on polygamy into "eternal families"?--You know,the 1950s-style Stepford Housewives kind of families who are more in love with how they look to the neighbors than with the actual individuals of those families of which they are so proud.

This transition just doesn't make any sense to me. Correlation has made it seem consistent and seamless: like things were always this way. It would be easy to forget that Joseph and Breed'em Young were porking dozens of women each if only it were possible to shut out the critics' voices entirely.

How was this done?



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 12/10/2015 12:31AM by Cold-Dodger.

In the days before the internet it was easy to control information. Anyone who had the courage to leak the truth of mormonism was immediately ex'd and their reputations trashed. Often these people also lost their jobs and standing in their community. Most of these people lived in Utah where they were dependent on other Mormons for their living and social life.

The mormon church did all they could to control the media messages that were put out about the church. Couple that with their intense campaign to convince the public that the mormons were "all that and more". There were very few who dared to go against that message.

The Tanners were the pioneers who bravely set up shop in Utah. That had to take some major courage. I'm sure they had many a time that they didn't feel safe. The mormon church has a history of going after anyone who stands up and tells the "real" story.

Also remember this was the John Wayne era when hollywood and network tv was all "god bless america" all the time, everything was censored. You couldn't film a toilet, have pregnant women around, and minorities were kept in the closet. It was the white mans dream.

Add to that people weren't into reading books and being educated like today. To learn history or information you would literally have to sit in the library for hours studying and there were only 3-4 libraries that actually had historical and critical books.

Tens of thousands of family journals that covered that time period were gathered for "microfilming and safe keeping" were "lost" and never returned to families.

With much of the hard evidence "lost" and only oral family traditions as "evidence " it was easy to rewrite history.

From my grandmother's journal I know she was married to Joseph while he was alive and she was married to her original husband.

I know she received her second annointing.

There is a record of numerous polygamist marriages.

If we had all the journals made public imagine the story that would unfold.

they've also been spinning doctrine as recently as within 5 years. take for instance familysearch.org. In the beginning there was all the same sex sealings that were all visible. the whole doctrine was plane as day many leading mormon families disowned their own fathers and substituted Brigham Young as their line. Of course that just doesn't make since today like it did in those days? so it's all been deleted and we don't teach that anymore.

The ultimate spin was that they would become gods and goddesses. After that, the physical evidence was simply buried only to be uncovered by a few brave iconoclasts--Fawn Brodie comes to mind. With the rise of the Internet, masses can now see the total depravity of polygamy and the true motives of the leaders.

As Brodie noted on 1940--Joseph's lust and ego led him to destroy conventional social structures and mores. Which is easier to believe that Joe had a revelation and an angel with a sword forced him to do something he didn't want to do, or he really wanted to fuck a lot of women? The Non-Celestial Boner.