to the church must divorce all but one of their wives in order to be baptized. Though it's currently forbidden in mortality, some LDS men are still sealed for eternity to multiple women. Charles W. Penrose wrote that "In the case of a man marrying a wife in the everlasting covenant who dies while he continues in the flesh and marries another by the same divine law, each wife will come forth in her order and enter with him into his glory." Harold B. Lee wrote this brief poem after marrying his second wife:
My lovely Joan was sent to me: so Joan joins Fern
That three might be, more fitted for eternity.
O Heavenly Father, my thanks to thee.
This belief sometimes causes anxiety for Latter-day Saints, especially women who are not enthused about the prospect of sharing their husbands with someone else for eternity and having no say in the matter. This anxiety is understandable and valid. The only rebuttal the church can offer is that the celestial kingdom will be wonderful and God won't make us do anything that will make us unhappy. Brian Hales has speculated, "On earth, polygamy fragments the husband’s time and resources. Plural wives may have felt diminished, in part, due to the comparatively limited resources available to her. In eternity, endless time and resources could greatly alter these deficits. Our Heavenly Father is aware of all His creations, even a sparrow 'shall not fall on the ground without your Father' knowing it (Matthew 10:29). God told Enoch: 'Wherefore, I can stretch forth mine hands and hold all the creations which I have made; and mine eye can pierce them also' (Moses 7:36). So if a friend accepts Christ, is baptized, and creates a new covenant relationship with deity, one that did not exist previously, that relationship does not take away from my own relationship with God. We may not fully understand how this happens, but godhood apparently brings the capacity to share intimate relationships with an infinite number of beings." Heber C. Kimball wrote in October 1855, "The principle of plurality of wives will never be done away, although some sisters have had revelations that, when this time passes away and they go through the veil, every woman will have a husband to herself."
The LDS Church later spent decades and millions of dollars supporting efforts to legally define marriage as the union of one man and one woman - most noticeably by eliminating the right to same-sex marriage after it had already been established in California. In his 1984 document "Principles to Govern Possible Public Statement on Legislation Affecting Rights of Homosexuals," Dallin H. Oaks wrote, "There is an irony inherent in the Church's taking a public position against homosexual marriages. This should be mentioned here since it is sure to be noted by others. The leading United States Supreme Court authority for the proposition that marriage means a relationship between a man and a woman is Reynolds v. United States, 98 U.S. 145 (1878). In that case, in which the United States Supreme Court sustained the validity of the anti-polygamy laws, the Court defined marriage as a legal union between one man and one woman. The court's stress in that case was on one. The modern relevance of the Reynolds opinion is in its reference to marriage as being between a man and a woman. The irony would arise if the Church used as an argument for the illegality of homosexual marriages the precedent formerly used against the Church to establish the illegality of polygamous marriages." Indeed.
The LDS Church later spent decades and millions of dollars supporting efforts to legally define marriage as the union of one man and one woman - most noticeably by eliminating the right to same-sex marriage after it had already been established in California. In his 1984 document "Principles to Govern Possible Public Statement on Legislation Affecting Rights of Homosexuals," Dallin H. Oaks wrote, "There is an irony inherent in the Church's taking a public position against homosexual marriages. This should be mentioned here since it is sure to be noted by others. The leading United States Supreme Court authority for the proposition that marriage means a relationship between a man and a woman is Reynolds v. United States, 98 U.S. 145 (1878). In that case, in which the United States Supreme Court sustained the validity of the anti-polygamy laws, the Court defined marriage as a legal union between one man and one woman. The court's stress in that case was on one. The modern relevance of the Reynolds opinion is in its reference to marriage as being between a man and a woman. The irony would arise if the Church used as an argument for the illegality of homosexual marriages the precedent formerly used against the Church to establish the illegality of polygamous marriages." Indeed.
