Posted by:
Zeezromp
(
)
Date: June 18, 2015 01:17PM
Scroll down to John Taylor's Lies. There are lots of LDS leaders lies while you are there.
http://packham.n4m.org/lying.htmJohn Taylor's Lies
The Lie:
In a public debate with Protestant ministers at Boulogne-sur-Mer, France, in 1850, John Taylor (then an apostle, later to become the third president of the church), 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 to 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, .... "we declare that we believe that one man should have one wife, and one woman but one husband." (Three Nights' Public Discussion..., published by John Taylor, Liverpool 1850, photocopy in Sharon Banister, For Any Latter-day Saint, Fort Worth 1988, p. 289)
The Truth:
At the time of this discussion, John Taylor was married to eleven wives in addition to his first (legal) wife: Elizabeth Kaighin, Jane Ballantyne, Anna Ballantyne, Mary A. Oakley, Mary A. Utley, Mary Ramsbottom, Sarah Thornton, Lydia Dibble (Hyrum Smith's polygamous widow), Ann Hughlings, Sophia Whittaker, and Harriet Whittaker. He had also been married to Mercy R. Fielding Smith (Hyrum Smith's widow), but the marriage had ended in divorce. (listed in D. Michael Quinn, The Mormon Hierarchy: Origins of Power [Vol. 1], Salt Lake City 1994, p. 597)
Notice that Taylor cited the Mormon scripture Doctrine and Covenants as it was in effect and binding on all Mormons at that time. Thus Taylor (as well as Hyrum Smith and Joseph Smith) was in violation of the official laws of his own church, as well as the civil law. Notice that Taylor describes polygamy as "most indelicate, obscene, and disgusting, such that none but a corrupt and depraved heart could have contrived. ... too outrageous to admit of belief." Surely he could not have been sincere in such an opinion about a doctrine that he himself was practicing, and which he practiced and defended (as soon as it was officially admitted by Brigham Young in 1852) until the end of his life.
Ironically, Taylor later took the opposite position:
"...we want nothing secret nor underhanded, and I for one want no association with things that cannot be talked about and will not bear investigation."
John Taylor, March 2, 1879, Journal of Discourses 20:264