. . . given that polygamy was a crime in the United States at the time he was entering into these sham plural "marriages."
Not only did Smith know--and brazenly lie about--the fact that he was illegally engaging in adulterous affairs (in violation of Illinois state law), he knew that he was also violating existing anti-polygamy laws:
" . . . Mormon polygamy was never legal, at any time--not even in the Utah territory from 1847 to 1890.
"[At that time] [m]arriage [was] a legal contract between one man and one woman. There ha[d] never been a law enacted to allow otherwise. All the married Mormons who emigrated to Utah in 1847 had been married under the civil laws of their respective states; each one of those states had laws against bigamy, thus making monogamy the "common law."
"The very reason Brigham Young chose to move to Utah, rather than Oregon, California or Texas, as others suggested, was because Utah was an uninhabited 'no man's land.' However, the area was legally Mexican territory and polygamy was illegal in Mexico.
"In the United States, marriage is a legal contract regulated by the various states. When the Mormons went to Utah in 1847, all married Mormons at that time had been married under laws of the states they had come from. Utah became U.S. territory in 1848 after the Mexican War and, thus, all citizens living therein became subject to the common laws of the nation, including marriage laws. (To use an analogy, you get your drivers' license from your state but it is recognized as being legal in all the states. Marriage licenses are similar).
"Once in Utah, Young attempted to establish the 'Territory of Deseret,' and operate the area as a theocracy, under the 'Law of the Lord,' which included plural marriage and blood atonement. However, Congress rejected Young's attempt and, in 1850, the area was officially established as Utah Territory, with territorial overseers appointed from Washington, D.C.. President Millard Fillmore appointed Young as governor. Thus, polygamy became specifically illegal under U.S. common laws in 1850; but, since polygamy was also illegal under Mexican laws beforehand, there was never a time when polygamy was legal in Utah.
"The 1862 federal Morrill Act was not the first law which made bigamy illegal; it was merely the first law which specifically reinforced existing state anti-bigamy laws. It was enacted specifically to close the 'loophole' that the Mormons mistakenly believed they were operating under.
"Even after the passage of the 1862 Morrill Act, the Mormon Church continued to practice polygamy in violation of the law for another half-century, and repeately challenged those laws. So anyone who argues that '[t]he Mormons stopped practicing polygamy when it was made illegal' are either misinformed or misrepresenting the truth.
"The final nail on the coffin which demonstrates polygamy's illegality was when Ann Eliza Webb filed for 'divorce' from Brigham Young and sued him for alimony in 1877. Young successfully argued that their relationship was 'an ecclesiastical affair, not a legal one' and the judge rightly ruled that since there was never any legal marriage, Webb could not file for divorce nor seek alimony.
"Since Young himself admitted that his own 'plural marriage'" were not legal marriages, that means that no other Mormon "plural marriage" at any time was a legal marriage either. No legal marriage licenses were ever applied for nor granted, and every single child born of Mormon 'plural marriages' was illegitimate--i.e., not born in a legal marriage.
"All of the federal laws enacted against Mormon polygamy from 1862 to 1879 merely served to force the Mormons to comply with existing common laws. But the fact that those additional laws were enacted does not mean that Mormon polygamous marriages were ever legal in the first place.
"In 1878, the United States Supreme Court upheld the conviction of a Mormon under the federal statute prohibiting bigamy against a challenge that, among other things, the statute infringed on the first amendment right to freedom of religion. In so doing, the Court noted that polygamy had 'always been odious among the northern and western nations of Europe and, until the establishment of the Mormon Church, was almost exclusively a feature of the life of Asiatic and of African people.'
"The U.S. Supreme Court described further that:
"' . . . [A]t common law, the second marriage was always void (2 Kent, Com. 79), and from the earliest history of England polygamy has been treated as an offence against society. After the establishment of the ecclesiastical [98 U.S. 145, 165] courts, and until the time of James I., it was punished through the instrumentality of those tribunals, not merely because ecclesiastical rights had been violated, but because upon the separation of the ecclesiastical courts from the civil the ecclesiastical were supposed to be the most appropriate for the trial of matrimonial causes and offences against the rights of marriage, just as they were for testamentary causes and the settlement of the estates of deceased persons.
"'By the statute of 1 James I. (c. 11), the offence, if committed in England or Wales, was made punishable in the civil courts, and the penalty was death. As this statute was limited in its operation to England and Wales, it was at a very early period re-enacted, generally with some modifications, in all the colonies.' (U.S. v. Reynolds, 98 U.S. 145, 164-65 [1878])
"The point is, polygamy has] always been illegal in 'civilized' western Christian cultures.
"And, since the 1862 Morrill Anti-Bigamy act, the 1879 SCOTUS Reynolds decision, and the 1882 Edmunds Act all reaffirmed the illegality of Mormon 'plural marriage,' then why did the Mormon God wait until 1890 to reveal to Wilford Woodruff that the church needed to obey the laws of the land which had already been in force for over 40 years?
"And if the Mormon God told Woodruff to obey the laws of the land in 1890, then why did Woodruff himself 'plural marry' Lydia Mountford in 1897? And why did other LDS General Authorities secretly authorize dozens of other 'plural marriages' between 1890 and at least 1906? And why was LDS Church president Joseph F. Smith convicted of unlawful cohabitation and fined $300 in 1906?
"What we must keep in mind is that Joseph Smith's 'revelation on celestial marriage,' which introduced and authorized 'plural marriage,' is Mormon scripture, even today as Section 132 of the Doctrine and Covenants.
"But in introducing the 'revelation on celestial marriage,' Joseph Smith directly contradicted the 1835 ]Doctrine and Covenants' scripture which specifically prohibited the practice of polygamy; and by practicing polygamy, Joseph Smith violated his God's order to 'obey the laws of the land.'
"So, we have a little problem here--and Smith's Prophetic successors as Church leader Brigham Young, and then John Taylor, continued to advocate and practice polygamy in violation of the law for another half-century. And the LDS Church's current edition of the Doctrine and Covenants still contains the 'revelation on celestial marriage,' which sanctions plural marriage.
"So, why did the founding prophet of the LDS Church contradict and violate his own revelations,' as well as the laws of the land, by secretly teaching and practicing polygamy? Why did Smith's successors continue to teach and practice polygamy for another half a century, in violation of the laws of the land?
If the practice of polygamy was wrong, then why did Joseph Smith tell his followers that God sent an angel with a sword to threaten him with death if he did not practice polygamy? Did Joseph Smith just make up all that or what?"
("Mormon Polygamy Was Never Legal," under "LDS Mormon Polygamy Law Illegal," at:
http://www.i4m.com/think/polygamy/polygamy_illegal.htm)
Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 11/13/2014 09:58PM by steve benson.